“Dad,” begins Mini Proclaims plaintively, “I dropped my rice on the table, on my chair and on the floor.”

As she regales me with this list she is counting the different rice destinations on her fingers. It takes me a while to work out exactly what she is telling me.

“Have you finished eating your rice?” I enquire.

“No,” she asserts.

“Are you asking me for help?”

“Yes!”

So I spoon-feed her the rice and soon the deed is done.

“Would you like some dessert?” I ask.

The response is very much in the affirmative, which brings a growl of discontent from her older sister, who is still eating her main course and is used to being first to get her just desserts.

“You can have dessert too,” I reassure her.

“Great,” she replies, “what is there?”

I fight back the urge to explain that everything we usually have available is what is also available today. There are unlikely to be any delightful culinary surprises of the saccharine variety. But it is a hot day so I point out that there are ice lollies in the freezer.

“What kind of ice lollies?” enquires my eldest child, “because you know I only eat very specific ice lollies.”

I know nothing of the sort, though I am aware that Little Proclaims’ taste in all foodstuff seems to change faster than the UK changes Prime Ministers.

In the end we agree that Little Proclaims will have a supermarket own-brand ‘Cornetto’ type thing, while Mini Proclaims opts for a rocket lolly, which probably tastes exactly the same as the surprisingly vast array of fruit-based lollies we seem to have on offer at Proclaims Towers, but which is shaped like a rocket. I respect her choice and actually the rocket lolly is surprisingly a brand name. I must have found a good multi-buy offer the day I bought those.

Mrs Proclaims reminds Little Proclaims that ice cream is just for the weekends.

“I know!” she cries impatiently, already desperate to return to a screen, any screen, and ignore us while she eats this dairy delight.

“Yes,” I affirm, “daily ice cream is only for daddies.”

I’m greeted by a roll of the eyes from the seven-year-old and a light chuckle from my wife.

But I’m not joking. There’s a half-eaten tub of Ben & Jerry’s with my name on it, that I’ll be destroying the second the kids are in bed. Well, obviously it doesn’t have my name on it. It has Ben’s name on it. And Jerry’s. But I’ll be eating it.

The ice cream cone doesn’t hit the sides for Little Proclaims. The speed she wolfs it down should surely have resulted in some kind of brain freeze, but she seems unperturbed as she scrolls through YouTube on the TV, searching for the kind of vacuous content that seems to be her main source of pleasure. We’ve restricted her access to all other digital devices but keep forgetting that the family TV is also a device. And frankly, it’s a device I’d rather be watching football on at the moment. While eating a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. Well, half a tub. But only because there is only half a tub left. Internally I congratulate myself on having shown sufficient restraint the previous evening when I first opened the tub.

Mini Proclaims is sitting next to her sister, consuming frozen empty calories on a lolly stick and watching the same empty content her sister so loves. I quite like that they have bonded. I just wish it wasn’t over this.

Mini Proclaims’ consumption of her lolly is somewhat more casual than Little Proclaims. There is a real danger she’ll be wearing some of the lolly before the evening is out.

Soon both children have had their desserts and eaten them. Now to peel them away from the idiot box, so that I can watch the idiot box.

It’s time to play the last card.

“Bath time!” I declare.

Neither child is thrilled by this, but they acquiesce.

Mini Proclaims is the more enthusiastic though.

“I need a bath,” she announces, “because my lolly melted on me.”