There was a deep grumble about the men in the pub. It was mid February and the weather was bleak. A grey fug lay over the land and there had been no sign of the sun or blue sky since the week after Christmas. The sky was grey and stayed grey and whatever colour there may have been in the hills from the grass and the heather had been washed out by the weather. There was no rain to complain about although the wind that came in from the sea filled the air with wet and it hung in the air and filled all the corners with a penetrating damp. There was no throwing it off and despite the chill everything was clammy to touch.

The grey weather had been so persistent that had even managed to drain the talk from the men. The weather and its changes was the starting point for any evenings talk but when it stayed the same and that same was grey and overbearing it just rubbed the talk out of them.

As Tom Cronin said ‘Why the feck can’t it rain and we can talk about how wet it is.’

There were eight of them in the pub. Six of them sat round the low rectangular table in the corner under the window by the bar, three of them on the seat by the window and three of them perched on stools. The curtain was drawn against the window and outside it was dark now. The other two men stood at the bar. Tom Cronin had his back to the bar and faced over the men and the man with the black beard with his back to the men, leaning with his elbows over the bar one hand on his pint and the other twisting at a small pile of crumpled notes and coins.

Each man had his pint and they drank them slowly. As one of them finished he nodded to whoever’s glass was nearly empty and there were a few murmured words as the glasses went onto the bar and the pints were replenished. A radio played quietly and if anyone spoke it sounded too loud and whatever short burst of conversation started it soon came to an end and whoever had spoken would retreat back to his glass drawing on the pint.

The man with the black beard turned to face the men.

‘Feck the feckin’ weather’ he said. ‘It can stay like this for another six weeks and will you all be sat here drinking your pints too scared to say a word for frightening the quiet. It’s not the weather that’s holding your tongues. You’ve all been sat here too many evenings and there is feck all left for us to say.’

He took a drink at his pint. ‘When was the last time, when did any of you last take out a boat to catch some fish? Cause I tell you that’s what I need.’

The men were quiet and had no answer for him.

‘There’s no feckin’ fish there now’ said Tom Cronin. ‘And any fish that is down there is too feckin’ deep and slow to be caught. You have to wait now to May or June for them to come back. There’s no point in taking a boat out for them now.’

The man turned to him ‘You know as I do that Jack Mitchell had three fish from the pier in Doneen on Christmas day morning and that was but six weeks ago. If there are fish there on Christmas Day there by the pier there’ll be fish there out in the bay where the water is deep. I’ll be out there tomorrow and then we can talk.’

Tom Cronin took a drink at his pint ‘Feck the fish that Jack Mitchell had were the last to go. Those were the fish that got left behind after last summer. The rest of them will be out in the sea too far to go out in your boat. If you’re going to catch fish you need to wait for them to come back and come back to the surface and for that you’ll need a change in this light. And that will not come until there is a change in this weather and the days draw longer. There’ll be no fish out there until then.’

‘There will always be fish out there’ the man said. ‘Three fish don’t get left behind. If there’s three mackerel swimming there’ll be another few hundred down there with them. I’m surprised that Jack just got the three. They may swim a bit more slowly but that means I just need to give them more time.’

Patrick Holland was sat on one of the stools and he bent round to look back and up at the man ‘And what will you catch them with. A feather’s not going to work in this water no matter how bright and flash it is. You’ll need something to wake them up down there.’

‘I’ll use a hook and a line’ the man said.’ And if I need something else with the feathers then I’ll find that out when I’m out there.’

He lifted his glass and finished his pint. ‘ Now I’m going home and I’ll be back here tomorrow with a bucket of mackerel and then we can talk some more.’

With the he lifted himself up from where he was leaning back on the bar and walked out of the door leaving the men to talk about the fish he might catch the next day.

I am not a great one for The Telegraph but if I do pick it up then will usually try and make my way to the obituaries. There will normally be some Johnny or Jane with more than two barrels to their name who did their bit in the war and managed to continue to lead  an exotic life with exciting times.

