For the love of scrubs

8pm, Thursday evening.  We open our doors, walk onto the street and clap for the NHS.  It's not that special now but still it's an opportunity to check into a collective effort.  A nod at our neighbours, maybe a quick conversation over the wall, across the balcony, to the other side of the street. It's little enough, but it's something.

This is a curious time when the most constructive thing we can do is not to do anything. Don't go out, don't embrace, don't linger, don't loiter, don't let your dog run free. Our compliance would seem to be working and we trust the virus is being somewhat contained. The success of our efforts translates into trends: a plateauing out of the pandemic, indicated by fewer cases, a dip in the daily tally of deaths.

Like many of us, I struggle with that daily toll. Numbers in thousands overwhelm the imagination and deceased celebrities who once would have merited a week of archived material, are mentioned, their achievements logged and then forgotten.  It is an empty field in County Antrim, now requisitioned and cordoned off, which chills.

In my street, as elsewhere, a Covid 19 Mutual Support Aid group has been set up, where contacts, services and bananas are shared. At the same time,  many of my social media groups have descended into bickering about the benefits of wearing face masks and avoiding sweaty joggers.  Our household is privileged in that we have a garden, a park nearby and a dog to exercise daily, a useful pretext for leaving the house. On our walks, we forage safely in rediscovered corner shops, hunting down strong white flour and gathering caster sugar.  We know how to bake, brew and make jam.  We get by.

Lucky us.  But it's hardly enough, this invisible compliance. I want to be seen to do something, other than depositing a few cans into the local foodbank. Cruelly, reaching out to the needy and vulnerable puts them and us at risk.  Self-isolation is lonely.

So I want to tell you about a movement.  Like many movements, it is currently under the radar (or if you like under the 5G mast) and it is momentous.  All over the country, women alone in their houses are making things. They are crocheting pairs of hearts to place in the hands of the bereaved families and to rest in peace.  They are revisiting stashes of buttons to make bands which alleviate the soreness caused by wearing masks.

I'm doing my bit as well.  With friends, I have made and delivered over thirty laundry bags to the North Middlesex Hospital and Whittington Hospital for nurses to store, transport and wash their uniforms without fear of cross-contamination..   I like to see my little bag as an interface between work and home, where potentially harmful clothing is separated out and dealt with, keeping the healthcare worker and their family safe.

In a quiet, somewhat introverted way, I have enjoyed the meditative act of creating these bags, imagining the grateful recipient, considering the wear and tear to fabric being washed at 60 degrees.  (You don't want the material to shrink or the colours to run.)  I have constructed these bags with French seams to avoid raw edges, and finished each one with a little heart.

So yet again, I find myself one of many, but this time I feel I'm doing something useful  I am channelling my spirit of Dunkerque.

 If you too are interested in getting involved, there are links to the projects mentioned above.

Meet your makers!

We now have 21+ local artisans who make, design and craft their wares. And they really are local - our sock maker and mosaic artist live in the road next to the centre; the Wasteladystudio duo live opposite. 

Others we had to find.  We hiked up the hill to Stroud Market where we met one of our potters, a knitter and a maker of vegan skin care products.  We trekked through ancient woods to find our honey maker in Muswell Hill, picking up a quilter on the way! Many of our makers do wonderful things in the community, providing cakes for a fundraiser at Mind or helping Hornsey School pupils create a sustainable garden.  Other makers came to us; talented and experimental, they wanted to share their work in this exciting new venture.

I hope you will come too and support our community of amazing makers.

A full list of stalls with appropriate links is given below.

