There’s something so calming and comforting about having a glass of hot blackcurrant cordial when you’re sick. It was one of the things my maternal grandmother would give me if I was unwell and she was charged with looking after me for the day. As much as I didn’t like her when I was younger, it was one of the few spontaneously kind things she did for me which has stuck.

I’m having some now because I have a bad cold and I am taken back to those days where I’d be wrapped up on her couch in that old house in Kitchener Street, Broadmeadows. A pile of pillows would be stuffed behind me, Vanessa’s cat, Prince, would be splayed out in front of the heater nearby and I’d be clutching a warm glass while we watched reruns of “Murder, She Wrote” together.