What's happened to all the currants in town?

 

Every now and then someone on Twitter, either innocently or mischieviously, gets me and the lovely Mary Berry mixed up. "I cant stand that Mary Berry droning on about the Romans" or whatever. The truth is there are only two days in the year when I even approach Bake-Off territory: one Sunday in November when I bake the Christmas cake, and another when I steam the Christmas puddings.

Today I opted for the cake, largely because it doesn't require such constant attention while I am trying to write a lecture (making sure the damn pans dont boil dry -- else all the work is ruined -- is edgier than just shoving a cake in the oven for four and a half hours).

The problem turned out to be the ingredients.

My faithful recipe (Delia, actually) specifies 1lb of currants, and 6 ounces of both sultanas and raisins. Both the sultanas and raisins arrived from the on-line grocery order, but no currants. The husband generously offered to do a trawl of the local supermarkets, with similar results. Sainsbury's had both raisins and sultanas but no currants, likewise the Co-op and the neighbourhood Pakistani omnium gatherum; Aldi was the same (though the girl asking 'what are currants?' didn't inspire much confidence in her ability to track the things down). Eventually,after trying another Co-op, I found a few precious packets in the Derby Stores in Newnham village (I say this for the benefit of anyone else on the hunt).

The puzzle is where have they all gone. Was it just bad luck? It seems unlikely that there has been such a flurry of Christmas baking that the currant stocks had been suddenly depleted. The husband began to postulate a European economic cause. Currants should come from Greece. So had the crisis affected the crop, production or transport? Suspiciously my find in the Derby Stores had the ominous word 'produce of more than one country' on!

So I hope they are decent after all. Every year the family finds it in themselves to say, ''We really do think this is your best one yet". But presumably that ever upward progress cant go on for ever.