Cable always looks difficult: impressive, but difficult.  Here is a whole book dedicated to helping knitters get to grips with this attractive and important stitch.

The book says "even beginners," and indeed the basics of the craft are all in here, from choosing your kit to casting on, and doing the basic stitches such as plain and purl.  It is organized in a series of lessons, and those are covered in the first five of them, although I wouldn’t personally buy it for a beginner unless they were learning to knit just so they could do cable.  There are some good projects in here for attractive and useful garments such as a scarf, tea cozy, hot water bottle cover, bags, baby blanket etc., all of which feature cable of course, but which are not necessarily ideal projects for the complete novice.  Any improver who had already done a bit of ordinary knitting and could follow a basic pattern would probably be all right with most of them.  There is a short chapter on reading charts that most people would find very useful and two whole sections on the cables themselves (mock and true), each presented as a small sample to work through before tackling an actual item.  I like the staged approach to what is generally regarded as a complex aspect of knitting and it does indeed look possible, particularly as working a sample first, then making a simple project, is an excellent way to learn.  The latter part of the book shows you some ways of making your work look even better, such as tassels, adding buttons, blocking and pressing and the all-important (and often omitted) aftercare.  If you want to learn cable, here is where to do it.