It was a sort of a barbeque--although I think of a barbeque as a social event, something forbidden in the no-contact zone of this year of contagion--still, it was sort of a barbeque when we opened a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc on the patio. We had a fire, over which we suspended some skewers. We dined at leisure, setting aside a hundred cares, as the sinking sun gilded the cornfields and the shelterbelts.