How it all began!

What do you do when, approaching your 55th birthday  and having worked for an institution for 26 years, you're called into a meeting and without any prior warning told that your post is being made redundant?

Other than feel anger and resentment towards those people who have kindly done this to you - you panic! Believe me - you start to poop your pants big time!

"What am I going to do? I'm too old to get another job that will pay me a comparable salary and I certainly won't make it on the European Tour as a golf pro!  I will have to move out of the house that comes with the job and so will my unemployed 22 year old son. Where will we live? How will I keep the wolves from my non existant door? " These were just some of the thoughts that flashed through my head during the sleepless nights that followed that fateful but deliberately callous meeting on April 7th 2009.

Nine months down the line and having agreed a settlement with my former employers I can honestly say the feelings of anger and resentment have almost dissipated and life is on the up!

This is the story of the love of a good woman, a local football team manager and a change in lifestyle! The love of a good woman perhaps is the first essential ingredient for this recipe. Sue had had her fair share of cack in her life so she didn't need me whingeing about not having a job and no where to live. She was supportive beyond reasonableness and although we would have lived together at some point in our lives - the decision to do so was somewhat accelerated! So in July 2009 I moved in to Grange Gardens! The 22 year old son was by this time living with his girlfriend so he was settled and the eldest son had been living away for 3 years before this all happened - so life seemed to be making more sense.

The wrangle with my former employer was settled in early September and it was at this point that a chance conversation with the local football team manager and personal friend (who masquerades as a manager at the local Job Centre Plus offices) led me to the unlikely road that I was about to embark on.

"It's scum like you that need to get off your backsides and get out and find work", Tim gently put to me as I sat open mouthed in the Barry Job Centre whilst I attended my weekly signing on session for my Job Seekers Allowance - all £64.40 of it!

"Or have you thought about retraining?" He thrust. "I'm nearly 55 and about to take my Teachers Pension, do you honestly think I can be retrained?", I countered.

"There's money available - through the Welsh Assembly - REACT funding is there to try and get those people who have been made redundant back to work", Tim continued

"Well I do like cooking - and like thousands of other people I could see myself running a Michelin star restaurant in Llantwit Major - and my lasagne is to die for - so if I find a catering course would that be the sort of thing that would fit the bill?" I excitedly responded.
"Exactly - but... you need to submit the application within 6 months of being made redundant and the course needs to be completed within a year of your redundancy". Tim sounded positively upbeat - unusual for him to have strung so many words together without resorting to the usual 4 letter expletives that I was used to hearing standing next to him in the dug out at Windmill Lane on a wet Saturday afternoon in November, watching Llantwit Major AFC 1st XI lose to Nantgarw Rangers 1 - 0 in the last minute.
I searched the Internet for hours trying to find a short term course that enabled me to follow what had up to now been a hobby, cookery! After much research I found what I was looking for -The Ashburton Cookery School in Devon - nestling on the edge of Dartmoor the 4 week Diploma course would enable me to break into that mysterious world of catering, cookery and canapes!
The course seemed ideal - short enough to satisfy the funding agency but long enough to to give me some real pointers as to how Jamie Oliver, Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay actually made it into the competitive world of cooking.
So- 10 months after my world fell apart.... my new career starts! My intention is to blog (my friends would unfairly say blag) my way through Cookery School and share with you some of the delights and tit bits on the way. During week one you can look forward to basic stocks and soups, basic butchery and vegetable cuts. I'm particularly looking forward to home smoking (having given up a year ago), working with game and sushi in week two. Week three will see me attempting advanced pastry making and catering for vegetarians - can't we just give them a nut cutlet? The culmination during the final week, includes wine tasting (I think I may be in the advanced group for this) and a 2 day work placement - knowing my luck I'll get Egg on Ronnie's, the breakfast van on the A38 just outside Tiverton.

My daily blog will include my culinary successes and failures (of which there are bound to be many!) - the people I meet and I hope the blog will convey a sense of fun - after all life is too short to be bitter for too long and there's a whole new gourmet world to be conquered!