Why I couldn’t believe my own mince pies

DID you catch two quality films at the cinema recently – real gems that cheered me up in very different ways.

The films The Lady in the Van and Suffragette both centred on very feisty ladies. The latter should be compulsory viewing for every girl, as I have never seen the quest for votes for women presented better.

Though both were outstanding and unusual stories, we encounter mundane, but nevertheless real life, drama every day.

You often see oldies, rather like the lady in the van, scowling when they encounter youngsters en masse, because unsupervised they tend to be noisy and take up too much pavement.

Well, believe it or not, I also used to be young and silly and take up space, but on a busy pavement with my parents I was trained to walk in single file, so everyone could pass.

I could forgive some of this pushing and shoving as high youthful energy. I can even shrug away the four letter words which pepper the older teens’ vocabulary, understanding the need to share a common ‘language’ while (more importantly) shocking the fuddyduddies. They do tend to grow out of it.

But one experience last week I shall not get over in a hurry. The young trainee who served me in a coffee bar was polite, gave me the correct beverage but then looked blankly when I asked for my favourite festive treat.

Dear reader, he didn’t know what a mince pie was! The youth of today … grump, grump.

Pass the smelling salts. (And another mince pie please).

I daren’t eat a mince pie at home because no one else in my family likes them and, as my drug of choice, I would be tempted to eat not just a bite, but a batch.

Actually, if I’d lived in the 17th century I, like my unfairly maligned barista, would not have wanted to know about these scrummy pies either.

They were then made of minced cooked mutton, beef suet, fruit sugar and spices. Ugh.

Of course in the 21st century it has become commonplace to mix tastes; in fact we ate a delicious salted caramel torte at a dinner party last week.

I was actually ahead of this culinary game, but not in the Nigella sense. I used to eat cheese with jam, and sprinkle jaffa cakes with salt!!

OK, I still do…