Home economics. It was awesome. I made blancmange. I'm not sure I progressed far beyond that culinary epitome, but it's the emperor of desserts, so I was pretty much at the top of the mountain already. Regular readers (I'm sorry) will note there's an awful lot of things I'm not very good at. Somewhere there's something I'm really good at but I haven't found it yet. Don't be sad, there's a few years left in me yet. I'll get there. Probably as I terminally teeter on the edge of my mortal coil.
I made a big beanbag for sitting on in whatever needlework was called in the 80s. My dad promptly sat on it and it exploded its polystyrene guts everywhere. I think that was a more a reflection on my dad's love of pork pies than my skills with a needle. I think I made an apron too. I got lazy with sewing because my mum was a lockstitcher and a ninja with a sewing machine.
I also did CDT which I believe was craft design and technology but was mostly involved a rather singed teacher telling us to put the big flame thrower down. And Mad Bill* spent the entire three years lathing crossbolt bolts (by the third year he was probably on WMDs). I go an O level in that. My final year project was a 'painting area' which was basically a box that you could spray paint things in. When no one was looking rather than bother with fancy dovetail joints I just nailed everything together and then put lots of paint on top so they couldn't tell. I am marginally good at subterfuge. That's why I had to discontinue my confession thread because really it was just going to me confessing my long list of sins.
I'm not so bad with a knife. But I'm better with stupid. Once upon a time, as I stood proudly on the cliff of achievement regarding the completion of my PhD, I carefully stacked the four (or was it five) printed copies of my thesis. To transport them to the binders I put all the paper in a discarded box, the kind that reams of paper come in. But there was too much box. What to do? I glanced around, what's that, the green fabric of a distantly used dissection kit (that last saw action in a cadaver's guts)? Scalpel! So yes, I have a nice scar along the meaty base of my thumb and I had to reprint 1200 pages and dispose of a lot of bloodstained paperwork. And I probably risked being turned into a zombie, which aren't even scary.
*he was famous for running at the classroom wall head first and going right through to his shoulders. No one had any idea why he was called Bill as his name was Michael. The army wouldn't have him, not even as ordnance.