Jams & Jeely Pieces
What’s a ‘jeely piece’ you ask? Invariably quoted in the sentence “Haw Maw! Fling us doon a jeely piece!” Quite simply, it’s a jam sandwich, preferably made with white sliced bread. Best prepared lovingly by one’s mother (‘Maw’), before being thrown through the air (‘flung’) from an upstairs kitchen window in the general direction of darling offspring, too busy playing football or nursing dollies to have time for a proper lunch.
It’s nostalgia in a sandwich (‘piece’) for a whole post-war generation of Scots who grew up in four- and five-storey apartment blocks, the tenements. Love and sustenance in the form of bread held together by sticky fruit jam.
The famous Scottish sweet tooth started young: jam sandwiches,
