My Lack of Cooking Skills.

I would like to begin by stating, for the record, that I can cook. By which I mean: I am physically capable of entering a kitchen without immediately bursting into flames. This, in my view, already places me in the top 50 percent of the population.

However, certain critics by which I mean everyone who has ever witnessed me attempt to prepare food  insist that my “cooking” is less a culinary process and more a series of escalating emergencies. These critics are wrong. It is one emergency, stretched across several stages.

The trouble always begins with confidence. I stride into the kitchen like a man who has watched at least three episodes of a cooking show and therefore believes he has absorbed the knowledge of a Michelin‑starred chef through osmosis. I open the fridge, survey the ingredients, and think, “How hard can this be?” This is the moment the universe leans in and whispers, “Very.”

Take chopping, for example. Professional chefs chop things with speed, precision, and a certain smug flourish. I chop things with the wide‑eyed panic of someone defusing a bomb using instructions written in a language he does not speak. My vegetables do not end up in neat, uniform cubes. They end up in shapes that defy geometry. Some pieces are the size of dust; others could be used as building materials.

Then comes the frying pan, which is where hope goes to die. Every recipe says something like “heat a little oil.” A little oil. What does that mean? A teaspoon? A tablespoon? A quantity roughly equivalent to the Exxon Valdez? I pour in what feels right, which is always wrong. The pan immediately begins making noises that suggest it is trying to communicate distress!

At this point, smoke appears. Not a lot just enough to make the smoke alarm say, “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed.” I open a window. I wave a tea towel. I shout reassuring things like “It’s fine!” and “This is normal!” and “Please don’t call the fire brigade again!”

Seasoning is another challenge. Recipes say things like “add a pinch of salt.” My pinch is either so tiny it could only be detected by laboratory equipment, or so large it could be used to preserve a walrus. There is no middle ground. My food is either aggressively bland or capable of dehydrating a camel.

And then there’s timing. Professional chefs have timers in their heads. I have the attention span of a Labrador in a tennis‑ball factory. I put something in the oven, think, “I’ll just sit down for a second,” and immediately lose all concept of time. When I return, the food is either raw enough to still have opinions or burnt so thoroughly it has achieved a new state of matter.

People say cooking is relaxing. These people are liars! Cooking, for me, is a high‑stakes psychological thriller in which the villain is a saucepan and the plot twist is always “Oh no, I’ve set something on fire again.”

But here’s the thing: I keep trying. I keep chopping and frying and seasoning and burning because, deep down, I believe that one day I will produce a meal that is not a crime against humanity. A meal that does not require a fire extinguisher. A meal that does not make guests ask, “Is this supposed to look like that?”

And maybe just maybe that day will come.

But until then, I will continue to bravely, heroically, disastrously cook. Because someone has to keep the smoke alarm in work.