Ma’s mince pies... you could taste the difference!

Pav’s Christmas Patch: I ADORE the sweet stuff at Christmas. Cake, pudding, log, I love the lot but especially mince pies. They bring back so many good memories for me.

You just can’t beat the smell of mince pies slowly baking in the oven, or the taste of a warm one as it breaks open on your tongue.

My mam used to make wonderful mince pies, so much so that when she entered her final illness I had her bake some, even though it was May, because I knew I’d never enjoy the taste again.

To be honest, I should have asked her for the recipe but I don’t think she could have written it down.

I get the feeling she did it all by rule of thumb. As a result, I have to rely on the Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference range (wonder if I’ll get a free box for the plug?).

In the days I was a postman, and it’s 29 years now since I started to pound the streets of Dukinfield and Hyde, she used to send in a tin of mince pies each Christmas.

We used to tuck in to them every December 24 after sampling the postmaster’s rum.

He wasn’t a popular postmaster but all the lads I worked with, and many of them were ex-servicemen, weren’t going to turn down a free tipple.

Anyway, the pies served to make my mam so popular at Hyde Sorting Office that she would find herself accosted in the street by postmen she had never met.

One morning, as I sat in the van ready to be dropped off, the driver noticed my mother walking along Wharf Street on her way to work.

“It’s Pav’s mam,” came the cry and the horn was sounded, the lights flashed, and sundry postmen hung out of the doors and the back shouting: “Morning Mrs Pav, where’s the cake?”

Mother cowered in a doorway, feeling extremely embarrassed.

On another occasion, after I’d left, I went to my car to find a traffic cone on the roof and a large notice on the windscreen.

Scrawled on a big piece of torn-off cardboard were the words: “Pav, why no cake for boys this Christmas?”

The result was that I got up at 4.30am, to drop some mince pies off at 5. Not only that, they made me help them with the Christmas sorting. Three hours’ work for no pay.

But that was mother.

As a child I had to play with scruffy kids I didn’t like, but she felt sorry for, so that she could give them cake.

Merry Christmas.