Monday 26 August 2013

Black Sabbath and the Bake-Off

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This may be the first time anyone has seen Black Sabbath and Mary Berry together in the same sentence.  Crazy perhaps -  but in my daughter’s life they are the most natural of bedfellows.

She represents a new generation – freed from the rules that I had at her age which still clung to our grandparent's views hanging over from the war.  My 21 year old is that rare thing – a female engineer .  And that alone is something to celebrate.

Her life isn’t easy.  She works hard – far harder than I did at her age.  She is growing up without certainty of employment – the shadow that hangs over this generation of which we were blissfully unaware.  But she has the freedom to mix it up in a way I don’t remember us having – whether due to ignorance or a lack of imagination. 


She relaxes with an evening of heavy metal – spending all her spare cash on gigs watching bands that I thought were already dead – Iron Maiden, AC/DC (but no, they are all back on tour and still alive), or with titles that make you feel faintly sick (Slayer, Megadeath), or are just plain weird.

The head-banging, brownie-baking engineer
But once the hangover has worn off, she indulges herself with her other hobby – baking.  Her role model is the septuagenarian Mary Berry – she asked for a food processor for her 21st birthday – and she told me last week she  made bread, despite having an oven in her student house slightly less effective than a calor gas stove.

This generation of women won’t have to be told to lean in.  They’re making up their own rules.