Author: Denise Irvine

Tuesday, April 28: Early morning and it seeps into my consciousness that this is the end of Level 4 lockdown, aimed at beating the deadly coronavirus. Five weeks of being home alone, in unprecedented times. There have been no visitors across my threshold and the car has only left the garage three times (briefly).  Level 3 is also about staying close to home, observing rules, staying safe. But already it feels different. I have a phone interview to do this morning, and I have my eye on coffee in Hamilton East and a takeout dinner from either the Dumpling House or Hayes Common’s Whizz Bang Bao foodtruck. The lawnmower man turns up at 9am and cuts my minuscule patch of weedy grass. He’s back in business, too. There are phone calls – and appointments for further down the track – from the dermatologist, a wedding couple, and my hairdresser Patrick (I cut my fringe this morning and it seems a bit short).

 Suddenly, there are notes on the calendar again; a whiff of freedom and normality.

In lockdown, I’ve missed the physical presence of my family and friends, I’ve missed having people in my house, sharing food, wine and company. I’ve missed fresh fish, Mt Maunganui, doing my own supermarket shopping, and most of all I’ve missed being able to hug people. I said to Guy the other day that I almost felt like rushing out and hugging the man who delivered my bread. I didn’t, I promise. And hugging still has to wait another couple of levels.

There are good things from this time as well. I know every sunny nook in my house, I’ve moved around these frequently with a good book. I’ve also liked having the time to pause, free of any pressure of people and places, and to just be, in my own space and company. On daily walks I’ve found many new corners of my neighbourhood, and I’ve truly valued the connections with my neighbours. This has helped during the weeks of a solo bubble. As have all the “contacts” – talks, texts and Zooms – with family and dear friends. You’ve been amazing; I couldn’t have done it without you. And I’ve been especially blessed to have Guy, Anna and the kids next door.

I’ve loved the peacefulness of my neighbourhood, the morning mists followed by glorious autumn sunshine and colours, the tuneful choirs of birds, the lack of cars, the friendly strangers, and the industrious people I’ve said hello to while they’ve been tidying their front  yards. I’m not much of a gardener but thankfully my herb patch has been lush with parsley, basil, sage, mint and rosemary. It has enhanced so many meals. Along with the produce dropped off by friends.

I’ve loved all the cooking, juggling pantry supplies and leftovers, channelling the food memories of my mother and my aunts who taught me how to make something out of nothing.

Some days I’ve revelled in the free-flow of lockdown, some days I’ve been desperate for it to be over. I’d like to take some of the accidental lessons of the past five weeks into the next round of my life: keep things a bit more simple, don’t overload the calendar, don’t buy stuff I don’t need, walk to the shops rather than drive, take time for neighbours and support local businesses wherever possible. Local businesses are fundamental to the fabric of our community.

 Right now, though, I’m keen to move forward. I don’t want life to be forever limited. I’m hugely proud of our country’s response to the pandemic crisis and hopeful we’ve done enough good work that we won’t be cycling in and out of lockdown. I’m thankful to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and her government and advisers, for steering us through this, and for making the hardest of calls between the nation’s health and economic needs. I back them. I’m sad about the Covid deaths and the wretched illness suffered by people who contracted the disease. And I’m as anxious as anyone about the state of our economy, and the many people and businesses now suffering. There are huge fiscal and employment issues ahead.

I’ve enjoyed writing this blog, originally a daily diary for my grandkids to read in the future. I’m always happy when I have my fingers on the keyboard and it’s been like talking to friends and family each morning, even if it is a one-way conversation.

Thank you, everyone, for the feedback, calls, emails and texts, and for sharing your testing times and good times as well. Now that Level 4 is over, I’ll end the daily posts with this one and maybe pop up again with an occasional missive. I’ll email when I’ve done this, in case you want to have a look.

My love and warmest wishes to all,

 Denise

Kia hora te marino; may calm be spread around you.

