Category Archives: Food

Family life, Food, Life

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

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Paul Fitzpatrick: June 2022, London

After a bit of prompting from one of my kids I visited an Everyman Cinema recently, and it was quite the experience.

On entering the cinema I was greeted warmly by staff who explained the set up and asked if I wanted anything from the bar (beer, cocktails, wine, soft drinks), or from the kitchen (tapas, burgers, pizza, snacks) which they could serve to my seat in the cinema, (there are trays attached to the armrests).

The cinema itself is a lesson in tasteful opulence where luxurious armchairs, and sofas that are dangerously comfortable, replace the standard cinema layout, the screen is the perfect size and the sound system is impressive.

Everyman Cinema

Before the film starts, a member of staff introduces the movie and reminds the audience that the team are available to serve any further refreshments to your seat during the film.

As it turned out, the movie I went to see (Everything, Everywhere All At Once) was a bit weird, as most movies about the multiverse tend to be, however the overall experience was such that I can’t wait to go back.

The level of service, the comfort factor and the food and drink were all ten out of ten, and it was probably the best cinema experience since my first trip to the ABC minors as a 10 year old.

I did ponder afterwards though…. ‘was this a glimpse of the future, or a nod to the past?‘

Have we been so conditioned to accept mediocre service now, that it’s a shock to the system when we actually receive some decent service?

Do we realise just how much we’ve been trained into doing things ourselves these days, even basic tasks that used to be part of the service?

I guess a classic example of this is self-service Petrol Stations.
It used to be the norm to get your petrol served, your oil checked, your windscreen wiped and your tyres looked over without leaving your car.
Nowadays you’re expected to do it all yourself then stand in line to pay whilst being subjected to the temptation of a ‘Ginster Pasty‘ or ‘three Mars bars for the price of two‘.

I often wonder if there’s still a place today for those old style petrol stations.
I completely get that it would be a niche operation, in the same way that Everyman Cinemas aren’t going to take over from multiplexes, but I’m sure some people would happily pay for that extra level of service (my missus for one!).

This self-service mentality also extends to shopping now, especially supermarkets where we’re herded to unmanned, self-checkouts, even though in most cases we know we’re probably going to require the support of shop staff who are now thin on the ground as they’ve been replaced by machines…..
It happens all the time – something won’t scan, or the till doesn’t recognise something in your basket, or you’ve bought something which requires proof of age, or you’ve used your own plastic bag, or you’ve purchased something with an electronic tag that requires removing.

Any number of reasons can trigger that wee red light that pings above your self-checkout station to alert staff that you need assistance, except when you look around there’s no staff to be found, or if you’re lucky, there’s one poor person dashing from checkout to checkout like a blue-arsed fly.

It’s a perfect example of a purported time-saving initiative actually adding time (and stress) to what should be a pretty mundane task.

Perhaps Don Henley had Sainsbury’s in mind when he sang…
“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”

Similarly, in department stores, you can now find yourself wandering about like a zombie looking for assistance, unlike the old days when you were swatting them away like flies.

The irony of this, is that compared to the 70s a lot of electrical items and household goods are now so complex that you require a degree in quantum mechanics to switch them on.
So, in an era where we really, really need access to knowledgeable staff who know their stuff, they’re scarce.

The whole self-service philosophy is based on spartan virtue: You make do with less, pay less and settle for adequacy rather than true satisfaction, but the frustration for most of us is, that the reduction in retail overheads and the stated improvement in efficiencies haven’t reduced retail prices.

Air travel is another example… we’re now conditioned to make our own bookings, action our own check-ins and print or download our own tickets, all for the privilege of getting to the airport 2 hours before take-off, so we can pay £5 to get dropped off, £6 for a pint and join numerous queues before boarding.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for technology and for anything that saves time, but in lots of cases there’s no benefit, instead, it just feels like manipulation, and a sneaky transfer in responsibilities has resulted in the customer taking on all the heavy lifting.

I’m also reminded of the services that used to come to our doorsteps in the 60s and 70s, the Ascot or Bilsland Bakery vans that would navigate their way around the various West of Scotland housing schemes, offering cakes, bread, biscuits, milk and soft drinks.
Similarly, local farms would load up weekly and take their vans round the estates offering fresh produce, and of course there were the popular Garvies or Alpine vans that offered multiple flavours of fizzy pop direct to your door.

