So what do you think that word means, if not this?

I have myself been called a vintage novelist (grr: I'm not yet quite 52.25, y'know...). In print, yet.

The only commercial brand of marmalade I'm prepared to take seriously offers two varieties, its standard Oxford Marmalade and its Vintage Oxford. Apparently, so do I.

It was purely serendipitous. Deconstructing the process in retrospect, my current theory states that late-season Sevilles are drier and less juicy than their earlier-harvested brethren, and therefore more inclined to float. Therefore, when I pour in water to cover - well, it takes me a while to realise that actually that top layer? Is floating. I did actually think of fishing out the last jugful of water, but nah, I thought. It'll cook off.

And so, of course, it did. Eventually. It took hours. My established process includes cooking the chopped orange peel with the juice-water and the pip-bag and the sugar for a couple of hours, then boiling vigorously for ten minutes to achieve a set. Make that boil vigorously for two hours, last night. All of which made for a much darker jelly and an almost caramel flavour: definitely, I am calling this my vintage set. Aged in the pan, as it were.

I think it's rather nice, though I depend as ever on the verdict of my public. Who may prefer the fresher flavour of the standard set. We shall see.

If you build it, they will come

So there I was, fuelled for once in my life by toast and marmalade, engaged today as every day in the walk from home to library, fretting as I have been for a week now about the End that Would Not Come. This book needs a big dramatic climax, right now, thanks: and I had no notion what or where. When you know how, you know who - that's Peter Wimsey's mantra, and it's good for me too. I had no worries about either of those. But it's no good having all your ducks in a row and no pond to sail 'em on, no bread to fling. As it were.

So there I was, fretting. I could set it in the house, in that big ballroom I've made so much of. That would do. Or up in those increasingly-spooky attics. Or outside, that might be more dramatic: in the stable-block, to catch that hint of former trauma? Or in the bath-house, to link it more thoroughly to The Keys to D'Espérance? Or in the woods beyond, or...?

It crossed my mind that what I was working my way towards here, what this would be is a big set piece; and my mind is more supple than my body and more greedy too, quicker to snatch.

It grabbed at that word set and I saw it in literal theatrical terms, a thing you build, knocked together out of timber and flats; and - well, there you go. There we went. If you want a set piece, build a bloody set.

So that's what I have them doing now, all these men: building the very thing on which they will act out their drama. It's perfect.

Perhaps I should eat marmalade more often?