The season of over-eating is over.....

Last Sunday I woke up shaken but not stirred. I staggered into the kitchen but I’m not sure whose kitchen it was. I thought I was in the bathroom.  Mistaking a frypan for a mirror I looked into it, saw two fried eggs and thought, "My God, what did my body do to my face in the middle of the night?" 

Friends or perhaps enemies had organised one of those progressive dinners where you eat each course at somebody else's house.  Usually it's very civilised, but somewhere between Falmouth and St Helens we turned into savages.  Sadly we had to leave the wounded behind in Falmouth (it’s possible the town was named in memory of those who had overeaten before us) after a Chocolate Rumball Blitz.

I don't remember exactly what happened or how much food I shovelled into my gob or even precisely what it was that I ate but I felt cheap; cheap, bloated and guilty. You can't eat what you want any more.  You have to eat low salt, low fat, low sugar, low cholesterol, low taste.  We have diet meals in packets ready to eat. Actually there’s no food it’s just pictures of food on cardboard.  The packaging generally tastes better than the contents.

We've got Health Food shops, an admirable concept but why do they employ the thinnest, palest, sanitary-looking sales people?  They ask neatly, "Can I help you?"  And I want to reply "No, but can I help you?  Would you like some oxygen?"  They' appear to be permanently on some cleansing program; purging, expelling and purifying. I think they may have flushed out their personalities.

We have products like Fibre Tablets to help us lose weight.  You swallow one with a glass of water it expands to five times its size and fills you up.  Suddenly one leg blows off then an arm and that's how you lose weight.  Except in the case of certain politicians where only the head expands to five times the size while their brains shrink under the pressure.  They generally score top portfolios.  In my worst nightmare I imagine Death being tall and thin, wearing designer black and carrying a scale that never moves beyond 55 kilos.