When I was eight, a fairly standard packed lunch for little Nell was a falling apart cheese and brinjal pickle sandwich, a tartan thermos of Um Bongo and a handful of sunflower seeds that one of my parents would simply toss into my lunchbox before slamming it shut. And yet, last night, I watched a pair of perfectly manicured hands carve daisies out of an egg. A hard-boiled egg.
That’s right: a sulphuric, sewer-smelling flower made of unfertilised ovum. Yum. A few minutes later, I gawked at someone trimming a cheese sandwich into the shape of a butterfly before sticking googly eyes on it.
They paired this with an over-engineered kiwifruit and a piece of processed cheese with star-shaped holes punched through the middle. I say the following in a spirit of loving kindness: Instagram has left us all a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Along with the parents of about 9,092,072 other UK pupils, I’m waving my son off to a new school year this week, and lo, my Instagram feed is suddenly stiff with highly curated photoshoots of uniforms, book bags, front doors, school shoes and, of course, lunchboxes.
Whether it’s a “back-to-school” hairstyle for a four-year-old or a monogrammed satchel bouncing down a leafy street, this whole September aesthetic makes me feel woefully like an outsider. As both the daughter and wife of a teacher (different ones – I didn’t actually marry my mother), my aspirations for a good start of term are: that the children are safe, on time, preferab.