Ceramics from Fiona and Nigel, glassware from Hilary and mosaics from Rachel: 
Cushions, bags and quilts from Anita, Helene and Zuz
Jams, chutney from Dick and honey from Manola
Cards and prints from Jane, Alison and Anne

Gift wrapped cakes and cupcakes from Cake2theoccasion 
Hand made dolls from Stewart and hand painted dolls from Calamushkas
Knitted socks from John and knitted scarves from Simon
Handmade jewellery from Jackie and Joyce
Bughouses from Briggsbughouses and terrariums from Enchanted Terrarium
Sustainable living: fair trade goods from Poppy and Friends of the Earth; vegan skin care from Mama Aroma Tierra  and plastic free and upcycled pieces from WasteladyStudio

This is a not for profit event to support our local community of makers.  There will also be a festive cafe and a lantern making activity for all ages. A donation will be made to Haringey Winter Night Shelter.

Why I don't buy from Amazon

I try to live a sustainable life. I have made a pledge not to fly; I eat meat only at the weekend; I try to avoid single use plastic; I don't buy from Amazon. Most of these demand a degree of abstinence, a sacrifice, a conscious consideration of the choices I make.

Except for giving up Amazon, nah, that's easy.  Because although they purport to be a worthy, well-intentioned company, they are not.  Let's have a look at some of their claims.

Amazon is a great place to work

You've seen the advert.  Employees enthuse about flexible working hours, the career opportunities, the camaraderie of cakes every Friday.  Sure there are targets, but everyone has targets, don't they?

The Amazon website explains the advantages of working four ten hours shifts with three days off every week: 'fast delivery for our customers' and 'another day for free time and social activities.'

When journalist James Bloodworth worked undercover at Amazon, he discovered that no-one he met managed to achieve the nine months' employment threshold to gain permanent status. Most were 'released' due to black marks allocated because of taking time off, or declining overtime, or being late back from lunch, or just not meeting targets.

Bloodworth was employed as a picker: walking round the Amazon fulfilment centre, the size of four football pitches, he would clock up ten to fourteen miles a day No wonder that home at last, he would try to rest his 'heavy legs supporting suppurating feet which over the course of the day had puffed up half a size bigger.'

A modern version of the Robert Frost poem might read:

The aisles are endless, dark and deep
But I have targets to meet
And miles to walk before I sleep
And miles to walk before I sleep.

Amazon uses its money to do great things

Jez Bezos is the richest person in the world. He has recently donated $98.5 million to organisations that support homeless families in the USA, amounts which range from $1.25 million to $5 million. The day the new gifts were announced, Bezos stated an intention to donate 56,702 shares of Amazon stock, worth just under $99 million to non profits.  

I'm guessing that means the amount he donated was non-taxable. Amazon's record for paying tax is heinous.  And as Jeremy Corbyn tweeted at the time, $98.5 million is just 0.09% of his net worth.  Not so great, then.

Amazon is a great way to research a product

The consumer group Which? found 97% of its members used Amazon reviews when buying a product. They also found 30% of them were disappointed by the end result, despite the good reviews.  Which? recommends a sceptical approach: if a product receives numerous 5* rave reviews, using the same glowing phrases, all posted on the same day, there's just a chance they are false.

Amazon also buries 1* reviews in bundles of better reviews: the TV adaptation of Dirty Dancing (1* on Rotten Tomatoes) combined with the film version garnered 4.5* revews from over 1000 Amazon customers.  Reviews for authors with the same name are lumped together because after all, 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' are more or less the same book...

Amazon offer you great choice

It is very hard to make a purchase online without using Amazon.  Search for a book online and you have to wade through lists of  links to Amazon.  Hunt for a CD on an independent music website and you will be directed to.. Amazon.  Join in a jolly Secret Santa at work, click on our wish list and it takes you to... Amazon.

You may think you are an autonomous being when you follow a whim and elect to buy the latest gadget.  You're not.  Amazon know you bought one just like it in the last three years.  The gadget is waiting for you, waiting for you to make that click.

Amazon is so convenient

Remember how Amazon justified those ten hour shifts: they ensure 'fast delivery for our customers.  'Every one of us who want a product next day, in two hours, this afternoon , who cancels an order because it takes two days to get to you,  is complicit in those long hours and demanding working conditions.

