Hangovers and longnoses

Fragile and badly hung over this morning. I think my new life officially begins next Monday. I can't start it with a hangover. For a bad hangover makes simple things very complicated. For some reason my mobile phone wasn't working, and it took most of the morning to work out that if I turned it off and on again it might work.

Managed a spot of light shopping, including going to the Chinese store and buying a bag of dried black fungus, beansprouts and a tray of small but meaningful chillies. Probably because I was creeping about hypochondriacally, I was asked three times if I needed help. And then was given lots of cheerful but unasked-for advice about how you can freeze chillies, and that the beansprouts needed washing before using and so on while I was standing about blearily wanting to plunge needles in my own eyes.

A quiet night indoors virtuously sipping sparkling mineral water with a squeeze of lemon. Watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new series River Cottage: Gone Fishing, which explores all the kinds of fish that we could eat instead of picking on a few traditional varieties. The first episode saw him catching and cooking fish in the Channel Islands. Including him fishing for longnose (garfish) from the lighthouse in St Peter Port. Nice to see him standing in the very spot where I caught a longnose as a young whippersnapper. I have never tasted a longnose though. Maybe soon. It looked nice, despite its bright green bones.

Below a longnose.