A Very Distinctive Fanny

You should know by now that I am obsessed. Totally and absolutely fixated. Preoccupied some might say. It's okay, you can say it too - it's not really a big secret that I am infatuated with Fanny is it? Madame Cradock is on my mind all the time. She has a grip on my thoughts. She's bewitched, bothered and bewildered me for some time. She has taken over my every waking moment, and truth be told she has dominated my dreams too. She's got her hooks into me and I'm delighted about it!

I love being immersed in her life, her work and her crazy creations. I love reading her words, gazing at her images and second-guessing her thoughts. I love watching her work. Some say I am gripped. Some say possessed. Some say haunted. Some people might even say plagued. For me though it's a joy that I have created for myself. My life and her life were well and truly wound up and wrapped up together enough as it was before this past year, but I have taken the immersion to another level.

I've just completed a Masters course in Gastronomy. Yes, me. It's been a roller-coaster year of lectures, reading, writing and presenting - it's been full-on all about the assignments, assessments and anxieties. All on top of work. Strangely though I've loved it too. And I have survived. Fanny has been my saviour you see, in a strange twist of fate. I seized the chance to spend three months over the summer researching, digging, uncovering, gasping and rejoicing her life. Her real life. She became the focus off my dissertation project.

This was never the plan. She had already crept into every available space of my life, but it appeared that there was no escape. Or perhaps no return. No denial. All my worlds collided at just the right time, and I was offered access to Fanny Cradock's own personal archive. I just can't explain how exciting that was for me. Her contribution to the world has never really been discussed beyond the usual mentions of ballgowns, eyebrows and green potatoes. Until now... Could I do it?

So research in hand, insights noted and somehow all pulled together into a (hopefully) coherent set of 12,000 words for submission, I handed in my work. Then waited. And waited. It seemed like forever waiting on that mark. Had I done Fanny justice? Had I repaid all the kind offers of help and access with something decent? Would anyone find my research as fascinating as I had? Had I just made a Cradock of myself? Well, it turns out that I needn't have worried. My work earned me a Distinction. It's official. I now have a distinctive Fanny. I'm super pleased of course. I'm hoping to publish my research in some shape or form, hoping someone will want to read it! Maybe I should go for a PhD next. After all, what better to top off being a distinctive Fanny than being crowned a Fanny Doctor?