We were celebrating a birthday this morning and a return from Norway. So the day started slowly with lots of tea and bacon and some of us reading the cool magazine we bought from Cow & Co yesterday..

The weather was grey, cold and miserable but suddenly around 2.00 in the afternoon the sky cleared until there was nothing but blue sky and the sun started to beat down. I had time to plant out my tomatoes and weed around whatever is in the veg patch.

We had pizza for lunch. The recipe for the dough came from Kitchen & Co (and they took it from Jamie Oliver) and I let it rise until it was thick and bread like in the trays. I made three toppings; a thick spicy tomato sauce, large field mushrooms fried in garlic and oil until soft and half a dozen onions, sliced  and cooked slowly until almost caramalised.

We ate it outside before going off for a birthday treat to watch The Great Gatsby. it seemed a shame to leave the sun to go sit indoors and the 3D glasses didn’t work well with my glasses.

I didn’t finish that last post quite as I meant to having been hassled off the laptop by a child claiming that she wanted to do homework but really wanted to watch another repeat of Friends.

I was going to say that when it comes down to it I am not sure which out of music and food I would rather not lose. Of course they are both a long way ahead of the children.

I was in Probe this morning and in twenty five years or more of shopping there out of its various locations around Liverpool City centre I had the longest conversation so far with the guy behind the counter. He had been at the Public Service Broadcasting concert I had been to on Wednesday and I wanted to know what he thought.

He shook his head. ‘It didn’t do it for me. Have you heard Thee Oh Sees. I saw them two weeks ago in Liverpool and after no other band is going to match up.’

I resisted the temptation to go back to the racks to pick up all the Thee Oh Sees CDs I knew he had there.

There was a grey covered album on the counter. He shook his head again. ‘Don’t even go there. I was playing it earlier and it cleared the shop.’ That sounded like a recommendation   to me and possibly worthwhile if only to scare the children when we got home. I resisted again and paid for what i was getting and left.

Supper this evening was smoked haddock carbonara listening to fuzzed up American scuzzy sounds.

Here’s a story. Twenty five years ago or thereabouts I was a trainee solicitor waiting the results of my law finals exams. I had managed to scrape a training contract but had been told that if I failed my finals there would be no second chances and they would be letting me go.

The day before the results came out I had to go up to London to do something at The Royal Courts of Justice. Living in Oxford I got the bus to Notting Hill and then the tube into the city proper. On the way back I was walking down Notting Hill and went past The Notting Hill Record & Tape Exchange. There was a Situation Vacant sign in the window. I considered for a moment. I was pessimistic as to my chances of passing the exams and was reasonably confident I would be without a job and without much of a future sometime the following day. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So I went in.

I must have looked incongruous in my suit and tie straight from court but I went up to the counter and asked about the job. The manager came out and gave me an interview. It was probably the best interview I have done and I passed with flying colours.

He asked me the name of the singer in Marillion. He asked me what band Van Morrison had been in before he went solo. He pulled out a record sleeve and asked me what is was called – it was Led Zeppelin IV. He asked me to name Peter Gabriel’s first three albums. He offered me the job.

We discussed starting dates and I took his number so I could give him a call when I knew I would be finishing in Oxford.

That evening I got the results of my law final’s and heard that I had passed. So I never had the chance to give the man a call.

Twenty five years later I am still just about a lawyer.

For anyone who read last night’s post the good news is that the dishwasher is still fecked and showing even less sign of life than before I spent £200 on getting it repaired and there is no hot water at all when at least before British Gas came to do their repairs there was  enough to fill the sink in the kitchen. And I have just volunteered to spend my Saturday night shuttling to and from Manchester Airport.

So I am finishing off a good bottle of red wine and casting my mind back over the quail I had earlier in the evening.

There was a time that I would welcome future brothers in law into the family with a combination of broken wind, bad breathe and general grunting. Time moves on and I am a father now with a first boyfriend sat nervously at the table. I wonder what he made of the quail.

The kids wanted to eat vegetable pasta bake from M&S. Staring at the plastic packaging on the shelves in the supermarket I resolved to make it myself. I did okay I think although judging by what was left behind on some of the plates I should have stuck with the pasta and left the vegetables.

I had the quail with some of Michael’s bread.

There were four of them. I split them in half and put them in a large metal bowl with some olive oil. I ground up cumin, sea salt and a couple of small fresh bay leaves and rubbed the mixture in together two crushed cloves of garlic.

After half an hour or so the oven was on hot for the pasta bake. So I spread out the quail on a baking tray and put them in as well.

As they cooked I sliced two onions and cooked them in hot olive oil. More by luck than design I avoided burning them and as they caught I threw in splash of balsamic vinegar.

I made toast with Michael’s bread as I served the pasta bake.

I put the toast on a plate, spread some of the onion on top and then laid on two of the quail.

They were delicious. The crisp toast working with the onion and the bits I was able to take from the quail with a knife and fork before picking them up with my fingers.

Listening to another Soul Jazz compilation, this time deep house from 1980’s Chicago and beyond, and something by someone called John Murry which could be very good. It sounds like a more bruised Bathers.