May 31

I have been promising the girls that we will try and make marmalade for some time now so today we look through some recipes and decide on one that looks quite easy.

Everything is going well until it comes to the point where I think the mixture should be thickening up.  Boil for 10-15 minutes says the recipe, but nearly an hour later, we have made little progress. Following instructions,  I put some saucers in the freezer and every now and again drop some mixture in, watching hopefully for it to wrinkle, but it just sloshes around.  It's time for some Facebook help.

Now, this is one of the things I do not understand.  Having received lots of messages from friends about how to rectify our runny marmalade, it is blazingly obvious that marmalade needs pectin in order to set and oranges don't have much.  Therefore, why doesn't the recipe say add lemon juice?

My mum said once that women are quite funny about exchanging recipes.  She claimed that some people deliberately changed the recipe so that it would not work out when someone else tried it. I always thought this was a bit of a conspiracy theory, but I do remember one friend of mine in the UK really taking umbrage to someone asking her for her recipe for coq au vin and writing the woman a long email explaining why she couldn't divulge this information and why it was rude of her to ask.  I do feel that if you are going to put a recipe on the internet, though, it's because you want people to use it, like it and think that you are wonderful for inventing it.

In the afternoon, I mark essays. On the Rheam side of my family, there is a history of Quakerism.  Rumour has it that my great-grandfather got into a lot of trouble for riding his bike on a Sunday.  Although I think this is a bit extreme, I really do wish I lived in an age when doing work on a Sunday was frowned upon.  How nice would it be for someone to say: 'Oh no, Bryony, you cannot possibly do any work today.  Doing so will only incur the wrath of God and lead to eternal damnation.'  Sigh.  Those were the days.

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