I look after my grandaughters one halfday weekly – on Friday mornings. Strictly speaking, I dont look after Molly (3) as she goes to Beginners Corner Montessori until 12 when I pick her up and then, I’m off duty at 1pm. This week, Alice (2) and I picked up Molly at 12 as we always do and then as we usually do, we go for a treat to Tadgh Ryan’s shop mostly but this week it was Super Valu as I needed to get fish.

Of course, I met the whole world in the shop and had great old chats with them all and the girls had a wonderful time being admired by everyone. So much so, I discovered we were running really late and Alice should have been down for her nap 35 minutes ago and here we were, still only as far as the cereal shelf in the middle aisle.

So we abandoned the rest of the shopping and I let the girls choose an ice-cream for their treat.. They looked into the fridge and instead of going for their usual, Loop the loop(Molly) and Twister (Alice) were bedazzled by these massive cornettos. To be honest, I couldnt even eat a full one of those. I explained to them that the ice creams were too big, too expensive, and simply too much of everything all round. Of course, this made the cornettos evem more irresistible so they both said please very politely and looked at me beseechingly. I wasn’t in my usual with it form as I had started the morning with a puncture and so to cut a long story short, I thought, oh let them have it, get back and put Alice down for her nap.

Their house is five minutes drive out of town and when we arrived at the gate, Molly announced from the back ‘I’m full, Nana, I can’t eat anymore.’ I’d say if there were four licks taken off the mammoth thing, that was it. Before I could say anything, up pipes Alice ‘I’m full too, Nana. I not like this ice cream, it’s too cold.’ So I give them both a lecture on waste and expense and couldn’t resist throwing in the I told you so comment and for Alice’s information, why ice creams are actually COLD and the reason why the word ICE is in the name. To their credit, they both istened politely while holding the mammoth cornettos, holding now, not eating.

Then Molly says eminently politely and reasonably ‘But Nana, we had to try them ourselves to see if we liked them, but now we know we don’t, we won’t be trying them again.’

What could I say to such logic – I fear that child could well end up a politician or a civil servant.