JAM TODAY, JAM TOMORROW

Last night. I stayed up making jam. The house was quiet. Just the odd owl hoot for company. I made two batches. The first, plum, in response to the glut hanging from the branches of the orchard. The second, plum and fresh ginger, an experiment.
Neither worked, adding to a list of niggling frustrations which have invaded the last few days and weeks.
Now I will have a couple of jars of short shelf life fruit spread. The rest will have to be junked. I think that to boil it up again, with even more sugar than the amazing amount already in it, will leave it tasting burned, stewed. More sugar, though, is what the recipe needs, even though it seems unbelievable that 2 to 1 fruit to sugar is insufficient to do the job.
When plums are ready, they are ready all of a rush. An orchard full of them creates a sense of panic in me, to get them in, consume them greedily, and concoct ways of getting their benefit. I've already made quantities of slivovitz and plum brandy. Stone fruit like plums seem to be year on, year off. It's a two year cycle, and knowing there will be an absence next year adds to the sense of urgency in harvesting. This year is year on for the plums. Year off for the greengages. I picked seven or eight yesterday and that's the lot. Last year, I took a load of gages onto a yacht, where they were greatly appreciated by the crew. One crewman cited them as a cure for seasickness. They are very special, green - golden little globes, but curative properties may be exaggeration.
I can remember my first acquaintance with Victoria plums. My Dad had an allotment. His next door neighbour had a Victoria Plum tree. It was adjacent to an untended, overgrown patch which was the only bit of ground left uncultivated by my Father. My sister and I called this the Jurma Bungle. God knows how we knew about Burma at that age. It was a play area for us, and therefore convenient for my Dad, as it created a space in our endless whining about how bored we were at the allotment. When in fruit, the neighbour's Victoria Plum tree was an irresistible magnet. We would lurk in the long grass of the Jurma Bungle and shoot out to steal a small handful of booty. Retribution in the form of the neighbour, who was a perennially grumpy sort, and from my Father, who, though never as far as I can recall, given to corporal punishment, was still to be feared. This just added shivers of excitement to an already enjoyable experience. I'm certain my Dad must have realised we were scrumping. There are times of course when the correct action is to see no ships. I can imagine this was one, as occupation of any kind for us kids meant that Dad could get on with proper gardening, uninterrupted.
I was puzzled about the name. Why Victoria plums? My Father explained. I remained sceptical. I thought Victoria plums were an invented over claim. The possibility that a plum would be named in affection for a monarch seemed remote to me. My Dad was often selling things to us with the notion that they were somehow special, in a way they plainly were not. For example, when we had ham, my Dad would sell it to us as Virginia ham. The exoticism appealed to us, and we'd cease picky eating and tuck in. Likewise, Garibaldi biscuits and other boring staples were sold as having, somehow, an exciting provenance. My Dad should have been in advertising. He had a copywriter's natural bent for simple yet memorable emotive benefits, wrapped in very few words.
It's not something I've inherited. But I have had a couple of compliments about my writing in the last week. One was from someone encouraging me to write a book. Very generous. The other came because a friend of mine lost his Dad recently. His Dad drove a Jaguar and I wrote him a letter about how his Dad resembled and fitted the marque of car he drove. Apparently, unknown to me, they read it out at the funeral. Not a dry eye in the House.
Now, jam. If one were into holistic metaphors, one could see my jam making as an analogy for how life is with me. Frustrating in circumstance though happy in mind. The experience of starting a new business over the last year or so has been in parts exciting, tasty, rewarding and deeply frustrating in that it has not yet tapped the deep rewards possible. To know one has cooked up a system which works brilliantly, is appreciated by users, and has huge benefits, is all well and good. But it is jam tomorrow. Why? Despite user enthusiasm, and organisation wide benefits, it gets closed down by gatekeepers who've never even bothered to witness it first hand. The jam hasn't set. The answer is plain to me. Like the jam, just adding more sugar would spoil it. Mere copywriting schmaltz will not hack it. Exoticism not required. More adjectives not needed. I'm just dealing with the wrong people. And that is a matter of positioning. So now, with efficacy in the bag, I need to go back to square one and reposition the whole thing to reach audiences who will listen and will care. Make a new batch. Then I think the thing will set solid. Jam, tomorrow, though, I'm afraid.