I’m writing this blog post on the train, on my way down to see my best friend…she very annoyingly lives nowhere near me and despite nagging her incessantly for the last twenty years or so to move back to my neck of the woods I’ve given up now, she’s got a couple of grand babies and I know when I’m beat.
Even the lure of my roast dinners couldn’t tempt her away these days, especially since the portions have shrunk, and rightly so. But I have business meetings in London over the early part of this week, and I grabbed the chance with both hands to come down early for a weekend visit and some cuddles with those babies.
There’s a young guy sitting opposite me across the aisle, who bought a bar of chocolate from the trolley as it made it’s way down the carriage. Me, I bought coffee and I’ve already polished off the two bananas I brought with me for breakfast. But I’m fascinated by this bloke…he ate one strip of chocolate, and now he’s gone to sleep. With the chocolate open, and unfinished on the table right in front of him. Who does that?!!
I’ve never been able to do that. I have friends who laugh about recipes which invite to you use leftover wine, on the basis that no such thing exists, and whilst I can take or leave wine, there’s definitely no such thing as leftover chocolate in my world. I mean, buying a bar to eat later would be hard enough but come on, surely once you’ve had a square and got the taste for it you can’t just leave it sitting there? And sleep.
My mind is wandering all over the place…I’m imagining some kind of ninja move to swap out my empty banana skin for his barely touched bar of Galaxy. I mean he’s out for the count, right? He might just think he dreamed the chocolate and really he ate fruit, kind of like the shower scene in Dallas…the chocolate never happened, in the same way that Bobby Ewing never shagged that other woman whilst Pamela was off being dead for a bit. It was all a dream.
I’m thinking no, I probably couldn’t get away with that. Christ, I’m a fifty year old woman reduced to thoughts of skullduggery by an open bar of chocolate that’s not even near enough for me to smell it. Get a grip woman. It’s a good job he doesn’t have cheesy balls or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I’d be looking at getting escorted off the train at the next station on the basis that the bright orange e-numbers smeared all over my chops proved the case against me despite me denying all knowledge m’lud.
I know that sugar is addictive, and I’m seriously thinking about cutting all refined sugar out of my diet…can’t just quite commit but they’re more than idle thoughts. But what about the other stuff that I find just as addictive..? Cheese balls being a case in point. It’s the same thing, once I start and I get the taste for them, it’s over.
I’ve been known to sit and eat three family bags of them one after the other when I was gripped by a binge, usually followed by something sweet to finish with. And you know whilst the concept of that feels very alien to me from this perspective of food sobriety, my God there are times where I just want to melt into my big fat recliner and vaporise my own body weight in crap. I won’t…but sometimes I really want to.
Which brings me back to the train and Rip Van sodding Winkle across the way there with his half eaten bar of Galaxy. On a scale of one to ten, exactly how wrong is it of me to hope it bloody chokes him?
