Croissant, Chips, Cake covered in Custard

Today people were talking about school lunches.

Do you remember those days?



In junior school (ages 7-11ish), I was extremely proud of my My Little Pony Lunchbox. I think I remember having things like sandwiches wrapped in kitchen roll, crisps, a chocolate bar, a small yogurt, a small orange.
That's reasonably healthy for a long-legged mentalist of a child, i think?



Although, I vividly remember being mortified that my sandwiches were wrapped in kitchen roll and not cling film or kitchen foil - those things were fun, you can make shapes with them! Kitchen roll ends up soggy and a bit manky.
Looking back now, my lovely mum probably put a lot of effort into those making sure we were well fed and that the sandwiches were wrapped up neatly.
If only that was my biggest worry now - I'd have sandwiches covered in kitchen roll every day!

Then in senior school (ages 11-16ish) I remember starting off with the above then I had to go to school lunches, which consisted of £1.20 to spend on what i wanted! Yay! Well I'm 12, I'm not being funny, what do I know about nutrition?
A new bakery opened up on my route that took me to school and if you got there for 0825 on the dot, they would be taking freshly baked goodies out of the oven! And that is why i love croissants, freshly baked out of the oven, warm and still slightly gooey pastry goodness.
Then at lunch, I know that chips taste nice, okay so start with chips covered in vinegar, salt and ketchup - and they're only 60p!
(by the way I am slightly concerned about the fact that i can actually remember the prices for my school dinners from over ten years! Haha I'm not becoming senile!)
And then I've still got 35p left over, and that would go to one of three options:
1) A sweet roll (with pink icing on top) covered in custard (and the thick gooey proper school dinners style custard that, if you dropped it on your clothes your mum would have to scrub off because it cemented in!)
2) Millionaire's Shortbread, strawberry style - this consists of a layer of shortbread, covered in soft toffee (or strawberry!) sauce cooled down and then covered in chocolate
3) Or, on the way home, buy something from the local supermarket/sweet shop

And five years later, put on five stone.

(I remember once, later on, when I'd realised that I was different, when I was fatter than everyone else, I bought a salad roll. Hmmmm. That is why I do not like Iceberg lettuce to this day. I ditched the salad and ate the buttered roll whilst some girl commented on why i should actually eat the salad.)

The point of this stroll down memory lane is that when discussing this today, someone commented on those people - the ones that ate the chips and the custard, the ones that didn't fit in because they were fat - and called them 'little fat b**t**ds. And then everyone joined in in the laughter.

And half way through joining in with the laughter, I then realised that I was one of those kids.
And stopped laughing because, I didn't even know before then.
And everyone else just looked a bit awkward, because well I'm still the fat one in the group by quite a while.

I was angry and sad, but I didn't really know what to say.

I guess at least now I make a point of making different and exciting packed lunches (not wrapped in paper kitchen roll, might i add!) and making changes and I know that, mostly, I make healthy choices that help me in the afternoon so I don't get a slump. I've changed, I'm re-learning old patterns of behaviour that existed more than ten years ago.

So I'm making Progress.

I'm a Work-In-Progress.

And these things take time.