So here's the scene: it's about five o'clock in Sainsbury's, and I'm by the fresh bread/patisserie shelves. A woman is beside me with her little boy; he must be about five or six. He's just run up to her holding a modest plastic carton of mini chocolate muffins.
Boy: Mummy, I want these. I like these ones.
Woman: No, not those.
Boy: But Mummy, I want these ones now!
[Woman ignores him]
Boy: Pleasemummypleasemummyplease!
[Boy starts jumping up and down, grizzling]
Woman: Come on, we'll have these instead.
And she leads him over to the other side of the cake area, and chooses absolutely huge muffins, slick with oil. A big pack. Cakes the size of your fist. Cakes that say, eat me and you'll eat nothing else all day, oversized in the same way that big spiders and moths are scary because somehow, their large size is just plain wrong.
And I blinked, twice, and carried on squeezing the bread.
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