Winters were a favourite time of year. Our mother would cover our bodies in lard each Sunday evening and, barring typhoons or other inconveniences, would send us scurrying about the garden around dusk to drive away the wood pigeons. It rarely worked.

My cousin Anthony would spend hours boiling artichokes with the crazed notion that they would yield an ink darker than pure indigo, for which he would be celebrated and reviled by the local clerics.

Alas, the ink itself never materialized but our uncle Cedric did temporarily find use for the pulp in one of his cayman farms in the north.