h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I’m making my Christmas cake today. The fruit and nuts have been steeping in brandy for a week and I’m now ready to complete the task . This is a complicated recipe. I need to separate the eggs and whisk the whites into a froth. Later, I need to heat sugar until it goes dark brown and add milk – without producing toffee. Anybody might be forgiven for thinking that I’m a good cook.

So I’ll tell you a secret. When I did cookery classes at school, I was really bad. I used to get in a muddle, drop things, use the wrong ingredients and rush around in a panic. My cookery teacher described me as ‘like a nymph who’s been stung by a gadfly.’ I was glad I didn’t have to do a cookery exam.

However, I’ve now been cooking for many years. I prepare a range of vegetarian and fish dishes, as well as making bread, soups, vegetarian pates and cakes. Last weekend, our son was taking part in a drama competition in Southampton. We drove over to watch and, in the interval, I produced a box of home made quince cake to hand round. I asked myself if I wanted to be known as the old woman with the box of cakes. But there are worse things to be known for. So the moral of this story is: if you want to do anything reasonably well, just keep practising.

Thanks My Christmas cake turned out all right.

I'm impressed, too - Quince cake sounds fascinating!

I think it helps that in school there's quite a bit of pressure, whereas at home it is more relaxed so you can enjoy it more - eg I didn't used to like Art because I never did well enough in class, but in the very last lesson before I dropped it from my timetable we were allowed to use proper watercolours instead of poster paints, and I discovered I had an amateur enthusiasm after all

It's surprising how good school is at putting you off things!

Yes...

Luckily I did have some inspiring teachers, so I enjoyed Maths, English and Greek and Roman History in particular