How does it go again? “If you can meet with triumph and disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same”.

That often-quoted line from the poem by Rudyard Kipling was ringing in my ears this week when the Big Boy returned from school looking very glum indeed.

Having just started at secondary school, to say he has had a bit of a baptism of fire would be an understatement indeed.

For a start, we’ve put him forward for music lessons, which in itself is fine, if he hadn’t chosen the most ridiculous instrument to play.

I suppose we could have steered him in the direction of perhaps the guitar, drums, may be the clarinet or flute. But no, he decided he wanted to play the trombone.

I never really appreciated how big a trombone was until he brought it home in a case that was almost as big as he was. I’ve no idea how he carries it to school when I struggle lugging it up to his room.

Then there’s the dreaded PE kit, which at primary school was kept in a bag that remained in his cloakroom until the end of each term, when it was brought home for it’s triannual wash.

At secondary school PE takes place twice a week and you have to remember to take your stuff in on the appropriate days.

I suspect it’s not quite like in my day when you forgot your kit and you were made to play in your underwear, but I’m sure it’s still a daunting prospect if you do forget.

Which he did on the very first day.

But all of these woes pale into insignificance when it comes to food tech.

I remember food tech when my daughter did it in Year 7 and what an utter nightmare it was then. At least she had a term to get used to school before she started lugging in various plastic containers with stickers on them telling her whether it was flour, sugar or salt. The Big Boy was thrown right into the deep end and things didn’t start well.

Week 1 was supposed to be a healthy wrap, but he forgot to bring it home for three days.

But then he got into the swing of things and he really started to excel.

Week 2 saw him make a delicious ragu sauce, which we used as the basis for our spaghetti bolognaise that night, and last week his chicken goujons were so good they were snaffled up by the rest of kids within ten minutes of him walking through the door.

This week, he made apple crumble, except when I came home he looked crestfallen. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I dropped the lid of the oven dish on the floor and it smashed,” he replied trying to hold back the tears.

“Yeah, but look at the crumble you made,” I said looking at the pudding sitting on the table.

I told him I was such a disaster at food tech at school my mum put the rock cakes I had made on the mantlepiece thinking they were bits of pottery.

That made him feel a little bit better. Then we tried the crumble and we both felt a lot better.

“That’s really nice, isn’t it?” he asked me. “No, that’s blooming delicious,” I told him.

What My Kids Said This Week: “I don’t need a snack today dad, I’ve had two lunches.”