Our desire to have things in the 'here and now' has far-reaching consequences. While the latest game may have made its way from half way across the world  to a UK warehouse, the last mile to your house is the trickiest.  Did you know that an average package is dropped 17 times before it reaches its purchasers? Parcels in half empty vans skid around or are crushed under the weight of other gods.  No surprise that electronic device you ordered doesn't work so well. This explains the excessive use of cardboard and plastic packing (which by the way is not recyclable), all of which adds to Amazon's overall carbon footprint, equivalent to 44.4 m tons of carbon dioxide.

It make no commercial sense to transport a small number of parcels, so drivers have to deliver 200 a day in vans, packed to the rafters.  They park in cycle lanes or on double lines, or double park to load and unload the contents.  The infrastructure of cities cannot cope with this army of delivery vans and we look on helpless, stuck in traffic jams, or worse breathe in the fumes.  One solution to this problem is 'beds and sheds' complexes with their own delivery systems and underground rail links shunting hundreds of packages every hour: one of these exists already. Dystopian.

So essentially, Amazon saves time and money

Does it? To recommend you now go and buy your Christmas presents for family and friends and Secret Santa gifts for colleagues at your local makers' market (especially ours!) might seem a bit hopeful..

And yet and yet, the twelve minutes saved by clicking online can be channelled into walking to the shops, saying hello to neighbours you meet on the way, browsing a few stalls, having a cup of tea, browsing a few more stalls, buying something that catches your eye. It might take longer than 12 minutes but it sounds like time well spent to me.

Hornsey Vale Makers' Market

Makers' Market or Craft Fair/Fayre?

 

Knitters at Brixton Makers' Market

Mention a ‘craft fair’ and what comes to mind?

Stalls, of course. A delightful place to visit. Tea and cake. Scarves and earrings, all the stuff you find in a National Trust gift shop.  Essentially a day out, to browse a few stalls, buy something nice for a friend’s birthday and take a chance on the weather. 

The heritage setting is key: look how the Channel 5 show, The Wonderful  World of Crafting chooses a charming place for each programme: https://www.channel5.com/show/the-wonderful-world-of-crafting/

From a business point of view, craft fairs are a great way to make money. The fee for the stall can be used to fund other projects and support worthy causes, and as long as the organisers attract enough punters, the stall holders should be happy.  The more stall holders, the greater the profit; the more stallholders, the greater the attraction, the more people come, the greater the takings.   Everybody happy.

The Makers’ Market I have in mind is somewhat different. Linguistically, with a bit of alliteration, it puts the makers at the centre of the event  This is to encourage conversation with the seller about their craft, the origins of the materials they use, and their passion for making.  A maker is always happy when they sell on the day, but they are particularly delighted when they engage with a customer and take on a commission. Co-production of this nature is less wasteful of energy, time and materials; no-one wants a pile of unsold items...  And how great to own a piece of work, made to your requirements from someone you know!

So for our Makers’ Market, yes, there will be tea and cakes (and mulled wine too).  The setting is Hornsey Vale Community Centre, whose architecture is more 70s than heritage, but which is convenient for Crouch End and the W3 and W5 bus routes.  There will be a range of interesting items for sale, lovely gifts for Christmas and beyond.  The majority of our stallholders will have made the items they sell.  They will have sourced their materials, decided on a design, and spent hours, working on their creation. 

Come and talk to them!

The Makers Market is not for profit event at Hornsey Vale Community Centre, on Sunday 8 December, 3-6 pm.  If you would like to sell at this event, please email me at: Wasteladyn8@gmail.com and I will send you further details.

A Vintage Life - Ways to Avoid Single Use Plastic

One billion elephants! 

Or 8.3 billion tonnes. That's how much plastic has been produced when the plastics industry really took off in the fifties. Of that amount, 9% has been recycled, 12% has been incinerated and the remaining 79%?  Well, you've seen the pictures on TV...

