A gentle discourse on the recurring subject of feesh

I can't help noticing a certain piscatorial repetition amid these musings - a feesh-motif, you might say.

Thinking that this might be like a leitmotif only with scales, I even bothered to check the dictionary and was alarmed to find that it had something to do Wagner. Screeching fat birds with added cod? Scary . . .

Moving hurriedly on, it is indeed true that I nicked the feesh from Terry Darlington's highly enjoyable Narrow Dog to Carcassonne sometime last year to reflect on two intriguingly black specimens by Braque.

Then there was Cantona with his sardines, not to mention my mate Stan and a hard man punk he knew in New York who wanted Poison tattooed on his arm. Unfortunately it came out Poisson . . .

I used to enjoy a spot of fishing myself and have been known to dip into that fine English classic The Compleat Angler. Which could all have kept for another time, had I not paused to consider what the great poet-philosopher Isaac Walton would have made of the magnificently tacky feesh en plastique which has just appeared on a brand new rond-point (roundabout) near us. I can only think that he would have been compleatly gobsmacked.

This actually used to be the carrefour (crossroads) outside the Champion supermarket at Quillan. Then Champion changed to Carrefour. I assume that the carrefour outside Carrefour was too confusing and positively lethal in the camper van season, so they built the rond-point instead. In a way it's a masterpiece; the great feesh en plastique suspended in mid air above its rocks, turf and deliciously fake mountain stream.

In times of economic crisis, one never fails to be amazed, thrilled and comforted by the absolute necessities on which local authorities still manage to spend money . . . Given that it hasn't properly stopped raining since about last November and even rivers as humble as the un-mighty Faby are teeming with enough real feesh to give the bonking frogs a run for their money, one might possibly just question which financial genius authorised this one.

Or you could just give up the unequal struggle and try lieu noir with tarragon, tomatoes and mushrooms. I dreamed this one up the other night and was rather chuffed with the way it came out.

*Chop up an onion and three cloves of garlic and fry in olive oil.

*Chop up three good, ripe and juicy tomatoes, three large mushrooms and four 10cm sprigs of fresh tarragon and add to the pan. Add a veg stock cube, a teaspoonful of paprika, a slosh of white wine, a sprinkling of freshly-ground black pepper and about half a mug of water.

*Bring to the boil and simmer until the onions and tomatoes soften into a sauce, reducing the fluid until the sauce thickens.

*Cut a large fillet of lieu noir (coley) into bite-sized pieces, add to the pan and simmer for about five minutes or until the pieces of fish whiten and the whole pan is bubbling again.

*Serves three. We had ours with mixed rice and peas.