Retailing used to be based on convenience and service, but I guess it all got a bit Americanised, which meant we traded in ‘small and local‘ for ‘big and out of the way’, ‘two-for-one‘ offers, ‘meal deals’ and a free packet of Percy Pigs every once in a while.

So perhaps this Everyman Cinema model isn’t new or revolutionary after all, it’s simply a return to the halcyon days of being customer focused.

It certainly seems to be working for those guys.
Despite the multiplexes, despite the fact that it’s not the cheap option, Everyman now have 35 cinemas and are growing rapidly.




Family life, Food, School, Teenage Years

In Praise Of Lunch

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Paul Fitzpatrick: London, January 2022

It came to my mind recently that lunch tends to get overlooked these days.
Brunches & Suppers are regularly championed by Nigella and Jamie, we’re constantly bombarded with dinner ideas on MasterChef and up until intermittent fasting came along we were hoodwinked into thinking that ‘Breakfast is the most important meal of the day’.

By the way, do you know who’s credited with that oft-repeated and very famous quote?
None other than John Harvey Kellogg…. yeah THAT Kellogg!

Subsequently, lunch has dropped down the ‘square meal’ league table into the relegation zone which is a bit of a comedown.
Once upon a time it used to run away with the title but that was before Gordon Gekko’s “lunch is for wimps” claim in the movie Wall Street.

In its glory years lunch was called dinner, it was the main meal of the day and was eaten any time between late morning and mid afternoon. Then the industrial revolution came along at which point sustenance was required between morning and afternoon shifts to enable workers to sustain maximum effort throughout the day, hence the regimented one hour lunch break, we know now.

Cut forward to today and lunch for many consists of a quick sandwich in front of a computer screen, checking out social media and looking at Nigella’s recipes for supper, or if you’re male, and of a certain age, just checking out Nigella!

Back in the 70s however, when we were at school or newbies in the workplace, lunch WAS the most important meal of the day… by a long chalk.

Maybe it was by default… after all breakfast was relatively basic, a plate of cereal or a slice of toast before you ran out the door to catch the school bus.
Dinner, on the other hand, was a bit more formal in most households, the table would be set but you had to wait till your faither got home.

To be honest dinner was a bit hit or miss in our house.

You see, my dad was an offal man for his offal – kidney, Tongue, liver, tripe, all the stuff that was popular in its day and made fancy window dressing at the butchers…. but offers good reason to turn vegetarian now.

It got worse though, if the raw materials my mum had to work with weren’t great, then her cooking skills only compounded things.

I love my Mum to bits, but she was no Fanny Craddock and trying to mask the stench of charred liver from my favourite Fred Perry polo shirt, (by splashing on copious amounts of Brut) before heading out to impress, was not a pleasant experience.

So, whilst breakfast was on the hoof and dinner could easily have consisted of hoof…. lunch was always to be savoured for a few reasons…..

Firstly, although we may not have been enduring the same hardships as our distant relatives from the 1800’s, lunch still broke up the day perfectly – and if like me you were stuck in a dull lesson pre-lunch, then you could start counting down to the lunchtime bell before meeting up with your pals to eat, blether, and release some of that pent up energy.

Secondly, free-will, which was in scant supply back then, came to the fore as we were able to take ownership of our daily lunching choices.


You could go to the canteen for school dinners if you were seduced by the day’s menu offering, (beef olives was always a favourite), or if you fancied a wee donner (the walk not the kebab) then you could take your lunch money and saunter down to Bearsden Cross to the bakers for a sausage roll or a sandwich…. always accompanied by a carton of ski yoghurt for pudding.
It was probably the best hour of most school days!

Bearsden Cross pre lunchtime

School holidays meant lunch at home, and after a bit of trial and error, home lunches became a slick operation, i.e. straight out of a can – Campbell’s chicken soup and cold Ambrosia Devon Custard…. tasty, low-maintenance stuff that even I could prepare without the need to splash any Brut on afterwards.

