Today

In 2008, a publisher called Florence Sandeman decreed that the first Sunday in February would henceforth be known as British Yorkshire Pudding Day. It would be a day to celebrate this humble "pudding" - that has accompanied roast meats in the British Isles for at least three hundred years. Mrs Sandeman had various reasons for picking this particular day - mainly its temporal distance between Christmas and Lent.

Though I support the idea of a day designated to rejoice in  the existence of Yorkshire puddings, I am affronted, nay hurt that Mrs Sandeman did not think to discuss arrangements for the day with me - a man who after all changed his name to Yorkshire Pudding several years ago - someone who has always been a loyal ambassador for the kingdom of Yorkshire and a champion of all things Yorkshire.

If she had met with me, I would have proposed the following for Yorkshire Pudding Day:-

1) All Yorkshire schoolchildren to wear larger Yorkshire puddings like flat-caps for the day or two smaller yorkies as ear muffs.

2) Yorkshire pudding hurling events to be held in Yorkshire parks - flinging the pud like a floppy frisbee to win various prizes in several age groups.

3) RAF Red Arrows acrobatic team to drop thousands of small Yorkshire puddings on troubled hotspots around the world like Syria, Canton GA and Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The delight engendered would create genuine pathways to peace.

4) For charity, all members of the British Coalition cabinet to be force-fed burnt Yorkshire puddings - which should of course normally be avoided at all costs.

5) If snow is on the ground, extra large Yorkshire puddings to be baked then allowed to dry till hardened before being used in municipal parks as sledges by young families from urban areas that are blighted by poverty and joblessness.

6) On BBC, a musical talent show to be launched in which contestants are only allowed to sing self-penned songs that are about or refer to Yorkshire puddings.

Perhaps next year Mrs Sandeman will pick up on some or all of my ideas and the whole world will notice that it's Yorkshire Pudding Day!

Six years ago on this li'ol blog I posted my Ode to the Yorkshire Pudding. On such an auspicious day the time seemed right to recycle it:-

How simple thou art, risen through the years

I recall you marked my Sundays

Fat laughter and glass tears

Golden wert thou - a vessel for mum’s gravy

Mashed potato memories

Brown ocean for a navy

Of minted garden peas

What an ordinary pudding you are

Milk and eggs and plain flour

In a hot oven for half an hour

You’re even made now by the famous Aunt Bessy

Supermarket packaging being not quite as messy

As beating those ingredients

In an old mixing bowl

You bear my county’s name

My land of hopes and dreams

From Flamborough’s chalky cliffs

To Barnsley’s deep coal seams

But in googling the world wide web

I find your fame at last has spread

From Timbuktu to Kalamazoo

The Yorkshire pudding rises…