Pancakes

Was there ever a time when pancakes were a regularly-scheduled event? I don't mean drop scones, which are an essential part of a complete (read: excessive) fry-up. Crêpes only seem to have been for Shrove Tuesday, or, as heathen secularists like myself refer to it, Pancake Day - except for the few weeks immediately after discovering the French bloke in the St George's Market every Friday.

I'm pretty sure, despite the one-day-a-year tradition of making extremely thin yorkshire puddings and drowning them in golden syrup, that pancake batter was always made from kitchen staples when we were growing up; flour, eggs and milk would have always been in the cupboards (which makes it seem even more unusual that it was such a rare occurrence, given the convenience of pancakes). Nowadays, it seems like there's a panic-buying rush on batter ingredients one week a year, and the other fifty-one nobody even thinks about pancakes.

On the run-up to pancake day I usually spend at least a few minutes imagining a delirious world where every day would have pancakes, but usually by my fourth crêpe on the day, the delirium is caused by an imminent diabetic coma.