Being Me

I've just eaten a chocolate eclair and it reminded me to tell you about Mrs Gough. Mrs Gough taught me to cook at the Warwickshire grammar school I attended in the 1970s. I think they called her subject 'Domestic Science' officially but it was 'Cookery' to all of us.  Now the subject is called Food Technology or Food Science or How to Grow Up Without Knowing How to Make A Stew. There is cookery involved, but there's also much scientific theory, assessment of nutrition, costing of dishes, market research, and other sub-topics that Mrs Gough would have sniffed at. The science, in 1976, was what the boys did, while the girls cooked them steaming sausage rolls to give out at break time in the hope of an invitation to the school disco to snog behind the school hall curtains. It's amazing what a 14 year old boy will do for a free savoury bite No, Mrs Gough was all about the pastry - puff, buttery rough puff, tough puff, shortcrust, longcrust, flaky,...

Let's talk ear wax. Or is ear wax, like politics and religion and how often people actually do break wind, not for polite conversation?  We all have ear wax, yes? I looked it up and Auntie Google says it's there to moisturise the ear, to fight off infections, and to act as a shield, stopping dust, dirt, insects and presumably lost sparrows from finding their way inside your head and into your brain.  I'm liking my ear wax more, reading that. There could be nothing worse than trying to think through something complicated like difficult long division or the Times Cryptic Crossword or the concept of nihilism only to find a random small bird flitting about among your grey cells as though he didn't have a wife and three tiny children to feed.  But ear wax is all very well until it begins to proliferate as though in a bid to take over Warwickshire, like mine is currently doing.  The ear wax build-up happens to me about once every two years. Normally, I go to the GP ...