Personal Goals: a rant.

There's a sign above the ready-meals section of my local supermarket. It says:

Healthy meals, drinks and snacks to help you achieve your personal goals

Yeah, right. A mushy rectangle of mince will really be a significant help in winning the Nobel Prize in Medicine, an Olympic hundred metres gold medal, or the Turner Prize, won't it.

I mean, what else could you need but a dollop of watery mashed potato to fulfill an ambition to become a nuclear physicist, a brain surgeon, or a professor of classics?

To help you climb a mountain, write a novel, play some Chopin?

Decorate the living room, knit a mitten, grow some tomatoes?

Healthy meals, drinks and snacks to help you achieve your personal goals

Your personal goals...they're assuming our personal goals centre round being a bit thinner or fatter, aren't they?

And, quite honestly, I wish the people who came up with that sign would go off somewhere a long way away and patronise someone else.

Word To Use Today: achieve. This word comes from the Old French achever, to bring to an end, from a chef, to a head or conclusion.