Sadly Miriam and her story of burnt mackerel did not win this evening but it is in the book of the shortlisted writers so that is a start. Considering the story was cobbled together from a couple of posts on here in an evening before going away in the summer it did well to get where it did.

I was by far the oldest there this evening and I got the impression that at least some of the other writers had a slightly more professional aspect to their writing.There were ten shortlisted writers in all and we were gathered together with our respective supporters (thank you Bridget & Steve – no thanks to kids who all had better things to do and no doubt are still off enjoying themselves).

We were in The Anthony Burgess Foundation and we were able to have a glass of Enderby Pale Ale which was very good.

After an introduction and a reading of poems and a short story we were into the countdown to the winner. The tension was ramped up by them having five consolation prizes. These were an e-reader of some sort. So just as well I didn’t win one of those as the fights at home with one of those in house would have the potential to be fatal.

The consolation prizes out of the way meant there were five names in the hat for the winner. As I have said it was not me. So I now know what they feel like at the Oscars and can put a fixed grin on like the next guy.

So the celebratory bottle of red wine I pulled out of a cupboard earlier in the day has turned itself into the evenings consolation prize. I will have it with a partridge that has spent 40 minutes roasting in the oven. For half that time it has been accompanied by a couple of apples from the garden, peeled cored and chopped up. They have now disintegrated and have been stirred into the juices and fat given off by the bird.

A recipe adapted from Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed.

Before finishing I should mention two things. The post bought me this morning a copy of Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. He is the master of less is more. They are rules to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book. Sounds like something to live by.

Second thing; lunch today was a small rack of mutton from the farmer’s market in New Ferry. And very good it was to.

Listening to Bob Dylan and The Band. May go on to Orange Juice.

It has been quiet here for the last few days. This is mostly because a large part of the week was spent down in London.

The last time I spent an evening in London I ate delicious but expensive tapas at Barrafina and went to watch Dexy’s play in an old theatre in the West End.

So this week operated as something of a contrast.

I arrived at Euston late on Tuesday afternoon and was whisked off to The Britannia Bar overlooking the concourse to meet my companions for the next 48 hours. Having snuggled my way into a pint of Golden IPA we left to make our way to Barking. We had been booked into the Ibis Hotel there and so with thoughts of Billy Bragg we set off.

There is great benefit to be had from living in Liverpool which is a city that has seen its population shrink around the infrastructure that was created a hundred years ago. A five minute hold up through a set of lights is the worse that you may have to put up with on a drive home in the evening.

Barking is apparently just over eight miles from Euston. On Tuesday night that journey took us an hour an half in the back of a car. It was a grinding slow drive leavened by the diversity of the areas we crawled through, the sheer rough complexity of London moving past slowly beyond the back windows of the car.

It was dark by the time we got on to the three lane dual carriageway that was Barking. The sat-nav took us to the door of The Ibis and we spilled out ready for another beer and something to eat.

All our spirits were dashed as we crowded into the reception area and we looked around us. It appeared that our only options for food for the night was going to be a set of shelves filled with Pot Noodles and Mars Bars and the bar was a fridge stacked with cider and Carling. Fortunately it transpired the sat-nav had taken us to the wrong Ibis. There was a slightly posher version three hundred yards and a Travel-Lodge up the road. We turned the sat-nav back on and motored across.

The second Ibis was a great deal posher than the first in that it had a bar and offered the promise of food. We booked in, changed and met in the bar. The choice was limited to Guinness but that was okay and I tucked in.

Having looked at the menu I chose Prawn Cocktail and steak. What could go wrong. To start with there was only one steak left and two of us had ordered it. I gave way and went for a burger instead. In the event it transpired that that was wrong to. The steak that arrived after a warm prawn-cocktail was more like a third of a steak and had been cooked in a way that banished from it anything that might give the impression this could taste good.

The next night we cruised the streets of Barking to find something better and ended up in the Weatherspoons next to the tube. This time they did have steak and the piece that arrived on my plate was about five times the size of the thing that that had been served up the previous evening. They had good beer as well and I squeezed in a couple of pints of Scapa Special.

The evening was rounded off with a talk on tomatoes and greenhouses and the merits of Rossendale of which there are many!

Sunday afternoon whilst planting the garlic our lunch was cooking.

