Eat your heart out
When I was a teenager, my mother and I were obsessed with Gilmore Girls. She and I saw eye to eye on almost everything apart from television, where we veered wildly, with one important exception: Gilmore Girls. Serendipitously, we began watching it in earnest when I was contemporaneous with Rory: as she applied to college, I filled out my UCAS form; as she left home for her first real job, I packed up the car for London.
By the time you read this, I will have undergone and, I hope, survived, my first technical lecture, my first demonstration, and my first practical of the school year, and already have blithely moved on, and be up to my elbows in mousseline and crème pâtissière. But right now I am a wibbling wreck of nerves and inadequacy; right now I am just a girl standing in front of a patisserie course asking it not to burn her.
By the time you read this, I will be on holiday. In fact, I will be nearly back from holiday. Back, I hope, to crunchy leaves and high-tog duvets and tights fresh from the packet. I’m ready for crumbles and shepherds pies and soups thick with lentils. And mashed potato. I’m ready to eat a lot of mashed potato.
It’s raining today, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’ve just filed a long piece about the best pudding to make in high summer and bright sunshine, and now it is raining with blustery gusto. Oh British summer, how you toy with me.
My childhood was littered with quiche. Mostly quiche lorraine, from Marks and Spencer, served with baked beans and chips. It was my mother’s ultimate comfort supper and I was, without fail, a little brat about it. I was adamant that I didn’t like quiche, despite demolishing it whenever it was put in front of me.
Almost six years ago to the day, I completed my graduate diploma in law. A month later, I secured pupillage at a fantastic set of chambers, and prepared myself for a lifetime of criminal law. I was absolutely certain that I wanted to be a criminal barrister for the rest of my working life. But, four months ago, I handed in my notice. And yesterday, I left the bar.
For a long time, I didn’t really understand breakfast. As alien as ‘eat to live not live to eat’ is as a mantra to me, breakfast always struck me as something of a chore, a waste of a good meal. As a child, it was a non-negotiable sit-down affair, and the food as boring and repetitive to a child as the routine; porridge or weetabix, maybe toast if we were lucky.