MY wife and I had been to the cinema to see a film called The Imitiation Game, about how one of history’s greatest mathematical brains, Alan Turing, had cracked Germany’s Enigma code, shortening the Second World War by an estimated two years and saving millions of lives.
With Bendict Cumberbatch outstanding in the lead role, it is thoroughly recommended.
Anyway, not for the first time lately, I offered to make the tea when we got home. I suggested my speciality – egg and chips – but my wife decided she’d rather have chips with the spicy prawns from the freezer instead.
The chips went in the oven and the spicy prawns followed at the time dictated by the instructions on the packet. Everything was going according to plan.
“Do you want beans with this?” I shouted.
“No, I’ll have sweetcorn,” she replied.
“But, don’t worry, I’ll do it myself.”
This might be rather familiar to regular readers because my last column was about how, after 26 years of marriage, my wife had declared that she doesn’t like the way I “do bread”.
Upon interrogation, she’d explained that I wasn’t up to the job because I spread the butter/margarine haphazardly, with not enough being pushed out to the edges of the bread.
I admit to being a bit upset, but I’d just about got over it – until the sweetcorn incident.
When buttering bread, I can see there is at least a certain technique involved – skill even. But what on earth could be wrong with the way I “do sweetcorn”?
“Surely, it’s just a question of emptying it into a bowl and microwaving it?” I shouted back into the lounge, where she was watching telly with her feet up.
“Yes, but you’ll do it wrong,” came the reply.
“In what way will I do it wrong?” I asked.
“You won’t time it right,” she said, finally making an appearance in the kitchen.
Ah, so, it was a question of timing.
“You always microwave it too early so it’s not hot,” she went on.
The irony was impossible to escape. We’d just been to see a film celebrating the life of a legendary mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and pioneer of the computer age – a man who cracked a code with 150 million million combinations – and I couldn’t even be trusted with overseeing a two-minute blast on the microwave.
The result of all this is that I am refusing point blank to cook anything anymore. We are in the midst of a new Cold War and I’m rapidly reaching the conclusion that my wife is an enigma even the tortured genius Alan Turing could never have worked out.
I left the bread. I left the sweetcorn. I left the kitchen.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

THANK you to John Winterburn, who dropped me a line about his grandson, James Chambers, aged ten, who was walking round Morrisons in Darlington with his mum and told her he’d been learning about the First World War at school.
“We learned about Rudolph Hitler as well,” he announced.

MEANWHILE, Harvey Westcott, eight, of Middlesbrough, was heard to question the validity of the wartime song “It’s A Long Way To Tipperary”.

“Not if you fly, it isn’t,” he