I made a thick coconut flavoured Indonesian curry. It was very straightforward and was a dish that was happiest being left on its own to cook whilst I got on with other things which included nibbling at some sweet crispy crabs.

The recipe came from a book on Indonesian cooking that I picked up years ago. It was a chicken rendang. It is similar to a beef rendang save that the sauce is left to cook for an hour before adding the chicken.

The sauce was six cans of coconut milk, chopped onion, garlic, galingale and chilli, lots of turmeric, a couple of bay leaves, a bruised piece of lemon grass and salt. All this was put into a large pot and brought to a slow boil and then left to simmer until it had started to reduce. I then added the pieces of chicken and some thick tamarind water and left it all to cook for another hour and a bit.

At this point the sauce should separate into the oil from the coconut and the rest. You should then turn the heat up and continue stirring so that oil is absorbed by the meat and the sediment.

I did a bit of that but time was running out and the kids were hungry so we ate it with rice before all the oil had been absorbed.

The vegetarian alternative was easy to make by putting some of the sauce to one side before adding the chicken and stirring in a chopped aubergine and a tin of chickpeas.

There was plenty left for this evening and it was better second night in. In reheating the oil was absorbed and the whole dish took on a nutty flavour as if I had stirred in a half jar of smooth peanut butter.

Last year I called the eldest and only son a ‘bloody idiot’ for putting the hedge trimmer through its electrical cable. Yesterday he had vindication as I did exactly the same thing. There was a satisfying bang and a blue spark and then nothing. So that must make me an idiot too, if not a bloody one. Having mended it once before I knew what to do and had it working again in ten minutes or so.

Trimming the hedges was the second job of the day. The first was mending a doorknob. One of the joys of living in an old house are those things that fall apart and can then be left a few months before being mended. The door knob to the cloakroom has been coming off in our hand for the last few weeks. Yesterday morning it took four screws and ten minutes to mend it which I suppose must beg the question as to why I did not get round to it sooner.

Tea was a fractious fish and chips as various children announced that either the would not be home for tea or they had plans to be out for the evening and could they have their tea now rather in the hour or sos time I had planned. When the three that were left got round to their tea it was very good.

I had watched Simon at Wards taking the fillets off the haddock that morning. I seasoned them with salt and pepper and then ran then them through trays of flour, then egg and finally breadcrumbs. I am always slightly amazed that this process works so well. The breaded fish goes into the hot oil a flaccid white sticky mess and comes out with a stiff coat of fried brown bread crumbs encasing the creamy white flakes of fish. We ate them with potatoes that had been cut into chips and roasted in the oven, peas (lots of peas) and a great jar of tartare sauce. Next time I will make my own tartare sauce.

Today’s job is going to be planting garlic. This will be to give the empty parts of the veg plot something to do over the winter months. I have grown garlic before almost by mistake. I just push some old cloves that were showing too much shoot into the ground and I was surprised when a few months later I had a few bulbs I could harvest.

This time I have been more scientific about it and have been on The Garlic Farm website and have bought myself some proper seed garlic. I have a combination of Elephant Garlic and Vallelado Wight. They will be going into the ground this afternoon and hopefully I will be pulling them up next summer. So come back here in six months or sos time and see how they are getting on.

Garlic is of course good for you and it is one of the kitchen staples. If there isn’t any in the kitchen I start to get nervy. It is so good for you that I have persuaded myself that it acts as a counter-balence to all the too much beer, red wine and red meat I punish my body with. Keep eating garlic and it will be okay.

Many years ago I was given a two kilo string bag of garlic from Spain. It was brought over by Simon who had travelled to friends before he came to see us. He carried the heady perfume of it around with him for weeks. I put the garlic in a great bowl in the kitchen and we steadily ate our way through it over the course of a couple of months. The smell of it filled the small house in Oxford we lived in at the time.

In the meantime it is still warm in the garden. There is a bumper crop of apples. rather frustratingly some of the best ones for eating have come from a small tree that has not produced much before and which I had mentally cut down so I could enlarge the veg plot. It has bought itself a stay of execution.

The tomatoes are still going red in the greenhouse which means I won’t get to try out a trick I heard about on the radio during the week for reddening green tomatoes which involved putting them in a paper bag with a banana. Next week perhaps. And my sole remaining pepper is starting to turn red. I am looking forward to eating it!