Sophistication is eating cold mushy peas straight from the tin - Ian McMillan

His mam had laid out six colour-co-ordinated plastic beakers, each with a design of leaves on them. There was a jug with the same pattern of leaves and the jug brimmed with orange juice.

None of us knew the word sophistication; it was a concept that was so far outside our orbit that it may as well have been Pluto, but the thing that sang out with sophistication was the fact that his mam had sliced an orange, sliced a real orange, and the slices were floating on the top of the jug of juice.

Those floating circles of orange juice have stayed in my mind’s eye for decades because, and of course I struggled to articulate this at the time as I glugged the juice and we fought over the bits of orange so boisterously that his mam had to remove the jug, it was a scene of almost unimaginable beauty.

Let’s contrast that glittering childhood moment with something that happened a couple of weeks ago. It was mid-evening and I’d been in the bath. Because I’m an early riser I like to have a bath before 9pm and then sit there in my dressing-gown feeling the world slip away.

So there I am on the settee in my dressing-gown and slippers and suddenly I’m seized by the urge to have some supper. I know that it’s not wise to eat late at night but I’d walked quite a lot that day so I felt that it was okay to have some supper.

Picture my slippers, by the way, to get the full measure of me in relaxation mode: let’s say with some confidence that they are not designer slippers.

Let’s say with some confidence that they have seen better days and that the soles have almost declared independence from the rest of the slipper. Yes, but they’re comfortable, so comfortable.

Anyway, I am seized with a desire for supper and I am seized with a desire for a very specific supper. What I want more than anything else is cold mushy peas straight from the tin eaten with a soup spoon. The way that the cold mushy peas delight all the senses.

The way that the cold mushy peas remind you of every time you’ve ever eaten cold mushy straight from the tin and how wonderful each occasion was.

I go to the pantry shelf. I pick up a tin of mushy peas. I grab the tin opener like an orchestral conductor might grab the baton. As I open the tin I am struck by a sudden thought: is this a sophisticated thing to be doing?

As far as sophistication goes, is on the same scale of sophistication as those golden slices of orange floating in than jug all those decades ago?

I slide the soup spoon into the tin. As I do so I decide that something is sophisticated because I say it is, just like something is a poem because I say it is.

Maybe I’ll slice up an orange and drop the slices in the mushy peas. Now that would be sophisticated, wouldn’t it? It really would!