Cook school

It’s not easy to find the photo that captures the whole essence of today, but this is the best I managed. My daughter-in-law invited the girls over for a cooking session with their cousins - if sorbet and ice-cream making counts as cooking, along with the creation of Hallowe’en biscuits. (Granddaughter Anna, 8, overheard: “I’m making Boris Johnson”).

They zested lemons and squeezed them; they ate as many biscuits as they decorated; they consumed witches’ hat sausage rolls and when it was all over vanished upstairs together. I feel I probably failed their fathers terribly in the lack of this kind of thing in their childhood, but have convinced myself that my tiny kitchen played as big a part as my disinclination.

And the sorbet was excellent, to say nothing about the Nutella ice cream. Sensationally good and sensationally unwise ...