It’s strange but I can’t remember much about school lunches at primary school, I lived about 15-20 min’s walk from school so I doubt that I lunched at home every day. I do remember a few kids having packed lunches though and thinking that themed lunchboxes were cool, but I don’t think soup and custard would have travelled that well.

Another weekly treat during school holidays was going to Drumchapel swimming baths, not so much for the eye-stinging chlorine or the daredevil belly flops off the dale, but rather for the delicious pie & beans in the adjoining canteen afterwards.

As we moved into the workplace, lunchtimes were a saviour, it broke the day up and gave you time to regroup and recharge your batteries.

I worked in a small office in central Glasgow when I left school. There was just 5 of us and I was the youngest by some 20 years, so come lunchtime I was a lone-wolf – until my good mate Billy Smith started working in Frasers in Buchanan St a few months later.
This was a tremendous turn of events as I used to go with Smiddy to their excellent staff canteen where we’d fill our faces and gawk at all the elegant cosmetic girls, before meandering about town to wile-away the rest of the golden-hour.

The iconic gallery at Frasers Glasgow

It was a splendid arrangement and when Smiddy told me he was thinking of quitting his job for a more lucrative one, I did what every good mate would do in the same situation….. and tried my darnedest to convince him to stay.

“what about the great staff discounts”
“what about all the pretty girls in the cosmetics dept”
“what about the opportunities for promotion”
“what about the fact you’re working in an iconic building”
“what about – the subsidised staff canteen for Christ’s sake!!“

Of course, Billy very selfishly took up the life changing opportunity, leaving me to lope around as a lone-wolf once more, although I used to regularly meet my mate Joe Hunter on a Friday and we’d head to Paddy’s Market to get our outfits for the weekend.
If ever clothes required a splash of aftershave, it was those ones!

As enjoyable as all those lunch times were back then, you knew the pleasure was temporary, you always had an enemy – the clock!

As you get older and escape the constraints of the clock, lunch offers a great social opportunity to catch up with friends and family and the lunches I look forward to the most now are the leisurely ones you have on holiday. Looking out at a sun-splattered, turquoise ocean, with a cold beer or a chilled glass of wine accompanied with never-ending portions of seafood or salty tapas… living in the moment with nothing to rush back for.

All hail lunch….


Family life, Food, Life, Play

for whom the bell chimes

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(Post by Colin ‘Jackie’ Jackson from Glasgow – January 2022)

“Five more minutes. Pleeeaaase?”

I must have used that plea more than any in my sixty-three years on this planet. It’s become an almost instinctive response when I’m reminded that time is pressing and really should be doing something else, somewhere else.

I no longer even hear myself say it, but my wife is convinced that when the Grim Reaper comes calling, I’ll still be bargaining for “just another five more minutes.” And who wouldn’t, let’s be honest.

She also asserts my habitual tardiness will see me late for my own funeral. I’d hate to disappoint, so it’ll actually be written in my final instructions, that the hearse delay arriving at the church or wherever. Remember this if you plan coming. There’s no need to rush that cup of coffee before leaving your home – especially if it’s a cold or wet day (which it won’t be, by the way.) Just take it easy.

Sorry, I’ve gone really early with the digression on this post.

Anyway, the origins of this now habitual phrase stem, I believe, from the winter months of my early years. It was developed as a counter to that dreaded call from my parents:

“Time for bed!”

It was a stalling ploy – at least, so I hoped.

You see, I’d been promised somebody special was coming, but they had not yet arrived. They’d be here any time now. Five more minutes. Pleeeaaase?

Well – if you don’t ask, you don’t get, right?

So my dad would strike a bargain. If I went to bed ‘right now’ like a good little boy and left him in peace to watch the latest episode of ‘The Saint,’ then he’d buy me a pack of ‘The Man From UNCLE’ bubblegum cards when the ice-cream van came down the street.

And off to bed I’d go, eventually drifting into a blissful sleep dreaming of a packet with no ‘swapsies,’ but containing that elusive # 43 card everyone in class was yearning.

Yes, the Ice-Cream Man, or ‘Icey’ as we knew him played a huge part in our, early lives. In the winter months, he’d generally arrive under cover of mid-evening darkness – probably because he had another daytime job, or simply because there was little custom to be had through the day.

