Toblerone

I like chocolate. Not unusual I would have thought, but when I was getting my hair cut the other day I stopped the hairdresser in her tracks when I outlined my weekly consumption. We were having a detailed chat about food and ended up going through exactly what we eat in a typical day:

Her (Laura): nothing at all until about half ten in the morning and then she has a sandwich or, if there is milk in the fridge at work, a bowl of cereal. Later in the day if she still has the sandwich she eats it and otherwise eats nothing (nothing!) until about eight in the evening when her husband cooks her a nice dinner.

Me: at about eight in the morning, I have cereal (two weetabix)and tea, at eleven, toast(two pieces, real butter) and tea, lunch is usually what is left over from yesterdays dinner(pasta/curry) and mid afternoon brings more tea and a bar of chocolate. Dinner is for me too at about eight and cooked by my husband.

Laura lowered the scissors and looked at me in the mirror.

“You eat all that? Every day?”

I nod. Every day.

“A whole bar of chocolate?”

Yup, sometimes a large bar, (caramel/golden crisp) now that they are on special offer in Superquin. (Two for two fifty).  Apparently some people can eat just a few squares and then put the bar away for another time. And some people, Laura being one of them are just “not that into” chocolate. The mind boggles.

One of my little boys is sort of a chocolate Scrooge. As I write there are four triangles of Toblerone in a kitchen cupboard. They are the remains of a whole bar he was given in January (it’s the 30th of April today). Two whole uncracked Easter eggs are in his egg hunt bag, gathered in the garden almost a fortnight ago on Easter Sunday. (I’m surprised he has them actually. For the first ten minutes of the scrabble for eggs he let his brothers get the lions share as he wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t Lindt. He walked past Nestle and Cadburys with his nose in the air!) So my burning issue of the moment is, how long do I leave the Toblerone before its ok for me to eat it? Forever? That’s what his dad thinks. Three months, that’s what I think. I know it is literally taking candy from a baby but I could still live with myself. What I really want to do is wait for a weekday and when I reach that post-school run pre- homework afternoon slump, make a cup of tea and sneak out to a sunny spot in the garden with the purloined chocolate, tea, a cushion and my book (Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow, gripping in a totally un housewifely way). Or even better, if it’s Wednesday, Grazia magazine. That’s it; I’m giving him until Wednesday. If it’s still in its golden box in the cupboard by then, its mine.