Yesterday I spent the best part of two and a half hours in a large dark room with a hundred or so other people in the company of The Revenant. I am still undecided. There was lots that was beautiful to look at and plenty of gratuitous violence but does all that make a good film. After a while I found myself wishing they would just get on with it and do away with all the snow filled vistas and ponderous music.

This morning I had some sympathy for the writer who suggested that all it boiled down to was two and half hours waiting for someone to be killed with an axe.

Putting all  that to one side the cold and grey outside put me in mind of something warming to eat.

I was given for Christmas a book of Nordic cooking. Amongst the recipes for smoked puffin and seal guts I found a recipe for a Captain’s beef stew with potatoes and beer.

We will be eating it this evening. A mixture of beef, onion and potato browned in butter and pig fat and cooked for a few hours on low heat. It should be good.

It has been a grey flat day and as the clouds started to bunch up  from the west towards late morning there was a hint of snow in the air. But when it came it came as hard cold rain.

There were only three of us for lunch and I decided to try and use up some of the cavolo nero that has been growing down the bottom of the garden. When I got down it transpired that the pigeons had eaten most of what there was. I had seen the pigeons there a week or so go but had not taken on board how much damage they were carrying out.

Betwen them the pigeons and squirrels seem to be determined to ruin all my good intentions in the garden. One of the butchers at The Farmer’s Market last week had some skinned grey squirrels for sale along side his rabbits hares. Maybe I should invest in a suitably powerful catapult I could keep the family fed that way. They would taste mighty fine fed fat on my tulip bulbs and black cabbage.

In the meantime there was just enough of the cavolo nero for me to make rough sauce for pasta.

The cavolo nero was blanched in boiling water for a few minutes with a couple of cloves of garlic. It was all fished out of the water and ran through with cold water and I then tipped the pasta into the pan of still boiling water.

As the pasta cooked the cavolo nero was drained thoroughly and then puréed in the fine hand mixer that was gifted to me for Christmas with a generous slug of olive oil.  A couple of squashed cloves of garlic were stirred in with more olive oil and a seasoning of salt and pepper.

the thick green sludge was then stirred into the drained and cooked pasta. We now now all smell of garlic for the rest of the weekend.

Sat here now listening to the first side of Station to Station for about the 20th time this week. Getting up every twenty minutes or so to lift up the needle and put it down again at the start of the locked black grooves. There is no doubt it sounds better on vinyl. So I am just looking forward to playing it loud.

In another world I made some kedgeree this evening. I had the recipe for it open in front of me although I am not quite sure why as nothing was measured out and the only reference made was to  get confirmation of the number of eggs for hard boiling.

It was good comforting food as the hail came down outside and the wind snuck its way through all the stray holes in the house.

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So far as I can tell my first memory of David Bowie is the cover of Aladdin Sane in the window of a reord shop in West Kirby. I can remember the shock of the bright red hair, the zig-zag lightening streak across the face, the androgyny and pink make up.

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A few years letter someone at school had the album and then there was the shock of the word “wanking” – although nowhere near as shocking, and satisfying as New Boots &  Panties.

Someone else had a compilation album which I think was called Changes and a black and white cover. That album had all the songs on that I needed to hear and even now it is the songs I heard on that I am drawn to.

I can remember him doing Boys Keep Swinging on Top of the Pops.

The first album I bought was Scary Monsters and in some ways it was the last one I bought as well. After that I picked up over the years most of what he released during the 70’s and I have accumulated a few other waives and strays along the way. But Scary Monsters was the only one I bought as it came out. It is 35 years old now and almost unplayable. The sound could be coming from the depths of a deep pond. Over the years I have meant to pick up a clean copy but have never got round to it.

The start of Station to Station is still extraordinary. We had it on this evening and the kids were lost wondering just what that noise was.

Three years ago we were lying in bed listening to the Today programme and there was a real jolt when they announced that David Bowie had released a new album. Somehow I haven’t got round to buying it yet.

There was a greater jolt when we were lying in the same bed and listening to the same programme to be told that he had died.

Looking through the records I am surprised at how few I have got. But there has never really been a need to have them. The music is always so embedded it is there anyway especially those songs from the Changes compilation.

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