Before I get started on actual important things, can I just ask anybody who is 1. in love, 2. at all enchanted by Ann Summers red skimpy pants or fluffy crap from Clinton’s, or 3. planning on snogging/holding hands with/stroking their significant other in my presence, to please go and live under a rock for a couple of weeks and leave me and all the other poor lonely masses alone. Thanks muchly. Now back to actual vital and pressing issues (not really, I’m just going to write down one of my slightly weirder thought processes for you, as usual. I hope you’re sitting on the edge of your seat). Ready? Yes? Okay? Food. Food is all I think about. I spend lectures and train journeys and job interviews pondering what I want for lunch. I sit on the blue bus and fantasize that salmon steak will be on offer in Sainsbury’s Local. I eat boring food because I must (normally tomato soup because I’m a poor, poor student) and picture duck paté and truffles and mushy peas and my mum’s chocolate mousse and the pizza you get in Naples and the chorizo you can buy in the Spanish sierras instead. Oh man.
I find it very, very sad when people have negative relationships with nosh. You know who you are, you girls who eat celery and wheatgerm for lunch and think grapes are a hedonistic indulgence. Yes, regularly eating fry-ups and calorific puddings makes us tend more towards Michelin Man than Ms Moss, but if you live off Ryvita and rice out of choice you miss out on one of the most pleasurable experiences a human can have. Think of taste and flavour (which in my experience are very very often tragically linked to butter, oil, sugar and salt) as dark and evil yet incredibly attractive mistresses. If you let them, they will destroy you in the manner of Black Widow spiders, you are doomed, but by Christ will you enjoy the experience. Aphrodisiacs aside, I definitely link food with sex in my mind. Looking through a cookbook with shiny photos in it when you’re hungry is better than porn. Gastric orgasms (don’t laugh, you’ve been there, when you put a spoonful of some extremely girdle-busting dessert in your mouth and let out an involuntary high-pitched squeak of delight) are definitely approaching real ones in quality, but don’t tell any of my ex-boyfriends that.
I understand wanting to be fit and healthy, and I’ve tried dieting in the past. Well, not dieting, but attepting to rein in the out-of-control stagecoach heading towards a cliff that is my consumption of chocolate biscuits. If you can achieve a healthy balance of exercise and limited treats (such as only eating one Rolo from a packet, for example. I have not found this happy medium of restraint) then fantastic. And yes, you’ll feel healthier if you only eat broccoli. You probably won’t pass out in culinary comas calling desperately for Rennies, like we do in my house when someone has made an enormous pie. You’ll fit into slinky dresses and look acceptable in hot pants. But be warned! You won’t be happy, and your life will be one desperate longing for a slice of birthday cake.
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