My mother was not Fanny Craddock.

Nor was she ever going to be the modern-day equivalent of Mrs Beeton.

Her culinary skills were lacking, as was the variety of food I was given.

Saturday lunch in our Balham flat was always sausages – good alliteration, not very good nutritional value.

The sausages certainly weren’t flown in from Fortnum’s, and seemed to be made of anything rejected by the local saveloy maker.

I was forced to eat these.  Most Saturday lunchtimes, for me, became like being on the set of Spring and Port Wine – this cast me as the Susan George character.

I claimed that sausages made me tired.  My parents suggested this was impossible; I, therefore, feigned tiredness by slumping my head into the accompanying mash potato. 

I was at that age when I didn’t wash that frequently and the following Tuesday our school teacher asked ‘how long had our family been eating Smash? ‘ There were moments during Saturday lunchtimes when I wished the Smash Martians would come and take me to another universe.

The irony nowadays is that sausage and mash is a natural go-to comfort food.  Now, the only dilemma is choosing which one, as there are slightly more than just pork: wild boar; wild mushroom; wild man of Borneo.  It makes me tired just thinking about it.