They are selling this forgotten delicacy on the supermarket shelves.

We can nip out and buy a pair in between digging up our lawns and planting potatoes in a sort of hark back to the Dig For Victory campaign of the Forties.

I'm all for it. I'm already stocking up on dried peas so I can make mushy peas or pea soup for tea.

In fact, I did some the other day. They weren't bad although I lost marks on presentation.

"A sort of khaki colour" said my wife but she did eat them all up with a good dollop of mint sauce.

It may be harder to persuade her to have a taste of trotter, though.

The first time I ate them the family revolted.

We were on holiday in France and I saw a nice pair of ready-cooked trotters in a shop and bought some.

"You're not going to eat those!" shrieked the family in unison.

I'm not quite sure what put them off but it could have been the bristles sprouting between the piggy's toes.

They refused to allow me at the same table so I was sent out into the garden of our gite to scoff them.

Now I don't know whether you've ever had a pig's trotter but you haven't got to expect a lot from it, more skin and gristle and gelatinous tissue than anything else but it makes a good gnaw.

They weren't bad but not a patch on the trotters I had at Fischer's of Baslow Hall, stuffed with foie gras and chicken mousse.

They weren't cheap but they did come with a Michelin star.

The last time I ate them was in a restaurant in Spain. It is a local speciality in Catalonia but the owner refused to take my order. Did I know what a trotter was? I did.Well, he said, English people had eaten them before and complained. He didn't want that happening again.

Look, I said, I know my trotters but he wouldn't budge.

The next night I went back to the same restaurant, took the bull by the horns and ordered trotters.

I could see the owner was impressed.

Afterwards he wondered how I had found them. To be honest, I'd had better but I didn't let on. Wonderful, I said.

If it's not pig's trotters, it's mackerel. I've just had a press release (it's from those blighters at Waitrose again) which tells me we've all got to eat mackerel because it's good for us, plentiful and cheap.

Now I have a so-so relationship with mackerel. I always have to bury one memory deep in my mind and not let it surface until the last morsel has been eaten.

Many years ago I had to write a story about sewage disposal in Exeter.

If you're eating your tea I'd give up reading this now.

To cut a long story short they burned it but were left with a residue. This was put on a boat, sailed down the Exe and into the English Channel and released at sea.

I watched from the stern. Very soon the water was boiling with mackerel in paroxysms of delight over the free lunch.

The crew threw out lines with unbaited hooks and hauled in mackerel by the bucketload. Easy-peasy.

Did I want some? I paused then took half a dozen home.

I never let on to her indoors.



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