We went out for Sunday lunch this last weekend. The family took a break from waiting for me to put the food on the table and we all went into Liverpool to see a film and then eat.

The film was Gravity. After some consultation and deliberation we had all decided that we wanted to go see it. Without giving too much away I suspect that those on the Sandra Bullock side of the debate as opposed to the George Clooney side got the better end of the bargain. There were a couple of bits that reminded me of Jaws being the beginning when we see the grey shape of the space shuttle coming through the black distance of space and then the head in the hole in a boat moment. It didn’t go on too long either which was a bonus as I had to watch it with the 3D glasses perched on my nose in front of my normal glasses. Kids were amused and I was grumpy.

after the film we went to eat burgers at Free State Kitchen on Maryland Street and they weren’t too bad. Better and cheaper than Byron’s and without the incessant pressure to look as if you are enjoying yourselves. The chips just made it onto the right side of being crispy and there was good bottled beer.

I even got round to suggesting we should do it again.

Monday evening was Low inside The Anglican Cathedral. Go back through this blog and somewhere you will find me telling you that Low are responsible for possibly the best Christmas record ever. Grouch that I am about Christmas I slightly hoped that they might play a song from it. They didn’t. But they did play a lot of songs that appeared to about God. Some of the loud. Some of them quiet. And some of them moving gradually from quiet to loud. The ones that moved from quiet tended to finish very loud. That of course is a good thing although sometimes it seemed a shame that the noise they were making was not filling the whole of the Cathedral as opposed to the relatively small space we were occupying at the back under the Tracy Emin sign.

Fish tagging experiments have been carried out at least since the 1890s, but undoubtedly Ehrenbaum was the first to tag a mackerel. He noted that ‘mackerel are caught from time to time bearing a narrow rubber ring on the fore part of the body, either placed close before or behind the pectoral fins. This perhaps perhaps is nothing more than an an idle jest on the part of the fishermen’. Mackerel, and some other species are caught wearing these rubber rings even now, but in these less naive times we are aware they may more to do with a mariners brief, but amorous trip ashore than they do with any idle jest at sea.

Stephen J Lockwood The Mackerel

Today would be a good day for gardening. It is strangely quiet outside with little wind and warm when the sun comes out. Then I realise the quiet is because my ears are as bunged up as my nose and after shuffling a few leaves I have to come inside to rest. A bout of man flu is a desperate thing to be combatted with long periods of doing very little at all and waiting for the pubs to open.

I thought that lasts nights Fideus would help beat the man flu into submission but it doesn’t seem to have worked so I have been feeling sorry for myself for almost 48 hours. Having said that fideus was very good. Nuggets of monkfish and prawn nestling amongst the thin strands of pasta which were coated with the thick tomato sauce well flavoured by the halibut head. No-one else was keen on the clams so I picked at those myself. They were small and sweet and salty.

The leaves in the garden will have to wait until next weekend by which time it will no doubt be freezing cold and lashing down a gale!

If a fish-head can look baleful the one that I picked up this morning did it stuck in the bottom of my stockpot and waiting for me to add onions and carrots, salt, peppercorns, bay leaf and water to make up a good fish stock.

There is no point going without fish stock. If you are cooking fish you need to go to the fishmonger so ask him if he has a fish-head or bones for making stock. Most of them will and if they don’t then maybe it is time to think about a different fishmonger.

The fish-stock is going to be used in the making of a seafood fideus. Fideus is a Catalonian paella made with small noodle shaped pieces of pasta rather than rice. I spotted the pasta in the back of a cupboard and thought that it needed eating up. I had bought it last year when we had a Spanish student staying with us for a few days and I was wanting to make her something that might remind her of home.

On the moment there are some onions cooking down in a wide iron pan. Once they are brown and sweet I will add a couple of chopped tomatoes and some garlic and then monkfish prawns. That will all get stirred round for a few minutes and then monkfish and prawns will go in and get stirred round some more. Then the pasta which will needed to be covered in the sauce before the stock is ladled in and it all left to cook through for about twenty five minutes.

Finally I have a handful of clams that I will cook separately and then dot over the top.

Listening to John Cale and The Velvet Underground.