EGGS and bacon. No problem there. I've cooked and eaten them since my student days. Milk and water. One goes on my cornflakes, the other down my gullet by the gallon everyday as I battle to keep hydrated. But flour? What am I supposed to do with that?

I remember chucking it around on my last day at school, a jolly jape which landed me before the headmaster. I recall mixing it with water to make glue as I tried to make a Tracy Island. But use it in cooking? Now that's weird.

Well, no use musing, just get on with it. Harrods pinny in place I sieve a bit of the white stuff not really knowing the reasons why. Then I have to get my hands sticky by rubbing butter into it. "Add four tablespoons of water and mix it around with a round-ended knife," says the recipe. And within minutes, like magic, the pastry dough appears out of nowhere. That's got to be one of the most exciting things I've seen in my life - which is a sad reflection on my life.

If this works, then the boys at the Black Bull in Melsonby, near Richmond, can't fail to be impressed. I could well be baking the winning egg and bacon pie here. I could be well on the way to winning the prestigious Melsonby pie man title and a gallon of beer - just what you need when you are teetotal.

The competition is now in its eight year and just the thing for crusties like myself to do on an autumn evening. The challenge is for the village's men to don aprons and, without any help from the fairer sex, bake the tastiest E&B pie possible. So that's what I do.

Now somewhere in the deepest recesses of my memory I seem to remember my ol' mum saying shortcrust pastry was better if you let it chill in the fridge overnight. So that's what I do, placing the dough ball into a food bag.

Next day there it is, resplendent - and hard as a small breeze block - though it does, thankfully, thaw out in time to be rolled. Now I don't know about you, but I like my shortcrust nice and thin. There's nothing worse than biting into great chunk of flaky pastry and not being able to swallow it because it dries your mouth like the sun bakes a desert. Well circumstance dictates the thickness of my pie crust, namely I haven't made enough mixture for the large pie dish.

Flour on the roller, flour on the marble chopping board, flour all over my face. Then it's roll, roll, roll until the pastry is wafer thin. Now, I'm getting the hang of this and am becoming rather deft with my pastry. Flop it over the rolling pin and lay it on the pie dish. Pack it round before turning thoughts to the filling.

Three hardboiled eggs and six rashes of smoky bacon are bound by a mixture of one beaten egg and some milk. Loads of black pepper - I'm a black pepper junky - arrange evenly and cover with more pastry. Trim to fit, press the edge down with a fork - now there's a pretty pattern - a quick slosh around the top with a milky brush and into the old oven at 180C.

Forty minutes of pacing like an expectant father and the chime tells me it should be ready. Pulling down the oven door exposes an egg and bacon pie of such beauty, of such magnitude, of such perfection that a little tear forms in the corner of my eye - although that could have been caused by the oven burn I inadvertently gave my wrist.

On to the cooling tray by 11.30am, not a bad morning's work, and I also enjoy watching the day-time programmes which are on the TV.

It's a great pie, a pie among pies, an award-winning pie. It's in with a chance, I can feel it. Just think of the glory as I walk round my village of Melsonby and people look in awe at Pieman Lamming. I can't wait for the judging, due to be held in the Black Bull. I can barely get through the afternoon's work.

Then catastrophe strikes, a world event which keeps me at work until 9.15pm - and the judging starts at 8pm. And it's with heavy heart that I return to my pie, my very first pie, the pie that came so close.

But out of disaster comes fortitude and my gloom brightens when I realise that the pie I made without any female assistance (save for Delia Smith who wrote the recipe) will keep me in packed lunches all week. What a baker, what a pie.