It has been a grey Saturday today.

We woke at 8.00 to the sound of thunder. It rumbled through our closed eyes and our dreams the sound of a heavy wardrobe being pulled along the pavement filling the air over the house. Then came the rain. Great spats of it against the window. I opened the curtains and lay down in bed again watching it come down.

It stopped for a while during the morning and there was time to go into Birkenhead without getting wet. For the second week running I was too late for the razor clams from Wards. i will need to get up earlier next week if I want them for a Father’s Day treat.

In the International Store I bought myself a hunk of lamb, for kebabs on the barbeque (optimistic despite the rain) and bulgar wheat for a summer tabbouleh.

For lunch I found myself some mouldy cheese in the basement left over from the large party we had hosted three weeks ago. I had forgotten to put it in the fridge and it had developed a deep green layer of mould. I was able to scrape it off with a sharp knife and it did for cheese on toast with piccalilli.

Over the afternoon the garden was too wet to do anything so all there was to do was potter in the green house. I shifted the tomato plants and potted out the one padron pepper plant that has deigned to come up.

The rain has flattened everything in the garden and it is looking fat and green.

As I write there are four onions roasting on the barbeque and Volume 5 of London is the place for me.  A compilation of Calypso music from the 1960’s.