In the fifties, our grandparents reeling from war-time shortages and post-war rationing, kept everything.  (I know that from having taken over a year to clear my mother's house.)  They bought their groceries and meat from small independent shopkeepers who wrapped their purchases in paper.  They sat down to eat at the family table and had two sets of cutlery: one for everyday, one for best. They had tea parties for special occasions with tea-sets and tea-pots and tea leaves. 

They tucked handkerchiefs in sleeves or pockets and gave pretty embroidered sets as presents.  At the same time, they embraced this new extraordinary material which could be used to store food safely and they loved the affordable jewellery that sparkled and gleamed and looked like real thing: amber, pearl, ivory and coral.

A random selection of beads from my mother's jewellery box

Thanks to their careful curation of these precious things, many of them are still around. So can revisiting the past, help us reduce our plastic waste and create own plastic free legacy?  Here's some ideas.

1) Use tea leaves (and tea-pots!)  Almost all teabags contain a plastic sealant, polypropylene, to stop them disintegrating.  Contrary to popular belief, they won't biodegrade in your compost.

J G Meakin Studio teapot and vintage tea caddies

2) Use handkerchiefs.  Tissues are 100% paper but they can't be recycled or flushed away and they come in plastic wrapping (even the boxes).

3) Bring your own cutlery (and napkin) to work.) Each year in the UK we get through 16.5 billion pieces of disposable cutlery and we are among the biggest users of straws on the planet: 42 billion per year.

4) Use soap and shampoo bars and display them on pretty vintage ceramic dishes.  These are Poole, made in the sixties, hand painted, each with their individual maker's mark.

Hand painted Pool pottery from the s 60with vintage soaps

70s Tupperware in various sizes

5) Use Tupperware.  You can take it to your friendly local shopkeeper and producer and avoid plastic bags and food trays. An estimated 2.26 million tonnes of plastic packaging is produced in the UK each year, of which three fifths ends up being dumped)


6) Avoid clingfilm. In the UK we love cling film, 1.2 million metres every year, to be exact; that's an annual 44m per household.  Switch to beeswax wraps.

50s fabric turned into beeswax wraps

Beeswax wraps are a brilliant way to wrap food stuff (although avoid meat) and can be shaped into pockets and boxes. My beeswax wraps are !00% vintage cotton infused with a blend of beeswax, anti-bacterial jojoba oil and pine resin (to make the wraps cling). In future I plan to use beeswax from local beekeepers. 

The wraps can be wiped or rinsed in lukewarm water; they should last at least a year and can be refreshed by putting them into a warm oven for a few minutes.  Once they finally reach their end of life, simply put them in the compost.

WasteladyN8 Studios

At WasteladyN8 Studios, the material comes first.

Every sample, off cut, discard, charity shop reject, discontinued line, junkshop find, however bent and battered, biffed and buffeted, frayed and friable, is interesting to us. We squirrel, and hoard horribly.

Every find is a project.  Before we stash, we explore possibilities: it is not what to do with the material, but what not to do with it.  The best way to use a resource is to experiment with it, but what if, there is no more of it to be had? 

No matter - limitation inspires creativity. Everything we produce has been crafted, not just in its execution, but also in the thinking behind it.  The outcome is an item, that is unique, a one-off, never to be repeated, because the material we have used no longer exists.

Small purses made from Donegal tweed offcuts - material no longer available!

The wasteladyn8 blog is not just a showcase of items we have made.  It is also a discussion of the journey towards the finished product, the twists and turns and glorious dead ends we encounter.  It is about finding material and rediscovering it.

Brooches made from Paul Smith silk samples, sold at a pop-up shop.

Robin Livingstone 1920-2017

 

 My mother, Robin Livingstone passed away on Wednesday 11 October 2017.  In 2013 she won First Prize in an essay writing competition for the Ulster Countrywoman Magazine.  The piece was read out during her funeral on Saturday 13 October and is reproduced in full below.

