Having spent some time yesterday communing with a frog I set out this morning to do the same with a newt.

Newts are a great deal more shy than a frog. A frog is happy to put its head up out of the water and sit there quietly taking in the sun and, so long as you don’t make a loud noise, allowing itself to be photographed.

Newts lurk under the water skirting beneath leaves and the green tangle of weeds on the surface and by the time you see one it has gone with a flash of its tail.

So some time had to be spent doing nothing but crouching by the side of the pond waiting for one of them do something. It is surprising how much movement there can be in the slow still water of a pond. The slowest movement is the crawl of a water snail over and under the weeds on the surface and then there is a bend in the water as a fish moves underneath and the plop of a newt or frog as they elude the watcher again.

Eventually a newt held still near the surface and I got it.

Then we went out for some late lunch in Liverpool  walking past the old Cains building and bemoaning the closure of a brewery.

We have just had the first proper barbeque of the year. I had bought the food for it yesterday but getting up this morning and listening to the rain hammering down I thought I was going to have to think again.

But mid-morning the rain stopped and there some flashes of blue sky and then after midday the sun started to come out and when it did there was proper heat in it.

So most of the afternoon was spent picking out weeds and trying to hold back the spread of ground elder. There was time to plant out some potatoes and to take ten minutes to fall asleep in the some of the heat.

Then it was time to light the barbeque. It all felt a bit creaky having been in the cellar for six months but having got the coals alight it was good to feel the heat of it curling up the hairs on the back of my hand.

We had:-

lamb chops marinaded in garlic, cumin and olive oil

chicken wings with harissa

veggie burgers

large field mushrooms steeped in oil, garlic and cherry tomatoes.

The sun shone bright as we ate listening to Tom Waits & Crystal Gail.

I should also mention the newt that flipped its tail and went back into the water back behind the frog’s head.

I am still haunted my the Super-hot Mackerel Curry I had at Jane-tira in January. It is not so much the heat that has remained with me but the deep overpowering gut wrenching stench of rotted fish.

Looking through books for something to eat last night I came across a short section on fermented fish in a book of Thai cooking. The section was headed Putrid Pisces which gives off the general idea and it went on to describe some of the smell recalling the accumulated stench of putrefying corpses, abandoned kennels, dirty feet, stagnet bilges and fly-blown offal.

That about does it.

They go on to point out that most Thais would find the smell of blue cheese fairly off putting – so who are we to talk.

Anyway last night I wanted to cook something that gave at least some slight approximation of all that so we had a seafood and noodle soup.

The depth was provided by a combination of prawn paste and tamarind juice some pots of which have been lurking in the back of the fridge downstairs.

Prawns and squid were fried in very hot oil and a combination of finely chopped ginger, galangal, lemon grass, garlic and spring onions was then stirred in along with good helpings of the prawn paste and tamarind juice. I then stirred in some mange tout and spinach. Some sugar was added along with a good dose of fish sauce and finally I poured over a pan of stock that had been made with the prawns shells and the trimmings from the spring onions.

To eat, noodles were cooked and put in bowls with the soup being ladled on top.

Although it was good it had nowhere near the depth and sheer earthiness of the mackerel curry.

It looks like I may need to work out how to ferment my own mackerel this summer.

So Thursday was an interesting evening. An Old School Dinner in The Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake. It was a wonder they let me in and there was a temptation to sneak out at some point to do some defacing to all of the large Esther McVey posters littering Meols Drive. Old school dinners are not really my thing and there wasn’t much of Thursday night that went towards persuading me that they should be. Thirty-three years after leaving and there is noone that I am in contact with from me having been there. Then I find myself in a room with dark purple walls full of people I don’t know, some of them wearing strange ties and jackets, and then one or two of the faces start to coalesce into something half familiar and then there are strangers walking up to shake my hand and telling me I look no different apart from the beard. All very strange and slightly unsettling. For the dinner I found myself sat next to the headmaster’s wife – she did very well and must have had long years of practise being sat next to the socially awkward. It transpired that we could talk about cooking and the need for sharp knives. She has a drawer full of them. I have just the one. I used it at lunchtime today to cut up some dirty carrots for soup. The carrots were cooked in butter with a sliced onion and flavoured with ginger, lemon and honey. Each bowlful was sprinkled with crushed toasted cumin and very good it was to.

The brightness of the soup made up for the grey sky and wet outside.