Being a nutritional role model for your kids is tough when you're a greedy guts with all the self-restraint of a hungry lioness with her head stuffed into the carcass of a recently downed zebra. I was thinking about this recently as I was hiding my stash. As ever, it was the hard stuff: a bag of sherbet lemons, bars of M&S Swiss milk chocolate and a packet of Mr Porky scratchings. The hiding place is the corner of the top shelf of our walk-in food cupboard. For years it has been the perfect place to hide my filth. I was the only one who could see what was there.
And then I realised: no more. My 14-year-old son is almost my height, and apparently gifted with the wisdom of the ancients. He now knows and sees EVERYTHING. This was confirmed a little while later when he barged in on my wife and me in the living room, as we hurriedly tried to hide the tattered evidence of the chocolate we had just devoured in front of the telly. He didn't even look at us. "I know you've had chocolate," he said. "I know where you keep it." He might as well have announced that he had located something boasting three speeds and made of washable latex under the marital bed.
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