From My Kitchen Window

The theme for my story is taken from the film, Casablanca, the lovely, sad song: 'As Time Goes By...' 

As I sit at my kitchen window the scene changes by the hour.  The post-man in his 'little red van' is the first to arrive.  Disappointing, no letters!  Only circulars about great deals from supermarkets and letters from charities asking for donations for worthy causes.  Today, nobody has time to write; it's all texts and emails.

The afternoon is quite exciting. I see businessmen home for lunch.  Wives drive to supermarkets.  Nobody walks to the local shop with a shopping bag today.  It's all trolley, plastic bags into the boot of the car and home.

Vapour trails in the sky mean the plane is on time as it flies towards City of Derry Airport.  The bus passes bringing children home from school.  The lady walks her dog and the neighbour's big ginger cat takes its afternoon stroll around the garden.

In the evening I watch for the crows on their way to roost in the tall trees, and keep warm near the road's lights during the night.

Sometimes, there is a spectacular sunset.  I stand in awe as the sky glows with colours - red, gold, yellow and primrose - a scene not even David Hockney could paint.

The road light outside my window has come on.  It's time to draw the curtains and call it a day.

Days of the week are known by what is happening outside my window.  There's the bin lorry, so it must be Thursday.  Sunday means neighbours drive off to church - men in tailored suits, ladies with freshly styled hairdos.  Sunday is  no day for jeans and anoraks.

As the seasons roll by I enjoy my garden.  Spring brings flowers - snowdrops to cheer cold January days and daffodils at Easter. May brings life to a my cherry tree.  I watch it from bud to leaf to blossom and sadly, it forms a carpet of pink petals on the grass. 

I look out of my window and listen as a pair of doves coo a duet on the telephone wires while a blackbird searches for worms to feed its chicks.

I welcome the swallows, and the butterflies feeding on nectar from the buddleia bush. Summer is here at last.

Autumn, although a season of fruit and Harvest thanksgiving services, fills me with a kind of melancholy.  I watch the leaves on my cherry tree colour yellow, then gold and drop off.

There's not much to see during the winter.  The only interesting thing was the arrival of a large flock of redwings. They stayed for three days feeding on the little apples on my crabtree.  Redwings are beautiful birds with black cap and red wings -they are a delight to watch.

Today I am glad to be sitting in my warm kitchen looking out.  Overnight, a snowfall has turned my garden into a sparkling Christmas card. I'll stay indoors.  Too old to throw snowballs or make a snowman.

Over the years I have seen babies in prams become toddlers, teenagers, adults and parents themselves: life, full circle.

To conclude, I must confess I have idled away too many hours sitting at my kitchen window.  I have never finished my 'Things to Do' list.  I just say like Scarlett O'Hara in the film, Gone with the Wind, - 'Tomorrow is another day!'

Giro d'Irlanda?

The Break Away Group appears

Traffic commercials in Northern Ireland are usually grim. Coffin shaped glasses of lager, a mashed up profile, howling parents punch home the message: driving is dangerous.  You are only a second away, a momentary lapse of concentration away from a horrendous pile-up of smoking metal and mutilated limbs.

But a more recent DOE information advert, broadcast before and after the Giro d’Italia, is different. The refrain is ‘Don’t Forget’ as cyclists and motorists bat back and forth advice on how to share the Road.  ‘Don’t forget I need a least the space of a car when you pass me.’ ‘Don’t forget it’s dangerous to pass me on the inside.’ The final image is of a motorist and cyclist at a junction saying in unison, ‘Don’t forget, I’m human too,’ followed by the banner, ‘Share the Road. Respect Everyone’s Journey.’

‘Not forgetting’ is something of an issue in Northern Ireland.  ‘Remember, Remember the 5^th November’ children may intone in England but here we have a litany of dates to recall and commemorate, triggered by location-specific insignia.  A tour around the Sperrins Mountains or the Glens of Antrim will take in a succession of villages, which offer different coloured flags: Green, White and Orange ceding to Red, White and Blue.  When I was growing up in the seventies, even the graffiti oscillated from FTP to FTQ where the P stood for the Pope and the Q for the Queen.  The rest you can guess.

