Family Fortunes: My mortifying Flora Buttery tub lunchbox

When I was five, I felt my parents’ decision to put my school lunch in a Flora tub was a terrible injustice


In retrospect, I agree with my parents’ decision to persistently ignore their children’s demands for novelty lunchboxes and other such impractical things. However, as a five-year-old girl I felt this was a terrible injustice.

My two brothers and I were notorious for losing our prized belongings; the more highly we valued an item, the more likely it was to disappear. It must have been for this reason that the giant Flora Buttery tub that I was made to use as a lunchbox and was desperate to lose simply could not be lost.

Each day I would arrive at school and place my Flora tub in its assigned cubby between Stephen’s and Amy’s. Stephen had a futuristic, transparent, green lunchbox with compartments and a matching water bottle that clipped neatly on to the side. Amy had one of those briefcase-style ones with a top handle; it was bright red and blue and had the maniacally smiling faces of Ant and Dec exploding through the abstract, mid-1990s designs on each side.

Both were enviable boxes and were representative of the standard of lunch containers owned by my classmates.

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Quite apart from the fact that the plastic tub was pretty flimsy and that there was nothing cool about Flora to a bunch of five-year-olds, the very idea that a vast quantity of faux-butter once occupied the container was off-putting. I was convinced that my lunch was somehow contaminated by the tub’s original contents.

One lunchtime I went to retrieve my Flora tub as usual, the silently mocking faces of Ant and Dec leering up at me and my inferior lunchbox from the neighbouring cubby. I returned to my table to sit with my little friends. My tub was feeling heavier than normal. When I opened the lid to inspect its contents with the kind of anticipation that only accompanies the promise of food, I was horror-stricken. There was no sandwich. No apple. No Capri-Sun. No Club Milk. Just masses of pasty, pale-yellow, pretend-butter staring blankly back at me. Disappointment. Disbelief. Embarrassment. Hunger.

And the following week, a brand new, real lunchbox.

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