The Pomegranate Supremecy

We had one of those mornings, the spawn and I, when we rode to school, three-a-breast across the wide pavement - the Three Amigos, The Magnificent Three, The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse - and all the people in their cars and the many-layered pedestrians stared at us like we were insane.

It was the first really cold morning of the season. A lovely autumnal mist, a thick chill in the air, maybe two degrees. Two of Two and I were in our shorts, not a jacket between us. One of Two had a jacket, but was wearing a short skirt and no tights. Not a hat in sight, but a lot of cold ears. And we were all, to a man and child, freezing. But it wasn't because we were insane at all. It was because I was really, really stupid.

Stepped outside this morning, dressed as we were to go to school, realised that rather than just being cold in a generic cold kind of way, it was actually the type of cold that makes your fingers fall off when gripping a bike handlebar, numbs your legs, and seeps chillingly into the fibre of your id. At that point I should have said something like, 'I'll just get the hats!' or 'Another three layers for everyone!' or 'Ok, you win, we'll take the car.' Instead, aware that we were running a bit behind the curve, I said, 'Here, it's a bit chilly. Let's go.' The poor young fools followed blindly and trustingly behind.

By the time we'd arrived at school twenty-five minutes later, One of Two had lost a leg to frostbite, Two of Two had green ear and I had to get the school nurse to amputate my hands. Otherwise everything was fine.

The real issue of the morning, was why we were late in the first place. And it's all to do with the pomegranate.

What is the point of the pomegranate? And how did someone ever open one up and think, 'well that's not going to be a pain in the backside to eat'? The pomegranate, more than any other fruit or vegetable, is designed to have someone else prepare it for you. Which is why One of Two has me.

I don't know what the verb is to describe what it is you do to prepare a pomegranate. There may be another method - in fact, there may even be a particular pomegranate tool in the Lakeland catelogue - but I do it by cutting it in half, then scraping out all those little red things into a bowl. But you can't say, 'Did you scrap the pomegranate yet?' that sounds pretty gross. 'Did you scoop the pomegranate?' doesn't work either. I like the word 'shuck' but it's not at all appropriate. Perhaps an adaptation of the word shuck might work...

The thing about flucking the pomegranate is the amount of juice that sprays out as you're scraping the spoon through the eight or nine million red flesh coated seeds inside. And I did the whole thing wearing a white t-shirt. At the end of the flucking I looked like I'd gone on some wild, chainsawing bloody rampage. And not only did I have to shower, scrub with a wire brush and change, it takes a long time to fluck the pomegranate in the first place.

All the time you're thinking, 'what's wrong with a banana?' But then, in the end, you do anything to try to get your kids to eat a piece of fruit. Even fluck a pomegranate.

And so, finally, when we stepped outside to a misty morning, chilled by a cold front sweeping down from St. Petersburg, I didn't stop to consider the weather, but rode off valiantly into the day, leading my doomed troops to a freezing and bitter end, once more consumed by the endless time crunch of a pre-school morning.