Monday, April 27: I love a plan and today I’ve got one. Writing in the morning, finishing the family treasures project, and continuing with the book cull. The practical stuff before a social afternoon. Social looks good: meet Denise again at Parana Park, then a couple of Zooms, including a family quiz and catching up with the grandkids.

We’re moving into Level 3 tomorrow, inching back into the real world. I’m trying not to think of all the domestic jobs I was going to do in lockdown but didn’t get around to. Like my tax return, filing our messy piles of family photographs, cleaning the windows. They’ll keep. Or maybe I’ll knock a few more things off in Level 3.

I walk to meet Denise and there are welcome signs of business activity in Claudelands, owners dusting off their shuttered premises. The Dumpling House has handwritten notes in the window saying, “See you Tuesday”; the people at Scoff Take-out for Grown Ups are cleaning the fittings; and across the road there is similar action at Red Pot Kitchen, the Malaysian take-away. I’m already placing my dumpling dinner order in my head and can almost smell the coffee at Grey St Kitchen. Across town, Banh Mi Vietnamese restaurant reports its delivery slots are booked out for Tuesday and Wednesday.

 We’re on the cusp of change and I am pleased my age group has no greater restrictions in Level 3 than anyone else. For more about how people are regarded and treated, based on their age, read Venetia’s excellent opinion column on Stuff, headlined ‘Please don’t tag me vulnerable’.

At Parana Park, Denise and I sit on either side of a seat in the circular rose garden, and we’re also looking ahead to things we want to do in the near future. Hug our families, for starters. We’re hopeful that the Kiwi team of five million has done enough to defeat Covid-19. Lockdown has been hard work at times, curiously satisfying as well.

The last time I was at Parana Park’s rose garden was to conduct a wedding ceremony for Adriana, the brilliant manager of the hospital where Bill was a patient. It was a truly happy event; there were hugs and tears and closeness as Adriana and Johnny got married, with a cast of family and friends in support.

The memory lingers still, the gatherings like this that we took for granted. I want those days to come again.

Food matters: Tonight, I discover the pleasures of frozen paratha, Indian flat-bread, found in the freezer section at Green Patch green-grocery, on Grey St (thanks Anna, for the tip). Frozen paratha is a great vehicle for whatever bits and pieces you have to hand. You put the paratha straight from the freezer into a hot frying-pan, no oil or butter, and it puffs up nicely. Turn it over, do the same on the other side, then flick it out and load with toppings. In this case, a warm salad of green leaves, herbs, roast pumpkin and red pepper, and roast chicken thigh glazed with a swish of white miso, chilli sauce and olive oil. But anything will work on this golden flaky base.

Note: The best freshly made paratha in town is at Lazat Malaysian restaurant in Victoria St.

 “You can’t buy happiness but you can buy local and that’s kinda the same.”

 – Waikato Food Inc

Sunday, April 26:  When lockdown was flagged I didn’t rush out and panic-buy flour because baking is not really my thing and there is only one person here to eat it.  In the past few weeks I’ve made a fruit cake and Anzac biscuits (and given some of this away) and today I’m making my mother’s ginger crunch biscuits to mark the anniversary of her death, on this day in 1984.

My mother was a champion baker. She was also very modest and she never entered her baking in A&P Shows and similar. She reserved her work for her appreciative family, and friends who came for afternoon tea. Sometime in my childhood she commissioned a special baking table to be made by a local cabinetmaker. It had a wide Formica surface and drawers to hold her equipment. It was her pride and joy. I think Margot and I helped her on baking days but my memory is more about scraping the leftovers of the mixing bowls and eating gorgeous creamy-buttery-spicy confections. Mum’s signature marshmallow slice could be traded at school for anything I fancied and there was an annoying time at Cambridge Intermediate when someone regularly pinched it from my lunchbox.

With so much to live up to, I became a nervous baker. And I’ve never quite grasped that you can’t go off-piste with baking in the same way as other forms of cooking. It is chemistry, as people have gently explained, you have to follow the recipe. I tried hard when I had my own home but there were as many flops as successes. Once I pretended to Mum that a beautiful fruit loaf (bought from a home-cookery) was my own and she spotted the fraud immediately. She asked for the recipe, and I was undone.

