What’s eating the dinner lady?

What’s eating the dinner lady?

I’m in a primary school in Buckinghamshire. Mrs Phipps is stirring a simmering pot, her face warped in the reflection of a saucepan hanging behind the hob. “Do you enjoy being a dinner lady?” I ask. She abruptly steps back from the roiling contents of the hob and brandishes her wooden spoon at me: “I think you’ll find it’s lunchtime supervisor now.” A blob of red flicks from the spoon to the floor. Probably bolognese, possibly not. For 80 years,…