First Draft to Published

In ‘Mr. Vinegar and the Frozen Sea’, the third book from the Tinfish series, Mr. Ginger graduates from being a mere recipient of Mrs. Tinfish’s mackerel sandwiches to becoming the team’s head chef. This transformation is accompanied by his discovery of a cookery book containing elaborate recipes, for which he has limited understanding and none of the right ingredients. Needless to say, the results of his culinary endeavours have remained somewhat questionable. In many ways, Mr. Ginger’s voyage of discovery into the world of cookery is similar to my own (apart from the mackerel sandwich bit, although I can be partial to one…). My cooking experience, up to the point that I left home for university, came from two directions. Firstly, from my pub-kitchen job on a Saturday night where, after considerable dedication to the washing-up, my responsibilities were elevated to doing the toast for the chicken-liver pate and rinsing the slugs out of the lettuce. Meanwhile, at school I had been prepa...