Nowadays, I have a few faithful party pieces, including fruit cakes. I surpassed myself some years back by making Campbell and Ellen’s wedding cake but I think when my sons are listing the good things they remember from their childhood, home-baking will not be among them. They both do better scones than me.

I’ve been revisiting Mum’s hand-written cookbook during lockdown. She had two of them, and Margot has the other one, known as the “Bird Book” because it has an image of a bird on the cover. Recipes are neatly recorded by Mum in fountain pen. Some of them, in my opinion, are way too cryptic, they assume knowledge. Mum rarely says what size baking tin to use, she vaguely notes “bake in a moderate” oven, and sometimes she just lists ingredients but no method of assembly.

She was only 64 when she died of cancer, and she’d never had a day’s illness until then. It’s a long time ago but I remember it was a beautiful sunny autumn that year, just like now. So today, with the sun streaming into the kitchen, I put together her recipe for ginger crunch biscuits. This one is cryptic, too. It’s actually a slice, not biscuits, so I use Mum’s original Swiss roll tin. It’s dead simple, even I can manage it. Great with a cup of tea.

Ginger Crunch Biscuits

115g butter

55g sugar

1 cup flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, mix in dry ingredients and press out in a Swiss roll tin (roughly 29cm by 19cm), greased or lined with baking paper. My mixture didn’t quite fill the tin but of course that may have been slack-method measuring and my electronic scales need a new battery so I had to guess at the butter. Bake at 180 dec C for 15 minutes, or thereabouts.

Topping:  4 tbsp icing sugar, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 heaped tbsp butter, 1 dsp golden syrup, ½ tsp lemon essence (I did a squeeze of lemon juice). Melt ingredients gently in a pot, ice the slice while both are still warm.

Note: We are on the cusp of take-out coffees and home-delivered food. Huge excitement in my bubble! Can’t wait to eat something I haven’t made myself, and also to support local businesses. Many of the Waikato favourites will be offering contactless pick-ups and delivery services; Waikato Food Inc has put together a great round-up of such places.

See www.waikatofoodinc.com/support-local

Saturday, April 25: Sometimes when we asked my father what he’d done on a particular day, he’d reply, usually in jest: “Nothing, and I’ve been doing it very well.”

It kind of sums my day. I’ve done nothing, and I’ve done it very well. And I’m not joking.

It starts with purpose, at 6am. I walk out of the house to stand by the letterbox for the stay-at-home Anzac commemoration, and Anna and Guy step out from next door at the same time. Anna suggests we move down the hill to Bill’s memorial seat in our subdivision and stand beside that. We do, and it is a good thing. We are next to the seat and the feathery kowhai trees, and neighbours across the street are at their letterboxes with candles. We listen to the broadcast dawn service, the Last Post, and watch the pink lights of dawn streak the sky. There is dignity and poignancy in this small assembly. We walk home and have a cup of tea at a distance in my courtyard and then – to quote Dad – I kind of do nothing very well for the rest of the day. I talk to family and friends on the phone, walk to the local greengrocer, who is open again, read newspapers in the sun, do a few minor jobs, read my book.

I wear my Anzac poppy brooch today for my father, a World War II returned serviceman, and a genuinely good man. I think about him a lot, in lockdown, because he was a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany for two-and-a-half years. In Germany, particularly, he suffered great deprivation. Not that he ever complained about it, and he came home from Europe determined to make every day afterwards a good one. So in tough times in the past few weeks, I remember that my lockdown is, literally, a walk in the park compared with his. I have a comfortable home, plenty of food, wine, books, television, phone, internet, a great neighbourhood, nearby friends and family, and I can go for a walk (in a park) whenever I want to. So I think, surely I will manage this brief period of restraint.

 My sister Margot and I ask ourselves during lockdown what Dad may have missed most during his POW years; what were the things he really wanted to do when he was released. We don’t know the answers to our questions because we never raised this with him. We thought we had all the time in the world to talk to Dad about his wartime experiences but he died too soon, he caught us unawares.

