Читать книгу A Spoonful of Sugar - Liz Fraser - Страница 37

After a brisk morning walk up the nearest hill, which all but kills the lot of us, I leave my children playing ‘attack the cute, fluffy rabbits with pieces of dry twig’ in our garden while their dad tries to set up some kind of internet connection so we can check our email – sigh – and toddle off down the road again.

Squeezing through the gap in Granny’s French doors and making my way past the piles of catalogues, binoculars, weed killer and cushions, which fill the sun porch, I finally enter the kitchen and am somewhat alarmed to find her cooking an enormous pot of Scotch broth. This, in itself, would not usually be any cause for concern: she is, after all, a Scot, and broth is the panacea of the pennywise unwell: cheap, warm and highly nutritious.

But when I tell you that she is doing this otherwise entirely sensible activity in a room containing approximately six hundred badly stacked and never quite properly washed pots and pans, at least twenty-five opened herbal tea packets, fifty cereal boxes – some predating the Queen’s coronation – the entire Lakeland catalogue of ‘Handy Kitchen Gadgets’ (none of which appear to be particularly handy as they are almost all still in their packaging and are merely cluttering the work surface, such as is visible), several kilos of bird food, yesterday’s shopping – still in bags – two cat litter trays, a jungle of house plants, not all of which are still alive, a motley collection of sad-looking fruit and nowhere near enough space to swing either of the cats who are helping themselves to some chicken remains on the sideboard, then you will perhaps understand why my eyebrows come to rest at my hairline.

Experience tells me not to even think of asking if I can be of assistance. If there’s one thing my grandmother isn’t, it’s helpless. This Scotch broth will be made, by her, in this environmental health catastrophe, and I will be having some.

She looks up as I enter, her eyes softening at the sight of uncomplicated, friendly company. But then, the frown.

‘Oh – and where are your lovely children?’

That’s me feeling special, then.

‘Getting to know the local wildlife a bit better, Granny. Best left to it, I think.’

She gives the bubbling liquid a final, vigorous stir, just to make sure there’s nothing either alive or with any nutritional value whatsoever left in there as seems to be the custom with ladies of a certain age, and picks up a ladle.

‘Well that’s a shame. Still, you’ll be having a plate of soup, will you?’

It seems wholly appropriate, as we spoon the thick, surprisingly delicious liquid into our grateful mouths a few minutes later, that our conversation should turn to the nutrition of our children. It’s a subject that spills into our newspapers almost daily, and, like the waistlines of our little darlings, shows no sign whatsoever of decreasing. It has come to obsess the nation, fill more column inches than Jordan’s chest, and bring to their knees a good number of parents who are simply trying to feed their family, but haven’t got a clue what’s OK to eat and what’s not any more.

Before we even start, some facts and, erm, figures.