As a schoolboy during the 1950s and 60s, I was constantly eating mince pies and currant cake. These were baked by my mother in the oven of our Reading kitchen. We were a poor family, and Mum was a consummate housewife who saved money by baking all manner of things: apple tarts (using windfall apples from our back garden), apple crumbles, rhubarb tarts, jam tarts, treacle tarts, lemon meringue (which she pronounced ‘lemon meringoo) pies, cupcakes, scones, sponge cakes and, most importantly, mince pies and currant cakes. Mums currant cake was better than any cake you could buy in the shops. It was dark brown, rich, heavy, sweet and delicious. I loved Mums baking. If I had a dollar for every mince pie and slice of currant cake I wolfed down during my formative years, I would be a wealthy man.
I well remember those baking days when Mum - wearing her apron and orchestrating an assortment of bowls, saucepans, metal trays, spoons, knives and other utensils – conjured up, as if by magic, delicious things for us to eat. I would sit on the wooden step dividing our kitchen from the talking to Mum as she
bustled about, watching her, hoping she would offer me a tasty morsel – a spoonful of Lyles Golden Syrup or a bowl to lick clean.
Oh, the anticipation when one of Mums confections was baking in the oven! In the 50s and 60s, life was spartan for a boy like me, so the prospect of mince pies and currant cake was I would demolish a single mince pie in two or three mouthfuls, and a tinful would be gone in no time. A more substantial currant cake lasted longer. Mince pies tasted best when still hot, but currant cake was best cold.
Thinking about my diet in those days, I am appalled. Before the advent of healthy cooking oil, Mum used lard to fry chipped potatoes. I will never forget the spectacle of the chip basket after the liquid lard had congealed – a solid white mass to be used over and over again. The same applied to sausages, bacon, eggs and fish fingers – Mum fried them in lard. We had no idea then what constituted healthy eating. All those mince pies and currant cakes were bad for me too. For years, I
gorged myself on them, and Mum, a trained nurse, gave my appetite free rein. When I left Reading for Leeds University, Mum would post the occasional currant cake to my hall of residence. When I bought my first house – 28 Parkfield Road in Stourbridge - in 1982, I put the oven to good use by baking currant cakes from Mums recipe. She wrote that recipe for me on a piece of notepaper – in her distinctive handwriting – and I still have it. One thing she did not write down was that the margarine had to be Echo brand.
Now I realize what caused the chronic constipation that was such a feature of my childhood. It was my unbalanced diet. I ate too little fruit, too much fried stuff and far too many mince pies and currant cakes. To remedy my constipation I would steep senna pods overnight in a glass of water and drink the brown liquid in the morning. This partially helped, but nobody was able to tell me the cause of my infirmity. Then - after leaving the family nest and taking my first teaching job, in Stourbridge - I started cooking for myself, my
These days, I live in Vietnam and am fed by my wife. I eat very healthily. My breakfast is a plate of mixed fruit, my lunch a salad or a vegetarian thali. For dinner I alternate between chicken and pork and fish, rice and baked potatoes, salad and fresh vegetables. I do not eat between meals and drink plenty of water. I am never constipated. The mere thought of stuffing myself with mince pies and currant cake makes me ill. However, there is no denying there was a time in my life when gorging on mince pies and currant cake gave me intense pleasure.
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