There is not a single sentence in the English language which irritates me more than the one in the title of this post. Three simple words regularly make me want to scream in frustration.
As some of you will know, I have a severe nut allergy and it is quite possible that a microscopic piece of food will one day kill me. So far, I have been lucky. I have had a few scares and one memorable overnight stay in hospital attached to a drip but I am still here to tell the tale.
Part of the reason for this is that I am very, very careful. I tend to cook a lot of my food from scratch and will carefully read the ingredient list for anything pre-made before buying it or putting it anywhere near my mouth. I am also fortunate that I have some kind of hyper-awareness built into my body that tells me when something is not quite right. I can smell a Snickers bar at 50 paces and have been known to get a very itchy throat when someone is eating nuts in the vicinity. I once had to use someone else's desk at work when my PC wasn't working - within half an hour I was itching all over as the usual owner of the desk had been eating nuts the day before and the residue must have still been on their keyboard.
It's peanuts and cashew nuts that are the fatal ones for me. Weirdly, neither are actually nuts - one is a seed and one is a pea! Other nuts will make me itch and vomit but just the smallest piece of the two biggies will make my body and airway swell, restricting my oxygen intake and eventually sending me into anapylactic shock.
Anaphylaxis is not a fun thing. I have luckily never progressed fully to that stage, although the last scare was very close and it was only my close proximity to the hospital at the time that prevented it from developing. I fully intend that I will never get to that stage. This however is much harder than you would think.
All of my life, I have had to contend with the people who are convinced that I merely 'don't like' nuts. Even a family member was adamant that I was just being fussy!
Part of the problem is that the word 'allergy' is often confused with 'intolerance'. A food intolerance can result in migraines, bloatedness, sluggishness and stomach problems. It does not lead to death.
Allergies can also be much less serious, for instance a pet hair allergy will usually make someone very uncomfortable but will rarely kill them. Nobody will bat an eyelid if someone says they are allergic to wasp stings or chlorine but for some reason, any food related allergies are written off as insignificant. I sometimes get the impression that people think that I am joking when I say "it will kill me".
To be fair, most people who have known me for a while or who have had personal experience with severe allergies are usually very sympathetic. They know not to put out bowls of nuts at parties (there are few things worse than being ravenous and not being able to eat anything at a buffet due to cross-contamination), not to eat nuts before coming to visit and to take me seriously if my super-sense kicks in. They also know to save the boxes for any pre-made food that I am unfamiliar with so that I can check the ingredients. If I am not sure, I don't eat it. Better safe than sorry.
That brings me back to that dreaded sentence. Think about the phrasing. The word 'may' is key. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told "you can't have this - it may contain nuts". It may contain cat hair and half a dead mouse too but they don't put that on the flipping box.
It has got to the point where I don't declare my allergy if I go out for a meal as I will more often than not be told that the vast majority of the menu is off limits. This omission may sound stupid considering how careful I usually am but having a whole food group banned from my diet is hard enough without being told that the pre-made sauce for the salmon may contain nuts and the chef is scared of getting sued so won't serve it to me.
There is a big difference between the sentence 'may contain nuts' and 'contains nuts'. Both are found on packaging. 'Contains nuts' is a clear indication that the food will make me very ill, even if it doesn't kill me. 'May contain nuts' is an advisory note, nothing more. My general rule is that if there are no nuts listed in the ingredients then the odds of the food containing nuts are similar to the odds of it containing the aforementioned dead mouse.
I love my food and get very ratty when I am not allowed to make an informed choice. In my opinion, if a basic strawberry yoghurt 'may contain nuts' then someone needs to start cleaning the equipment more thoroughly. My world would be a much simpler place if the phrase 'may contain nuts' was removed from it.
Thursday 8 September 2011
Tuesday 6 September 2011
Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled...
It was back to school this morning for DD. She is in Year 4 this year and is starting to look really grown up. Worryingly tall as well! We had the usual problems that accompany a school morning - DD needing to be crowbarred out of bed; spending more time staring into space with the spoon halfway to her mouth than eating her breakfast; and reading 'The Railway Children' rather than putting some clothes on but we did make it eventually.
Watching her walk into the playground in search of her friends, I started to reminisce about my own days at primary school. I was very lucky in that I attended an excellent school and I have some very fond memories.
It was a very small school in terms of both the building itself and the number of children it could hold. There were only five classrooms and 140 children, so of course everybody knew everybody else. As the school was not big enough to be split into Infants and Juniors, there were often a number of children from the same family together in assembly, at lunch and at playtime.