Though I forget it now, we all then knew the ‘Icey’ by his surname. He was a kindly gent as I recall, and always obliged, when having been sent out by Mum, I asked:

“Ten Embassy tipped please. And …. do you have any broken biscuits, please, Mr (Whoever)?’

I’m sure every kid on the route asked the same. Poor guy. I even witnessed him breaking up wafers and cones deliberately for me.

He sold all sorts. From delicious, soft ‘Mr Whippy’ type ice-cream (with raspberry sauce, of course) through bubblegum card packs, cigarettes, to chocolate and all kinds of ha’penny / four to a penny sweets. Of course, there were also the spectacularly coloured ice lollies such as ‘Fab’ and ‘Zoom,’ and on Saturdays, he’d also have a supply of the ‘Pink’ a newspaper with the day’s football results and reports.

During the school summer holidays, though, even making an extra afternoon visit round the local streets, he’d face competition. That came in the form of the ‘branded’ ice cream seller – in our case, Walls.

The Walls man differed in many ways and though our unsophisticated vocabulary of the time couldn’t express it so succinctly, I think all us kids regarded him somewhat an interloper.

His van was smaller, more like a conventional car, but with a raised section at the rear to house the fridges. I always harboured the impression it was based on an American model, with the driver / seller wearing a red and white shirt and sometimes a small white cap. Maybe though the latter detail has been implanted in my memory from watching U.S. based television sitcoms based in 1960s Diners. 

The Walls ice cream differed from that of the other ‘icey,’ in that it came in blocks. Wrapped blocks, if I remember correctly. How many young tears do you think were shed over a treat dropped onto the pavement as it was being unwrapped?

Even more unconventional were the biscuit ‘cones’ used by walls. I was pretty rubbish at maths (actually, make that ‘totally’ rubbish) but I’m fairly certain a ‘cone’ was circular at the top and not rectangular. I suppose once they were committed one of the two, the other had to follow. Whatever, they were a nightmare to eat – the made-up phrase ‘square cone and round mouth’ comes to mind.

Granted, the blocks were a better option than the soft stuff if you were one of these weird folk that preferred your ice cream to be to be sandwiched between two individual wafers.

Then there was also a third means of serving up the frozen dessert, one that was favoured by the ‘icey’ who passed my Gran’s house; scooped. Falling somewhere in consistency between the poured ‘Mr Whippy’ sort, and the rock hard block of Walls, it was reasonably adaptable in its serving. It did though have the unfortunate look of the mashed potato slapped down beside your beef olive by the school dinner lady. Of course that was easy sorted by another liberal addition of raspberry sauce, but the use of gravy coloured chocolate sauce would not have helped ease that initial impression

It was at my Gran’s house too, that I first clapped eyes on an ‘oyster.’ This was a very mysterious delicacy indeed, because only the adults got one. Whenever I asked, I still ended up with a cone. Tight wads, my family!

I was about nineteen before I sampled my first one and true enough, this was too good for kids! Scooped ice cream held between twin oyster shaped biscuits that had been dipped in chocolate, and coconut, with a soft, gooey, sweet mallow filling.

And then there was the ‘double nougat’ – ice cream sandwiched between  two wafers, the edges of which had been coated in chocolate and then injected with a similar mallow fill.

Such decadence.

Of course, an ice cream van wasn’t only identified by the goodies it sold. Neither was it the cartoon characters adorning the bodywork that necessarily distinguished one from another.  No – the idea was to announce the impending arrival on your street by sound, rather than sight. To this end, each ‘icey’ played their own distinguishable tinny, high-end chimes, giving plenty time for kids to pester parents into supplementing that week’s pocket money. One van would use ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,’ as their rallying call; another, ‘Greensleeves,’ others maybe ‘Pop Goes The Weasel’ or ‘You Are My Sunshine.’

Undoubtedly, the peak of my excitement at a visit from an ‘icey’ would have been as a kid, pre-1974. And this is significant, because prior to the ‘Control of Pollution Act, 1974’ there were no restrictions placed on vans playing these tunes.

