Packed lunches

are not something I often need to do now. If I do need to be out and want to take my own then I can usually put something together very quickly. I prefer taking something with me to paying exorbitant prices for something like a sandwich.

I was discussing this with a neighbour yesterday. She was worrying over the upcoming need to provide packed lunches for her two boys. She talked about providing this and that and something else and then the need for a "treat" and wondered if they would eat the fruit she intended to put in. A sandwich? No...that wouldn't do at all. They won't eat sandwiches! She might just give in and let them buy their lunch most days.

I listened to all this and thought back. We don't have "school dinners" here. There are school canteens which provide items that the food police have approved or children take their own to school. When I was a mere kitten I took my lunch to school. When we lived in the city I was allowed to buy a pasty and a bun from the school canteen - once each term.  I suppose there were children who frequently bought their lunch but most of us brought ours. 

Our mothers made us sandwiches with white bread - that being all that was available most of the time.  We had "Vegemite", peanut paste (as we called it then) or perhaps a slice of processed cheese in it. Some children got jam or honey and banana - but that was generally frowned upon (thus making it all the more desirable). Very occasionally we might get some meat scraps - left over from the weekend roast.

With it we would get a biscuit or cake and a piece of fruit. We drank the almost undrinkable water from the taps by scooping it up with our hands as the tap ran. (The city's water supply was so bad that the ships would not take it on.) Some lucky children would bring cordial to school but there were not that many of them.

When we moved back to a remote area there was no canteen at all. The children brought thick sandwiches made from wallaby or kangaroo or mutton. Some of their mothers made the bread. If not it was very stale white bread by the end of each week and everyone looked forward to the weekly delivery from some 70 miles away. (It came packed into tea chests.) There were sometimes slabs of sultana cake if shearing was going on - because the shearers got that for "smoko" breaks. There were biscuits - often shop bought "Bush" biscuits - very large, squarish sort of plain biscuits. Fruit was rare unless there were fruit trees on a property. My siblings and I were stuck with Vegemite sandwiches but we saw more fruit than most children. 

And yes we ate those unattractive lunches without thinking too much about it. We were active. We were hungry. It was much the same for everyone. One piece of waxed paper around our sandwich had to last all week. We had to shake it free of crumbs and fold it. 

I told the neighbour about this. She nodded and said, "I bought my lunch most Fridays I suppose but never in between. I had sandwiches and biscuits and fruit. Mum might fling in some almonds or something like that as an occasional treat. My two don't know they are alive but I just can't be bothered arguing with them over what they want in their lunch boxes. At least now they are in high school they haven't got the teacher checking their lunch boxes."

I suppose that's something. I do wonder what teachers think of what goes into lunch boxes now. It does worry me that notes can be sent home when a child brings something "unsuitable" to school. (One of the children in this street had a piece of his own birthday cake confiscated the following day because it was not something in the school guidelines.)

And I wonder if the children I know would eat Vegemite sandwiches made with stale white bread?