In the Dog-House

I am still making jam - batches and batches of the stuff - to sell at the farmers' market tomorrow. It's what's known as a cottaging industry, or some such like.

I have a fridge full of fruit from my dad's allotment. The fresh sweet smell of the blackcurrants, an intense odour like concentrated Ribena, takes me back to our fruit-picking days last year, when dad was ill in hospital and when James really became a member of our family. He threw himself straight in, head and heart first, comforting, supporting, entertaining, hugging and harvesting. And at the end of the summer he got down on one knee in my parents' flower-crammed garden and asked me to marry him. Ah, memories. The smell of blackcurrants makes me say a silent prayer of thanks that Dad got better, and makes me want to hold James a little closer.

I multi-task. I put on a batch of cooking apples to cook and turn to pulp, which I then strain through a jelly bag. I'm making mint jelly, you see. I have the mint freshly picked from Megan's garden, where it grows as a weed. Fresh mint smells of Kuwait. Cooking apples takes me back to my childhood home in Barnehurst, where they could be heard thudding to the ground every summer as the branches of the trees strained with the weight of so many apples.

While the apple pulp is straining, I start to top and tail the blackcurrants. The ipod is on and I sing along to the Great Big Sea, the band that will always evoke memories of my first year at Cambridge, and my shiny new friends and my wondrous new life. As I sing I hear a thumping noise. It is Henry's tail, wagging against the carpet in excitement at my voice. He looks at me with his big black labrador eyes, and and I smile serenely. There's something calming about the presence of a black lab in the house, like a positive, warm and cuddly charge in the air. I'm glad I borrowed him for the day.

I start cooking the blackcurrants. Bam. The smell reminds me of Nanny, the long summers of my childhood when she would collect all the fruit from our garden and make enough jam to last us until the following summer. Her hand-written labels, shakey old granny writing on deep red jars of jam made from home-grown strawberries, the smell of sickly sweet fruit cooking upstairs, her singing to the radio as she worked. I feel a lump in my throat and suddenly realise how much I miss Nanny, and especially the Nanny of my childhood. My knitting and my jam-making often feels like a way of connecting with her, saying hello, smiling softly, reaching out.

I carry on cooking, finding myself surprised at the philosophical and emotional experience it is becoming. I think to myself: I must write about this in beautiful, sensuous, evocative prose, the sort of writing I admire in other people's blogs that makes me wish I had more of a way with words. Yes, I think, I must share this experience with everyone. My train of thought is then disturbed by a strange slurping noise, and I jump out of my daydream to find Henry, the little fucker, DRINKING my freshly-strained apple juice. I screech at him, call him words that only Satan should say whilst sat on the toilet, jumping up and down in anger and frustration as Henry stares at me in bewilderment.

Then I realise, my blog isn't one of those blogs. My blog is a blog where things like this are reported, where serene moments are a mere pause in the general insanity of life whilst living in a family crammed full of confirmed lunatics. Henry is a BAD, BAD dog. And he's going straight back home where he belongs, and where there is no cottaging industry for him to bring to financial ruin in one fell slurping swoop.

In future years, when Henry has gone to the Great Dog Home in the Sky, will the smell of cooking apples remind me of him, I wonder?