The Taste of Mitten

Today I have cut eighteen slices of bread and spread them with low fat marg., mashed two cans of hook-and-line tuna with mayo and sweetcorn and formed it all into one gigantic packed lunch.  The lunch also features anything that can easily be slung in a rucksack – hot cross buns (still feel bad about eating them before Easter day), cereal bars (no religious complications here) and apples (suddenly now worrying about Garden of Eden).

This procedure used to be followed most weekends, but is now a rarity – or rather, the scale is a rarity – I still make sandwiches each week day for my enormous teenagers.

Family days out are so uncommon nowadays that we sometimes push the boat out and buy a bowl of soup when we’re there, but today we are going in to pricey London and have already spent our lunch money on exhibition tickets. 

However, this is no weather for picnics.  In my heart of hearts I know that it is so cold today that the only thing that matters about our lunch is that it be suitable for quick consumption.  It doesn’t matter what it tastes like – our taste buds will have frozen long before we finish eating. 

I only hope I don’t accidentally take a bite of my own mitten – tuna, sweetcorn and wool is a combo that I’ve never seen at Pret a Manger, and I think there’s a reason.