DOMESTIC science lessons were anxious affairs for me as an 11-year-old overwhelmed by the transition from primary to grammar school.

You’d think they’d have come as light relief amid my struggles with maths and science.

But no. Our needlework teacher was a pernickety and unsympathetic spinster of the old-fashioned kind, who was always making me unpick my stitches and do them again, more neatly.

It took me the whole school year to finish the regulation bibbed and embroidered apron for the following year’s cookery lessons, while cleverer classmates had made themselves a skirt, too. “Tries hard, but is very slow,” it said on my report.

Sadly for me, the cookery teacher was cut from the same cloth.

White-haired, and with a misleadingly benign expression, she was anything but grandmotherly.

My scones in her end-of-year exam turned out rock hard because I was in such a tizz that I forgot to add any raising agent. And it seemed so important at the time.

Looking back, it was all down to personalities. I sensed, without knowing why, that neither of these ladies liked me. Perhaps their years of experience told them that there was a particularly bolshy teenager waiting to emerge like some poisonous pupating bug. And so I was always filled with dread that I was going to do something wrong.

A self-fulfilling prophecy. Result – I dropped both subjects as soon as the curriculum allowed, and wrote myself off as a hopeless needlewoman. Why am I telling you all this?

Because my husband has just bought me a sewing machine. One that will do a lot of my thinking for me.

Making up for lost time, I’ll be starting with bunting for the forthcoming family wedding. And if I have any difficulties I can go back to the shop and ask for help. I can even book a lesson in there.

That’s the great thing about shopping locally. Since I started making more effort to do that, I’ve realised that Fisherton Street – where I previously only popped in to the Asian food store or the Mill – is full of good things.

The bride-to-be has been going there for upholstery lessons.

And I’ve just found some lovely, bargain curtains for the newly-decorated spare bedroom I was telling you about the other week.

There’s a proposal knocking about to create a new entrance on the street to a ‘cultural quarter’ linking the City Hall and Playhouse. If it takes off, it should benefit nearby traders.

Let’s hope so, but let’s hope, too, that this remains one part of Salisbury where small and interesting enterprises aren’t priced out of business.

anneriddle36@gmail.com