Online courses are pretty great. When I was recovering from surgery, I’ll admit – I was bored out of my mind. I read, I watched TV, I had food delivered by a lovely chap who offered to unpack everything for me, gorgeous friends visited – I should have felt busy but, in truth, there was lots of empty hours with nothing to fill them.

During my recovery, I wasn’t allowed to work. There’s a lot more bending and lifting involved in bar work than even those who do it would assume. So I was bored.

It’s all right, I’ll say it for you. I should have trusted myself to write a book at that point.
So I started searching for things to do with the quiet time. Quite quickly, largely because I had a lot of time on my hands, I realised there were probably courses that could be done online.

And so, as the stitches healed, I got qualified in food safety. It’s almost certainly out of date now, but that’s almost irrelevant. It gave me something constructive to do and it helped me to feel better. Obviously, it’s important to go with a properly accredited company, and do spend time researching that kind of thing if you find yourself inclined to study something at home, but at the time of writing – I’ve at least been certified safe to work with food.

Also, I’m a qualified masseuse.