So tonight is one of those rare evenings we can open all doors at the back of the house and they can stay open until the sun has gone down and bats replace the swallows in their frittering around the trees.

It wasn’t quite so warm last night but all the children were away for forty-eight hours. More chance than any design they had managed to deposit themselves on almost all available options for the Celtic fringes. As has been reported already the oldest is in Ireland – in the meantime the other two have taken themselves of to Bude in Cornwall (the youngest for a school trip) and somewhere in North Wales (the middle one).

So with the new found freedom we took ourselves off for a walk along the old sandstone wall that runs north from Parkgate. It was just us and the birds and a few dog walkers. The dog walkers seemed appropriate given the joke just heard on Just a Minute around the topic of ‘a fork in the road’ and the Irish for dogging.

As we walked the full force of the evening sun was hidden amidst a bank of clouds but it gave out a clear distant light that picked up the mark on the horizon of Hilbre Island and the yachts on their side that lay in front of it.

Back home we finished off the cold sea trout, new potatoes and mayonnaise. The sea tout was almost better second time round.

Later in bed I filleted through the books on my bed side table and found that last year I had bought myself a How to Fish book on sea trout and read about them until the early hours.