Fetishism*

When I arrived at the Lit & Phil this morning, there was a big lorry outside unloading boxes of stationery. I felt my usual shivery thrill at these circumstances, and walked up the stairs into the library thinking that all the writers I know are similarly kinky, that we all grew up with a fetish for office supplies. Pens and pencils, reams and quires of paper (in foolscap and quarto for preference; I have learned to love A4, but I will never come to fancy American letter size, that's just disproportionate and wrong). Carbon-paper and cartridge paper. Bottles of ink and blotting-paper. Tracing-paper and erasers. For me there were also compasses and set-squares and dividers and graph-paper and slide-rules, but you might need to be a maths geek too to desire those.

But then as I reached the head of the stairs and came through the double doors, it struck me that all these things are no longer the appurtenances of the writer, and I dunno. Are we the last generation to be kinky for the contents of the stationery cupboard? Do kids these days not get that, because these are not the tools they use?


*When I was a teen, a friend played me a single from which the only lines I remember are:

"What's fetishism?"
"Plump thighs!" cried the plump-thighed pigeons.

Tragically, Google does not know this work. [This page may be a Googlewhack; I g'd "plump-thighed pigeons" and it found nothing. Until, presumably, now.] I may have asked before, and someone may have told me, for you are all brilliant and I am forgetful; but can anyone place it?

Recommended Reading

Hmm. Folks, I tell you what: the Locus Recommended Reading list is here.

And nobody told me - possibly because there is a teeny inaccuracy in their version of my title, and everyone knows what a pedant I can be? - but Jade Man's Skin by Daniel Fox is right there, on the list.

*chuffs*

Marmalade

Okay, hands up those of you who know that our our word marmalade comes from the French word marmelade which came from the Portuguese marmelada, from marmelo a quince, from Latin melimelum, from Greek melimelon a sweet apple, from meli honey and melon an apple...

Okay, you can put your hands down now, clever clogs. Unless you want to explain red onion marmalade to all the class...?

Good. Moving on:

I have, in other words, made marmalade. It is currently still seething gently in its jars, so this post is entirely premature; I have no real idea how it's going to set. Only that it stiffened lovely in a saucer, and the pan was a devil to wash, so I anticipate stickiness. Stickiness at the very least.

And - because I have a few minutes to spare, and am quite pleased with myself thus far - this is how I did it:

Buy a kilo of Seville oranges. (No, Rupert, no other kind will do.)

Wash them and then put them in a saucepan of such a size that they all fit in one layer, and cover them with water. When they start to float, stop pouring water.

Bring to the boil, cover, and simmer for an hour and a half, or thereabouts.

Turn off the heat, leave them covered and go to bed.

Next day, put them in a sieve over the pan of boiled juicy bitter water (taste it!) and chop them roughly, so that the contained juices will ooze out. Leave 'em for an hour or two for this to happen.

Then chop the oranges smaller but not too fine, separating the pips as you go and heaping same into a piece of muslin. Put the chopped peel & flesh back into the juicy wateriness, and turn on the heat beneath the pan.

Knot all the pips into the muslin, and add that to the pan.

Stir in one kilo of sugar; I used confectioners' sugar without added pectin, on account of shouldn't need added pectin, but your confidence/experience may vary.

Dissolve the sugar and bring up to a slow simmer, then leave it for an hour or so, stirring occasionally.

Now put six clean one-pound jam jars onto a baking tray and heat them in a low oven, while you turn the heat up high and boil hell out of the marmalade.

If you have a thermometer, add it now; you're looking for a confident 220 degrees F.

Put a couple of saucers in the fridge.

After ten minutes or when the thermo is there or thereabouts, try a splidge of juice on a cold saucer for the finger test. (Let it cool, then run your finger through it. If it wrinkles appealingly, it's ready.)

Leave it boiling a little longer, just to be sure. By now the quantity should have reduced observably, and the liquor darkened.

When you're confident, turn off the heat. Squeeze out the muslin bag, and discard contents (or the whole damn' thing, if you think muslin grows on plants or something). Dispense marmalade into jars, feeling slightly astonished that a kilo of fruit and a kilo of sugar and a quantity of water has come down to exactly four pound-jars of marmalade, when you had so carefully prepared six.

Admire how the liquid seethes in the jars.

When it stops seething, top them off and seal with lids (carefully! still hott!!).

Clean all the things.

Now I guess I need to defy all my instincts and actually eat breakfast, just to test it to destruction. Or offer a jar up to a self-sacrificial victim... (Because, y'know. It's dead easy, and kind of fun: and I only got four jars, but there are still oranges in the market. I could do it all again. With double quantities, even. If it's any good. But I do need to make that assessment first.)