Not that I’m a man to cross my ‘fridges. But I have a complaint.
In the big, promotional foodstuffs push nothing has brighter trappings, more flavours and names exotic enough for the Arabian Nights, than ice cream.
But this is my complaint. The kids get there first.
Children are harder on ice cream than the Kellys were on banks.
This pampered, pack aged product of the decadent West, this icy aberration named after pop groups and space wars, this soft option of democracy—kids are all over it.
The dignified adult, arriving at the ‘fridge, finds only remnants, a hollow container like a sacked city. The space lickers have gone, the two-litre lifeline in rippled raspberry is a gutted wreck and this old gut rumbles with discontent.
Just as there are films, there should be ice cream for Adults Only: The only way we are going to wrap it up for ourselves is to be crafty with the packaging.
This is the age of the eye. What catches it is what gets gourmandised.
We are so visual. So why not start with dinky wrappers containing sums and potted geography lessons, or advice from parents? No kid worth his salt or honey ripple is going into an ice cream parlour to ask for a “geometry special” or a “New Maths Mouth Mauler.”
Why not ice cream buckets with such legends on the outside as “Brussels Sprouts Delight” or “Marrow Leftovers?” Or even a nice picture of the local head-master?
This would give the adults a chance.
One of course could stake out the deep freeze by sleeping on a ground sheet on the kitchen floor, jerking awake at the slightest surreptitious movement.
Guarding your ice cream supply is surely what the Cold War is all about.
There is the medical outlook. Do you want your child to be fat and piggy-eyed like the rest of us?
Has it occurred to you that we are becoming a soft nation, ready to get the thick shakes at the slightest threat?
Bring children up rough on Murray Water jelly. Keep the ice cream for old men who want a gentle recall of long-gone youth.
Spare us a mouthful.
The trouble with our ice cream supplies is that we’ve got brats in the belfry,
The catchcries race through my mind: “Ice cream for oldies”… “Keep It from the kids”… “Bread-and- butter pudding is best”…”Bring back prison hulks.”
There’s nothing I can do, people say.
The kids will get there first. My campaign is well and truly dished.
Which brings me to the sad fact that our ice cream container has been ravished again. Visiting fingerprints fresco its sides. I wept over the small hardened stump of its once-rainbowed contents.
Surely there is something left?
Frozen bread-and- butter pudding? Why not.
Max Fatchen
(Who has never been invited to appear as a guest columnist but who never gives in)