Comfort and Joy by India Knight

they do after school,
     or how early they learn to ride their bike without stabilizers, or how they have dried fruit for treats because it has been
     decreed that chocolate shall never pass their lips. How it bores me to the point of actual despair. It makes me want to tear
     off my ears and throw
them on the floor in disgust so that I don’t have to hear. These children – mine, Sophie and Tim’s – will always be fine.
     They are lucky, loved, wanted, privileged children. The end. Everything else is bourgeois hysteria.
    Sophie is still droning on about the pink girly stuff, as if it were the end of the world rather than mildly irritating.
    ‘Have some more,’ I say quickly, largely to stop myself saying ‘Oh, do stop talking.’ I also kick Hope lightly under the table
     and raise my eyebrows at her. She takes her cue immediately and starts asking Tim what he does (something to do with futures,
     apparently. Good luck to her, with that). ‘And have some raita.’
    ‘Did you make the yogurt?’ asks Sophie.
    ‘No. But I did grate the cucumber.’
    ‘We make our own yogurt,’ says Tim, quite slurrily, from across the table. ‘Well, Soph does.’
    ‘Why?’ says Tamsin.
    ‘Why do I make yogurt? Well, you know – it’s nice to be self-sufficient, even if it’s only yogurt and bread and growing a
     few vegetables,’ Sophie says. ‘It’s empowering. And the children love it. Tim and I are great
gourmets
, you see.’ She pronounces the word with a strong French accent. ‘We really
mind
about what we eat. We mind passionately. And the kids eat everything we do.’
    ‘Yeah,’ says Tim, rather pointlessly. ‘They do.’ He’s quite red, old Timboleeno. He’s drunk.
    ‘That’s great,’ I say, which it is.
    ‘My boys were the same,’ Pat says. ‘They ate everything we did. Chips, mostly.’
    She hoots with laughter, but I can see Sam practically twitching at the direction the conversation has taken. He is, to all
     effects and purposes, middle class these days, and he has no issues with most of the aspects of middle-class existence – niggles,
     yes, but
nothing that really tips him over the edge. Except for this one thing: there is a certain kind of approach to eating that
     sends him absolutely round the bend and that, to him, works as perfect shorthand for everything that is vomit-makingly wanky
     about the social class he now finds himself occupying. Triggers include: people who say ‘leaves’ instead of salad (see also
     ‘fizz’, ‘vino’ and every permutation thereof); people who extol the virtues of X or Y cheese for more than one minute, particularly
     where they say ‘chèvre’ instead of ‘goat’s cheese’ or specify the variety – sourdough, baguette, focaccia – instead of just
     saying ‘have some bread’; people who have ninety-five different kinds of vinegar but never the one that you’d want on your
     chips; people who call chips ‘frites’; people who won’t drink tap water, or – worse – people who will only drink one brand
     of bottled, because they only like the taste of that one; people with ‘allergies’ who are really on diets; people who order
     off-menu in restaurants; and any kind of over-thought-out, over-fussy arrangement on a plate. He can’t stand wine bores, on
     the basis that nobody normal can tell the difference between a £10 and a £20 bottle of wine, ergo they’re just pretending
     to, like the bourgeois ponces they are. His particular bugbear is people who make too much of the fact that their children
     are omnivores.
    Once, in Italy, we were sitting in a restaurant next to an English couple – overconfident, entitled-seeming, red with sunburn,
     foghorn voices booming over everyone else’s conversation – who said to their toddler, ‘Try it, darling, for num-nums. It’s
     called Parmigiano. Par-mee-gee-ah-no. That’s right! Come on, try it. You’ll like it. It’s only a tiny bit stronger than Grana
     Padano, and you loved that,