Midnight Feast

My mother was at boarding school and had a most unpleasant-sounding headteacher who everyone called "Hetty". The girls in her dorm organised a midnight feast one night and Hetty got wind of it. At midnight, when the girls were about to creep down for their feast, in walked Hetty. She turned on the lights and commanded the girls to get dressed and walk downstairs. In the dining room, she had laid the table and put out all the food that had been gathered for the midnight feast. The girls had to eat it all in dead silence, with beady-eyed Hetty sitting at the end of the table, having sucked all the joy out of the escapade. At one point my mother picked up a slice of what she thought was cheese and ate it only to discover it was a piece of margarine. She did not even dare to giggle. At the end of the "feast", they had to clear the plates and then go upstairs and put on their night things before the light was switched off. Not another word was said about it.

Cold curried apple soup

Just the name of this appears in my mother's recipe book, as though she had eaten it and wanted, at some stage, to write down the recipe. But she never did.