FEED THEM AND WEEP

Hunger, food, food and hunger. Quite straightforward really, or so you would think. Not here it isn’t - this house is alive with eating issues:

• Bobby refuses to eat most things, and currently survives on Heinz Tomato Soup and chocolate spread sandwiches.
• The Father of the Children is dieting for the first time in his life. He’s developed what we’re calling ‘a bit of a belly’ (a massive understatement for the sake of marital harmony). Having spent most of my adult life keen to lose weight, it makes me snort with rage to have him sloughing pounds, just by cutting out the odd Guinness and cooked breakfast.
• Flo and Max are demanding ‘different food’: they’re bored of the usual fare. Max wishes we could have ‘things like chicken chow mein,’ and ‘proper cooked meals’. What does he imagine I’ve been doing for the past ten years? I resist the urge to storm out of the front door forever.
• Bertie the cat, whose feeding requirements rival those of a prima ballerina with first night nerves, like Bobby rejects most things that are put in front of him.
• I, on the other hand, will shortly have to start wearing a Hannibal Lector-style mask to prevent any more hoovering up of leftovers. I cannot bear the waste, although I do draw the line at the Friskies.

All these eating issues need to be addressed. I know that as chief cook it is my job to right what I have clearly got so wrong. First I had to talk to the children about food and waste. Hence the truly scary moment on Wednesday afternoon when I turned into my mother. My mother, circa 1970. I didn’t reach for a beige, silk Jaeger headscarf or anything, it was more that my voice came out of my mouth as her voice. It gave the ‘There are children in Africa’ Lecture, delivered in a high-pitched, preaching voice, with a hysterical edge to it. Knowing, as I do, that this lecture is meaningless, especially to a six year old refusing to eat his fish fingers and peas in the comfort of his kitchen, it still had to be said. A mother’s words, passed down from mothers to their daughters through the generations, in the hope that one day its message will be heeded.

Shamefully, feeling as I do about the eternal cycle of shop, cook, throw in bin or down my hatch, I am brutal in my resolve when it comes to the cat. I refuse to buy expensive cat food which ends up wolfed by any old Tom, Dick or Fluffy who comes through the cat flap on the scavenge. I now bellow at Bertie, when he refuses to empty his dish. Transferring my anger and frustration onto the poor, unsuspecting cat. Flo is horrified, and has probably already called the RSPCA. In my defence I say that I am sorry, but wouldn’t she rather I screamed at Bertie than at her and her brothers? She replies, tears welling in her eyes, that ‘it just makes me so sad Mummy, and it makes Bertie sad too.’

This is all too much; I am the worst of mothers. Out of extreme guilt and to please my daughter. I rushed to the shop and bought a dozen tiny, golden tins of gastronomic luxury ‘for the choosier cat’, in the vain hope that somehow if I sort out the cat’s eating habits and keep him happy, it might in some way turn the tide with the children. I can’t help thinking, though, how marvellous it would be if there were similar diminutive golden tins full of the ideal nourishment for the choosier child. They could call it Fussy Tikes and advertise it as Guarantees to solve your child’s eating problems. I wonder if it would sell?!

Life in the Slow Lane is written by Clare Kent. She has three children - Max is nearly eleven, Flo is nearly eight and Bobby is six and a half - and lives in Wiltshire.

Read Claire's previous diary