Hilary Fannin: The nuns split us into girls who did science and girls who did domestic science

• Published date: 30 September 2022

We dom-sci girls also dabbled in a bit of sociology, which was taught to us by the same sweetly sceptical nun who taught us sewing. The only sociology lesson I can remember (learned while we were sewing darts into our reversible waistcoats – you're not dealing with muck here, mate) was one that instructed us young women not to disagree with our husbands in public

The sociological advice on offer to our young minds was to wait until later to voice our discontent. We were urged to have our petty disagreements in the car or in the privacy of our own homes, to get nice and comfy in our baby-doll pyjamas and fluffy mules before we told the jumped-up misogynistic little turd to get his fingers out of the hostess's vol-au-vents and stop shagging interrupting when you were trying to talk about the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the disbanding of the Beatles.

Anyway, suffice it to say that I never did quite get my head around the niceties of the subject, and while I now like to cook (rock buns aside), domestic standards in this house do have a tendency to slip under the mucky carpet.

How opportune, then, that a pal should send me the Homekeeper's Diary 2023, the latest offering from erstwhile lifestyle guru and five-star hotelier Francis Brennan.

I was thrilled to receive it! Finally, after a further half-century of slumming it round the back of the metaphorical bike sheds, I was going to learn how to make a hospital corner, rotate a cuff and pickle my own kumquats.

In my younger, leaner years, I might have scoffed at a man who wrote with such guileless certainty about the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things. But since then, my eyes have opened

What larks, Pip, I thought as I thumbed through my gift, delighting in the elegant pages devoted to explaining washing symbols and phases of the moon and the precise measurement of a cup of sugar. And who knew the things one can do with a fistful of Epsom salts?

Similarly, I found myself fairly riveted by the instructions for removing nasty odours from the dishwasher. I even tried sprinkling the recommended vinegar-and-baking-soda solution over the TV news channels, to see if it would dispel the...