Later going to old firm football games, buying a couple of hot mutton pies was a delight on cold winter afternoons. The technique of eating the pies was to rip a hole in the side of the pasty (As soon as possible) then hold it up to a high level and drink the liquid lard before it congealed, until the pie dried out. This action occasional had to be briefly curtailed and the pie protected, as some disgruntled fans had a habit of peeing into empty Tenants lager cans then hurling them over the heads of their fellow fans, somersaulting the contents in a wide arc.

A special treat as a small child was when my grandmother made a clootie dumpling – flour, breadcrumbs, sultanas and currants, suet wrapped in a clean rag & boiled for a few hours then dried out over the fire. She had a special collection silver thruppenie coins that we were keen to locate & keep for a while, as well as bearing in mind to avoid swallowing them in the mix.

Daily school dinners kept us going but the teaches had an unfortunate habit of publicly grading the children’s weekly ticketing purchase queue by ‘means testing’. Each Monday morning I paid the upper level cost (For the same meals as the others) of three shillings & sixpence per week as my father had a job, the poorer kids had to wait & queue in diminishing order (E.g. Two shillings, eleven pence, one shilling eleven pence etc) until the last ones were issued ‘free’ tickets.

One of my fondest memory of Scottish food is picking wild mussels of rocks at low tide off an anchorage somewhere on the west coast of Scotland.

We once sailed and anchored in a hidden spot as the tide was ebbing out. The shoreline was thick with rocks. Only through binoculars could we see that the rocks were thick with wild mussels, as far as the eye could see. We jumped off our boat onto a dinghy armed with buckets and spades. Quick row onto the shore to claw out as many mussels as our fingers could stand in the freezing cold sea. Quick row back onboard the boat to clean and cook. Fresh mussels eaten with butter and garlic sauce with a gin & tonic while the sun sets….

1. a haggis supper whilst sitting in the car next to Helensburgh pier, rain coming in sideways; and

2. sharing the admiral’s platter at the Wide-mouthed Frog in Oban with my new fiancee – langoustines, crab, scallops – the lobster was still in the harbour when we ordered! That was the only time I have ever pushed aside the gravlax on account of it being the most boring part of a dish!