Every so often, I’d get an email or a text message from Ailish. It would go something like this:

“I ate some yogurt. It expired yesterday. Make sure you tell the doctor if I get sick!”

I never quite figured out why Ailish would occasionally eat food that had expired. Did she only realise after she finished eating it? Probably not; she thought my concern about expiry dates was a bit excessive. I tend to throw out milk a day or two before its best-before date, while she thought of the date as more a sort of marketing suggestion.

Today, I ate some shepherd’s pie that expired on April 29th. I had kept it in the deep freeze and only put it back in the fridge on Sunday.