My old man likes marmalade. No, I suppose I’d better come clean, my old man has an obsession about marmalade. He has a whole vocabulary to describe it which I’d better not go into here, but its key properties for him are bite and snigs. Bite I suppose is obvious, he likes his marmalade bitter and sharp enough to wake him up at breakfast after an evening spent discussing the merits and demerits of various samples of malt whisky with others, whose opinions he has great respect for, which of course had to be sampled several times.

However, snigs are not as simple as they appear. I know to the uninitiated they are just pieces of peel, however, to the aficionado, there’s not just size to consider there is the aspect ratio, at one extreme square chunks, and at the other long, wafer thin shreds. Then there’re also thickness, firmness, the nature of the fruit they originated from and a whole range of other attributes, of far too arcane a nature for mere mortals like myself, which all have to be taken into consideration to produce an acceptable product.

I remember a Sunday afternoon a long time ago. Like many other couples, we were picnicking on the bank of a river well known for its salmon and its lovers. I had absorbed its history, and I felt that the ambiance of a sunny Sunday afternoon there meant that my chances of being able to encourage him to propose marriage were looking distinctly promising. We had eaten our sandwiches and pork pies and were finishing our lunch with clementines. I was about to throw my peel away, after all it was biodegradable, when his distress started to unravel him at the seams.

I was informed that all commercially made marmalades were bite-less and under-snigged and the only way to correct this deficiency was to make one’s own. This involved saving all citrus peel till sufficient had been accumulated to make a batch that was adequately bitter and snigged. I calmed the poor dear down, and with a little encouragement and a fair amount of intimacy he did propose. Men are much more fragile than most of us realise, and you only truly see them at their best when you treat them gently. Just don’t do it in front of their friends!

I have since spent forty years managing bags of frozen peel and assorted citrus fruits on a three year cycle of marmalade making. I own and run a garden centre for a living where amongst other things I raise several hundred varieties of fruiting citrus, including a dozen or so varieties of the bizarre but fragrant Buddha’s Hand which not only gives our tea shop an exotic appeal, no pun intended, but its name too.

I suppose learning more about citrus fruit and marmalade making than is readily available on the internet is an easier way to maintain a good marriage than what some of my friends have had to go through, but I have to add I hate the stuff.