Rachel Johnson: everyone in my family is getting quince paste for Christmas

Brrring! Freddy Gray of this parish is on the blower. ‘How about a piece for this week saying he’s won, I’ve lost, let’s Get Brexit Done, that sort of thing,’ he pitched.

‘Sorry Freddy, can’t talk, am making membrillo,’ I snapped as I gazed down into my second batch of chopped quinces, vanilla, lemon and sugar — which were rendering down in my magic machine to be set into claggy slabs of mahogany fruit fudge — while snorting the heady, tangy fumes as if they were mummy’s special marching powders.

‘You what?’

I explained in brief what membrillo was (quince paste, made from the bulging, knobbly, hard yellow fruit and best eaten with manchego cheese) and why I was making it (I am channelling Mrs Beeton partly to distract from Brexit and the news cycle, but that’s not the whole story).

‘Write about that then,’ Freddy ordered.

Well then. I am no domestic goddess and am a rubbish housewife, but I do find secret solace in the achievement of ‘woman’s work’ such as ironing, making bread, sweeping floors, and so on. If anyone told me to do them I’d be furious, but if I find myself — even with sulky reluctance — doing some manual chore that generations of women have done before me, such as pegging out washing on a sunny day; or taking out a batch of scones from the Aga, to be scoffed with golden dollops of Rodda’s and jam; even cleaning out the fridge — a sense of satisfied calm steals into my crabbed, cross soul. I am as happy as a bright-eyed collie rounding up sheep on some green hillside, and I assume this is because I have yielded to an instinct in my blood.