Boiling eggs is not as straightforward as you would think. Feel free to mock me now.

I scoffed, along with the millions, at Delia Smith’s back to basics ‘how to cook an egg’ thing a few years back. After all, I wanted hard boiled eggs, so all I needed was eggs, boiling water, and four minutes. But I soon realised that’s the equivalent of saying I only need sand, cement and a few days to build Edinburgh Castle. It’s a bit more tricky.

Firstly, salt in the water? Dunno, but I’ll add some anyway, it seems like the right thing to do. Should the eggs go into cold or boiling water? I hedged my bets, and waited until the water was warm. I now realise why people put the eggs onto a spoon and lower them in, since I just dropped them into shallow warm water, and they thunked onto the bottom. One of them cracked and started oozing out and cooking. That’s why I hold my head when I’m pissed off, incase my skull cracks and my brains start oozing out. I imagine it would look kinda similar. And I know that when you put eggs in water, they’re either supposed to float or sink, but I don’t know which. One of them was floating, but it was oozing as well, so I let it off. And four minutes from when? Putting them in, or when the water was boiling? Just as well I didn’t want soft-boiled eggs, since I once again hedged my bets and gave them six.

So a bit of a farce then, and too much mental shrugging of the shoulders. But since they came out fine, I guess either I’m a genious, flukey egg cooker, or cooking eggs is as foolproof as I had at first suspected.

Bet you feel that that was really worth reading, eh?