It was a Church of England school, connected by a small wooden bridge over the beck to the parish church where my parents were married and my sisters and I were baptised and although the area it was in was very much part of the main town by then, many people (including my Grandparents) still referred to it as 'The Village'. The parish priest came into assembly every Tuesday morning and the curate of the time was fed to the wolves in Friday assembly. Out of the four curates who were posted with the church whilst I was at the school, some did markedly better than others when it came to dealing with the children. Being asked to draw a picture of God by one of my sisters can't have been the easiest task in the world!
I was at primary school a fair few years ago and in those days there was much less interference from the government in terms of a hard and fast curriculum and targets. My year didn't do SATs until Year 9 and the closest we got to any kind of testing at primary school was the mental arithmetic each morning and the famous times table test in Class 5. I'm sure that my teachers did have certain things they had to teach us at certain times but it all seemed to be very ad hoc and due to this it was incredibly enjoyable. DD has had a set timetable for her lessons since Year 1 and has had homework since Reception class. There seems to be a lot to cram in to a week at school these days and although I am sure that focus groups and OFSTED are ecstatic about it, it doesn't seem to be that much fun for the children.
I am probably remembering through rose-tinted glasses but things were much less structured back then. If we were doing maths (Scottish Maths books - remember them?) before lunch and we were all getting on ok, we were allowed to continue after lunch. We didn't have to drop things and move onto something else.
Time on the (now ancient but at the time very state of the art) BBC computers was given as a reward and an incentive. PE would make the HSE these days cry - clambering around untethered on rickety metal apparatus or playing shinty were my particular favourites.
Creative writing was very much encouraged and if we were on a roll we could continue until the piece was finished. I despair when reading DDs exercise books as it is obvious she has not been allowed time to finish stories properly and has rushed the ending. Think Stephen King and you get the picture.
Our headteacher was allowed to teach, rather than being cloistered in his office completing paperwork. Our deputy head was also the class 5 teacher. Mums would come into school and help us with our reading and the dinner ladies were for the most part related to at least one child eating.
We had proper assemblies every morning and we sang hymns and various other songs every day. I was surprised recently to hear Johnny Cash singing "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and it occurred to me that it probably wasn't a hymn after all! There are some songs that instantly take me back to school and one of them popped into my head this morning to inspire the title of this post.
Alumni of Cockerton Primary - all together now:
"So I musn't forget, no I mustn't forget, to say a great big thank you, I musn't forget".
Watching her walk into the playground in search of her friends, I started to reminisce about my own days at primary school. I was very lucky in that I attended an excellent school and I have some very fond memories.
It was a very small school in terms of both the building itself and the number of children it could hold. There were only five classrooms and 140 children, so of course everybody knew everybody else. As the school was not big enough to be split into Infants and Juniors, there were often a number of children from the same family together in assembly, at lunch and at playtime.
It was a Church of England school, connected by a small wooden bridge over the beck to the parish church where my parents were married and my sisters and I were baptised and although the area it was in was very much part of the main town by then, many people (including my Grandparents) still referred to it as 'The Village'. The parish priest came into assembly every Tuesday morning and the curate of the time was fed to the wolves in Friday assembly. Out of the four curates who were posted with the church whilst I was at the school, some did markedly better than others when it came to dealing with the children. Being asked to draw a picture of God by one of my sisters can't have been the easiest task in the world!
I was at primary school a fair few years ago and in those days there was much less interference from the government in terms of a hard and fast curriculum and targets. My year didn't do SATs until Year 9 and the closest we got to any kind of testing at primary school was the mental arithmetic each morning and the famous times table test in Class 5. I'm sure that my teachers did have certain things they had to teach us at certain times but it all seemed to be very ad hoc and due to this it was incredibly enjoyable. DD has had a set timetable for her lessons since Year 1 and has had homework since Reception class. There seems to be a lot to cram in to a week at school these days and although I am sure that focus groups and OFSTED are ecstatic about it, it doesn't seem to be that much fun for the children.
I am probably remembering through rose-tinted glasses but things were much less structured back then. If we were doing maths (Scottish Maths books - remember them?) before lunch and we were all getting on ok, we were allowed to continue after lunch. We didn't have to drop things and move onto something else.
Time on the (now ancient but at the time very state of the art) BBC computers was given as a reward and an incentive. PE would make the HSE these days cry - clambering around untethered on rickety metal apparatus or playing shinty were my particular favourites.
Creative writing was very much encouraged and if we were on a roll we could continue until the piece was finished. I despair when reading DDs exercise books as it is obvious she has not been allowed time to finish stories properly and has rushed the ending. Think Stephen King and you get the picture.
Our headteacher was allowed to teach, rather than being cloistered in his office completing paperwork. Our deputy head was also the class 5 teacher. Mums would come into school and help us with our reading and the dinner ladies were for the most part related to at least one child eating.
We had proper assemblies every morning and we sang hymns and various other songs every day. I was surprised recently to hear Johnny Cash singing "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and it occurred to me that it probably wasn't a hymn after all! There are some songs that instantly take me back to school and one of them popped into my head this morning to inspire the title of this post.