This last Sunday it was the turn of Marshall Meek, who died aged 88. He was one of Britain’s leading naval architects and chief naval architect of the Liverpool-based Blue Funnel Line during the 1950’s.

Marshall Meek was born at Auchtermuchty, Fife, on April 22 1925, the son of a monumental sculptor. The family were Exclusive Brethren, a fellowship which brought Marshall friendships worldwide and into which, in 1957, he married. He broke with the sect soon after; it had barred his mother and sister from the wedding, and was demanding that its adherents leave professional bodies they belonged to. But he continued to worship with more tolerant Brethren.

The first ship he designed for Blue Funnel was Centaur, to carry passengers, livestock and cargo between Malaysia and Western Australia. 

One of versions on How to Kill a Mackerel compares, in the introduction, time spent in the Cottage being a bit like spending time on a boat. The quarters are cramped and the bedrooms run into each other and after a night in the pub the night can be picked over in bed shouting through to the other rooms. Having put out that thought and went on to say….

‘Every good boat should have a manual of instruction, a guide as to how it moves best through the water, how to handle its ropes and get the best out of idiosyncrasies; the instructions passed by word of mouth or on a few gathered, scribbled notes. Patience Gray’s A Centaur’s Kitchen, was composed as a manual of instruction to the cooks of The Blue Funnel Line’s latest addition to its fleet, The Centaur. The owners had appealed to Patience Gray to write them a set of recipes that their Chinese cooks could execute. As the dust jacket declares the consequence and will appeal to those who enjoy their food with bags of flavour and richness, and who respond to the firm yet inspired guidance of a writer who knows what’s what.

‘Of course I do not know what’s what. But leaf through the illustrated pages of the Centaur’s Kitchen and it is clearly something more than the words spelled out on its dust jacket. It is a collection of recipes pared down to the bare essentials. They are for eating outside, with friends, cooked with the ingredients at hand. You feel reading it that if you have grasped the fundamentals hinted at through its hundred or so pages you will know all you need to know. You may even know what’s what.

‘The pictures are line drawings of the food, the kitchens and rooms and people where and for whom it was cooked. All of the recipes are clearly bound up with where they were learnt and perfected. They are simple but really say all that they need to say. And in the almost implied connection between recipe, the cooking and history there is the memory and desire.

‘It would be nice to do it as seamlessly as Patience Gray but I am not up to that. But it provided a starting point for these rough notes and jottings.

‘Patience Grey wrote her book as a manual of instruction for the Chinese cooks of the Centaur Line and so this book is a manual of instruction, a guide to cooking in the Cottage. It is not about the measuring of ingredients but about the taking of what is available or on offer and making use of it and hopefully making something that will be good.’

I was probably about 19 years old when I first heard Tom Waits. So that is about thirty years listening to him and now my children, or at least the eldest one, are getting close to 19 and it seems about time that they should be getting him too. So I have decided we are listening to nothing but Tom all week and for Sunday night we have started with One from the heart. 

We will see how we get on.

Outside it has been the last day of our Indian summer. There are brown leaves on the ground but it feels as if the trees are all holding back and keeping their green leaves up there to take the last few days benefit of heat in the sun. The ground has been brittle and dry and I spent time this afternoon clearing some space for garlic. The seeds should arrive this week from the Isle of Wight. I have grown garlic before when I shoved a couple of cloves into the ground and forgot about them for six months.

It was warm enough for the barbeque this afternoon. I cooked a spatchcocked chicken marinaded in garlic, lemon juice and sumac. But the highlight was the squid.

All that Wards had yesterday were huge squid too big for the pasta I was going to cook. Last night I used up the tentacles and a few slices from the body and the rest of the sac went into the fridge.

As the barbeque got to its hottest I took the squid out of the fridge and cut it in two. I then put a few light cuts down it and smeared it with garlic, olive oil and chilli.

It only needed a couple of minutes on the rack over the coals and it was done. It was then sliced up up and mixed in with chickpeas, rocket and more olive oil. My lunch tomorrow.