Blog: A healthy time at Fat Donald's (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Blog: A healthy time at Fat Donald's

4:22pm Thursday 7th March 2013 in Opinion By Ellis Butcher, Reporter

YOU think you know it all, then you have children. It’s how gaps in your general knowledge are exposed.

The five-year-old is getting too clever. “Why is milk white when cows eat grass?”

I think for a moment: “Calcium!” Her: “Cowcium? Cow-cium?” Me: “No, calcium. CAL-CI-UM.”

After five minutes, we agree that maybe it’s enough talking about calcium for now.

Walking away from a sweetie shop, she can’t comprehend why the sweetie man sells them and gives them all away.

Me: “Well, they’re not really his, see. He buys them off someone.”

I have a go at trying to simplify the micro-transactions that take place between wholesaler and retailer.

She thinks the fruit and veg off the market is grown in the trader’s garden.

It must be a ruddy good one, we buy coconuts off him. Looking at the road and trees, she says: “Some people think God made all of this. What do you think?” I think at the end of a working week, theology for five-year-olds is just what I want and need. Then she complained: “Daddy. My shadow keeps following me. I don’t like it.”

The two-year-old has got a horrible surprise coming too. She’s convinced the mini-break is at “Santa Parks.” I hope Center Parks can handle toddler meltdowns.

The other day on the road, she heard a wailing siren and angrily exclaimed from her buggy: “What’s dat?!!!”

“It’s okay, it’s an ambulance,” I said. She looked, thought for a bit, then tutted: “Noisy AMBIENCE! Made. Me. Dump!”

I hope she meant jump. But we are on potty training and pronunciation.

At lunchtime, she smeared her entire face and head with spaghetti hoops. Her reasoning: “Make hair? Like Farmer Miss Muss?” As I recall, Father Christmas doesn’t have tomato-based pasta in his hair.

As a special treat, the childminder took her to McDonald’s for the first time.

Returning home afterwards, she shoves open the lounge door and proclaims: “My been Fat Donald’s!”

All those millions spent putting salads on its menus - undone in a sentence.