National Ice Cream Day.

 National Ice Cream Day.

You must have been wondering what day it is. Go on, have a guess. Think of something that you normally associate with summer and a refreshing sweet treat that just melts in your mouth. It's a lovely, nostalgic throwback to your childhood or should have been if you were somehow conditioned to eating this most delightful confection when you were but a couple of years old. It was something you developed a taste for when all of your other friends were eating the same thing.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen. Today is National Ice Cream Day, a celebration of all our younger days and still capable of capturing your imagination in adolescence. There can be no arbitrary time for ice cream because most of us long to finish our  lunch, tea and dinner with something that reminds us of that first day of primary school when all of the kids came racing out of the school gates, satchels flung over our shoulders like the flapping sail of a boat and shirts fluttering in the autumnal winds. Ice creams were programmed into our DNA rather like breathing, talking, walking, running, laughing and smiling.

By the time we reached our respective sweet shops cum newsagents we were already on a high, finally free from the drudgery of being slumped over ink stained desks, listening attentively to our teachers, bored silly at times and longing for the end of the day. We'd stare vacantly at the blackboards, not really concerned at the times table or English sentence construction. We'd already resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd have to wait until tea time before ice cream treats could only be briefly considered so we just knuckled down to the task of concentrating on our early academic lessons.

And then your mind wanders happily back to those halcyon days of long, meandering school summer holidays. For most of the day you would climb onto your lime green bicycle and then embark on the finest voyage of your early life, pressing hard down on your pedals before treading your feet firmly down on the bike accelerator and then sprinting for the land of paradise, a world of freedom, luxury and hedonistic enjoyment - or at least that's how it felt.

But then we realised what time it really was. It was roughly late afternoon and my late and wonderful mum was preparing herself for the great Olympic dash out of our family home. She probably didn't fancy interrupting her daily schedule of cooking our evening meal but knew that her young son simply wanted an ice cream. Not a problem, at all. So, accompanied by the rest of our road's doting mums, she would put down her tea cloth before rushing out swiftly to buy that mouth watering ice cream or lollipop.

Outside their houses, an assortment of mums with purses in their hands and swapping all manner of pleasantries between them, would willingly part with shillings or sixpences for the delicious sight of dripping choc ice or a 99, a vanilla ice cream complete with a chocolate flake. Eagerly devouring this guilty pleasure, the said ice cream would slowly disintegrate into something that was completely unrecognisable from the moment we'd first started licking our ice cream. The cone, at first irresistible, now rapidly disappeared into oblivion, consumed by a child who just didn't care.

In later years, ice creams were regarded as something that just happened to be there whenever or whenever we wanted them. They were served at family parties and kids birthday parties, they were something that cooled you down at the seaside when your buckets and spades had served their purpose and you'd just built a thousand castles in the sand. At any social gathering, ice creams were the perfect complement to a rich, savoury meal or just felt good to tuck into just before tea, cakes or biscuits. 

Even now summers would somehow incomplete without a Magnum ice cream and golden chocolate shells that just dissolve dreamily in our months. Back then, there was a simple joy and innocence about eating ice cream and the thrilling prospect of consuming something that you must have privately known was bad for you but just loved to enjoy at your leisure. And the sheer variety and diversity of ice creams still hold you enraptured. Who doesn't just smile at the thought of scooping up large helpings of Ben and Jerry's tubs, Haagen- Dazs tubs and Baskin Robbins into our tea time bowl?

There are a million ice cream parlours serving all manner of flavours, strawberry, raspberry, salted caramel, pistachio, coffee, the conventional chocolate, lime, mint, mango and then the remarkable alternatives to the standard ice creams.  Then there were, and still are, dinner parties where we all luxuriate in the traditional taste of apple pie with ice cream, chocolate sponge with ice cream, strawberries and ice cream, rhubarb, custard and, quite possibly, ice cream and whatever other pudding that springs to mind.

Your mind reels back to your school days when mum would invariably produce a gorgeous delicacy called an Arctic Roll, which, you believe, still exists but, at the time, was regarded as a novelty. The Arctic Roll was that very streamlined dessert which just sent your tongue into heaven. There was that perfect fusion of a thick sponge garnished with that magical slab of vanilla ice cream. It had to be the finest and most satisfying dessert that had ever entered your mouth. As a teenager you were transported to a place you'd never thought possible. 

And still ice cream is  just an idyllic accompaniment to a meal or even that addictive indulgence that we can never say no to because the whole world eats ice cream. It's followed us through our formative  teenage years to the present day and we don't quite know how that came to be the case. It must have been something your ancestors had eaten in huge quantities but never knew why. Ice cream is designed for the working class, the middle classes, the upper classes and those who just like familiarity at meal times.

So Ladies and Gentlemen. It's National Ice Cream Day and that's official. There can be no arguments. In the  mind's eye you can still hear the nursery rhyme tunes that could be heard on the other side of the world. A Rossi's van that looked appropriately like an ice cream, would turn into our road and then we abandoned our gruelling cycling marathon and a gentleman or woman would poke their heads out of the window of their ice cream van. The tune that reverberated so  melodiously sounded like the kind of ambient noise you'd normally expect to hear at Disneyland.

 A smile would wreathe their faces and children from every conceivable part of Essex would stampede towards the ice cream van. It all seemed very well ordered and somehow ritualistic until we later discovered that we'd gain three stones in weight. But then the puppy fat fell off in no time and ice creams became permissible, acceptable and right because if it was good enough for the other kids then why did we have to be deprived? It would have been a travesty of justice had we missed out on ice cream and, more annoyingly so, your friends and neighbours were tucking into huge tubs of cold, flavoured ice.

So reflect this evening on the timeless pleasures of ice cream, always suitable on a hot, summer's day or a winter's evening in front of a roaring log fire where the central heating has been on for ages. Ice creams dominated our childhood when we were kids because they were somehow rewards for good behaviour when we'd come back from playtimes that just went on and on. None of us were ever keen on returning to our family home after days of play But there were times when mum and dad had something special in the freezer for our evening tea or supper. So Happy National Ice Cream Day everybody and while you're out, you may want to remember how good it makes you feel and still does.