Life’s safer nowadays. My brother cooked Sunday lunch for me yesterday, two world’s first’s – first time he has cooked Sunday lunch for me and on the first day of the year. He is very supportive,  and always been creative, made his own sausages, stout, bread, curry, chow mien, beer. Even before he left school he showed extremely early promise with distillery  – one day a thin copper pipe appeared out of the wall just above the sink in the outhouse which backed onto what we called ‘the barn’.’What’s that?’ my mother asked, I didn’t know, and the pipe stayed there. Next thing it started to drip ‘water’ into  a glass flask  strategically placed in the sink beneath it!… His mates used to call him the mad professor  – he had an electrical box that belonged to my father who died when he was 4 and I was 6 – I’ve no idea what the box was – he used to connect his mates up to it – they all had to hold hands in a ring-the ‘box’ forming part of the ring, and he then switched  on and their hair stood on end.! He was a bit hazardous I have to say, and had a narrow escape when 20 bangers went off in his duffle coat pocket shortly before bonfire night (the coat was new – but alas no use after the explosion) he was very shaken at that. I was bad with electricity too and succeeded in getting the poker stuck to the electric fire when I was letting off caps (rows of paper with tiny bit of explosive dots that went into toy cowboy guns – I liked these as cowboys rode horses…and was blowing them up on the electric fire, maybe I should write a book..I remember the poker gave me a nasty jolt up my arm…life’s a lot safer nowadays