Curmudgeonly Passion

At the weekend, I went to a food fair with a friend. We had a great day: The sun shined, we stuffed our faces with free samples and met loads of passionate people.

I'm always fascinated by people who are so passionate about something that they turn it into a business. We met jam preservers, sausage butchers, people who flavoured alcohol and cheese makers (blessed are the cheese makers). We met a lady who was selling the most beautiful aprons in the world. She made her first one on a leather sewing course. Who knew that such things existed. I wanted to ask her what other people on the course had made but held back for fear of being told tales of people who had read 50 Shades of Grey and couldn't find what they wanted in a shop.

The cookery demonstration was by John Whaite who had been on Bake Off. He was very entertaining: camp, Northern, a little rude and funny. He was wearing one of the aprons and had clearly had similar thoughts about leather as me, as he tweeted about bondage in the kitchen.

His demonstration included a coconut flan thing with a base made from marshmallows, with a look that he called curmudgeonly. I liked that description, as I am the embodiment of curmudgeonly at the moment.

At the end of the demonstration we bought his book and got him to sign it. I confessed that I was a bit of a cookbook collector and probably didn't have room for it on the cookbook bookcase. He looked at me with his twinkly eyes, a moment of recognition passing between us, as he said that he was exactly the same. I imagined him taking his favourite, maybe a Mrs Beeton or the new Nopi book off the shelf, flicking through the pages, giving it a quick sniff and stroking it before placing it carefully back in position. (Everyone does that with their favourite books, right?)
"Oh, she's terrible," my friend said, "She can't even watch Bake Off without making a cake first."
I thought that was normal.
"I was exactly the same," he said, "You should enter."
I blushed and instantly felt stupid. "Fifty years old and blushing when a gay young man sort-of pays you a compliment," I chastised myself.
I know that I'm not Bake Off material. I'm too slow, not neat enough and have a face for radio.
I explained that my baking was too curmudgeonly.

Seriously though, I just couldn't imagine entering something like Bake Off. It would just gobble up all of your time. I like doing lots of things. I love food and music and knitting and reading and writing and yoga and walking and swimming breast stroke with my head out of the water and digging my allotment but if I was properly passionate about any of them then I wouldn't be able to do all of them.

It's just lucky that I'm curmudgeonly passionate.