On that occasion I wondered if she would have been an even more marvellous writer if she'd made apricot jam. Apricot jam being a metaphor for any cooking task which involves transformation, which is in its own way magic at the same time as it is absolutely ordinary. She would have despised such an activity, would not have been able to comprehend how to begin; moreover she would not have seen that as her problem. But I think it was. Murdoch being a philosopher by trade spent a lot of time thinking about Heidegger and not being able to make the sense of him she wanted. This is what he said when he was out on a walk and stopped to look at oak trees: "Everything real and true only prospers if mankind fulfils at the same time the two conditions of being ready for the demands of highest heaven and of being safe in the shelter of the fruitful earth: the oak constantly repeats this to the country lane, whose track runs past it."

I think my apricot jam does much the same thing. I am not even that fond of it, much preferring Seville orange marmalade, and pretending anyway never to eat jam, but I know a good metaphor when I have ladled it into sterilised jars. It's a marvellous concoction, firm, sticky, richly fruited, deeply and darkly flavoured, dense amber gold in colour. Objectively regarded, it's gorgeous. And it brought comforting messages with it, of thrifty housekeeping, of provisioning against times of want, of turning what would be wasted — the apricots came from a friend's tree — into a treasure. Thus it offers the demands of the highest heaven as well as safety in the shelter of the fruitful earth. What's more, it's ephemeral, it's designed to be consumed, its success is that finally it does not exist any more, which is fairly metaphysical. If only Murdoch had made some jam, or done any of the cooking (any kind, really) that is alchemical in nature, transforming simple and disparate ingredients into a quite different other, she might have made more of the sense she wanted of Heidegger.

¶ 9:27 AM