Ice-cream

In the summer afternoons when I was a child, the ice-cream van used to come round, ‘ding-dong-ding-di-dong!’ It was just a simple little tune and the ice creams on offer were quite simple too. Lollies or wafers,I don’t remember there being cones then, or maybe there were little cardboard tubs… but we usually had lollies. They were either on a stick, or in a papery tube and you could buy half of one if you didn’t have much pocket money left. Every Sunday we had ice-cream after Sunday lunch, and usually it was Neapolitan, a block of brown, white and pink, which we had in slices; occasionally we would have a choc-ice as a special treat.

The first time I came across exotic ice-cream was when I went to France as a student and there seemed an astonishing variety that was served in little metal dishes to be eaten with a spoon. My favourite was always pistachio et praliné… how wonderful that was, to sit beneath a parasol at the little café in Gorbio, just outside Menton on the French-Italian border.

Now there seems to be every flavour imaginable, but somehow I usually just have vanilla as these days it seems to be made with real vanilla. My real, real favourite though is ginger… mmmm, ginger ice-cream!!