Day 31

Monday, April 20. There is a signature Waikato fog this morning, the first of the season. In the early pearly light the landscape is a beautiful sight. It is lightly damp outdoors but in a fresh, clean way. A huge Norfolk pine in a neighbouring gully pokes through the white and the tui in our kahikatea keep up a clatter while a feathery mist swaddles their tree. Magic, I think.  

 What happens next is the excellent thing that often gets overlooked in the rush to diss a fog. The sun comes out and heats up the air, the fog (a light one) burns off and a calm, clear day follows. There are, of course, days in deepest winter when the fog hangs around like damp sheets that never dry and that’s not quite so magical.

I’m kind of edgy, waiting for the Prime Minister’s 4pm announcement about the plan for the next few weeks. I fill in the time with a bit of work, start a project recording the history of some family treasures, there are phone calls, I talk to Dott and Brian in the driveway when they arrive to pick up Volare bread I have ordered for them. They’ve just come from a flu injection appointment, which seems the big whoop-de-do lockdown outing for many of us.

Suddenly it’s 4pm and we all know the outcome, Level 4 continues until next Tuesday, followed by two weeks of Level 3, until April 11. With specific regulations and requirements around this. The PM is impressive in her delivery, well-informed and thoughtful. It seems a sound decision. While there is continuing social and economic pain and uncertainty, the lockdown extension means we’re not risking the gains we’ve made and it’s less likely that Covid spikes will have us cycling in and out of lockdown later. We can do this.

Then it’s time for video drinks with Kathryn and Jackie. Three old friends mull the extraordinary events of the past month, and we wonder when we’ll ever get to Thames to see Kathryn’s new patio, which we were meant to do in late summer. Before the world went mad.

Food matters: Quince paste is gorgeous but it’s a fiddle to make (only in lockdown) and it takes me pretty much all afternoon to turn out a couple tubs, fitted in among the aforementioned activities. The quinces are from Mary, and the golden globes have been brightening my fruit bowl for a few days. I made paste once before, using an Alison Holst recipe, and luckily I find it online. I think about Dame Alison as I make it, and the influence she had on the country’s cooks. I was sad to hear a few years ago that she had dementia; she disappeared from public life but she is with me this afternoon as I chop the sturdy fruit (thank goodness for a decent knife). I can almost hear her calm, well-modulated voice stepping me through her recipe. You can Google it, but here is the précis:

Wash the down from the skin of 500g-1kg of quinces. Chop carefully into quarters on a wooden board. Put into a pot with a tight-fitting lid, add ½ cup of water and ½ cup of lemon juice and boil until soft, about half an hour. Then – this is the fiddly bit – squish through a coarse sieve, or use your hands, to extract the golden flesh, discarding the cores and skin. It takes ages but Alison doesn’t tell you this, doesn’t want to put you off. Puree the flesh with a wand, or in the foodprocessor, measure the volume of puree and mix with the same volume of sugar. I did two cups of puree to two cups of sugar. Place in a heavy frying pan, don’t crowd the mixture, and cook on moderate heat until it thickens and darkens in colour. It needs lots of stirring and be careful of hot splatters. It takes about half an hour and is ready when a little bit on a cold plate sets hard after a few minutes. Cool slightly then turn into lightly oiled plastic tubs or hot wet jelly jars. Clean up the major mess you have created before admiring the beautiful amber result. And anticipate the pleasure of eating it with cheese and crackers.

I can almost hear Dame Alison say, “very well done, it was worth the effort.”

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