Venetia and I visited my father’s first prison camp, in Abruzzo, Italy, a few years ago on holiday, and we got a small insight into the spartan life he would have led, the freezing concrete huts the prisoners slept in, the forbidding watch towers and barricades that ringed the camp. Later, we climbed the hill above and looked down on the old prison – situated in a beautiful, serene valley – where thousands of Allied soldiers were held.  We made friends with Italians whose forbears had been my father’s foes. The irony of this was ever-present.

Food matters: dinner is pizza from the backyard next door, the work of talented great-niece Emme. She makes the dough and cooks the pizzas on a cranked up charcoal barbecue which tonight doubles as a pizza oven. It’s the first time the family tries this: a cast-iron frying pan is lined with baking paper, and individual pizzas – topped with lovely fresh ingredients devised by Emme – are baked in the pan, on the barbecue, lid on, for a few minutes a pop. They’re hot and tasty, with crispy bases and lovely smoky flavours. Better than a bought one, and a perfect end to this memorable Anzac Day.

Kia hora te marino | May calm be spread around you

Friday, April 24: For a moment, it seems there will be no diary entry on this Anzac morning. The Last Post is playing on radio as I sit to record yesterday’s events, and it seems to be the Last Rites for my computer mouse. No sign of life, no amount of rattling and gentle banging will revive it. My first inclination, always, with a technology/equipment problem is to panic. Or phone a son for advice, or Guy-next-door.  Then I hear Richard’s voice in my head, from previous occasions:  “Google it, Mum.” So Google tells me to take the mouse apart and clean it, or to try plugging it into a new port. I locate a Phillips screwdriver (thank you, Bill, for the handy little kit in my desk), take the back off the mouse, dig out the dust and there’s still nothing doing. Next the port swap. Like a miracle, we have lights, cursor, action.

This Friday, ahead of Anzac, is spent in glorious sunshine and in the afternoon I walk to the cenotaph and meet Denise for another distance catch up. I think we’re both in need of company. We spend ages sitting together/apart on the memorial steps, autumn leaves falling around us from the giant oaks. I was not quite 18 when I met Denise, who was newly engaged to Bill’s older brother Chris. We’ve shared a name, a friendship, and a family, for more than 50 years. Times like this, I value her more than ever.

On the walk home, I speak to a young woman and her son who are pinning handmade poppies onto their letterbox. They’ll be standing beside the letterbox at dawn tomorrow, she says. Another woman stops and asks where I got the poppy brooch I’m wearing. Her father was a returned serviceman, too, and in normal times she wears his medals at the dawn parade at the cenotaph. We share our fathers’ war stories. Could they have met in Egypt? Would we stop and talk to random people like this in normal times?

Shout out to Papamoa Paper Plus: There are two Papamoa birthdays coming up in our family, Campbell and Penny, and the staff at Papamoa Paper Plus make gift-buying easy in lockdown. Penny tells me her wish list, Ellen suggests I phone their local Paper Plus; they’re not open but they’re taking orders and will deliver next week in Level 3. Staff member Hayley Butler sorts out Penny’s list, emails me photos of some excellent suggestions and I pay online. Hayley says she’ll gift-wrap in pink paper and deliver ahead of Pen’s big day. An order is also placed for Campbell. It is wonderful personal service.

Food matters: I’m making Anzac biscuits this week, along with everyone else, and have deviated from the Edmonds cookbook favourites with this crispy recipe by Rachael Rosel, from startsat60.com I’m pleased to unearth an ancient container of golden syrup from the back of the pantry. I’m sure it doesn’t go off!

• Anzac Biscuits
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup coconut
• 125g butter
• 2 tbs golden syrup
• 1 tbs water
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1. Preheat oven at 175C. Grease or line a baking tray with baking paper. Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the sugar, rolled oats and coconut.
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add golden syrup and water. Stir the bicarbonate of soda into the liquid mixture.
3. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
4. Place walnut-sized balls of mixture on tray and bake for 15-20 minutes. Biscuits will harden when cool.

