Brookfield’s cake tin

To say, “There are more important things than keeping the cake tin filled,” may not sound controversial, but it is if you are Jill Archer. Making cakes has been her strong suit since she married Phil in 1957. In the 60 years we have heard from her since, she might not have said so, but she surely knows that baking for the family does more than feed the inner Archer. Yet now the hungry Brookfield household look up and are not fed, for Jill has taken to activism and street protest. She seems to act under force majeure, almost as if she were a helpless puppet mouthing words not of her own devising. Jill is not perfect (her suspicions of the Fairbrothers reflecting emotional vulnerability) but her virtues are more authentic in a farmhouse kitchen than on the picket-line. As the poet almost said, they also serve who only stand and bake.