It is easy to forget working in Liverpool city centre through the week that it is worth making the effort sometimes to go in at the weekend as well.

Yesterday morning -before doing that I kept myself down to earth with a quick run into Birkenhead market to buy red mullet, monkfish and prawns from Ward’s Fish.

In Liverpool we had coffee in Ziferblat and discovered that whilst 8p a minute might not seem much at all, spread out over a few hours it mounted up.

We then went into the Tate to look at Tracy Emin’s bed. And that was all you could do with it really – just look at it. More interesting were the paintings and prints by William Blake that were on the surroundings walls. These included one print showing the head of a man being swallowed by a fearsome dragon. Pleasingly the face on the head bore a resemblance to Trump and even better all his hair was blown out of shape. Let us hope a similar fate befalls him in the real world soon – that is both out of shape hair and being swallowed by a dragon.

I then had half an hour to slip into The Open Gallery to look at photos and and other items celebrating the idea of the North, Fashion and Identity. I managed to resist the temptation to spend more money I don’t have on two books of photographs on Men and Women. It is possible that part of the attraction was the picture of Anna Friel on the front cover of the book on Women. Thinking about it now I may have to go back.

It was good to be reminded of my only visit to the Hacienda to go see Blancmange who were supported by a band called The Basking Sharks whose prop was a shark fin made out cardboard stuck to the front of the drums. They no doubt went on to great things.

There was just time to pop into Lunya to buy sausages and beans to eat with the remains of the ham tonight.

We had the fish last night. The prawns and monkfish were boiled for a couple of minutes and then refreshed in iced water. We had them with a cold salad of peppers and onion flavoured with oil and vinegar. It was more of a summer dish but I had seen the recipe and wanted to try it.

The red mullet were of a good size so we just had the one which had been filleted.

It took as long to cook as it took for the water for the pasta to boil and the pasta to cook.

Whilst the water was coming to the boil I chopped up three tomatoes and mixed them squashed garlic, a generous slug of olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper.

Whilst the pasta cooked I cooked the fish. Hot oil in a pan then sliding the fillets in skin side down. I flipped them over after a minute and a minute later they were done.

The drained pasta went back into the pan and I stirred in the tomatoes with a handful of torn basil leaves.

The pasta went into a bowl and the fillets of fish laid on top. I had managed to keep the gold red skin intact on one of the fillets and it almost looked too good to eat.

We listened to Holly Golightly.