Thursday, April 23. The day kicks off – always, always – with coffee. I absolutely can’t get underway without it. I go to any lengths to have morning coffee. Venetia and Barbara, who holidayed with me in Rarotonga a couple of years ago, will attest to this: there was no coffee pot or similar equipment in the house we rented and the nearest café was half-way around the island. Venetia and Barbara were okay to wait until late morning for coffee when we went out. Not me. I rigged up a homemade system using a saucepan and a sieve. Not the best coffee I’ve ever had but it worked. Last year, in a similarly desperate holiday situation I watched in awe as Barbara’s husband Max went one better, steeping coffee grounds in a plastic jug and using the finest etching on a flat cheese grater to strain it into cups.

Anyway, I’m talking coffee because this morning I have a fresh, fragrant bag of my favourite Coffee LaLa from Kuaotunu, on the Coromandel, just landed in the mail. My first LaLa since lockdown. I’ve been ordering LaLa since I interviewed its makers, Mark Tugendhaft and Nedilka Radojkovich, for a Waikato Times story about 15 years ago. Mark and Nedilka were prime movers for many years in the Coromandel Watchdog group opposed to gold mining on the peninsula. Their unique roastery is adjacent to their home, and they send their coffee nationwide from their secluded native bush valley. Mark initially began roasting coffee for personal use in a popcorn machine, next thing there were six popcorn machines on the go as friends placed orders. Then he built his first roaster out of bits from a Hillman Minx car, and Coffee LaLa – “insanely good coffee” – was born in 2002. Winning awards and friends everywhere.

In normal life, I quite often nip out for a coffee in Hamilton East but in lockdown I fire up my little stove-top pot, drink the LaLa thick, strong and black. The first mouthful is the best.

Question time:  Sometimes people ask casually, “what have you been up to today?” It’s a standard, everyday question, I ask the same of others. Once I would have instantly reeled off an answer, nowadays it takes me a minute to marshal my thoughts as one day merges into another.

 So, today? Write the post for this blog; assemble some funeral readings, following a request for these; re-do my eyebrows with the tint kit (one was darker than the other, now they’re even); clean out the jumbled bookcase in my bedroom and start a book cull. Find two precious “missing” books while I’m on the job. Vacuum upstairs; do washing; short walk; Zoom drinks with friends; listen to the news, read the news.

It’s a day, a pretty satisfying one, really.

Food matters: I finish the last of a big container of freezer soup for lunch. I’ll never make in exactly the same way again because it is of its time, starting with the last shreds from a slow-roasted leg of lamb a few months back. I boiled the bone for stock, briefly fried some finely chopped carrot, onion, broccoli and garlic in oil then cooked them gently in the stock with the shredded meat until it all thickened nicely. The intense roasty flavours indicate I may have added some pan juices or leftover gravy. I’m sad to see it go.  

Wednesday, April 22: One of the hardest things in lockdown is not being able to hug people. It is keenly felt today: my friend Rosemary’s brother dies this week at Hospice Waikato, she lives a few minutes away from me so I go to see her and the instinctive thing to do is to wrap my arms around her, hug her tight, and have a comforting cup of tea. But we respect lockdown rules. We sit tea-less on the driveway at a safe distance and talk about the impact of lockdown on so many aspects of our lives, including this one where the time-honoured rituals of death, grief and funerals are radically changed to fit the restrictions. Rosemary’s brother’s family will have a small funeral for him next week with 10 people – under Level 3 guidelines – and a memorial service later. Many other bereaved families are heroically making the same shift, reflected daily in death notices signalling plans for later events.

Kia kaha to those who lose loved ones in lockdown.

Crazy moment: I walk up Argyle St in Claudelands just after 3pm and in the distance a man is walking towards me in the middle of the road, on the white line. Argyle St leads to the back entrance of Hamilton Boys’ High School and at this hour – in normal times – it is a jumble of cars and bikes as hundreds of students spill out of school. Today, there is not a car in sight and the man holds the line unchallenged. I’ve always wanted to do this. When I turn back for home I walk the line, but I’m a bit more chicken and do it for only a short stretch.

