Saw this on the way out of swimming lessons earlier...

[SleepWarrior]

The front entrance to the leisure centre has a few tables with school-type chairs which are usually being used by children to do homework while their siblings swim.

Today as we were leaving there was a mum serving up steaming spaghetti and meatballs out of a giant glass dish onto proper dinner plates with proper cutlery laid out around the plates. Her two very embarrassed looking children (about 10/11yo) were talking in those cross hissy whispers through gritted teeth "that's enough mum", and she was all "no, no don't be silly, you need more meatballs. Here." while she dished up with proper pasta serving spoons.

Spaghetti and meatballs at the swimming pool! Made my day! I normally hate the faff and palaver of swimming day, but this is a new day and time for me so now I can look forward to seeing if she's there each Monday, and find out what's for dinner

Yep, pajamas the norm here too. Who wants to get back into a sweaty school uniform? I even bring mine a clean pair of socks!

One of the mums at school who has 6 children does this, but gives each child tupperware with cold pasta and roasted veggies when they get out of the pool.

Very practical if you ask me, as the little ones would be ravenous by the time they got home - avoids them filling up on the mountain of Haribos and crisps she'd be pestered into buying otherwise.

My dh is like this. Any car journey over an hour and he's packed the car like we're going for a month. The first time my son had a soccer game for his school team, I turned to see my husband open up a cooler bag, take out a porcelain cup, a spoon, a tea bag and make himself a cup of tea from a thermos. He pulled out a second porcelain cup and offered it to me. All the other parents were buying coffees from the van.

I don't get why it was so embarrassing.

Because you, me and other posters either wouldn’t notice or if we did we wouldn’t snigger, smirk, stare, judge, start a thread on mumsnet.

Others think it would be embarrassing because their response would be to snigger, Starr etc

🍿👀

In case anyone is interested, she was there! I could smell dinner smells before I turned the corner (and it smelled bloody amazing).

It was a much less elaborate affair though - a chunky soup of somekind but in plastic bowls rather than proper ones, and a sliced baguette. Maybe the all out spaghetti meatball dinner was a special occasion!

Didn't pluck up the courage to say anything but I did do a friendly smile as I walked past.

Wow, not just a one off then!

I’m interested! And I will be very interested in what’s cooking next week!

YES!! I just came back to see if there was an update. So glad she was there with her meal!

I'm looking forward to checking back every Monday evening yes, I have no life of my own

Did she have napkins? Soup spoons?

Didn't see any napkins and honestly didn't notice the spoons as they were in use (last time the table was laid so cutlery was v obvious).

There was a giant metal thermos that I assume the soup came in. Nobody looked embarrassed this week either, they were just tucking in.

Perhaps the kids told her they were happy to eat their dinner there but to dial back on the crockery! It does sound much more practical and less remarkable than last week. I'd do something like that for sure.

You definitely need to ingratiate yourself so you can get the recipe.

Thanks for updating! A regular thing then (albeit without cutlery etc)

Also waiting for next weeks menu.

tip of the hat to that mum! I wonder if she's British.

It might be embarrassing for her kids now but on a serious note, surely teaching kids that there's no real reason not to eat decent food instead of processed crap can't be a bad thing. I would have thought a bit of embarrassment was worth it for good health and habits.

So glad you came back to update!

It might be embarrassing for her kids now but on a serious note, surely teaching kids that there's no real reason not to eat decent food instead of processed crap can't be a bad thing. I would have thought a bit of embarrassment was worth it for good health and habits

Agreed.

Terrible