Anyone who has ever been a student on one of my courses will know that I do like to introduce the occasional gimmick or two – whether it be my use of a light sabre as a pointer in my “forces” lecture, sounding a bugle to highlight particularly important physical principles or … (further examples not disclosed so as not spoil the surprise for current students over the coming weeks!). Last week I think I surpassed myself though. At my first meteorology lecture of the year a few weeks ago one of the students came in with a plate of cakes that he was selling to raise money for a student group he is involved with. That put an idea in my head and with these particular lectures taking place late on a Friday afternoon I thought that a nice surprise for the students wouldn’t go amiss. So I spent last Thursday evening in the kitchen baking, but not just baking any old kind of cake. With last week’s lecture being all about clouds, it seemed appropriate to bake some cloud cakes. These were then taken into work and given out to the students towards the end of the lecture when I got to the section on exotic clouds.

You’re thinking I’m bluffing here don’t you? You want to see evidence don’t you?

So here you go… proof that I really am mad!

My cloud cakes, each one with a pale blue sky background and a little piece of fluffy Cumulus!