So it was a stroke of genius for someone to suggest that instead of murals, grim-faced election posters and tendentious flags, Northern Ireland would welcome the Giro d’Italia with ...pink.  Not a sugary, girly, Princess pink, but a school dinner blancmange, cherry blossom, boozer’s nose pink. Ostensibly marketed to celebrate the Maglia Rosa (or Pink Jersey) worn by the leader of the Giro d’Italia,  Northern Ireland embraced Pinkness with pride.  Yes, the Northern Ireland community found it could do ‘camp,’ and very well, as it happens.  Resulting in pink sheep, pink phone boxes, pink horses, pink tractors, pink gnomes, pink fish and chips. Even the Grand Master of the Orange Order welcomed the Giro d’Italia, although as far as I know, he declined to wear a pink sash.  And everywhere streets and roads were lined with pink bikes and a festive flutter of floral flags.

During the different stages, the spectators wore pink, even if it was only a magenta rain poncho thoughtfully (and presciently) provided by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.  The Board had bid £4.2 million to entice the Giro d’Italia to come to Ireland and had beaten their nearest rival Venice, a curious place for a cycle race.  The Board’s slogan ‘Discover NI’ aimed to market the cities and coast to a global audience, who enchanted by the scenery would come in droves.  That didn’t quite work out, alas.  What the world wide audience actually saw on their screens was cyclists crashing on dangerously wet streets and not the iconic features of the coast, which swathes of rain made impossible to film.

The audience did discover something, however.  They knew that many in Northern Ireland like a procession. They probably knew that Ulster men and women are resilient, somewhat confirmed by the sight of hundreds of thousands standing in the rain, for four hours to see four and a half minutes of action.

But did they know we could be fun?  Like the riders on pink horses chasing the race until they ran out of beach.  Or the water skier keeping pace until he tried to wave at the cyclists and fell into the water.

And I discovered something too. I am a frequent visitor to my homeland and I would often remark to my husband on the potential there for excellent cycling.  How wrong I was. There is no potential.  People are doing it now. On the day of the race, we were impressed by the proliferation of cycle clubs,.  We encountered numerous bike riders on the narrow roads, moving as one like flocks of birds, heading to their favoured viewpoint.  We chose to coincide with the race at Cushendall, a small coastal village.

So what was the race actually like?  In the end it was brilliant!   We positioned ourselves on the bridge over the River Dall, able to see the bikes as they came round the sharp corner by the Curfew Tower.   

We waited a long time, standing around in the rain, observing the crowds, checking our cameras, checking our watches.  Until suddenly, we could hear the honking of a police bike.  It ushered in a host of pink taxis joining in the cacophony and waving huge pink foam hands out the windows. They were followed by a lull.  Quite a long lull.

 And then the bike outriders were back, beeping madly to tell us the race was coming.  It is easy to miss the leaders of the race, the breakaway group, and take them for a bunch of stragglers.  But you know that very soon afterwards (in this case, four minutes) the peloton will appear.

 Watching the pack of cyclists on the television, you notice how they pedal together, so fluid they seem to be coasting. They juggle jackets, no hands on the handlebars, poised like accomplished circus performers.

In the flesh, they were hard.  Fast. Pumping like a piston engine. And then they were gone....

On our journey home, we retraced the giro route, now bathed in sunshine and photographed moments of pink.  I hope too visitors will look at the Giro and see Northern Ireland in a different light, not just as a confection of sweet spots to touch and go.  I hope they would like to come and experience the community of cycling, just as we did.  And I hope they look forward to tapping into the culture of fun, which is so much part of the national character, and which we paraded in pink in the pouring rain.

