She told me about how Con had all ‘them problems’ with his hips and knees—from too many years roofing—and so couldn’t come anymore, and that she and Poppy struggle a little too; that it takes two of them to do what they used to be able to do on their own. Then she said: ‘You’ll come next time, give us old birds a hand, won’t ya?’

And I couldn’t keep the grin from my face. ‘I’d love to.’

‘It’s the beating of them that gets me these days. You gotta throw your weight into it and I lose balance,’ Flo said.

‘Beating?’ I asked.

‘Yep. Gotta tenderise them after you catch them. Else they’re like old boots. We beat them up on the road. Good hard surface. Once, some tourists stopped and had a go at us. Animal cruelty, they said! Course, they didn’t realise that we’d already cut their heads off, and when I told them so they were even more shocked. Mouths going like goldfish.’

We chatted as we boiled the octopuses in a big pot with wine, onions and herbs, sipping fresh cups of tea all the while.

‘This was Gray’s old cray boiler, this was,’ Flo said.

When Poppy removed the lid to check the progress, it let out a belch of briny steam.

In another large pot, Poppy brought a vinegar, sugar and spice mix to the boil.

‘My jam pot,’ Flo told me, nodding her head at it. ‘I’ll have to give it a good and proper scrub out after this, else my apricot jam’ll be chutney!’

It smelt so harsh it chafed the back of my throat.

‘It’ll settle, it will,’ Flo said as I coughed. ‘Just give it a week at least.’

After a bit, Poppy drained the octopuses. The foamy scum, brought forth by the boiling process, gathered in a crescent around the plughole, too light to be carried with the rest of the fluid down the drain. Then the three of us sliced the octopuses into chunks and packed the chunks into jars, which had been waiting, sterilised in the oven. Poppy poured the vinegar mix over the top and we sealed the jars.

We were onto our next pot of tea when the lids popped reassuringly.

‘You know, there was something terribly wholesome about it all. It was just so authentic,’ I told Jem as I looped a length of twine around the neck of a jar, just below the lid. I pulled the folds of the bow gently until they sat neat and even, then trimmed the tails so that they were the same length. ‘It was like, watching them last night—they were hunter-gatherers, living off the land. So decisive, so confident, so …’ I couldn’t quite figure out how to convey to him the impression they’d given off without sounding naff. ‘In the ecosystem?’ I tried. ‘You know, properly in nature?’

Jem nodded, barely glancing up from the synoptic chart displayed on the screen in front of him.