Verbatim (from a Berkeley Playground)

‘Are those blueberries organic?’ asked the strange child as he approached me in the playground (I say strange both because he was unknown to me, and also because he looked strange: The kid was so translucently pale he made Jack look tanned. Also the brightly orange hair and the Chris Kardashian self-possessed manner.)

‘Um, yes, they are, actually!’ say I (good to get one right for a change.)

‘Oh good! Cos I only eat organic’ continues the four-year-old, while he helps himself to my blueberries (but as I tell Jack, we are a sharing family.)

‘Yes, we’re vegans’ says a man who from the similarly pale skin and carroty hair I correctly deduce to be his father, approaching me wearing clothes I can only describe charitably as coming from a unisex wardrobe he undoubtedly shares with his wife.

‘Oh, cool! My husband’s a vegetarian, so we often eat vegan things like Bocca Burgers and stuff’ says I.

‘Well’ continues Pale-Haired Dad, looking ever-so-slightly aghast, as if I’d just admitted to a penchant for pureering MacDonald’s to feed to the baby ‘we make everything from scratch, so Quentin (probable name for kid that I just made up) wouldn’t know what that is. He doesn’t know any brand names.’

‘Yup!’ continues Odious Quentin ‘Just the names of real vegetable like broccoli, kale and things!’

Game. Set. Match and possible relocation fees to somewhere less strange like Boise, Idaho to Real Berkeley Family.

(This conversation brought to you, truthfully, by occasional-burger-eating-people whose idea of made from scratch begins and ends with British Pound Cake.)