I hated lots of the food in my childhood: tripe, offal, ox tongue, liver, mutton, whitebait; we had to eat anything and everything. We couldn’t pick and choose. There were no alternatives. You ate it, or you went hungry. We didn’t have a fridge or a freezer, so food went bad pretty quickly and couldn’t be stored for long.

For me though, the foods that take me back to my childhood are: Sunday dinners with Yorkshire puddings, a home-made mince and onion pie with gravy, stews and broths on a cold winters day, fresh baked bread rolls straight out of the oven, or my Nan’s jam tarts.

I wish I could bottle certain tastes and smells, much like a master perfumer who creates perfumes for leading fashion houses. Instead of floral bouquets, I’d create the scent of my grandma’s arms, my grandad’s tool shed, my Dad’s laughter, and my mother’s song. Then I could close my eyes and be transported back to my childhood, to the people I’ve lost and the places I’ve loved, but long forgotten.

Tastes and smells can do that. They have the power to take us to a different time and place. They are the closest thing we have to time travel, the best means we have of recapturing the things we have lost, the people we once were and would like to be again. If only for a brief, sensory moment.