Niccolo Machiavelli might have been happier in the community garden than in exile at his family estate in Tuscany. The politics are complex, the emotions many and the personalities as diverse as in the community from which it draws its members. Even he could find it difficult to steer a course through the prevailing forms of governments: benign dictatorship, alternating every few minutes with bureaucracy and popular democracy.
We would have welcomed him on the evening we turned up to strip the apricot tree and conduct a community jam session, one of the non-music-making variety.
We had a bumper crop of apricots — fat, golden, by now blushing towards pink. The crop was intact, because before early summer rain and prolonged heat had worked their magic, the tree was netted to keep both cockatoos and plastic-trough-toting locals at bay.
Jam, the ladies decided, would be a golden gift to all the gardeners. Machiavelli's persuasive skills would have been welcome here because not all the gardeners agreed, but in the absence of other suggestions, we arrived with our big pots, wooden spoons, knives and cutting boards as arranged.
The two designated fruit pickers and ladder failed to arrive, so we could have used Macca then too; his Florentine manners would not have allowed him to see the damsels becoming distressed, and he might have scaled the ladder like a figure in one of those books of hours which depict seasonal tasks.
As it turned out, he could keep his hose clean and unladdered because a cheerful fellow gardener turned up and landed 18 kg of fruit on the long table.
How do you make apricot jam? No-one was sure, but it seemed to be about fruit, water, sugar, pectin and heat.
There was discussion about the water — various probably deceased aunts and mothers never used water. Suddenly everyone was an expert. One of the younger ladies was despatched to the supermarket to find pectin and sugar, but by the time we had done the very complicated maths (if x cups of fruit needs y ounces of sugar and one teaspoon of pectin, how many kilos of fruit need how much of the same?) another trip was necessary.
Further complications arose because the pots were all different sizes and we had no scales. The sugar shopper is also a computer engineer, so her quick calculations passed unchallenged. Our Florentine friend