i Editor's Letter: Waiting for the royal baby

“At least when it’s your wife, you don’t go to the hospital until she’s in labour,” says BBC cameraman Harry Rabbie, who has been camping outside St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington with dozens of other photographers and film crews, awaiting the birth of the Prince or Princess of Cambridge. None of them knows the due date for the third in line to the throne – a detail wisely withheld from us all – and so the tedium of waiting for someone else to give birth continues. (Apparently it’s also a bit of an ordeal for the expectant mother...)

i will not post a reporter by the doors to the maternity ward, or outside the home of the royal gynaecologist, you’ll be relieved to hear. We’ll wait for the news to be broken in the old-fashioned way, by proclamation posted on an easel inside the Buckingham Palace gates. She or he will arrive when ready – one of 2,000 British newborns to be celebrated on whichever day that is.

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My ceremonial lunchbox apple used to enjoy its daily trips to school, before being returned home each evening, unblemished. It’s nothing new for parents to struggle in encouraging their children to eat healthily away from the nest. But childhood obesity is worsening and the behavioural and developmental problems fed by poor nutrition are now better understood.

Bravo, then, for Michael Gove’s support for the plan for universal free school meals, starting in the poorest areas (cover story, page 4). There are also plans for teachers to eat with children, for the return of proper school kitchens (lots have been turned into classrooms), and cooking lessons for parents and kids. Plenty for the Education Secretary to get his teeth into.

i@independent.co.uk

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