Alumni of Cockerton Primary - all together now:
"So I musn't forget, no I mustn't forget, to say a great big thank you, I musn't forget".
Monday 5 September 2011
Stresshead? Moi?
I can't believe it's been almost a month to the day since I wrote my last post. It honestly doesn't feel that long and I'm quite annoyed with myself for letting it go that far. The blame lies totally with OH for coming home and distracting me!
OH is back at HMS Sultan now and the kids and I are starting to settle back into our routine. One thing I am finding harder this time is not being able to do a countdown as we don't know for definite when OH will be back again. All being well he will be allowed weekend leave from next week but actually coming home is very much dependent on funds being available from our household budget for his travel as the Navy don't do travel warrants any more.
He will be getting a monthly travel allowance but this obviously has to be declared for Housing Benefit and Tax Credit purposes so chances are we will end up with exactly the same amount of spare money at the end of it all - nothing.
Train fare is obscenely expensive so OH will be hoping to car share with other people who happen to be driving up this way, hence us not knowing for sure when this will be. All being well, we should be in a position by next summer to get him his own car which will make life an awful lot easier and enable me to actually plan things.
I'm a bit of a control freak and feel very uneasy when I can't plan ahead. I like knowing exactly what I am doing and when and I don't do spontaneity very easily. This drives people around me slightly insane. For instance, I am struggling at the moment with our budget as OH has been paid different amounts each month so far and I have the nagging feeling that something is a bit wrong somewhere.
I have our budget on a very pretty Excel spreadsheet with fields that change automatically when different values are entered (this may sound very basic to most people but I'm not great with Excel and am still massively proud of being able to create this) but I have given up using it for the time being and have gone back to basics with a tally on an envelope in the kitchen drawer.
I'm not very good at putting nagging worries to the back of my mind and forgetting them. I tend to prod away at small niggles until they have opened up into great big festering, screaming traumas. When DD was little she was obsessed with the Mr Men and I felt a kindred spirit in Mr Worry - when the wizard took away his worries he worried about not having anything to worry about! My inability to chill out has driven people barmy for many a year and although this is a personality fault I am well aware of, I really am incapable of changing at this stage of my life.
OH is very laid back and I feel that we compliment each other well. I kick him into action every so often and he calms me down and talks me off the proverbial ledge on a much more frequent basis. The difficulty is times like this when he isn't here and I am sometimes in danger of losing the plot completely.
At times like that the only real solution is to eat cheese, watch some wrestling and try and remember where I put my marbles. Think I may go and do that now.
OH is back at HMS Sultan now and the kids and I are starting to settle back into our routine. One thing I am finding harder this time is not being able to do a countdown as we don't know for definite when OH will be back again. All being well he will be allowed weekend leave from next week but actually coming home is very much dependent on funds being available from our household budget for his travel as the Navy don't do travel warrants any more.
He will be getting a monthly travel allowance but this obviously has to be declared for Housing Benefit and Tax Credit purposes so chances are we will end up with exactly the same amount of spare money at the end of it all - nothing.
Train fare is obscenely expensive so OH will be hoping to car share with other people who happen to be driving up this way, hence us not knowing for sure when this will be. All being well, we should be in a position by next summer to get him his own car which will make life an awful lot easier and enable me to actually plan things.
I'm a bit of a control freak and feel very uneasy when I can't plan ahead. I like knowing exactly what I am doing and when and I don't do spontaneity very easily. This drives people around me slightly insane. For instance, I am struggling at the moment with our budget as OH has been paid different amounts each month so far and I have the nagging feeling that something is a bit wrong somewhere.
I have our budget on a very pretty Excel spreadsheet with fields that change automatically when different values are entered (this may sound very basic to most people but I'm not great with Excel and am still massively proud of being able to create this) but I have given up using it for the time being and have gone back to basics with a tally on an envelope in the kitchen drawer.
I'm not very good at putting nagging worries to the back of my mind and forgetting them. I tend to prod away at small niggles until they have opened up into great big festering, screaming traumas. When DD was little she was obsessed with the Mr Men and I felt a kindred spirit in Mr Worry - when the wizard took away his worries he worried about not having anything to worry about! My inability to chill out has driven people barmy for many a year and although this is a personality fault I am well aware of, I really am incapable of changing at this stage of my life.
OH is very laid back and I feel that we compliment each other well. I kick him into action every so often and he calms me down and talks me off the proverbial ledge on a much more frequent basis. The difficulty is times like this when he isn't here and I am sometimes in danger of losing the plot completely.
At times like that the only real solution is to eat cheese, watch some wrestling and try and remember where I put my marbles. Think I may go and do that now.
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