Magic moment: there is another fog this morning and when it burns off we’re treated to the most gloriously mellow, blue-sky Waikato autumn day. It lifts the spirits; I’d like to freeze-frame it, have the last leg of lockdown like this. The downer is that the intense afternoon sun cruelly exposes the fact that my windows need cleaning. I hear my mother’s voice in my head, saying, “you can hardly see out of them”.

Error: a sharp-eyed reader – Richard – points out that the Lord Lucan documentary mentioned in yesterday’s post is actually on TV OnDemand, not Netflix. Sorry about that, clearly missing a sub-editor here. Also, the new New Zealand series, One Lane Bridge, looks a goodie, with the glorious Queenstown scenery a huge star. TV1 Mondays, and OnDemand.

Frying pan pizza: I have a cast-iron 1950s Aga frying pan that is an absolute treasure. It cooks evenly, holds its heat, does fish particularly well and, of course, you can use it in the oven as well as on the hob. Tonight it is the vehicle for frying pan scone pizza, the perfect way to tidy up bits of this and that. I fry a stray leek with garlic, make the scone dough, press it into the greased frying pan, spread tomato paste, then the fried leek, cherry tomatoes, chorizo, chopped herbs, stray olives, grated cheese and anything else suitable. Leftovers are great for lunch.

FRYING PAN SCONE PIZZA 

Adapted from a recipe at bbcgoodfood.com.

Scone:
250g plain flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
50g butter, chopped
2 eggs
3 tbsp milk

Heat oven to 200 deg C. Mix flour, salt and baking power in a bowl and rub in the butter until it disappears. (I do this in a food processor). Mix eggs and milk together and stir into dry ingredients to make a soft dough. Add a splash more milk if the mixture is too dry. Press into an oiled 24cm oven-to-table frying pan, or similar shallow baking dish. Or spread out on a non-stick tray. Top the scone dough with whatever you have to hand, as above. Season with salt and pepper, add parmesan.  Bake for about 15 minutes, until golden. It’s good with a green salad and leftovers are for lunch the next day.

Tuesday, April 21: Bill had a penchant for ordering wine online and he built our bigger-than-average letterbox at Whyte St to dimensions that could hold a case if one were to be delivered in our absence. There is a smaller cavity for mail, the big one is for “goods”. He designed the letterbox in the style of our house, with a pitched roof and mock weatherboards. That sounds a bit naff but it’s a pretty cool box. It was irreverently nicknamed the West Wing by envious people and some suggested we could rent it as a tiny house. The grandkids could fit in it when they were little. That’s young Henry, aged about four, posted in the photo below (no pun intended). He’s a bit big for it nowadays.

Who would have thought that the letterbox would reinvent itself as a kind of quarantine station during lockdown? But it’s the perfect place for goods to be left by friends and delivery people, and it avoids direct contact: it’s been the receptacle, so far, for avocados, books, lemons, the eyebrow tint kit, apples, cartons of bread, and this afternoon a neatly wrapped slice of beautiful quince paste made by Mary, who gave me the quinces for my own paste. The box also receives the Waikato Times each morning and, a couple of weeks ago, a half-dozen of wine landed. Strictly to honour the original intention.

The avocados – yesterday’s drop – are from Dott and Brian’s prolific tree in Hillcrest. Green gold. I go weak at the knees when I take them out of the box. I buy avos regularly at Hamilton Farmers’ Market so they’re currently off the menu here. I miss them, along with fresh fish (Raglan fish truck), red capsicums and chillies from Matamata’s Southern Belle Orchard, and baby carrots and salad greens from Backyard Jem, Ngaruawahia. I hope all the market stallholders are doing okay; this is a long haul for them.

Television: Watched last night (and fascinated by) the documentary (TVNZ OnDemand), Lord Lucan: My husband, the Truth. It is an extended interview with the fragile, eccentric Lady Lucan, wife of British peer Lord Lucan, who in 1974 is believed to have killed the family’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, at their London home. Lucan also apparently bludgeoned his wife, then famously vanished. Never to be seen again. This documentary was made in 2017, a few months before Lady Lucan’s lonely death. She never wavered from her story of what happened on the night of the murder.

