Retribution was swift.
It took less than five minutes from a viciously casual remark to a teacher friend about to start school tomorrow, “When you go through the gates, I want you to know that there is a retired teacher smiling!” to trapping my little finger’s pad in the pre-swim shower button and producing a momentarily, intensely painful blood blister that my grandmother of unregenerate, pre-woke days, referred to as “a blackman’s pinch”!
I can’t remember the last time that I had one of those, but it must have been in my distant youth, and I did now what I did then, and bit through the skin to allow the blood to escape. So, I sat in the hydraulic chair (my ceremonial and arthrosis-friendly way into the pool) looking like some barely sated vampire.
I judged, almost certainly wrongly, that the various chemicals in the pool (as opposed to the various substances in the pool that necessitate those chemicals) would be beneficial for my small wound and that, in any case, I knew that I had a bottle of TCP at home, so all would be medically well. Eventually.
I was much more worried by the recently discovered chocolate stains on the front of my shorts that I noticed only when I was getting changed. And before minds whirl away on the wings of vile speculation, let me hasten to explain how they got there.
Chocolate is one of the banned substances in my so-called diet, and I find it hard to remember when I last had a ‘real’ piece of that confectionary. Everything is low fat and sugar free, and calorie reduced – and generally flavourless. But a summer without ice cream is unthinkable, and so alternatives to the desired-forbidden have to be found.
There are ice creams that proclaim themselves to be created with “No Added Sugar” and I have learned to be not too scrupulous in discovering exactly what that phrase might mean. What I take it to mean is that the substances so described are ‘allowable’ for me to eat. As with low-fat, sugar-free yogurt, you can enjoy such things as long as you do not, ever, eat the full-fat, sugar-filled, real alternatives.
I still remember a period years ago when I had got used to the anaemic yogurts that were allegedly ‘healthy’ and I called into my parents, where my mother offered me an M&S “rich and creamy” yogurt to try. Which I did, and almost fainted with the sheer pleasure and sensory overload that the deliciousness of “rich and creamy” was. It was only with a supreme effort of will that I managed to stagger back to my home and NOT instantly throw away the cartoned crappiness that I had been suffering to enter my mouth and replace them all with “rich and creamy”. But I resisted, though I never again (ever) ate a ‘healthy’ yogurt with anything less than resentment. And I still do.
Anyway, back to chocolate. It is possible to kid yourself that 80% cocoa content is OK and that there is far less sugar in such things as the acme of real chocolate deliciousness (at least if you are British) of Cadbury Dairy Milk - the chocolate that had (has?) so little cocoa in it that it was deemed by the EU to be a mere ‘confection’ rather than actual chocolate!
But most of the chocolate that we eat is full of sugar, so given my diet, a big no-no – except there is some sort of brown covering which is able to be called chocolate and does not have the vast number of calories that usually accompany taste!
We had discovered (and rejected) a whole range of chocolates (or ‘chocolates’) when we hit upon a whole series of ice creams in mini choc-ice form that seemed to combine the look of the real thing with about 40% of the ‘real’ taste – percentages we could live with! And they were mini size!
This discovery has kept us going through the summer with a taste of a traditional accompaniment to the heat. What went wrong is that I didn’t read the packaging well enough.
Yes, it has the equivocal banner, “No added sugars!” but what I hadn’t noticed was this particular box also had the words “Protein bar!” also inscribed. Added goodness, one might think. That’s as maybe, but what the ‘protein’ bit did was alter the consistency of the ice cream.
Taking them out of the freezer they looked the same, but the differences became apparent when one took a bite. The ‘chocolate’ (or whatever) looked and tasted the same, but the ice cream interior was hard and unyielding. This meant that, when biting into the choc-ice the chocolate shattered and the ice cream interior remained unbroken, producing a welter of instantly melting stain makers and rebuffed teeth.
Toni was all for throwing them away as unfit for purpose, but I was determined to thwart such ice-cream complexity and find a way to consume them.
I have resorted to childhood (yet again) and the way that one sometimes ate Penguin biscuits, by nibbling away at the chocolate covering revealing the biscuit beneath. This is only partially effective because such nibbling can, even with the most cautious canines, produce a catastrophic shedding of the chocolate coating that even the most nubile tongue is unable to deal with. I have therefore resorted to the use of a bowl under my chin to catch any shards that my nibbling produces. Ungainly, but effective.
Luckily there are only a few more mini choc-ices of the protein variety left and I will be able to resort to the normal manner of eating these delights and not have the fear of staining.
If I draw anything from this piece of writing it might be: always be kind to teachers, and always read the packaging.
Valuable life lessons!
