Monday 1 September 2008

a little space for the ice cream

Ruminants often have a stomach divided into four compartments - at least, it says that on the internet so it must be true. N has discovered that her stomach has at least two. Despite declaring that her belly was full and that she could not eat another mouthful, she looked down, looked back up at us with a conspiratorial smile and said that her stomach had a little space for maybe some ice cream.

I'm sure that there is a patronisingly twee lesson which I could draw here. You probably know the style - put in a slightly wrong verb and a bizarrely creative adjective and hope that it is interpreted as great wisdom rather than a poor command of written English. But no - she has merely learnt early that good things are much easier to fit in than yet another helping of green vegetables. And we're focussing on the fact that ice cream is dairy produce and so full of calcium and, er, all that other great stuff in milk - conveniently ignoring the ingredients on the side of the packet showing that the milk has been skimmed and the sugar has been ladled in with wild abandon.

I wanted to use the phrase 'gay abandon' and resent the fact that, were I to do so, some people would get excited about it for all the wrong reasons.

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