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Sugar and Spice...

...and all things nice!

Having been asked what she might like to eat by her mother, or perhaps au pair, she paused and studied the chiller cabinet, and requested a cheese toastie.  No, she was to have something sweet.  Why, I wondered, could she not be allowed to elect a savoury option.  A flapjack was produced.  A poor substitute for the toasted cheese sandwich she might already have got a taste for, as you sometimes do, simply on thinking about what you are about to eat.

The flapjack was, maybe predictably, shared. 

This was not, I realised, about entertaining a choice, but about enabling the older member of the party get what she wanted in that moment.

I wonder whether gender played any significance in this moment that was (I feel sure) unlikely to have produced any further thought, and consequently what else might have been ingested by the little one together with her flapjack.


Gender is between your ears, not your legs.  Chastity Bono

As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.  Patti Smith

 I love to be individual, to step beyond gender.  Annie Lennox







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