Marmalade

A stressful evening watching England in their second group game. They made heavy weather of it, looking at first as if they were cruising to a win, before sinking to unfathomable depths of despair; and then somehow bobbing up again to snatch an edgy victory. But it's a few more points on the board, which can only be a good thing.

I bought, the other day, some marmalade. Which was palatable enough; not astonishing, but sufficient for livening up a piece of toast in the morning. This seems an ordinary enough event, other than I am not much of a marmalade person: it has never really constituted a significant element in my life. A few years back, when I was living in a desolate land, I had more contact with marmalade than I really wanted. It appeared too often at the breakfast table; and was home-made. It was not badly home-made, by any means; but there was such a lot of it: jar after jar. As soon as one jar was emptied, another would appear in its place. In fairy tales, this type of behaviour is usually seen in a positive light; in real life, however, and particularly when applied to marmalade, it soon casts a cloud over the breakfast table, and eventually over life in general. Thus my voluntarily allowing a jar to enter the house can be seen as a step towards its rehabilitation, and the start of a long-sought healing process.