In a café in Norfolk last week, my seven-year-old son uttered words that mortified me. No, he didn’t comment loudly on someone’s weight, or ask why the lady next to us had a moustache. It was worse than that. Asked by a kindly man at the next table if he was enjoying his bacon sandwich, he declared to the café at large: ‘Yes, but I prefer them with rocket!’
Judging by the gentleman’s slightly blank smile, I’m not sure if he even knew what rocket was, let alone that in the London suburb where I live, it’s now as much a part of breakfast as smashed avocado on toast. Inwardly, though, I cringed — just as Peter Mandelson presumably did when, according to legend, he mistook mushy peas for guacamole in a Hartlepool chippy. I’d been exposed, by my own young son, as a fashionable metropolitan type. I might as well have asked for gluten-free granola, or worn a T-shirt saying ‘Bollocks to Brexit’.
With the summer holidays in full swing, I predict many more scenes like this around the country, if conversations with other parents are anything to go by. One mother recalls one of her offspring, aged around six, announcing she wanted ham only if it was prosciutto. Another child, asked by a neighbour if he’d like a snack, requested dried mangos. My nine-year-old daughter, if treated to a fizzy drink in a café, now insists on Sanpellegrino — aka Fanta for the middle-classes. When I was shopping with her in the Co-op recently, she demanded to know why I was buying sliced bread rather than sourdough. I wandered off to another aisle for a bit, pretending I wasn’t with her.
Tough luck, you might say.
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