Tumescent mackerel

Although I am looking forward to when we leave home in a few days time for the ferry from Holyhead and the drive across the green mass of Ireland  to The Sheep's Head where the wind that blows in off the sea smells of iodine and salt rather than the tang of the Mersey there is a frustration knowing that the veg patch will spend those two weeks going to seed. We will take with us a bag of beetroot, salad and courgettes - even the tiddlers an inch or two long. In the meantime I have been eating up the flowers.

They are at their best just as they are about to turn, fully ripe and filled with their flavour and as you bite into the core a taste of the rot they would otherwise soon become - as all plants are a mush of water and air.

There are bats above the garden and listening to the new James Yorkston and the sound of kids playing on the lawn a few houses up the road. The next post will be from Ahakista and rather than the dust of an office I will have under my nails the blood, shit and scales of a freshly gripped mackerel live and tumescent out of the dark waters of the bay.