Les:

pikelets are what the rest of the world calls crumpets (which didn't exist locally when I were a kid) - the thicker variety. Crumpets were what toffee-nosed public school kids toasted in front of an open fire. We used to eat 'em with butter and treacle (which is what we called golden syrup). You had to have a clean knife for the treacle, 'cos it were dead common to have a tin o' treacle wi' bits o' butter in it!

Exactly! That's the same as South Wales - it must be the view from the working areas of the country! We did toast ours in from of the fire - I still have the brass toasting fork (made by my father using materials kindly provided by GKN).

BTW - I'm busy, otherwise I would be watching 2 x 1 hour programmes about bread on BBC4 tonight. It's the iPlayer over the weekend for me.

Phil