This week I have been mostly on the Tik-Agram.  Or is it Insta-Tok?

Whatever, I’ve been pebbling (check me out, all down with the kids) pebbling my daughter and daughter-in-law with reels and funny memes and that bloke that goes on about the posh ice.

My daughter did suggest I limit the number of pebbles as I was at risk of essentially throwing rocks at them, but I’m all about showing the love, so I ignored her and sent more.

But then, along with the cats sitting on remote control hoovers, and dogs jumping into mud I came across a darker side of the internet.

I’m not talking about porn, or rich people and their ice, I am talking about packed lunches.

Now my kids all had packed lunches. Back in the day, you had a sandwich, a packet of crisps, a Babybell if I remembered to buy them, and a Frube. There’d be a carton of fruit juice and an apple that made the same journey back and forth to school over several weeks, ending its life as a mouldering stain on a bedroom floor. (it’s still there – the stain, not the apple. It won’t come out.)

After school, lunch boxes would be returned to be washed and the kids would help reload for the next day, making sandwiches, fighting over Frube flavours, and complaining about the lack of Babybell.

It seems things have moved on a bit.

The Insta-tok is full of women – and it is exclusively women – getting up a 5 am to make their little ones perfect little lunches.

First is the flex about the kitchen. (did I use ‘flex’ right?) which is obviously Gucci. Then there’s the flex with the lunch bag and matching cup that costs more than a decent pair of shoes.

Then the flex is all about the food prep.

These women are getting up at 5 am to cook fresh steak, and roasted sweetcorn so their little darling has a tasty lunchtime bite. Then there’s the addition of rice and chill sauce, then a seaweed-sesame dukka for extra crunch.

What the skibidi who-ha is going on here?

Tell me you’re not getting up to pack a five-course-tasting menu into your wee ones’ individually sealed lunch boxes.

One woman was clearly a bit ‘extra’. As well as the tandoori-inspired lunch for her little darling she chucked in 20 assorted chocolate bars, dried fruits, jerkies, Lunchables, and a tray of homemade date and peanut butter slices, as well as a pack of Pringles and a little note that said what – enjoy your school trip to the Artic, I will see you in six months?

Tell me, tell me, no one is really doing this.

Tell me women aren’t forgoing sleep to make a kids lunch and that your entire self-worth is not based on providing an outrageous rolling menu of madness.

Another woman on the Tok-Agram was flexing about making her husband’s lunch for him as well!

Excuse me?

As well as getting all the kid’s lunches done, single-handedly, often while you can hear the kids kicking off in the background, this woman is making lunch ‘for her man.’ 

She likes to line everything up by the Front door – his lunch bag, his work bag, his shoes, his coffee and his keys – to make his morning ‘as smooth as possible.’

Hello! First, second, third, and fourth Wave Feminism calling, – You don’t have to identify as a cat-lady to know we were freed from the tyranny of our value being based on serving our menfolk some time ago.

I am shook. Seriously I’m shooketh.

I’ve never made my Misters packed lunch. In nearly 30 years.

Mainly because in our extremely neurodivergent household I’d ‘do it wrong’, but mostly because he is a grown-ass man perfectly capable of making his own snap.

What is going on?

Haven’t women got enough to do already without the ideal being the flex of a humongous freshly cooked BLT ready for your mister before you do the school run?

Have these people never heard of Greggs?

I am back to watching cats knock things off shelves and Olympic level fridge organising.

But I am watching, –

Yes you, you misses. Put the frying pan down and go back to bed.

In sisterhood and solidarity