I’m making quiches. Oh dear, not my strong point. For one thing, I can’t make shortcrust pastry. Every other form of pastry is fine, including trickier and more pretentious ones, but regular shortcrust and I just don’t gell. So I bought it, no problem there. Then of course there’s the business of blind baking. Oh, there’s a tedious extra step – a pastry case, so good they cooked it twice? Huh.

I was asked to make them in foil cases. Beastly little shallow things they are, although I’ve left extra pastry sticking up at the sides and all that sort of tedious gubbins they are still only about half an inch deep when they come out of the oven and there will be hardly any room for the delicious filling.

I think that I’ll leave them at home, saying they are too hot to bring and I need to let them cool down, and hope that they aren’t actually needed. Then I can foist them on my unfortunate family tonight, who will be too busy comforting my lamentations that I can’t cook, to realise they are giving themselves indigestion. If the lunch turns out to be unexpectedly busy, the latecomers will have to make do with my sad efforts after all.

Maybe I’ll just pop down to the supermarket and see if they have any ready-made pastry cases.

ps – actually, quiches tasted fine. In the end, one went to the lunch and one was cooked later for us. Ro praised it, which has mollified me entirely. Maybe my quiche-making days are not altogether over.