You might remember a Travis video from a couple of years ago in which a posh dinner in a stately home descended into a giant food fight with all manner of nosh being flung and hurled around the place. If memory serves the video was a 'homage to' i.e. 'rip-off of' a French film in which the food fight serves as a metaphor for the barnbraism that seethes beneath the veneer of polite bourgeuis society. Indeed it was recently 'reprised' i.e. ripped -off again, in a BBC trailer for that Restaurant show that I didn't bother to watch.

Which very rambling preamble brings me to the fact that during half-term a remake/rip-off of this scene took place right here in our very kitchen. Only now, a week or so later, has the trauma subsided to a degree that I can safely consider writing about it.

Until lunchtime it had been the most tranquil of mornings. With Cath at work i was on solo parenting duties, and all obstacles had been navigated with the sweetest of ease. We'd been to town, I'd bought the new album by The Lilac Time, we'd got some groovy books from the library; all was well. Then it was time for lunch, and the mood swiftly darkened.

Three courses were offered, and all three courses ended up scattered around the kitchen. First to be flicked with disdain from spoon to wall and Daddy's face, was a a cottage pie. OK, I reasoned, unperturbed by the minor setback in our smooth-running morning, we'll try a jar of pasta. Sadly, the cottage-pie flicking episode was a mere warm-up for the hysterics to come.

Seeing the pasta approach her, she clamped her jaw so tightly shut it would have required drilling machinery to prise her lips apart. Undettered, though getting dangerously close to sobbing hysteria, I proffered some cheese on toast in Olivia's direction. The way in which she immediately launched it back at me with a force one wouldn't anticipate from someone merely a week older than 1, suggested she wasn't going to eat it.

After about an hour of this, during which the kitchen was being made to resemble the aftermath of a scene from Saw, Olivia finally decided she wouldn't mind a yoghurt. Broken and defeated, I had no option but to assent. It was a classic battle of wills, and mine was no match for Olivia's.

Documentary footage of the actual scrap does not exist, but writing this has proved cathartic, and I once again feel able to approach Olivia with a spoon in one hand and a protective shield in the other. Wish me luck.