Sweet William

I associate this with coming down in the morning after a dinner party the night before: a dinner party to which my brother and I were not invited. But the great thing about dinner parties was: the leftovers. And one of my mother’s signature dishes in the nineteen seventies was a pudding she called Sweet William. Chocolate chip cookies, each dipped in sherry, and then sandwiched to another with whipped cream, gradually forming a creamy circle around the edge of the serving plate.

North Pole pudding

They had fur in the soup on Tuesday, underboiled fish on Wednesday, and on Thursday the most unpleasant pudding Charlotte had ever eaten - North Pole pudding, it was called - a kind of jelly made of cornmeal, grey like porridge, shiny like glue and flecked with little pieces of meal like the flaws in glass.

From Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Makepeace

Lunch and Dinner

I was once a pupil at a school for such a short time that I never really felt I belonged. I was not even allowed to join the school library. On the other hand, knitting lessons were inflicted on me. They happened to take place in the library and I recall being tantalised by a copy of one of the few Enid Blyton Books I Had Not Read sitting on one of the shelves, which I was not allowed to borrow, as I sulkily attempted and failed to knit. My parents told me that if I had to fail at anything, knitting was probably not a bad activity at which to fail...

Cedar School it was called, in Exhall. They had a definition of “lunch” which I have never seen anywhere else. “Lunch” was a parent-purchased school-provided snack: I only had “Lunch” on my first day, possibly as a treat to mark the occasion. Mine consisted of a bag of square salt and vinegar crisps with a name I cannot recall, although I do remember earnestly discussing what I had been given for my “Lunch” with another pupil: “I’ve got ...”

But this was not our only meal of the day. Our midday meal was “Dinner”. It took place in the dining hall which is where we also met for Assembly and chanted at the headmistress: “Good morning Mrs Bentley. Good morning everyone.” I remember little about the food we received. Yeasty bread rolls and stew, possibly with dumplings. Not only was the school the educational establishment where I spent the least time; it also had the least memorable food.

Meaty soup

It was a cold Sunday evening in Kenilworth and there was a long drive to London ahead of us. We, the family, were hungry. We surveyed the contents of Granny’s fridge, gloomily. There was little enough within, because she and my grandfather had gone on holiday. A few vegetables left behind. And the remains of a beef casserole which would have served one. But it was enough for my mother who clearly regarded it as a challenge. “I could quickly turn this into a lovely meaty soup”, she announced. There was approval from us all and she set to work. Thus casserole for one and a few vegetables became rich soup for four, which we ate in the kitchen around the yellow Formica table.

Cooked breakfast

Neves, whom I had met on a train from Delhi to Goa, had come to stay for a few days in England. I was still living with my parents then and they gave him the spare room. On his first morning, I had made him a cooked breakfast which he seemed to enjoy. The next morning, he came down before me. My mother was in the kitchen and, according to her version of events, said brightly, “Good morning Neves. Would you like cereal or toast for breakfast?” His reply, which has gone down in family folklore, “Actually I prefer bacon or ham with an egg fried on both sides.”

My grandfather, too, liked his cooked breakfast and a family legend about him also concerns a demand by him for a certain kind of breakfast in a foreign land. In his case, it was France, with the family. This would have been in the nineteen fifties or sixties. There were, unsurprisingly, no menus on the table and only slices of bread, unsalted butter and apricot jam. When the waitress came over to take orders for coffee (no doubt), Grandfather, loudly, slowly and painfully asked her: “Could you do ham and eggs?"

In neither case can I tell you what happened next.