I taught them to cook vidya4 - Flipbook - Page 15
Autumn Term
13
beige grease hang from the eye level grill and drip onto burnt bits
in the frying pan below. As I open the oven door, it’s clear this
cooker has gone through a baking marathon. Even the glass door
is splattered with a thick brown layer of entrenched fat.
‘Jim, when do these ovens get cleaned up before I start?’
My arm sweeps around to the other cookers which are as
filthy as ones left in a student squat.
He looks sheepish, opens the windows to let the air in or out
and heads for the door. I wonder if he thinks I’m too young to be
head of department at twenty three years old, in charge of the
mighty task of running two cookery rooms and a school flat.
‘The teacher has to do it. I’ll let you get on – just put a note
under my door when you leave.’
‘But Jim – who taught here last and why did she or he go…?’
Too late – he’s disappeared into his sparkling corridors and
down to the caretaker’s hideaway.
From now on let’s call her SHE WHO RAN AWAY. And add
AND LEFT ME WITH THIS SH*T.
But onto tracing the smell – I can’t have classes arriving to
this putrid stink.
Imagine the ‘Ugh, Miss, vile smell’ comments or ‘I ain’t staying
in this.’ They’ll be out before I can say ‘My name is …’
A door from inside my room opens into the huge storeroom
which could shed some light on the cooking history of this
department and maybe hold the clue to the rot. The high
ceilinged room is stacked with enough equipment to supply any
professional kitchen shop.
What has She Who Ran Away been doing? On the top shelf
is a row of long, aluminium fish kettles with lids – big enough
to hold some large, unaffordable salmon. So was she cooking for
weekend weddings? Jim must bring me a step ladder if we’re
going to reach those. It will probably be me reaching them. Alone.
Next some flat, black, cast iron griddle pans with welded,
curved handles – the sort you see in a stately home kitchen for