Last week on Sunday The Observer Food Magazine had in it an article on Elizabeth David and a selection of favourite recipes chosen by famous chefs. My eye was caught by a recipe for Pot Roasted Chicken stuffed with olives from French Provincial Cooking. The Farmer’s Market was on the following weekend so I would be able to pick up a good bird.

Back at home I pulled from the shelf in the kitchen my rather battered copy of French Provincial Cooking and looked up the recipe. It was there but on the following page there was a recipe for chicken with tarragon and butter. There is a bunch of tired tarragon in the fridge and it would be shame not to use it up so we will have that instead with roast potatoes and cumin and honey flavoured carrots.

At The Farmer’s Market I was tempted by some great looking ribs of beef. They may be a bit extravagant when there will be only two people eating it but we will eat the leftovers as well. I will leave them until next month. Something to look forward to in the dog days of early January. In the meantime I made do with some Buffalo Rump Steak for Saturday’s lunch. Fried briefly in a smear of olive oil and and then stuffed into a crunchy baguette with a couple of slices of tomato. I bought some Tasty Lancashire cheese for my sandwiches during the week. People have been nibbling at it already and it will be lucky to last until Monday

I have also been attending to some of the preparation for Christmas. This included buying a tree. Not as big as last year but big enough and now up and decorated. I even hung a couple of baubles before being told by the youngest I was doing it wrong.

And then there was christmas shopping on Sunday. As we are going to be away for Christmas week there would appear to be less pressure to stock the house up on gifts. Walking round Liverpool there was time to admire some graffiti and wonder at why it was necessary to have the life size nativity scene in the middle of Church Street hemmed in by a fence. That probably tells us all that we need to know about Christmas.

Having completed my shopping I was able to sneak 20 minutes in Lunya for a pint of Estralla and a plate of Trevelez Serrano Ham in anticipation of the week that we will be spending in Spain over Christmas. And very good it was too.

‘Who was that man then?’

‘You know him alright. That was Two Pints.’

‘How does a man get a name like that?’

‘Feck. There’s nothing hard about that. He’ll just drink two pints for the night and leave it at that. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just the two pints. And he’ll tell you, make it as clear as he can, that there is no more needed. There is no better feeling a man can have than being halfway through that second pint.’

‘The first pint will loosen the back of the mind, shake out the cobwebs and clear up the air. You’ll be bound to finish it too quickly and the glass will be back down on the bar the dregs streaming in. There’ll be a wait then as that second pint is poured into its glass and as you’re doing that your tongue will rattle a bit in the mouth.’

‘There’s no patience to be had as you wait for that pint. But when it is there, in front of you, pause for a while and make that wait last. He’ll not have another pint after that one and you can see in the way he holds the glass that he’d like to have more.’

‘Drink deep there and let the world settle down around you. Two Pints will tell you there’s all sorts of temptation in the world and powders to make you feel good. But that second pint will knock them all down.’

Over the weekend I think I mentioned that I had come across my new favourite record shop on Cowley Road in Oxford.

Eighteen years ago when we used to live just off Cowley Road on East Avenue there was a record shop called Green River Records. I can’t remember the names of the two guys behind the counter but I was in there most Saturdays leafing through the racks of records until I came across something I fancied which was then duly taken up to the counter. Inevitably there would be something playing and I would ask “What is that?” and no matter the answer I bought that as well. I could probably go up to the attic now and start to pull out the various records I bought there. It was mostly obscure post-grunge American bent out of shape – no more so than Truman’s Water, mixed with a bit of Brit-pop and other stuff that caught my eye because the record had a good sleeve.

It perhaps no great surprise that Green River Records shut its doors soon after we moved away from Cowley Road to Liverpool.

So it was a pleasure last year to find that Trunk Store had opened its doors only a few hundred yards up from where Green River had been.

I paid my third visit there this last weekend. Of course its is mostly CD’s now as opposed to albums. It only took me five minutes to lay my eyes on five or six that I wanted. I made a mental list of them as I went through the racks and shelves trying to tick off in my mind what I could afford, what I would probably pick up later, balancing up the risk of not seeing something again and so never acquiring it against the number of times I would actually listen to it.

It took another fifteen minutes to narrow things down to a point at which I could take four CD’s up to the counter to pay for them.

It was at that point the rest of the family found me and we sat down to have coffee on the half dozen or so chairs squeezed up along the side of the shjop. Then Galen decided he wanted to look as well and he was trying to find something by King Krule and there I was flicking through the k’s only to come across a new King Creosote CD. So I had to have that as well.

It was well worth it. They all were although I gather from the questions being raised on me playing the Syrian Wedding music by Omar Souleyman that there may be some pressure that to have that on repeat too many times.

By way of an addendum to last night’s post I should mention that The Pitt Rivers Museum has a web page and if you spend view minutes clicking around you should come across a database of all that they have in the collection.

It is a wee bit clunky but it only took me another two minutes to discover that they have a large number of trumpets fashioned out of the human femur very few of which appear to be on display.

You have to wonder at who was the first person to pick up an old piece of human femur and have a go blowing down it.

So you Google it and discover that a trumpet made from a human thigh bone is properly called a Kangling and you can acquire them for $550 (male) or $600 (female). You can also get them made out wood – but that would appear to be defeating the point.

Anyway, pay them a visit at http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/index.html to see what you are missing and should you happen to be in Oxford spend an hour or two wandering round. If there is a child available take it with you and then send it off to find the shrunken heads and the nit combs made from a walrus’ tusk and the black statue studded with nails.