Yesterday afternoon I spent half an hour outside sawing logs for the fire. After cutting my way through a particularly thick log I paused for breathe and looked back at the garden. As I did so a goldcrest flew across the pond into the branches of the yew tree that overlooks it. The goldcrest paused there for a second then flew into the buddleia. As it did so it seemed to tumble in the air, halting then flying on again. I think it had been intending to fly down to the pond for a drink before being spooked on seeing me standing there.

The birds in the garden are waking up to the imminent spring. I saw two blue tits inspecting a hole in the wall as a spot for a nest. They nested there a few years ago although they were spotted by a cat before who would then sit on the top of the wall waiting to swing a paw in the split second they flew out of the hole.

In the garden this morning the birds singing was almost overwhelming. There seemed to be noise coming from each corner as if the change in the light was recharging them.

Last night I had only the two girls to feed so I made them potato croquettes. Five large potatoes cooked in their skins and allowed to cool. They were then peeled and mashed and mixed with a good few handfuls of grated cheese and an egg with a seasoning of salt and pepper. I rolled them into a short squat sausage shape and these were then covered with flour, dipped into a beaten egg and then breadcrumbs before being deep fried.

I allowed the oil to get too hot so they started to burn on the outside before being cooked to a volcanic heat inside but the girls still ate them up with a tin of Heinz Baked Beans.

There were a few left for a snack later this afternoon.

It has been a raw morning. It snowed for about ten minutes at 9.30. It was beautiful snow. Great big flakes half an inch across. They drifted down slowly. There were only a few of them and they stood out in the hard clear light of the garden. It didn’t stick and after a few minutes it had turned into a thin fine sleet.

I went into  Birkenhead on a shopping trip to buy for new shoes for younger daughter. Before heading into the centre we stopped at the butchers in Oxton for a pound and a half of stewing steak and then at the grocers for onions, celery and potatoes.  All good for a warm stew for Monday night’s supper.

The shoe shopping took an hour and took me into corners of Birkenhead centre I hardly knew were there including a quick five minutes in a deserted House of Fraser. The HMV is in the process of closing down and I found myself wandering through trying to find a bargain with everything 30%. But anything worthwhile had been taken already and the shelves were down to the dregs. It was all a bit depressing.

In all I think we looked at shoes of one sort or other in about 12 shops and of course ended up buying a pair we had seen in the second shop. It was proably better than being at home and supervising revision.

The wandering around shoe shops was broken up by a brief visit to Wards. I am planning on a sustaining fish pie tomorrow and was intending to make it only with haddock – an even mixture smoked and fresh. But next to the fresh haddock they had some great fillets of pollock so I bought that instead. The pollock we catch in Ireland tend to be small and their flesh can be watery. These fillets looked good and firm.

A quick trip to Wikipedia tells me that a few years ago Sainsbury’s took to renaming pollock colin so that customers would not be embarrassed asking for either because it might be thought they were asking for bollocks or because of its reputation as a cheap fish.

I also learn that year-old fish are traditionally split, salted and dried over a peat hearth in Orkney, where their texture becomes wooden and somewhat phosphorescent.

In Ahakista there are big ones to be had amongst the rocks beyond Carberry Island and part of the fishing competition is measuring up to see who has caught the biggest.

It is a while since I have spent a Saturday afternoon in the kitchen cooking and listening to loud music. These days are usually done best with a bit of planning. The morning spent on a trawl to Wards for fish, Edges for meat the grocers and The International Store for the rest of the food. There will be a plan in mind and having got my ingredients I will more or less know what I am doing. There might even be lists involved.

Having got lunch out of the way it will be time to start. Hopefully at this point the rest of the family will have dispersed and I will be alone for an hour or two. Time to indulge in one of the few decisions I made all by myself when we built our new kitchen – speakers in the ceiling. There are two of them positioned over that small zone between the oven and the chopping board. Perfectly positioned to deliver total volume as I am cooking.

Somewhere I have lined up a long piece on the music we should listen to as we are cooking and the risks involved. Playing air guitar with a sharp knife can give a whole new meaning to sticky fingers and getting carried away playing air drums (it can be done) with a pair of wooden spoons just makes you look silly.

