So as another week comes to a close and with shopping day imminent I find myself playing the weekly student version of ready steady cook. This week the items I have left to concoct a master piece are:

A small plate of grated cheese
A nectarine
A half eaten, cold pizza slice
Pasta sauce
Milk

I’m not going to lie I have faced far bigger challenges and come out of the other side passing with flying colours (the week where I had a half a bottle of Jack Daniels and a banana was an all time classic) so I’m not particularly phased by the task at hand.

However, one of the ingredients today did get me thinking, quite a lot in fact. So much so that my thinking, like it often does, spiralled out of control until I was pondering over far more important issues than ready steady cook (No offence intended Ainsley Harriot.) I won’t leave you in suspense any longer, the ingredient in question was milk.

Now in my opinion, milk is up there with toast as the most under rated thing ever. It’s ridiculous how much we use it in fact with cereal, tea, and white Russians just a few examples of its importance. Where in gods name would we be without these things?! It must surely be one of the most commonly used things in the world. This leads me to my point, yes believe it or not I have one. Who discovered milk? Who had the balls to go over to their mates and admit ‘Hey lads, I was just playing with that cows udders over there and this weird shit came out, its pretty good.’ Now correct me if I’m wrong but in no point in history has it been acceptable to be participating in certain activities with a cow and I can not see any other way of making such a discovery.

So like a true professional I decided to do some research and delve deeper into the subject. Turns out, milk was found in the early fifteenth century in Turkey during a time that was named the ‘exploration period.’ It was in this time that Christopher Columbus was busy getting lost and stumbling upon new places with funny languages and foods setting up many of the world’s current trading routes and connections. Inspired by this our chirpy Turkish farmer probably fancied getting involved in the action of ‘exploration’ and thought he’d make the best out of what he had, rolling up his sleeves and heading towards his anxious looking cow.

I’m almost 100 percent sure that when he told people about his discovery he was either laughed at for the rest of his life or the rest of his life was short lived. This has been the pattern for many of our great discoveries and innovators such as Darwin and Newton who were famously criticised by spectacle people of their time. People are always scared of something different and life changing. These people became legends of history because they stuck with their idea and kept plugging away at it until people could no longer frown upon them. As a scriptwriter I feel I can take many lessons from this.

I’m a firm believer that everyone has at least one good idea or discovery in them and everyone has the potential to be creative. At some point in life you will strike upon something that will ultimately be your signature item. The hard part is sticking with it and believing in yourself enough to sell it to other people and keep throwing it in peoples faces until they can’t refuse it anymore.

I told you I had a point.

Oh crap the milks off, turns out I can’t use it in my concoction anyway. What might have been hey?