Mouldy Old Dough

Jack, with typical teenage tastes, refuses to eat anything past its sell-by-date. My Grandad, on the other hand, would greedily grab as much as his 88-year old arms could carry from the mass of out-of-date produce available on the rogue stalls at the local market each week. Most of it would end up in food parcels doled out to me and any other relatives who, in his opinion, needed feeding up and/or helping out ( I suspect it was just me).

I always took them with graciousness, knowing how much it pleased him to be of practical assistance, but secretly ditching most of it the minute I arrived home or at best, a few days later. He could have spent the money more usefully on himself, but in all likelihood, that would only have been down the bookies.

I'd love to go back to those weekends, going round for a lunch that Grandad had cooked, wondering what we'd be served and hoping that our ironstone-bred stomachs would cope with it ( he'd been an army cook and old habits had stayed with him). I never suffered any ill effects, on the contrary, those were some of the loveliest lunches I have ever experienced, although not on a gastronomic level.

I'd also appreciate the goodie bags much more these days, not financially, but out of the sheer pleasure that Grandad had experienced from bagging a bargain and wanting to pass it on to me. There was nothing wrong with the stuff he bought. I'd probably even eat the tinned peaches nowadays.

Jack will come to understand this as he grows older.

This simple truth gives me immense hope.

Sell-by-dates might be a device for the supermarkets to limit their liability and increase their profits, but they are generally ignored by the older, wiser and more discerning clientele once they have the produce in their kitchens. Those same older, wiser and more discerning clients are the only thing that provide any prospect for blown, gone-to-seed, crows-footed, droopy-boobed still-sitting-on-the-shelf women past 30 of ever having sex again.