However, under Section 62 of the act, action could be taken if chimes are ‘sounded after 7pm in the night time, or before 12pm (Midday), or if they are sounded at anytime as to cause an annoyance.’ (I believe the legal maximum volume for this is 80 decibels from 7.5 metres, and they must be played for no longer than 12 seconds – and only while the vehicle is stationary.)

So – lying in my bed, having lost the ‘five more minutes’ argument, I would often hear a van arrive in the neighbouring estate, across the railway line that divided us.

I would wonder who the ‘icey’ was trying to entice to part with their money for the treats he could offer. Would some of my school chums have been allowed to stay up late for his visit? 

I would stress. Would he play his tune down my street? And when?

Of course he did. And my ol’man wold be true to his word and buy me some ‘Man From UNCLE’ bubblegum cards.

Because you know what – to slightly bastardise John Donne’s words that would centuries later inspire the title to one of Hemingway’s masterpieces:

‘…. never send to know for whom the bell chimes; it chimes for thee.’

______________

Food, Lifestyle, Work

it’s not easy being green

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(Post by John Allan, from Bridgetown, Western Australia –April 2021)

It was May 1975, I had just turned 17 and finished my highers and I couldn’t get out of school quick enough. It was time to make my way in the world…………… and become vegetarian (the reason why has escaped me over the ensuing years). I did have a paperback “1000 Vegetarian Meals” and I was up for a challenge.

My mother knew the lady round the corner whose husband Old Malky (or Callum as his wife called him) was the head greenkeeper at the Bearsden Golf Club and before you could prize the sheets off a surly teenager at noon, I had a job as assistant to the assistant greenkeeper.

Now why Old Malky should be Old Malky to us and Callum to his wife remains a mystery as Old Malky only spoke in monosyllables on alternate days. Come to think of it, I have been known by both ‘Snookums’ and ‘Hey Fat Arse’ on differing occasions by my wife.

The job was very task orientated which suited me fine. My first job at sparrow’s fart was to ‘switch’ the greens. Switching involved a large bamboo pole with a tapering fibre class rod attached which, when moved in a sideways motion, flicked off dew, leaves and other detritus such as beer cans and smouldering cars bodies. (I’m not being judgemental but Drumchapel was just through the woods !) I took to the task like a Zen Buddhist monk often standing on one leg and muttering to myself in a fake oriental accent like David Carridine (Aah, Grass Lopper – get it?

I quickly adapted to the routine. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I would mow the greens. Getting the straight striped effect is trickier than it looks. I tried to convince Old Malky my first attempt was my interpretation of a Rennie Mackintosh design but he wasn’t buying it.

Tuesdays and Thursday was time to trim the tees. If a player came on, we were supposed to move to the back of the tee and idle the lawnmower until they had tee-ed off but many a time we just carried on, hastening a panicked swing as spinning blades came perilously close to shaving the tassels off many a two tone golf shoe.

Friday was hole changing day. There was a special spade device for puncturing and removing turf and soil and woe betide anyone with the temerity to chip and put onto our green until the job was completed and the last bit of stubborn grass was expertly trimmed from around the new hole with the designated scissors. Strict quality control was then adhered to. A bucket full of balls and 3 putters were distributed to each greenkeeper and intense putting from all angles ensued. Then and only then could the club member follow through. Any disregard to this unwritten rule meant your ball was hosed off the green. I seem to remember this important ritual was accompanied by several bottles of beer and pay packets were collected. Friday was a good day.

The only thing I took umbrage to was the toileting arrangements. Greenkeeper HQ was a large corrugated hanger which housed all the tractors, mowers and sundry equipment. I don’t even think it had power. The toilet consisted of an old gallon oil container with the top crudely removed. Not only did you have to pee in full view of your fellow workers you had to hold a rusty jagged tin close enough to circumcise yourself with one wayward shake. As for other bodily functions, the only time I got caught short I juked through some gardens and trotted adroitly home to the luxury of plumbed in sanitation. Does a Bear(sden boy) shit in the woods ? Not this one !

