I suppose it comes to all parents. The scrap at the dining room table. Except ours was at the kitchen table.

Mealtimes are usually same old same old: Little Madam is pushing the occasional forkful of food into her face in between expounding massively on some subject or other. No-one else can get a word in edgeways. Meanwhile feeding Little Nutter is kind of like that old black & white film of some poor bloke shovelling coal into the Flying Scotsman whilst it breaks the speed record on the London-Edinburgh line. And Darling Wifey has to somehow manage to eat with Tiny Flirt on her knee, because there is no way that boy will allow any social activity to take place without him…

Today, though, whilst Little Madam’s favourite was being served up for lunch, she announced, “I don’t like lasagne any more.” Let’s skip the rest of lunchtime, and just summarise: by dinnertime, she was utterly ravenous.

For dinner, the rest of us had a kind of home-made French sausage casserole (cassoulet, apparently, but that sounds a bit fancy to me. Sossy Stew.) Little Madam was licking her lips, and was outraged when her untouched plate of lasagne was put in front of her.

Those of you who know Darling Wifey well will no doubt know what inevitably followed. Little Madam decided that she must put Daddy in his place, because such insolence was not to be tolerated.

“Just what do you think you are doing? How dare you give me this? I am very cross, and if I don’t get my casserole right now, you will regret it!”

The irony? She was saying all this whilst wearing a sequinned pink gown and tiara, weilding a wand covered in tinsel.