I taught them to cook vidya4 - Flipbook - Page 50
48
Autumn Term
BRISTOL UNIVERSITY stretches in large letters across
my chest. Students at the touchline giggle as I approach the
boundary lines.
‘What are they laughing at?’ I ask Pete after the game.
‘They think you have been to university to study Bristols.’ he
replies.
‘Bristols are tits. Cockney rhyming slang – Bristol City – titty.’
The offending sweatshirt gets packed away after the match
which we lost.
Back in my sweltering cookery room they squidge and squash
the fat into flour and add water to make a pastry mash. This is a
hot sweaty room with hot sweaty hands, and the dough looks like
we feel. Hot and sweaty.
I don’t care if the Stork Cookery Service has tested this
recipe. This is a pointless, purposeless cooking activity. Those
Stork people have never tried it with a class of teenagers in a hot,
airless cookery room with Jim banging on the radiators.
I’ve had enough. They have had enough.
‘Wrap and label your pastry, wash up and take your Stork
Cookery books outside and read about Rough Puff Pastry.’
I hand out Duralex glasses filled with orange squash and pass
round a plate of McVitie’s digestive biscuits on a frilly d’oyley.
Always a bloody d’oyley. Standards must be maintained, even
when it’s hot. They sit in the sunshine on the steps outside my
room. Before I go home I pack their pieces of pastry into the
freezer for next time. Rough poof pastry can wait till another
day. Bugger it.
A week later the room is still hot. Very hot. But the pastry is
cold, ice cold.
‘You haven’t defrosted it properly, Miss. Did you forget to take
them out of the freezer ‘cos you were so busy with your boyfriend
last night?’
Carol is being smart and nosy again. But she’s right. Mark and