There were fireworks this evening in Birkenhead Park. In fact there have been fireworks everywhere all evening bursting around the house and at one point we even had the clatter of some off-shot piece of plastic landing on the kitchen roof.

But the family was meant to be to watching the fireworks in the Park. But I was late back from work and by the time I got home the house was empty and the family had gone without me. I could have stayed at home and got myself a beer and put on some loud music but I didn’t. I scurried into a change of clothes and walked down after them to the Park.

By the time I got there it was too busy to find anyone so I watched the fireworks by myself surrounded by a crowd of thousands. They were good fireworks. Loud and tall. All around me there were babies in prams crying out in fear at the loud bangs and having to be reassured by their mothers. Walking back once they had finished I found some good pieces of wood to take back for the fire.

Good as the fireworks were they were not as good as the display we went to see late one summer 15 or so years ago in Italy. We were staying with Katie and Simon in the house they were renting in the small town of Bracciano, on Lake Bracciano, a few miles north of Rome. We had been told about a festival in the village of Trevignano one evening and so we went there with Kristen. She must of been four, maybe five.

Trevignano was around the other side of the lake. We were not really sure of what to expect of the festival and when we got there the village was filled with a great crowd of people. We ate pasta and tomato sauce in a dark restaurant and then walked out with the crowds and waited for something to happen.

Nothing happened for a long time although there was a gathering sense of excitement amongst the people. The excitement built to a pitch until around midnight when the fireworks started. Kristen was dead on her feet by then but the fireworks seem to come from a place centred amongst the crowds that were watching. There was no careful choreography but a steady cavalcade of noise and light from the rockets that were bursting in bright streams over our heads.

Later, when we were back at their house, Katie and Simon told us they had been able to watch the display from where they were sat on the other side of the lake in the garden.

Sunday and we had friends round for a late lunch. There has been a change in the dynamic since the older children went off to university. The ones who have been left behind are less willing to watch as their parents argue out the fag end of the afternon.

We ate a slow roasted shoulder of lamb that had been coated in a spice mixture made out of ground cumin, coriander, cinnamon and  ground up dried hibiscus flowers. The recipe said dried rose petals but I wasn’t sure anyone would notice the difference, as i ground up the hibiscus flowers they gave off a very faint cloud of pink dust.

The lamb took four hours to cook and we had it with rice, orange and radicchio salad and billowy flat bread.

Yet again we had found ourseles eating out of the the Persiana cookbook. This time we listened to Dexy’s and more of Perfume Genius.

One of the staples on the menu at school was Welsh Rarebit except they called it Welsh Rabbit the words spelt out in white letters on the black board over the queue for trays and then food. Even then I wondered where was the rabbit and why was it Welsh.

This morning I took a drive round some of the backwaters of Birkenhead. Unfortunately the camera ran out of battery. I will be back.

Last week in Oxford I picked up in the second hand section in Blackwell’s a second hand copy of a book on cooking with cheese. It sold itself to me as it had half a dozen pages devoted to Welsh Rabbit/Rarebit including a couple on which name was right and why it was Welsh, It transpires that no-one really knows.

We had it for lunch today although I didn’t follow any of the recipes in the book.

A good lump of mature cheddar was grated into a bowl. I stirred into it some mustard, a squashed clove of garlic and enough light bitter to turn it into a sludge.

Bread was toasted under the grill and the cheesy mixture smeared on top and then put back under the grill until it browned and bubbled.

One or two heretics put a piece of ham on their toast before covering it with the cheesy mixture.

We ate it listening to Perfume Genius. The families favourite music for the weekend.

I already had a copy of the book!

Forty or so years ago I used to read a comic called Battle. It was a proper comic on thin floppy paper. It came out once a week and there were half a dozen or so stories in it all about war. There were a number of other similar comics one of which was called Victor. But Battle was the best. The stories had more grit about them. Men died untidy deaths. There was an ongoing story about Johnny Red – a disgraced Spitfire pilot who found himself flying for the Russians; Blackie’ War  -about a lost sergeant who fought a particularly violent and bloody war in the jungles of the Far East, and Charley’s War, the ongoing story of a young private in the trenches of the First World War.

Over the last ten years the strips that made up Charley’s War have been republished in book form. A new edition has come out in October time and they have become a regular Christmas present. The stories were written by Pat Mills and drawn by Joe Colquoun and over the ten volumes build up in to a vivid history of the war. There are diversions into life in the navy and some of the experiences of the French Army, the mining that took place under the trenches (years before Songbird) and the near mutinies that took place in the British Army. A lot of the stories centre around the contrasting exeriences of the men and the officeresThere is no soft-soaping. Men, friends, die violent, horrible deaths. One story ends with Charlie have to collect the remains of his friend Ginger into a bag.

Driving home early from work on Friday I found myself listening to Radio 4 and an ongoing series on voices from The First World War. There were three r four men talking about their experiences fighting in the trenches. They must have been recorded more than fifty years ago but they sounded as fresh and as clear live on the radio and in their talk they brought back to mind stories in Charley’s War which must be a testament to how closely they got it right in the comic.