Taking Nicola to swimming club tonight we were talking about memories of her Nan and that reminded me of my Nan. Two things immediately sprung to mind, the first was going to Nan’s for lunch.

She’d always lay on a huge spread of food, filling a table that to a 6 year old as as big as I was (so, I imagine, about 1.5m diameter?). It had fresh bloomer bread thick cut and spread with real butter (at home we had margarine so it was always a treat). New potatoes that always tasted unique (I later discovered, it was the salt. Nan always added lots of salt whereas mum didn’t, which is why it always tasted so different at Nan’s). Fine bone china bowls with pastel colour flower patterns spring to mind, though not in any detail. Runner beans and peas, fresh from Granddad’s flower bed. Happy days of childhood.

I then remembered the ‘Mars Milk’. I guess I was staying at Nan and Granddad’s for a weekend. We’d gone shopping and I asked if we could buy the ‘Mars Milk’. I didn’t understand what Nan was trying to tell me at the time, that the Mars chocolate bar was an advert for Mars and the milk was normal milk. I liked it enough to ask for it again though. Several years later, and Mars flavoured milk appeared on the supermarket shelves.

I don’t claim that any of the above is of interest to anyone but me, but the memories are wonderfully tasty in my mind.