So the party is over and the bodies have been swept up from the floor. The carpet on the stairs is stained black and there is a strange smell in the bathroom. The basement smells like a pub on the morning after. The floor down there is sticky with cider, beer and vodka and stamped upon twiglets and half eaten pieces of pizza. There is still some bottles of beer left in the fridge.

But the sun is shining bright this morning and we have eaten fine bacon sandwiches and drunk lots of black coffee. I am going out to the garden in some old clothes to start digging over the veg patch. It will be time to buy seeds soon and start planting for the summer.

A chicken is defrosting in the kitchen and we have that for a late lunch. I should have got some tarragon to ease under its skin. We will have it with roast potatoes and carrots with lots of gravy.

Perhaps the highlight of lasts night was the tin of smoked preserved mackerel. They were only a few inches long and must have been young when caught.  We could have easily eaten a second tin.

The next time we do a good meal I am going to devote a whole course to tinned Spanish food. We will be able to have the mackerel, tinned sardines, baby squid in their ink and anchovies. there are also delicious red peppers stuffed with salt cod. My mouth is watering at the thought of it.

This morning has been a mad dash round Supermarkets for cheap booze, the greengrocers for tomatoes and aubergines to be made into soup for lunch and edges the butchers for a few kilo of chicken pieces. The soup is now bubbling away and we be eating it soon.

For the chicken I smothered them with a marinade made out of Heinz Ketchup, honey, two tangerines, soy sauce, chilli sauce and various herbs and spices that were to hand in the cupboard. Oh and an onion! That all went into the Magimix until smooth and was then smeared into the chicken with my fingers. Should be good.

Listening Cher 3614 Jackson highway. It is better than you think.

Another Friday night and looking forward to spending my Saturday helping to prepare for an 18th birthday party in the basement. the last time there was a party my Guinness toucan got stolen and was pictured on Facebook before being returned on to the door step the following day. A bottle of Marie Brizard anisette was not so lucky and was found empty on the floor. I had bought for the sole purpose of making an Elizabeth David recipe for a sauce to go with boiled lobster so I still hope that whoever drank it spent a long time in the land of regret. It has taken two years but I am now able to be philosophical about it.

Over lunch there was a quick trip to Lunya to buy some ingredients for supper this evening. We will start in a few minutes with a plates of Padron peppers and tinned Don Reinaldo smoked mackerel. I will try put out my mind the thought that the mackerel will have been sucked out of the water somewhere off Iceland as part of the the mackerel wars.

We will follow all that with a great dish of sausages cooked in fat from the ox’s heart with cider and lentils. They are all cooking slowly on the oven and should be ready in about 20 minutes. I will be off soon to find a good bottle of Spanish red to go with the.

In the meantime I should mention that when I got into the car to go home I switched the ipod to shuffle and the first song to come up was Lady Day by Rod Stewart. Well you don’t get better than Rod back in the day when he was good. After that I had The Flaming Lips followed by electrlane. So I had a shiteating grin going through the tunnel. Given the good food I will be giving over the listening for the rest of the evening to Rod when was good. Listening to him now sing I would rather go blind.

So after the post earlier in the week on dredging for scallops Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was on Channel 4 this evening talking about the exact same subject although he was talking about the seas around the Isle of Mann rather than the Western Isles. I thought he did very well diving amongst scallops the size of a good dinner plate without taking one back up to the surface for dinner

His recreation of a sea floor full on a life on the beach at Weston-super-Mare was effective especially when the tractors came to drag their gear over it demonstrate the sort of destruction that goes on hidden under the sea’s surface.

We are hopefully going to Ahakista for Easter (so long as kids can be persuaded that 5 days watching the rain come down with no internet will not be boring). We should be therein time for the end of the scallop season and if I am able to buy some from Tommy I will ask him about the fishing for them in the bay.

I can remember years ago being in Arundel’s one afternoon years ago. Mary was behind the bar and there was a man in there having a cooling pint of lager. He had come in a black van which was parked at an angle outside the pub. He was probably performing some errand further up the peninsula and he had called in to cool himself down for a while and to talk. He had a sharp quick voice and I had to concentrate to keep up.

For some reason the talk turned to scallops, the winter season for them and how best to cook them.

Mary said,  ‘I like to cook them on an open fire. Wait ’til the flames have died down a bit and put them there amongst the ashes. Put them in curved side of the shell down. They’ll open in the heat and the juices are lovely.’

The man left in his black van soon after. Mary said she had not seen him before.

Late last night all I could post was a description of being out mackerel fishing by Peter Anson. I have picked up a couple of books by him in odd second hand book shops over the years. He writes about fishing and fishing men but the great joy of his books are the illustrations. Careful line drawings of boats and the men who sail in them.

He was the son of a rear admiral and became a monk. He lived his live trying to balance a love for the sea and a love for the church. He is perhaps more famous for his drawings of churches and their interiors but it is his books on the sea that I enjoy. There is intricate detail in his drawing of the rope and line, each in its place, the tied engines for an old sailing boat.

It is always good to have something in mind when you go into a second book shop. On the moment I keep my eyes open for the names Dorothy Hartley and Peter F. Anson.