So this was the balmy summer of  ’75. I had a healthy outdoor working life and a healthy meat free diet. NB Take it from me. Tofu is only there to bulk up your plate. It doesn’t taste or smell of anything and the texture is a bit disconcerting too. It’s only there so that when people see your meagre plate of vegetables and bean sprouts they don’t say “Is that all you’re having”. Polystyrene would have much the same effect.

Unfortunately, summer changed to late autumn. Crisp summer dawns turned into dark foggy morns. Although I had waterproofs, they were not a match for the torrents of rain constantly soaking into my bones as I went about my daily chores.

Some days when the course was waterlogged I would have to stay in the shelter of the icy cold hanger and ‘riddle’. For reasons I could not comprehend, there was a large pile of dirt in one corner of the shed. My job was to scoop shovels of it into a large sieve and create a pile of finer dirt hour after sodding hour. I never ever saw what the purpose of my handiwork was as it just remained a bigger pile of finer dirt. Yesterday’s nut rissoles weren’t giving me the sustenance that I needed either. That and my mother talking about a turkey roast with all the trimmings for Xmas, I was beginning to crack.

I think I lasted until about October when I turned my back on the noble craft of the keeper of greens (all 9 holes of them) and succumbed again to the flesh of farmed animals and foul.

“Turn up the central heating will you Mum and pass me the chipolatas please !”

Food

knockout lunch

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George Cheyne: Glasgow March 2021

When I first started work I was like a kid in a sweetie shop..a chip shop..a sandwich shop..or a baker’s shop.

Joining the big, bad world of full-time employment in 1975 gave me the chance to break away from school dinners to give my taste buds a real treat.

Well, when I say a treat…I mean a full-on assault from a shed-load of unhealthy carbs and calories. Or lunch, as we call it in the west of Scotland.

Our office was right across from the gates of John Brown Engineering in Clydebank so the area was well served by food takeaways.

In fact, we were spoiled for choice. Two doors down from us was a sandwich shop, next to that was a chippie and round the corner was Greggs and City Bakeries. Decisions, decisions…

This new taste of freedom lark came at a price – not so much a financial one as a health one. But at 16 you don’t care about that because you’re invincible, right? 

The sandwich shop did a roaring trade at lunchtime despite having a menu that leaned heavily towards the minimalistic.

There was homemade soup (always lentil), made-to-order rolls – cheese and tomato, cheese and ham or ham and cheese – and, as an afterthought, some salad.

The only other things for sale in the shop were chocolate bars – Mars, Twix or Bar Six – and cans of Coke or Irn-Bru.

That was your lot. It was a stack-’em-high, sell-’em-cheap strategy that worked particularly well for the shipyard workers.

If you timed your run badly, there would be a massive queue or – worse still – only ham and salad left.

Faced with both these unpalatable options, you always had the chippie next door with its “lunchtime specials” menu.

It was a cunning marketing ploy to lure you in. Once inside, you soon found out the “lunchtime specials” were exactly the same as the “teatime specials” and the never-advertised late-night specials. 

It was a chip shop, plain and simple. Now I’m pretty sure no-one was expecting to walk in and find quinoa on the menu, but you’d be within your rights to think there might be something “special”.

Turns out that was covered off by the fish suppers having only one bit of fish instead of two. Some concession, huh?

No matter, they did a particularly-mean roll and chips which always tasted pretty special.

Round the corner at Greggs, the house speciality was a roll and mince. It might not sound that appealing, but somehow it worked.

The only drawback was trying to eat it on the move. If you did that, you ran the risk of mince oozing out on to your clothes.

The nearby City Bakeries sold those pies with mashed potatoes and beans on top, a real delicacy in this part of the world.

I could never really commit to them after watching a guy in work place two of the pies in a buttered roll, pour tomato sauce on top, squash it all down…and take a giant bite.

It’s an image I can never unsee. Bon appetit!

Family life, Food

the food, the bad & the ugly.

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(Post by George Cheyne, of Glasgow – February 2021)

Back in the day if anyone mentioned my palate, I assumed they were talking about the little tin tray that came with my paint-by-numbers set. Haute cuisine? Well, that was when you burned your mouth off after grabbing a chip straight out the basket of the chip pan before it had cooled properly.

