I’m fed up with institutional food. It’s muck. Several days ago, as a diminutive, grinning Spaniard handed me what was supposed to be the steak and kidney pie that would replenish my waning tolerance after a morning of displeasingly chirpy and filthily erudite supervision partners, I repressed my instinct to launch it straight back at his chuffed features.

I felt like yelling, “What are you grinning about you silly man? Your ‘pie’ more closely resembles the fruit of an expedition into an aqueous cabinet with a U-shaped fishing rod.” In fact, I thought, screw the politeness. “Your food looks like shit. It is shit. Excrement. Mierda.” It dawned on me that the faecal foodstuff I so detested was probably not the fault of this miniature Manuel, but rather the manure of mass catering – symptomatic of institutional grub.
The release was instantaneous. I felt like Gordon Ramsay, except weedier and with a better haircut. I would cook myself. My first project would be to receive my girlfriend for an extravagant homemade dose of culinary coitus.

To say that required a thesaurus; to do it, rather more problematically, required a cookery book. Having conservatively opted for Delia’s ‘Penne aux champignons’, I had succeeded in assembling all the ingredients. All, that is, except the ‘shallots’ – not even the nice Polish gentleman in Sainsbury’s knew what they were, although then again neither did he appreciate my witticism that they sounded more like a component of the kit-list of the Outer-Hebridean Neo-Arthurian Institution of Outrageous Neo-jousting (ONION) than the gourmet pasta he suggested.
All I had to do was follow the instructions – it would, I supposed, be just like the ‘Ikea’ bedside table I had erected years ago with my father, except without the collapsing and traumatic decapitation of Plop, my pet goldfish.

The instructions were, it turned out, about as penetrable as a nun. Yet the muddy gunk masquerading as mushroom sauce paled in calamitous comparison to my decorative candle-lighting attempts. A charred wad of newspaper later, the curtains were burning merrily, and the fire alarm was screeching for the staircase’s evacuation. Exasperatedly, I grabbed the pan from the hob – the contents of which now bore a striking resemblance to a photo I had seen of the first testing of the A-bomb (charred devastation with the lingering memory of mushrooms) – and dashed outside, stirring desperately. Only when I was met with the tearful glare of an evacuated essay deadline truant did I realise that I could hardly be a more obvious villain if I grew a square moustache and proposed a wonky high-five.

At this point, I was reminded of my contingency plan. “Hed I fforgotten to eenform you zat zees night Germanic themed is?” I interrogated my girlfriend, nervously twiddling the straps of my novelty PVC lederhosen, upon her arrival a frantic half-hour later, as the discreet bleep of my trusty microwave assured me that the frankfurters were hot and ready to be served.