Shrove Tuesday

Or bloody pancake day as I call it. I'm not a great fan of pancakes and have successfully managed to avoid it for the past couple of years but not this year. I did try I cooked dinner but no, the shouts for pancakes eventually got to me. So I dragged myself away from the sofa and went into the kitchen to make the batter.

But after that, it always goes wrong. I'm one of those people that when I was at school and we had to make a souffle I would've been better off making pancakes and if I had of done, I would have got top marks for my souffle.

I know what I do wrong, the pan isn't hot enough but I've got be careful because the kitchen gets smoked out and sets the smoke alarms off. So I have a not hot enough pan and then I ladle in the batter by the bucketful and watch in amazement at how something made from plain flour (not designed to rise) rises with such vigor. I daren't toss the damn thing just in case I miss and knock myself out, so using two hands with the fish slice I turn it over and marvel at how many pieces it can break into. After that it's a quick cook it on the other side and try and pretty it up on the plate, smother it in syrup, sugar and lemon juice and shout 'come and get it.' They must have been in a good mood tonight because I didn't get any complaints but was reminded that I had another 364 days to practice.

It does tickle me though that the whole idea of Shrove Tuesday is to clear the cupboard before the onset of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. I had to go shopping for stuff for pancakes, seeing as baked beans, tomatoes and the stuff I had in the cupboard didn't go well with pancakes. I did have some plain flour. I've been known to make cakes when the sun and the moon are in the right position and there were no weavels in it and it was still in the sell by date. I had eggs, milk, sugar but had run out of lemon juice and had no syrup so off to Tuffins I went. Somehow it seemed to defeat the whole purpose of pancake day.

Today has been a funny day. I haven't been down or anything I just feel very tired, despite so much sleep recently it's ridiculous and a bit sort of lost. Sounds daft really but I can't describe it any other way. Perhaps it was something to do with yesterday when I was looking for something on my computer, which has just been 'fixed' and couldn't find it and then looking further a lot of my photographs were missing. I asked Dan where they were and it's okay, they're safe but they're on another hard drive that I couldn't access. I was relieved they were safe but I felt sad that I couldn't just look at them. But, bless them, they've sorted that for me tonight and we've all had a look at some of them and laughed. Although a lot of the past is very painful, it's still good to look at it and remember the good times, despite the recent contamination of it.

But today I also visited the past in another way - pancakes. When I had mine they tasted just like my Mum used to make when we were kids - gorgeous.

PS Just in case you are wondering, no the photograph is not of my pancakes - I nicked the piccy.