Nigella fantasies

It is not fun trying to dress for work when your left leg is encased in a surgical boot. There is no work outfit on earth that is not immediately reduced to the status of fancy dress costume - or even kids' entertainer - when accessorised with a hulking grey boot that looks like part of a Jedi (as far too many commuters have now pointed out to me. A bit like when people say to you, really annoyingly, "You've had your hair cut" - you know, in case someone did it to you while you were asleep or something and you haven't yet noticed - commuters have no problem pointing out to me that my left footwear does not match my right, that surgical boots are horrendously uncomfortable, and that they make my otherwise smart and intimidating workwear look, well, just a bit ridiculous. I do not need reminding of this. Like the masochist I am, I make myself walk the mile from house to station instead of hopping on a bus, and then I walk another mile at the other end from the station to the office. It is hell. Walking on a surgical boot is not walking. It is not limping. It is as if someone has set your foot in a four tonne concrete breeze block and you can't get it off. That is what it feels like. By the end of the working day, I am in a bad mood. it is unavoidable. You spend the best part of a day smiling and doing your best to keep up with your colleagues as they flit from one meeting room to another, your frustration boiling away under the surface the whole time as you pwer limp after them in an attempt to keep up. By the end of the day I am ready to murder someone. So, in the train home, I channel my energy. Firstly, into pelvic floor exercises. Well why not. Some part of me needs to hold it together. Then I close my eyes and work through the first cakes I ever baked. These are all Nigella. Nigella was the first food writer whose recipes I decided to man up and have a go at. I was, basically, seduced by them. This was back in the day when Nigella wore tight little cardigans in primary colours and flicked her eyes at you seductively as she announced that she would dust her chocolate Malteser cake with "just a teeny bit of cocoa". I was entranced. And finally I decided to give it a go. I selected her chocolate cheesecake. And it was fabulous. It was so fabulous that I made it over and over again, giving them away as gifts and even raffling one off at an auction (it raised fifty quid!!!)It was an easy segue from the chocolate cheesecake to the London cheesecake and just a hop, skip and a jump over to her pumpkin cheesecake with butterscotch sauce, and her chocolate gooey meringue stack. I bake Nigella's cakes because they are a turn on. You pull a glistening cheesecake out of the oven, anoint it with some extraordinarily heart stoppingly rich sauce and you feel ready for anything. OK it's probably just a sugar high but oh wow, it works. It is a ROLLERCOASTER sugar high. They should bottle it and sell it in Ann Summers. So, as I hobble my last mile home, I think through the ingredients, and 45 minutes after arrival, smart suit still on, I pull a chocolate sour cream cake out of the oven. I think about reaching for a knife. But perhaps it would be more appropriate to strip off and dive straight into it.