Saturday morning and the sun has gone in.

There were a couple of days last week you could have persuaded yourself that summer was here. Of course I spent those days sat at my desk in an office and the summer was seen second hand through a thick layer of glass. But it was clear that the sun was shining and those bits of the Mersey I could see turned silver in the light and the sky was clear and a flat blue.

Today the temperature has dropped and the sky is grey and heavy. Thundery rain is predicted. There has already been a shower last night and outside the grass is slick with wet. At least I won’t need to worry about watering the garden over the weekend.

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It had started to cloud over last night but it was dry so I found time to light up the small barbeque to cook a couple of steaks. Because there wasn’t much time I put them on the barbeque too early. They cooked fine but the coals then reached their optimum heat twenty minutes after we had finished eating them. We had the with Royal Jersey potatoes and rocket from the garden.

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Listening to Rocket from the Crypt. Double turbo charged mindless rock’n’roll mayhem. Perfect for a Friday evening.

And now half an hour later some of the grey clouds are moving and there is a hint of blue sky and sun in the garden.

You can tell a man that has been to Brighton by the quality of hat he is wearing.

I was there for just over twelve hours but still found the time to find a hat good enough to feel like an old friend less than two days later. We will see if it lasts the summer.

In between buying the hat there was time to go to a place called Hen that was selling nothing but chicken (apart from the halloumi burgers). Given that you would have thought they could have got it right.

A long time ago I went to a place in Madrid that sold nothing but chicken and cider. In my memory it is was an old church and we were all sat on benches and as the the cider was ordered the corks were flipped with a finger high up into the air. The vegetarian amongst us was reassured by the fact that they sold chips as well until it transpired that their version of chips was a packet of crisps.

Back in Hen the chicken came just too quickly to be reassuring. Ordering it I had been given a detailed talk through the difference between the fried and grilled chicken which sounded great. Ten minutes later I was left trying to work out how they would have had time to fit all that in.

And the come Sunday evening we had a barbeque:-

– pork stuffed with fennel chilli and garlic

– chicken marinaded in garlic and lemon

– beans with a tomato vinagrette

– small boiled potatoes with butter and chives

It all seemed to go down quite well.

As any man knows it is important to walk tall and wear a good hat.

Howe Gelb and Giant Sand wore good hat when they played last night in the small Victorian theatre tucked down one of the sides of St George’s Hall. It was the same room that Dickens read in more than a hundred years ago and the only shame was that it wasn’t as full last night as it would have been on one of those nights with Dickens in full flow.

I have written elsewhere on here about Giant Sand so I won’t repeat too much of the history. The last time I had seen Howe Gelb it was twenty five years ago and he was sat on one of the benches on Magdelen Bridge in Oxford arms outstretched over the back looking cool and relaxed in the morning air. If I get round to writing a proper book of short stories one of them will feature the moment I hesitated and didn’t go over and shake his hand and say hello.

The night before when they were playing in the old Co-op Hall on Cowley Road I had shouted out for them to play Mountain of Love. He had shaken his head sadly and said “But that is an old song” and then went on to play it anyway. Last night when I shouted out for the same song he just said “No’ and went ahead and played something even older.

There can’t be many bands thirty years into a career who can just play a gig consisting mostly of stuff from the album they released only a few weeks ago and have it sound as if they are playing a show of greatest hits. But Giant Sand did that last night. They played as if that new album Heartbreak Pass was the best thing they have ever done but then I know they are at least a dozen other albums lurking among the thirty or so that are out there that are just as good if not better.

So it was a good gig and Howe Gelb wore good hat. He took it off for some songs, hanging it on a spare mic-stand or the head of the bass guitar, but it always went back on.

I should have shaken his hand.

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