Ostensibly the second hand daughter is a vegetarian but since she has been spending her  summer in Ireland there have been reports that fish has been had. More particularly hake has been eaten.

I can remember a hake dish I had in The good Things Cafe years ago.There was a pungent mixture of potatoes and tomatoes on onions on top on which a large slice of hake had been cooked.

I tried to create something similar this evening.

I started with a few par boiled potatoes. These were cut up into chunks and fried in olive oil over a high heat. As they took on colour some sliced onions were added. Then some garlic and then a combination of things from last night – a half dozen cherry tomatoes, a large grilled red pepper, some capers and a few chopped hot Turkish peppers. All this was seasoned with salt, pepper and ground coriander.

By this time then oven was on a high heat. The potato mixture was tipped into a terracotta bowl, drizzled with olive oil and went into the oven. Five minutes later I took it out to lay the two fillets of hake on top.

Twelve minutes later I switched on the grill and gave the skin of the hake a last drizzle of oil so it would crisp up.

We ate it listening to The American Music Club.

Last night was the last music club before we all break up for the summer. It was warm enough to sit outside so we did in a garden in the wilds of the Wirral until the rain came down sometime before midnight and we were rushed inside by the wet in a kerfuffle of beer, food and wires.

We listed to Patti Smith, Nick Drake, Bobby Womack and Ibeyi amongst other things. But the highlight was Frazey Ford’s cool languid songs which seemed to melt into the evening.We shall be listening to her a lot this summer.

I made four different pinchos for us to nibble over round the beer.

• olives, cocktail onions, hot Turkish peppers and anchovies
• artichokes, cherry tomatoes and olives
• Feta cheese,  cherry tomatoes and black olives
• roasted red pepper, cherry tomatoes, hot Turkish peppers and olives.

Very good they were to.

It was me feeding just the youngest daughter this evening and she had put in some orders. Either it was to be noodles (just noodles that’ll be fine) or a plate of potato waffles and some spaghetti hoops and then Dad something sweet to go with it – something like chocolate yogurt.

So on the way home there was a half tin of spaghetti hoops and a small box of potato waffles in my basket when I spotted some ribs going cheap. There was enough in the house to make up good gloop to go with them so the waffles and hoops went back on the shelf and I came home with the ribs.

The gloop was made up of an odd assortment of condiments scattered around the cupboards in the kitchen all loosened up with some beer stirred up with grated onion and garlic and then stirred in amongst the ribs.

After an hour in the oven at too high a heat they were eaten with chips and declared the best ribs ever.

After an hour spent cooking at too high a heat in the oven they were de

There was a careful calibration to the tone of his voice. He took it on as the pints got a hold.

There were other men for whom the words would get lost in a slur but he slowed them down and took his time to pick over each word, treading carefully around its proper pronunciation until he got it out right and could move on to the next one.

My mind was almost as tightly wound as his tongue and as each word came out I tried to piece together its constituent parts and keep them together for long enough so I could take on the meaning of the next one. It was a bad combination and over the evening our conversation slowed down until he tried to explain something of his bad behaviour towards the mackerel.

‘There’s nothing in it’ he said. ‘A fish like that can come over a man until all there you need do was take the feckin’ thing off its bones and cook the two pieces in some butter and bacon fat.’

‘You’ve seen how they are in the light and their colours and how the skin will go hard and paperlike after a few hours. They are not a fish for waiting around and the fecks who try to put them in a deep freeze and eat them then are more fools than I can put a name on.’ ‘

Out of the water with the wet still on them there’s no grip in your hand to be had against them. And then if you try hold to take it off its hook.’