I was in Steamer Trading looking for more tea-towels. Mysterious holes keep appearing in mine. Ok, I burn them. A display of expensive vegetable peelers caught my eye that claimed to work equally well for left and right-handers. Being left-handed, I’m dubious about such products. They remind me of the more evil of my sisters (and you know who you are) who used to call me cack-handed and ask me to peel carrots just for the amusement of seeing me flip the peel everywhere trying to use her ‘normal’ peeler. We live in a world designed for right-handers. Bread knives are serrated on the wrong side for me to cut with, scissors are tormenting, tin-openers are back to front, irons and kettles awkward. There is even a statistic that says left-handers die younger. I could go on, but truthfully, even these facts do not fully explain my spectacular capacity for clumsiness. A family I’d nannied for asked me back to cater for some dinner parties. My friend Serena came round for a cup of tea when I was cooking, and walked in to see vivid green watercress soup shooting up the immaculate white wall. I’d switched the liquidiser on without tightening the lid properly. It may be a thing about left-handedness and screw mechanisms (thank you Scooby Doo for subsequently teaching me ‘lefty loosey, righty tighty’) but I have to wonder if it’s just me. The third time soup flew up the wall, my so-called friend, snorting tea out of her nose, declared me ‘a culinary Basil Fawlty’. I chucked the rest of the soup down the sink and opened a tin. With great difficulty.