Wholesome, homemade lunches not on the menu

Cake pops.

There are times in life when it is the little things that grate the most. As I was driving to work this morning, listening to a radio report about Syrian refugees, I remembered that I forgot to get my lunch from the fridge.

I was devastated. And not about Syria, which is shameful. But nevertheless, my honest and immediate reaction was fairly typical of most living in the first world and in need of lunch.

The closer something is to home, the more we are affected by it. Sadly, I was not quite close enough to home to bother turning around and getting my lunch. Which affected me greatly.

Perhaps it shouldn't have. But to understand my disappointment one must first understand how rare it is that I don't just make lunch for my man, but for myself too. It's not that I don't have the best of intentions. Many is the time I've come back from the supermarket and transferred healthy little portions of champagne ham and shredded chicken to my Tupperware containers, only to leave them there till even Tupperware's magical preservation properties succumb to the inevitable slime and scum that forms around many of the things that make a home in my fridge for far longer than they should.

I'm sure I'm not alone in announcing that making lunch sucks. And unlike mothers the world over, I don't even have to contend with the fussy palettes of children and the PC requirements of the schools they toddle off to with packed lunches in their bags.

The long and the short of it is that I'm just too lazy to be bothered. I feel like I was born without the gene that other women have, that sees them spend long hours in the kitchen making cakes, hearty dinners and interesting packed lunches.

Instead, I go out into the working world each day with a couple of mangy muesli bars at the bottom of my bag and hope for a break long enough to get myself a subway or sushi but often knowing that I won't eat till I get home at dinner time.

By which point, I am far too hungry to wait till dinner time, and fall upon anything even remotely edible and frequently unhealthy, succeeding in ruining my appetite for the wholesome meal my imagination prepared earlier, and eventually having something quick, easy and devoid of inspiration in a last-minute bid to avoid ordering pizza.

The worst thing about my abhorrence of lunch-making is my colleague's delight and expertise in it. Most of us can do without most things as long as we're able to pretend they don't exist, but try going hungry when the person you work with arrives with an apparently bottomless pit of tasty treats and home-made smoothies that don't just taste amazing but are healthy as well.

Today she walked into the studio with a grand total of four receptacles in her arms, all bearing liquids of some description, including water, green tea, the ubiquitous smoothie and some lunch replacement drink that sounds ideal for someone too lazy to make lunch but realistically would still require too much effort.

Fortunately, she's like that really nice kid at primary school who always split their sandwiches with you when you forgot your own.

Today she introduced me to "cake pops" (worth Googling), which really just reconfirmed my long-held belief that cooking, baking and lunch-making are best left to those who can ... and those who can't should just look and feel really sorry for themselves till someone takes pity and gives you half of theirs.