Anyway this year I have tried to be more parsimonious with the buying of new music but there are already a few good candidates that should speed along the cooking. Top of the list so far will probably be the new Nick Cave album and in particular Higgs Boson Blues which this afternoon had me adopting guitar hero moves at loud volume in the front room to be caught by the eye of a member of the Merseyside Police delivering home safety leaflets through the front door. Nick Cave would then be followed by Matthew E White and his take on blue eyed blissed out soul – sounding like a bastard child of Plush and Spiritulised. The next two on the list are also on Jagjaguwar and are Foxygen and Unknown Mortal Orchestra – all weird skewed guitar ridden pop – the world needs more of this sort of thing.

I am looking forward to that Saturday afternoon.

A brief aside – as I write this the rest of the family are sat elsewhere watching old episodes of Sex & the City, younger daughter closing her eyes and blocking her ears at the nasty bits.

You could be sat in the pub on a sunny day in summer and a hire car will pull slowly up the small hill from the Cottage. The driver and the passengers all looking left at the view over the pier and the boats in Kitchen Cove. The car pulls up outside the pub and the driver gets out. As he does so he pauses and looks back and is obviously talking into the car. Once he is out he casts an eye over the wooden tables and benches on the patch of grass across the road that leads down to the water opposite the pier. He turns back to say something else into the car, straightens up and walks into the pub.

The door is open for the heat. Once the man is inside, he slows and looks around nervously. There is only me and the man with a black beard stood at the bar. We have not been talking, just drinking our pints in the quiet. Mary is out the back somewhere.

The man looks at us and says ‘Hello’. There is an accent to it but difficult to place. He walks up the bar and stands there straight but looking it over.

‘She’ll be out in a while’ says the man with a black beard.

The man who has walked in must be in his late fifties. He has grey hair and is tall and is wearing clean white clothes. ‘Do they make coffee here or some food?’ he asks. He has a Dutch accent.

The man with a black beard looks at him and shakes his head ‘You’ll not get that here’ he says, ‘It’ll be too much work. But you drive on to Kilcrohane, its a few miles along the road and Eileen she might make you a sandwich.’

The man looks puzzled ‘Eileen, who is that?’

‘Eileen, she has the pub in Kilcrohane, Fitzpatricks its there on hill up from the church. You will see it if you drive. But if you want a drink, a cold drink, well there is plenty here.’ The man with a black beard lifts up his pint and drinks at it quietly. ‘Mary’ he shouts ‘Mary there is a man here may want a drink.’

The man looks surprised at the noise. He looks out at the car and shakes his head at the three faces looking out.

Mary comes out from the green door behind the bar that leads into her kitchen. The man looks pleased to see her and repeats his question about food and some coffee. Mary shakes her head ‘No it is too late for that. We used to do coffee and I used to make sandwiches but we stopped that some time back. If you want a drink we have that and there is packets of Tayto’s if you want them and there is two packet of bacon fries we have left.’

‘Thank you’ the man says ‘A minute please’. He goes back outside to the car and puts his head through the open door. He is out there for a few minutes before the other doors open. Another man of similar age gets out of the passenger door and two women get out of the back. The three who have just got out of the car cross over the road and sit down on one of the benches. One of the women has a camera and she takes some photos of the view across the bay.

The same man comes back into the pub. He asks Mary for half a pint of Guinness and three glasses of Coke.

As Mary pours the drinks I ask him ‘Do you know where you are going, going onto from here?’

“No’ he says. ‘We have come from Cork and are driving to Bantry, to go to the House, but we drove here to see the water and we kept on driving, a little too far I think.’ He smiles sadly at that.

“Well if you have driven this far you can drive to the end’, I tell him, ‘To the end of the Sheep’s Head. It is another 25 minutes or so and when you get there you can walk down to the lighthouse. On a day like today it will be worth it. Have you a map and I’ll show you.’

He goes to the car again and takes out his map and I show him the road that will take him to the head of the peninsula and how he can cut back along the quiet road on the north side that will take them back to Bantry. Mary gives him a tray for his drinks and as he takes them outside he says “Thank you’.

It was quiet again for a while in the pub. Mary pours us two more pints and goes back into her kitchen.

‘It’s the end there, the tip, that is the Sheep’s Head’ said the man with a black beard. ‘You look on a map and it will have written down the middle of this spit of land The Sheep’s Head Peninsula. Well it is not. The Sheep’s Head is the last few hundred yards before it drops off into the sea. All the rest of it is Muintir Bhaire and you will see that on some of the signs but Sheep’s Head is easier to say. I ask you what is there here to be naming it Sheep’s Head after it.’

Out side the four visitors finish their drinks. They leave their glasses on the table and get back in the car. They drive back they way they came ignoring the suggestion to carry on up to the head of the peninsula.