My Secret Stash

First of all - hypocrite warning! As David Brent would say, in his brilliant creation The Office.

In a bid to keep my children healthy, I encouraged them to eat healthily. Plenty of fruit, vegetables, not too much meat and not too much white bread. Sweets, chocolate and crisps were to be regarded as very much a treat. Well, this plan worked reasonably well - until they went to school and started going to other people's houses and trading their lunchbox food for Twix, Mars Bars and Crunchies. Well, I content myself with the thought that at least I tried.

Now, almost three decades later, I would say that they are all fantastically healthy eaters, so much more so than me. And even when I was being a good mother and refusing to allow them too many sweets, chocolate and crisps, the shocking, chilling truth is that I had a secret stash of what I was denying them. Yes - sweets, chocolate and crisps, all kept in a shoe box stuffed in my wardrobe. The contents of that shoebox were hardcore. Sherbert lemons, fruit sherbets, Bounties, Mars Bars. thick bars of Cadbury's chocolate, milk, fruit and nut, whole nut, Thornton's toffee, Thornton's fudge and, the legendary Mint Aero. What a box of sheer decadence that was!

With my children, I would lecture them, show them pictures of decayed teeth, to put them off wanting sweets. It had no effect on them. It's like showing teenage smokers lungs which have been severely damaged by cigarettes. No connection between what they were doing and the consequences of that act.

I was discovered. I am teased about it even now. I was found out one night when they were all asleep; or at least I thought they were. I fetched my box and brought it downstairs. Coronation Street was on and I was going to have some chocolate and coke - diet of course. Suddenly, my eldest appeared at the door of the living-room and yelled, 'Caught you!' He had. Red-handed.

As a way of dealing with this gross hypocrisy, I liked to assume that I was not alone in this. That said, I must once again return to David Brent. Assume - makes an ass of u and me. What a wise man he is!