The Alternative Clothes Show 2013

Strike a pose on the catwalk at the Alternative Clothes Show 2013.  This is a chance to showcase clothing that is precious.  Maybe it's handmade, or upcycled,  or it could be treasure from your granny or the local charity shop! 

The Alternative Clothes Show is on Sunday 17 March, 2-5pm at Hornsey Vale Community Centre, 60 Mayfield Road, N8 9LP.    

We are also looking for people to come and display or sell handmade items, upcycled clothes or locally sourced textiles.  Prices for tables are as follows:

• Display: Free

• Traders: £12

• Private Sellers: £8

For further information: info@hornseyvale.org or ring Tanya 0208 348 4612

This is joint event organised by Transition Crouch End and Hornsey Vale Community Cente  We will be promoting clothes that are ethically sourced, local, or recycled.  We want to raise awareness about the ethical, environmental impact of the mainstream clothing industry.  And we want to have fun!

For more information: www.transitioncrouchend.org or www.hornseyvale.org

Seville Marmalade for 55p a jar

Unfortunately I can't do that.  

I tried. I bought 2 kilos of granulated sugar at 99p each and a kilo of Seville oranges for £1.99, from my local greengrocers, the Broadway Fruiterer in Crouch End (lovely old-fashioned name).  Plus two lemons for 60p.

I used River Cottage Pam the Jam's method and boiled the whole fruit for two and a half hours in two and a half litres of water at a steady simmer. I halved the now softened fruit, poked out the pips, and sliced the peel into fine strips.  Removing the pips was a bit of a chore, but handling the tender, squishy pith was quite pleasurable. 

Then I topped up the water to 1.7 litres, tipped in the pulp and peel and poured in two kilos of warmed granulated sugar. Plus the juice of two lemons to ensure the right level of pectin.  (I added in a little extra, because when I did the methylated spirit test for pectin, the liquid didn't clump.)

I placed the temperature probe in the preserving pan and waited for the alert,  knowing that when my concoction had reached 105 degrees C,  the setting point of 104.5 had been reached.  This made for a rather relaxed marmalade making session: the probe meant I could actually leave the pan for half an hour, confident that the resulting marmalade would set.

It did and this is how it looked.

But then there was the stress of working out how much it cost. In the end, I made 3040g of marmalade and spent £4.57. Or to put it another way, each 100g of my marmalade cost 15p.  But that's still more than Waitrose's Essential Fine Cut Seville Marmalade which at 55p a jar, costs 12.1p for every 100g.

How can they do that?!!  My costs didn't factor in the three hours' use of gas or the considerable labour, and that was using the whole fruit method.  (Cutting up the peel before being softened is even more effortful and time-consuming.) The jars were free, since they were recycled. I hadn't included the industrial chemicals in the Waitrose version: citric acid, gelling agent pectin, acidity regulator sodium citrates, firming agent calcium chloride.

However looking at their ingredients, their marmalade contained 26% fruit, whereas mine contained 33%, and while their sugar content at 63% was roughly equivalent to mine, this included glucose-fructose syrup, or corn syrup as it is known in the USA. Corn syrup is cheaper than sugar and is a much used ingredient in processed food; it is not so easily digested by the body and research has suggested that excessive consumption can lead to obesity.  

I'm not saying that consuming large amounts of Essentials Waitrose Marmalade will make you fat; that is the nature of sugar!  But I feel more reassured, pleased even, that I failed the budget marmalade challenge.  All my ingredients were natural and my citric acid and pectin came from the fruit itself.  Moreover I did not have to resort to cheap, potentially harmful substitutes and I know my marmalade will not go off, because of the way it has been prepared.  That's why it is called a 'preserve.'

Or to put it another way, for well under a fiver, I made over eight jars of delicious marmalade, with complex flavours and a lovely consistency.

And with a bit of tweaking and little extra cost, I can add a splash of whisky or a few grams of stem ginger to make my own Wastelady speciality.

Now that's a premium product.