The revenge of rough puff!

Today I took time out from writing a PhD related piece to make puff pastry .... not a huge thing really, a brief reprieve from overbearing complexity. Memories from school floated back... 

I do remember being chased around the school fete by my home economics teacher: Wendy Jones!!  She'd been trying to catch me, to let me know that I'd passed my term exam. "I can't understand!" She cried, obviously perplexed, ”I counted 4 times, and you still came top??" Well, it was the eighties, unconscious bias hadn't been invented, and the crippled child was expected to come bottom. Later that term she announced to my mother, at a parents' morning full of otherwise glowing praise, that I'd probably struggle to get through life ... because, and I quote: "she'll never be able to make rough puff pastry!"  It wasn't so much the condemnation, or the profound stupidity of the comment, but the cheerful glee in which she asserted her superiority. To this day, I truly wish my mum had lamped her one. Rather than wait and express her dismay later: "I should have told her I always buy the F-ing stuff!"

I am relieved to say she never put me off cooking. Pastry, bread, jam, curry!! I love the physicality of the science. I'm not a tidy cook, I am not the best or most accomplished cook - but love it! I do!! When my studies have scrambled my mind, an hour chopping and mixing takes me to a happy place. I smirk when I think back! I feel rough puff is a poor marker of success.    

I wonder what Mrs Jones would say about what I have done to dates! [pun intended!!]