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Eat Your Greens
When I was growing up my mother was very relaxed in her methods for raising us. I like to think she had a grand plan that taught self-reliance and stong independant responsibility but it may well have been that being a single working mother made life difficult. Somehow I have it in my head though that I had a good childhood full of more pleasant memories than bad and that I should feel grateful. So I am.
One aspect of my childhood I am not thankful for is the balanced meals.
I *wanted* beans on toast. I didn't want the brocolli or the sprouts. I *wanted* the apple sauce, I didn't care for the boiled potatoes. or steamed carrots. I *wanted* the crinkle-cut chips but didn't couldn't stand the aubergines or courgettes.
One day my mother decided to teach me a lesson. I think I was eight or nine.
"Who's he?" I asked.
"This is David George Brownlow Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, also known as Lord Burghley" replied my mother.
"Is he having dinner with us?"
He looked old and decrepit and like he was held together with glue rather than sinew and bone. I could have pushed a finger through his skin it seemed so papery thin and yellow.
"Is he dead?" I asked.
"No, he's just very quiet. Now look, Lord Burghley here was an Olympic athlete, and a member of Parliament, he won multiple events in the British AAA championships, the Commonwealth Games and sprinting around the Great Court at Trinity College in the time it took the college clock to toll 12 o'clock, inspiring the scene in the film Chariots of Fire."
He looked like the only runs he did these days were into his incontinence pants, and that Vangelis was constantly playing out his life in ultra slow-mo. He appeared to have fallen asleep at the table. My mother put a plate of sprouts in front of him, perhaps not the best idea.
"He has something to tell you about healthy green vegetables and why you should eat them."
She had to prod the old codger a few times before he took notice of the plate, reacting as if he'd just been told to eat raw dog feces. He looked across at me without seeing me, tried to look round at my mother and promptly died at the kitchen table.
Now, you have to realise, my mother was raising my sister and I on very little money. I guess that had we been living in your standard 2.4 children household with working father and perhaps a dog my mother would have arranged for Daley Thompson or Carl Lewis to show up and give me a patronising pep-talk about why greens are important. But as I say, she was doing the best she could.
Jul. 3.2006