FORMER Uplands resident, Carole Gasan, contacted the SNJ to share her memories of the elver season. Elvers are baby eels, which were once a delicacy in Gloucestershre.

They begin life as eel larvae and drift for three years, from their birthplace in the Sargasso Sea to the Severn Estuary.

They are collected in special nets as the spring tides carry them up the river. Most are now exported to Europe and Japan, although they are beginning to appear on London restaurant menus.

They are said to fetch £150 a kilo and the banks of the river are patrolled during the elver season to prevent poachers from taking an illegal share of the catch.

I'm sure that lots of your readers have fond memories of a particular food from their childhood and, as someone who grew up in Stroud during the early 1970s, I remember that the highlight of the culinary calendar (well, for some at least) was elvers.

These baby eels were eagerly anticipated when they came up on the Severn Bore during the spring tides and back then they were in abundance at the local wet fish shop, MacFisheries, in Stroud High Street.

On Saturday afternoon, my sister Tina and I would be sent down the town with 2/6d tied in a knotted hankie with instructions to buy a pound of elvers for father's supper.

Elvers were always sold alive and I still shudder at the memory of those black eyed, slithering creatures heaped together in a vast tank, trying to escape by crawling up the smooth sides of their confined space.

A kindly neighbour, Mrs Dean, usually served us and I remember imploring her to wrap the package well (in at least ten layers of damp newspaper).

Once the money was handed over, Tina and I would hurry home as fast as we could and I always made sure that she was the one carrying the precious package, as being the eldest, I was in charge of the money.

Alas, by the time we got to the bottom of Uplands Hill, one of the creepy creatures would usually have managed to escape and would be steadfastly crawling up the inside of Tina's sleeve.

This resulted in much screaming and jumping up and down as she threw the whole lot on the ground, causing the eels to slither along the pavement after us (like a scene from a horror movie).

Father would be furious that his supper had gone to waste and we would be sent straight back down to MacFisheries to buy some more.

Any hapless creature that did make it as far as mother's kitchen would be boiled alive in milk to be eaten with just a generous seasoning of salt and pepper and plenty of brown bread and butter.

Even so, I remember a few still desperately trying to crawl up out of the saucepan till mother beat them back down with a wooden spoon.

It is many years since I last saw elvers for sale in any of the wet fish shops in Gloucestershire, as the few that do manage to negotiate the strong currents of the the River Severn during the spring tides are probably exported to far away places to be sold for extortionate amounts of money in high class restaurants.

Funny though, I don't feel terribly sad not to see them again, the nightmares are too vivid.