Safe to say, I knew what I liked and I liked what I knew when it came to dinner time in our household and I look back fondly on those salad days of no-fuss meals. Maybe describing them as salad days is a bit of a stretch right enough, it’s probably more accurate to say they were deep-fried days.

Not that we had chips with everything, mind you. There was always beans on toast, spaghetti hoops on toast, ravioli on toast or even Heinz beans with pork sausages on toast to break up the monotony.

Now, my mum was a brilliant cook but even she had to succumb to straight-forward midweek menus. They were something of a necessity for me and my three brothers because there was always somebody in a rush to go somewhere.

Football training, down the park, swimming, pal’s house or Cub Scouts, no matter where we were going, we’d always need sustenance before heading out. And we lapped it up. Not literally, of course – we left that to the family dog in the unlikely event there were any leftovers.

I think it was TV chef Heston Blumenthal who described the 1970s as the decade that good food forgot, but maybe he had higher expectations than we did.

We were brought up on a diet of sausages, Spam fritters, cold meat, fish fingers, cauliflower and cheese, fish cakes, crispy pancakes and eggs, lots of eggs.

I certainly don’t remember too many complaints when we all sat down together – and, yes, that was a given back then – for a family dinner.

The accompaniments were sometimes a bit tricky given the West of Scotland’s aversion to vegetables, but baked beans and peas usually made it past the teenage food censors.

And when there wasn’t chips there was always Cadbury’s Smash, the instant mashed potato which owed its success to a brilliant of-its-time TV advert. You know the one…where aliens mocked mankind for being primitive because they peeled potatoes, boiled them for 20 minutes and then mashed them into small bits. “For mash get Smash”. Genius.

Then there were the puddings. And they were always called puddings in our house, never desserts, sweets or afters.

They could be seasonal, too. In the winter we’d have tinned Heinz treacle sponge pudding or home-made apple pie with custard. Spring and summer meant Angel Delight, Arctic Roll or ice cream.

If I remember correctly, Angel Delight came in two flavours – strawberry and butterscotch – and, as there was a 50/50 split between the four of us, we had to do it week about. My favourite was strawberry and a lot of wheeling and dealing went on that week with my butterscotch brothers to persuade them to hand over some of their portion in return for a similar deal the following week.

There were some mighty rows about that, as I recall. Some, if not all, of us seemed to suffer a sudden memory loss by the time it came around to returning the favour and claim and counter-claim regularly flew across the table. We could certainly have done with VAR back then to sort out who’d promised what to whom!

We also used to enjoy a cheeky wee soup ’n pudding combo which broke a lot of the meal-time traditions of the day. Critics would splutter: “What, no main course?” into their meat and two veg and I kind of get what they were saying.

But it was a win-win for our family. My mum’s home-made soup was chocca with vegetables and goodness and would have easily covered the complete set of any “five-a-day” mantra on its own. The puddings, on the other hand, easily covered a week’s worth of recommended sugar consumption for any kid. What’s not to like?

As we grew older, my mum cranked up the oven temperature on our eating habits. Following an ill-fated experimental dalliance with stuffed peppers, she boldly went where she hadn’t gone before with some enterprising choices for dinner time.

First up was a Fray Bentos steak pie. Not just any steak pie, you understand, because this one came out a tin. Yep, you read that correctly – a tin. Despite this, the pie was voted a winner and it encouraged my mum to take us to the next level.

And what a game changer that turned out to be.

You have to remember we were living in a world before McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Indian and Chinese takeaways, Uber Eats…anything, really, that made eating in an accessible, enjoyable experience.

But we went all in with a Vesta Curry. This was the vanguard of ready-made meals, a taste of the exotic served up in bags you placed in boiling water. Now, I’m the first to admit that doesn’t sound particularly exotic but, when you’d lived through the stuffed peppers era, this was foodie heaven

Vesta cast a wide net when it came to your choice of cuisine. There was Indian beef curry, Chinese chow mein, Spanish paella, Italian risotto and French chicken supreme.

They may not have been up to Michelin star standard, but they did enough to tickle our taste buds and set us all off on a gastronomic journey which has lasted the best part of 50 years and is still going on to this day.