Fret, low cloud, mist, wet fog, damp, pernicious, insistent, persistent, insidious, clammy, soft, dry, wet, crept upon, under the skin, down the the back of the neck, damp, wind blown, up from the sea, ambivalent, thorough, sea cloud, limpid.

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I have lost count of how any records I have in the attic. I used to have a list of them all but I could never keep it up and the list went to one side. So if asked I will say a few thousand and leave it that.

If I am asked then inevitably the conversation will move on to what they are worth. The answer is not as much as I would like to think. A lot of them are second hand and they have all been played – at least once – so none of them are mint. And the ones that might be worth something are the ones worth playing so they have been played until the vinyl has worn thin.

Then on Friday night at one point the conversation turned to Michael Head and the Strands and their album The Magical World Of The Strands. I mentioned I had it somewhere in the attic and was told to look after it as it was now worth a small fortune. After some searching it transpires it wasn’t in the attic but was tucked into one of the other piles of albums scattered round the house.

We have been listening to it this afternoon waiting for the sun to come out and wearing out the vinyl.

In the meantime out in the garden I have been harvesting some of the garlic.

There were four elephant garlic that had grown out of whatever had been left in the ground after last summer. They were more than six feet tall with the bulbs as big and thick as my fist.

The rest of the garlic had been planted last October having been bought from a stall at Bantry Market. There are four beds of it and it could probably stay in the ground for another few weeks but I need room to plant out some beetroot so I pulled one of the rows out. These were of a more modest size. They are now hanging to dry in the greenhouse filling the air with there smell.

Ostensibly the second hand daughter is a vegetarian but since she has been spending her  summer in Ireland there have been reports that fish has been had. More particularly hake has been eaten.

I can remember a hake dish I had in The good Things Cafe years ago.There was a pungent mixture of potatoes and tomatoes on onions on top on which a large slice of hake had been cooked.

I tried to create something similar this evening.

I started with a few par boiled potatoes. These were cut up into chunks and fried in olive oil over a high heat. As they took on colour some sliced onions were added. Then some garlic and then a combination of things from last night – a half dozen cherry tomatoes, a large grilled red pepper, some capers and a few chopped hot Turkish peppers. All this was seasoned with salt, pepper and ground coriander.

By this time then oven was on a high heat. The potato mixture was tipped into a terracotta bowl, drizzled with olive oil and went into the oven. Five minutes later I took it out to lay the two fillets of hake on top.

Twelve minutes later I switched on the grill and gave the skin of the hake a last drizzle of oil so it would crisp up.

We ate it listening to The American Music Club.

Last night was the last music club before we all break up for the summer. It was warm enough to sit outside so we did in a garden in the wilds of the Wirral until the rain came down sometime before midnight and we were rushed inside by the wet in a kerfuffle of beer, food and wires.

We listed to Patti Smith, Nick Drake, Bobby Womack and Ibeyi amongst other things. But the highlight was Frazey Ford’s cool languid songs which seemed to melt into the evening.We shall be listening to her a lot this summer.

I made four different pinchos for us to nibble over round the beer.

• olives, cocktail onions, hot Turkish peppers and anchovies
• artichokes, cherry tomatoes and olives
• Feta cheese,  cherry tomatoes and black olives
• roasted red pepper, cherry tomatoes, hot Turkish peppers and olives.

Very good they were to.