Recent experience has shown us that buying fish is not always as straight forward as you might expect. Hubby went to the supermarket with his list in hand. One item on his list was fresh mackerel and so he headed for the fish counter and made several purchases one of which went into the freezer when he got home. Some days later our menu plan indicated that we had got mackerel the following day and I left it to him to get it out of the freezer. When it was time to prepare dinner the next evening I took the fish out of the fridge and started to cut open the bag. As I did so, I noticed that it was labelled and priced up as salmon and I pointed this out to Hubert and he said that he had seen it when he had put it in the freezer. Of course, salmon is a little more expensive than mackerel but no matter, we are fond of salmon as well. I took the fish out of the bag and got an even bigger surprise because it was neither mackerel or salmon – it was trout! Somebody was having a bad day, not sure whether it was hubby, the fishmonger or both! We enjoyed it anyway and it gave us much amusement. It was definitely fish.

I thought of the appearance of Jesus to the disciples after the resurrection as they fished the Sea of Tiberias and I wondered what kind of fish they would have been catching – answers on a postcard please! They had been out all night and caught nothing heading towards land there was a man standing on the shore and the man asked if they had caught anything. When they said that they had not he told them to throw out their net to the right side of the boat and straight way they netted fish, so much they they struggled to haul in the net. It was then that Simon Peter realised who the man was, “it is the Lord” (John21 NIV). Jesus had a fire ready and they all sat together for a breakfast of fish. This was the third time that Jesus had appeared after he had been raised from death and as the men ate together the other disciples were as certain of his identity. It was definitely Jesus.

Pam