Small comforts: I’m sometimes using a fine china cup and saucer for my tea, and a crystal wine glass at night. These are usually shuttered in cupboards and cabinets, it seems a special treat to use them. And I’ve got the time to wash them by hand.

  Food matters:  The fresh input of avocados is wonderful. One of them is nicely ripe, so lunch today is avocado on toast.

The next ripe avo is for Nigella Lawson’s guacamole, from her splendid book, How To Eat. Nigella’s guacamole is fresh and sharp; none of the extras that you sometimes find in guacs that Nigella says (graphically) end up looking like “burst-boil mush”.

I often scale this recipe back to one avo, use lemon if I don’t have limes, and sometimes sub mint for coriander. I almost prefer it with mint. But this is the original: 3 properly ripe avocados, juice of 3-4 limes, 4 tablespoons of fresh coriander, chopped, ½-l (to taste) fresh green chilli, deseeded and chopped finely, scant teaspoon of salt, 4 spring onions, sliced finely. Chop and mix the whole thing just before serving.

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.”

Sunday, April 19: I’m pleased to hear British writer Neil Gaiman say on RNZ this morning that we shouldn’t expect to come out of lockdown having taught ourselves Swahili, written a new novel, or performed other remarkable feats. It will be enough, Gaiman says, to simply get through this period well, to enjoy whatever we’re doing, and be kind to ourselves. That’s our job at present.

I tell myself something similar on aimless days. I think it’s the lack of structure that I struggle with most. This is the most sustained period of unstructured time that I’ve ever experienced. In my childhood, the family mantra was that you got out of bed in the morning and you “got cracking”. My parents never fully understood the teenage thing where Margot and I wanted to sleep late at the weekend, especially after a party night. The “cracking” rule applied seven days a week; with the accompanying rhythm of farm work, garden work, house work and school work.

Rhythms and tasks have changed many times since then but I always get cracking, have places to go, people to see, stuff to do. When I look back on what I did during the pandemic crisis, I’ll remember some moochy days and also days of quiet satisfaction, of things accomplished. There is no structure, no great plan, no foreign language learned or novel written but somehow lockdown life finds a rhythm of its own.

Today it takes me 20 minutes to walk down our short street because I meet four neighbours and we enjoy a chat, standing in the sun. I continue the walk, my fingers itch to pick a solitary ripe lemon I spy on a tree adjacent to the footpath. It is a flash of yellow among the green but I talk firmly to myself and walk on. I’ve already done that, picked (or pinched?) a “last lemon” without asking and it severely impacted on the G&T of the friends whose tree it was. I never heard the end of it when I confessed; they certainly didn’t buy my story that I was saving the lemon from potentially rotting on the ground. I’ve been a nervous forager since then.

 The afternoon is given over to cooking produce that has legitimately landed in my kitchen. At one point I’ve got three pans on the go and I’m whirling around, stirring stuff with wooden spoons. There is Chunky Monkey chutney in the oven, mushrooms simmering gently, rhubarb and apple stewing happily. The One World: Together at Home event is streaming on television in the background and I don’t quite get to the quince paste. Maybe tomorrow.

Later, I slice up a precious lemon – also legitimately obtained – for a Zoom gin with friends. We typically get together during the Christmas holidays but now we are raising a glass in our bubbles in Hamilton, Sydney, Mt Maunganui and Tauranga, picking up where we left off in the golden summer just gone.

 Food matters: the instructions on the Chunky Monkey Feijoa Chutney recipe clearly say to leave it two weeks before eating, to let the flavours develop. I can’t resist a smidgen with cheese and crackers before dinner. It’s got plenty of lovely kick, and more to come. I accidentally write Funky Monkey on the label and one jar still has its original relish brand on the lid. Nigel Slater may say I’m setting myself up for condiment confusion in the future.