THE secret for a well-tossed pancake seems to be in the way you hold your mouth.

That, anyway, is what we take from these pictures from pancake days past – where looking at the facial expression can be even more fun than seeing how high the pancakes are tossed.

One that is particularly cute is where St Bridget’s teaching assistant, Carol McCartny, is tossing a pancake.

The children are laughing and enjoying the show – except for young Liam Cunningham who is convinced it will all go wrong and has his hands out ready to catch the pancake when it falls.

The other photo that both amused and brought back memories was the 1988 Whitehaven pancake race.

The winner, Alan Todd, who worked at the NatWest Bank received the prize of a cassette recorder. That would have been quite a prize in the 1980s and Santa’s sleigh would probably contained several hundred of them for 1980s Christmasses.

The only thing we hope is that Mr Todd was given a ball point pen along with the player so he could twirl loose tape around it and make his cassettes playable again.

In case readers are wondering why all this talk of pancakes, it is because Shrove Tuesday is just around the corner - on February 21.

Shrove is derived from the word Shrive which means going to confession, doing penance and being absolved of your sins.

All this happens on the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and the 40 days of fasting and sacrifice leading up to the most important day in the Christian calendar, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

The reason for the pancakes is that it is traditionally a good way to use up all the stuff in your cupboard that you are not going to be eating during lent.

While we toss pancakes, however, there are places in the world such as Rio De Janeiro and New Orleans where they have Fat Tuesday – Mardi Gras.

Let’s ditch the chef’s hat and bring out the feathers – now that would be a Shrove Tuesday to remember!