Whisk The Batter In A Bowl, Add A Few Tears.

What you do is, you take a spoonful of batter - please don't ask me how to prepare the batter, I have no idea - and drop it onto a really hot flat piece of metal. Perhaps the bottom of an upside down frying pan. What you get when you do this is a scotch pancake. If you then spread butter on it and add a dollop of jam, mmmm..delicious!

That's not what I did today. What I did was, I went to the local shop. I should really say, one of the local shops. I've been told that the one I referred to in another post is not the local shop. Bilsham Stores is the original local shop in this village.

The other, larger shop is the Co-op. I always, if possible, give my custom to Bilsham Stores. I believe it is important to support small shops. Besides which I fancy one of the women who works there. Very attractive she is. Her name is..... Oh, would you listen to me, getting away from the subject matter again.

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying. I went to the local shop and there on the shelf, I saw a packet of scotch pancakes. Immediately I saw them, memories came flooding back to me. I bought a packet. I should just mention at this point that I bought them in the Co-op. Bilsham Stores don't stock them. What is a man to do? I have to eat!

Mum used to make scotch pancakes, although I think she called them drop scones. Which is the same thing. They tasted best when she cooked them over a camp fire, beside a bender tent in the woods. Me and Fergie were both very fond of them.

Years later, when she had married Jimmy, and lived in a real house with a kitchen. She had a proper griddle to cook them on. She didn't call it a griddle though. She called it a girdle. They were still tasty, even though they were cooked indoors. Jimmy would always spoil the eating of them for me though, by insisting that I could have butter, or jam, on them, but not both at the same time. Some people are strange!

Mum solved this minor problem by cooking some when Jimmy was not around. It was nice to get one over on him. It was nice to be in cahoots with Mum. I remember once, in a moment of rampant overindulgence, I spread one so thick with butter and jam, that when I bit into it, most of it fell on the floor, and got snaffled by Scampi the little sheepdog. Jimmy would have had a blue fit if he'd seen that happen.

But back to today. I got home with my packet of scotch pancakes, and put the kettle on to make a nice cup of tea to have with them. I buttered them quite thickly. Unfortunately, what I thought was a jar of jam in the fridge, turned out to be a jar of pickle. So I ate them, all of them, with just butter. Jimmy would have been pleased! That jar of pickle has been in the fridge for months. I could have sworn it was jam! Someone needs to sort that fridge out.

The upshot of all this is that I didn't really enjoy today's scotch pancakes. They tasted nothing like my Mum's. Also it wasn't the same sitting here eating them on my own. Sadness overcame me. I am an emotional person. I cried today. In a manly way, obviously.

Mum died when she was eighty four. If I was to work it out, she was probably only a part of my childhood, on and off, for maybe three years, if that. I got to see more of her as I grew older of course. But those fleeting childhood memories of her are so precious.

She could be a cantankerous old so and so at times, but I loved her. She was my Mother, even when she wasn't there. I never forgot that.

Enough of this maudlin introspection! Off you go now, and dry those tears, and if you are thinking of buying scotch pancakes from the shop, don't bother. They are rubbish. Make your own! The way my Mum did.