Dinner used to be a four-part consortium of:

  • meat, one of: pork chops, lamb chops, sausages, chicken, fish (usually fingers), beefburgers
  • potato, one of: boiled, mashed, roasted (if we were lucky)
  • two vegetables, boiled, two of: peas, beans, carrots, sweetcorn, spinach, cabbage, Brussels sprouts (if we were unlucky)
  • sweet (which is what we called dessert in those days), one of: blancmange, tapioca, semolina, fruit (stewed, canned, or pie-encased) and custard

Tomato, HP, Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce bottles were clustered in the centre of the table, like a miniature Manhattan, with salt and pepper pots playing Brooklyn.

There were also a few hardy variations: shepherd's pie, curry and rice, stew.

Over time this basic theme was elaborated with innovations that were always received as special treats. Ice-cream came first in cardboard cartons, then in plastic containers that could be reused for storing flour and rice. Pre-packaged exotica like Vesta's Chow Mein with crispy noodles became family favourites. Mum developed a few specialities too: Chicken a la King, barbeque chicken, carrot and sultana salad in mayonnaise. Travel exerted some influence, reaching its peak perhaps in satay with peanut sauce and Indonesian pappadums.

On Saturday mornings dad would take his turn in the kitchen and fry everything in sight: eggs, bacon, tomatoes, black pudding and bread. Another highlight was mum's extensive and generally very successful baking.

We were told we didn't know how lucky we were. Things were different in their days. Mum used to eat bread and dripping (bread spread with the congealed fat of the previous Sunday's roast). Dad was hit with a leather strap for not cleaning his plate in silence.

The hoarding instinct set in hard with the advent of the 'deep freeze'. Dad bought an enormous commercial one; too large for the kitchen it shared the garage with the car. He procured a retailer's card for the local wholesalers and together with mum would buy beefburgers and fishcakes 96 at a time, four gallons of ice-cream, shop-sized jars of sweets. When they moved to Brazil in 1975 I was left in the house alone. I lived for over a year on what was in the freezer when they left.

Like most families, we began to eat out more frequently. The preferred spots were the Shing Du restaurant in Derby and the Crewe and Harpur pub at Swarkeston. In time more distant and more fashionable venues played host to our alimentation.

But somewhere along the line, things started going in reverse. We noticed that mum and dad couldn't manage the menus in restaurants, and when their food arrived they couldn't finish it. Pretty soon eating out was more stress than pleasure for mum, though dad was still happy to indulge. The old stand-bys were still being cooked up at home, but the presentation was beginning to lapse. Mum lost the knack of thawing frozen food before trying to cook it. Mistakes first became habitual, such as undercooking frozen pizza, and later these 'mistakes' became the accepted way of doing things. Anything requiring preparation, such as baking, fell away relatively early. Quick meals took over. Simplicity became the watchword. Taste no longer seemed to matter. There was a constant tension between the need to cook something, since that was always the way things had been done, and the inability to stock the fridge and cupboards or assemble their contents into a meal.

The funny thing is that when mum and dad now think of 'slap-up feasts' (as dad calls them) it is to the basic days of the 1950s 'meat, potato and two veg' formula that they refer. Dad refers to anything else as 'foreign stuff' or 'fancy stuff'. When we visited the local nursing homes we noticed that they cater exactly to these antediluvian tastes. We mentioned this, and they told us that it was because 'meat and veg' is what most of their residents think of as a proper meal.

Now mum and dad's diet would comprise perhaps eight or ten items if it were not for Meals on Wheels, Regan's regular supermarket forays, and the occasional takeaway meal brought in by Greg or I.

Milk, tea, bread, biscuits, apples, oranges, chocolate...and I cannot think of anything else. Perhaps eight or ten is an exaggeration.