A recipe is a thing to come back to, again and again. Like a home, like a feeling. A favourite poem. The last time I was suffocated by everything, I put myself to work memorising ‘Sonnet for Christmas’ by Judith Wright. It was a rainy day in the summer heaviness, I looked out the circle window of the Bargoonga Nganjin library on Brunswick Street. We are winter-caught, and we must fail, said the dark dream, and time is … and time is … (looking back to the page) … overcast.

Mum cooks quinces forever. They turn from wood to a kind of sand, with vanilla bean syrup and Pauls ice cream. And then there’s the getting out of the butcher’s paper. I feel ill. I can stomach a lot of sweets though and I try to put a lid on things. The quinces come from the tree of one of mum’s three friends with the name Jen. Jen lives in Port Fairy and quinces fruit in spring, mainly, but mum wouldn’t go there just for the quinces, and she might not necessarily get them if she did go. It’s a lucky strike.