It’s all about holding your licker

THE ART OF EATING ICE CREAM: If there’s one thing that chimes in the months of summer, it’s the sound of an ice-cream van trundling on to your street.

There’s actually been one outside our local school all winter but that’s by the by, it’s in the summer that it arrives in your neighbourhood and the children’s eyes light up to the melodic “Teddy Bear’s Picnic”.

Now, I wouldn’t claim for a minute that eating ice-cream from a bowl or direct from the tub isn’t an activity to be cherished. It brings spine-tingling pleasure to many a woman who’s already gone well beyond the amount she said she was going to eat when she got it out of the freezer. But for the purposes of this analysis, it’s eating ice-cream from a cone on which we’re going to focus.

Whatever the flavour, your approach should remain the same. I like to see a bit of conviction in an ice-cream eater and find those who half-heartedly twirl their tonge at it slightly unsettling. You should be firm but fair.

I first slurp an ice-cream in a regular, circular motion which keeps it neat and tidy. Then I follow up with a few big extravagant licks before biting it aggressively from all sides.

I then return to calm, circular slurps as if I’ve just arrived home and I’m casually straightening the coasters on the coffee table. Then I lick it. And bite it! And return to more circular slurps. Do take time out to savour a bit of flake, a chunk of fudge or a hint of minty chocolate. The experience is over too quickly not to spare yourself a moment or two to appreciate the flavour you have chosen.

Only when you have levelled your ice-cream off at the top of the cone should you consider biting off the bottom of the handle and sucking the ice cream through. It’s a strange yet popular turn of events and the energy it takes to drag the ice-cream through really isn’t worth it but if you’ve being doing it since you were seven then it’s a hard habit to crack.

Drips should be dealt with as soon as you spot them. If you’re so consumed that you don’t realise until one reaches your fingers then either you’re three-and-a-half years old or, despite being an adult, you’ve failed miserably to develop as an ice-cream eater.

And as with most things, the way you tackle an ice-cream has been analysed by psychologists to discover what it “says” about you. They posed the question: Three women are eating ice-cream. One is biting it, one is licking it and the other is slurping it. So which one’s married?

Turns out it’s the one who’s wearing a wedding ring but apparently the answer you give can reveal quite a lot about the current state of your relationship.




Next Week: The art of building a sandcastle.