Day 1: A perfect place for a beginning

I thought a cockerel might wake me this morning, and I haven’t thought that for a while. I put in the earplugs just in case, but was woken instead by something else - a sense of excitement and anticipation of the day ahead. The first day of Cookery School. Twelve weeks of Cookery School.

It began with a couple of hours walking around the grounds of the school and the farm - a nice way of easing into things and getting a chance to chat to some of the 60-odd other students. We walked through fruit orchards, hen houses, a beautiful kitchen garden, amongst the cottages and through three stunning gardens demarcated by majestic beech hedges ten foot deep. We traipsed through a giant greenhouse home to every vegetable you can think of and many you cannot. We were introduced to the principles of growing and invited back at 7.45am every Wednesday for organic gardening classes. I’m there.

There was a lot to take in, most of all the strong organic and environmental principles, which I think most people had probably already figured and got a little bit tiresome after a while. A huge rat darting out of a vegetable patch in the greenhouse woke a few of them up.

Before lunch we had to endure a round of “My name is Jimmy and I am…” style introductions. Most surprising to me is the international mix, with students from at least a dozen countries. There are far more girls than boys (about 3:1), or should I say far more girls than men, as there seems to be an age differential here too. Basic categories are school leavers, university graduates, people experienced in the catering industry, career breakers, those recently made redundant. There are plenty of crossovers in there and those categories span the generations and continents. But everyone is extremely open, warm and friendly, and all of them, it seems, love their food.

Lunch, when it arrived, was good. A simple, not too overpowering, tomato and basil soup followed by a plate of assorted canapés, Pick of them for me was the locally smoked mackerel, salmon and eel, or a really smooth and creamy chicken liver pate. Dessert of Pavlova with berries and ice cream didn’t hang around long. We sat in small tables and filed up obediently for our servings, then back again with our dishes. Haven’t done that for a while…

After lunch began some demonstrations. The room is crammed with an assortment of uncomfortable chairs. At the front are a couple of ovens and fridges. Two large hobs straddle an enormous work surface. Suspended above it is a mirror angled down to give an aerial view, flanked on both sides by monitors showing close ups. We will need to get used to this place. Basic stuff today - chopping vegetables, making soup, creamy mushrooms (too creamy for me), roux, flapjacks, syrups, lemonade, and soda bread (giving away my location there). The startling thing was the pace at which we go through things. Fine when you are making soup but it is going to get a lot more complicated and we will need to eat a lot of Pavlova to keep the concentration going through the weeks ahead.

There wasn’t a bell that rang when we finished up at 6pm, and had there been you wouldn’t have heard it anyway over the collective sigh of relief. Any enthusiasm was tempered by the imminent inventory taking in the residential cottages so the celebrations will have to wait for a little while yet. It has been a hectic day. Lots to take in, but hardly time to catch your breath or stretch out amidst the barrage of information and, it must be said, repetition. I don’t think I’ll be turning up in the kitchen with many hangovers.

I am in an incredibly beautiful place though. The thing that struck me most from today was walking around the grounds this morning and garnering a real sense that things - nice things, beautiful things - take a long time come to fruition, and need care and nurture to respond. Too often we demand immediate rewards and are almost always the poorer for it.

In the grounds we walked through a stunning ornate herb garden. It started out life on the back of an envelope after a visit to Villandry in the Loire Valley - a pencil sketch of little hedgerows and plots and the paths that run between them. Then the soil was turned and toiled and fertilised. Then the ground was staked out and the pencil drawing began to take shape. Next, the planting: delicate, precise and painstaking. Then weeks and months of watering and pruning as the hedgerows and herbs grow. Then tending them constantly, for hours and hours over years and years. And it is not just for what they bear us directly, but the growing and nurture is an end in itself. Beauty, peace and tranquillity are its bi-products. It will definitely be my sanctuary when the kitchen heats up.