This is the time of year when strange things happen to your fridge. For many
years now the standard winter inventory for the family fridge has been a
satisfying mix of Marks & Spencer’s Indian dishes, their individual
syrup puddings, the luxury custard that Waitrose makes (the one with double
cream in the recipe) and lots of cheese. But while such a mix might indeed
appear designed to see you through the most depressing months of the year,
there’s every chance that your fridge has been repopulated in the past week
or so.
Like a football team taken over by a Russian oligarch, all the stodgy old
favourites will have been kicked out and replaced by flash new purchases. So
there’ll be a lot of blueberries and other strange, often tropical, fruits.
There’ll be peculiar juices, whether cranberry, carrot or wheatgrass. Your
eggs might have survived to suggest some sort of continuity with the way
things used to be, but you’ll look in vain for some potatoes to make up a
nice tortilla. And don’t even think of using them to bake a batch of fairy
cakes with the children. For of the two ingredients vital to any baking
enterprise – sugar and flour – there will be not a sign. To change metaphor,
they are the Charlie Falconer and Peter Mandelson of the new dispensation –
once always in demand but now banished, erased, airbrushed from memory and
never to be found anywhere near any cabinet.
For this is the season of the diet. And whichever diet your partner is
pursuing, whether it’s GI, Atkins, Neris and India’s or Michael Winner’s (I
think it involves being so rude to waiters that they only bring you inedible
dishes), there will be consequences for you. And those consequences will go
beyond the removal of the Green & Black’s chocolate ice-cream from the
freezer compartment and its replacement with miso soup sachets. For diets
are never just about reforming one individual’s shape. They are about
creating a Reformation in a wider sense. Dieters, like pilgrims, are not
embarking on their journey purely for individual salvation. They are joining
a movement. They are adopting a new faith. And, like all converts, however
recent and shallow the conversion, they find the stubborn resistance of
others to the new faith a rebuke and a challenge. By declining to go on a
diet while another family member submits to a new regime of bodily
mortification you are, psychologically, cutting yourself off from them.
Because they are making sacrifices, and you, with your brought-home bag of
double-choc muffins, clearly are not, you are not only showing a lack of
solidarity, you are revealing yourself to be a wilful, sinful,
self-interested brute who fails to see how submission to an externally
ordered and sublimely ascetic lifestyle can bring uplift and renewal.
So the dieter feels that he or she has to persuade, or even coerce, their
partner into joining in, otherwise their own decision risks being seen as a
selfish lifestyle whim rather than a programme of purification and
betterment. So those Krispy Kremes must burn on the pyre that we’ve built
here in the garden. And you’d better get used to the wonderful subtlety of
flavour in quinoa.
Many of us, however, love our partners, think they’re great the way they are
and believe that there’s no need to change any aspect of their eating
regime, not least when M&S are doing a special deal on their individual
syrup puddings and they’re the perfect accompaniment to watching that guy
freeze on Coast. So what do we do? Well, here follows my advice on
how to cope with the immersion of one close to you into the Church of Curly
Kale and Protein Milk Shakes.
First, under no circumstances ask how things are going. If the diet is going
well, the proof of the absence of pudding should be all too visible. If the
pounds are dropping off, there’ll be no need to ask, will there? Secondly,
when you’re asked how your partner is looking after a few weeks/days/hours
of the regime, you must reply first “healthy”, then, when pressed,
“amazingly well” or “great”. Under no circumstances venture a precise
assessment such as “a bit slimmer round the tum but still rather jowly . .
.” You will not, cannot possibly, know with the same degree of precision as
the dieter what changes have actually occurred to their body. So don’t try.
You will only get it wrong, fail to notice the real areas of improvement,
and send the dieter into a cycle of depression, leading them to think that
it’s all been for nothing and the only one they can really rely on is Mr
Kipling.
Thirdly, eat what they’re eating whenever it’s offered up. Even if they’re on
the Atkins and you’re a vegan there will be some common ground. Yes, the
Atkins involves eating a massive fried breakfast and then snacking on
biltong and salami later but look on the bright side – there are worse ways
to start the day than with someone’s surplus half of a grilled tomato.
Admittedly, most of them involve being in a Turkish prison. But marriage
needs work – we never promised you a rose garden.
Fourthly, never notice when they fall off the wagon. Smiling, and then
offering to get in the Domino’s and Häagen-Dazs when you catch them eating
toast on a cold morning is not very loving. Simply pretend not to notice.
Leave the omniscience to the Almighty.
And, above all, do your research, find the one treat they are allowed on the
diet (champagne features in lots of the regimes) and surprise them with it
one evening. This shows that: a) you are committed to their New Path and b)
you know that Path can be Hard and Stony and a taste of something heavenly
can inspire the dieter for the difficult days ahead.
And why do I speak with such unshake-able conviction? Well it’s the champagne
that’s keeping me going . . . the prospect that after another 13 days on
seeds I could crack open a bottle is helping. And seeing that bottle in the
fridge almost makes up for the absence of custard. But not quite . . .
Why the people love Huckabee
It’s his success as a dieter which is part, but only part of Mike Huckabee’s
appeal. The former Arkansas Governor who won the Republican caucus in Iowa
almost halved in size a decade ago, and his triumph over the sin of gluttony
is part of his down-home Baptist preacher appeal.
According to those who know him, that is at the root of his charm, along with
his love of music (he wants more emphasis on the arts in schools and the
Rolling Stones to play at his inaugural) as well as his self-deprecating
humour (he says the five words that Arkansas politicians most fear are “will
the defendant please stand”).
But there is, I think, another reason why Mike Huckabee does so well: his
resemblance to Kevin Spacey. Both have that slightly deputy-dawgish,
weatherbeaten Dadish natural appearance that embodies Middle American
decency. While Mitt Romney looks like the naughty senator in the film
version of Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun, Mike Huckabee looks
like the hero of American Beauty.
And just to develop my thesis on the way in which life imitates art, I’m
convinced that Barack Obama can only have been helped by the sympathetic
portrayal of a black president on 24. And Hillary Clinton can only
have been harmed by the portrayal of Bree on Desperate Housewives.
I was that saddo
In his Books section column before Christmas, David Baddiel asked who settles
down at the end of Christmas Day to relax with a new biography of John
Stuart Mill. Mind you, that was before the TV schedules were public.
Well I am that sad, sad man who did round off his Christmas with a life of the
Victorian sage. I haven’t got much beyond the bit where the 13-year-old JSM
takes a “complete course in political economy”. But at least, as wallows
in the past go, it has more suspense and laughs than To The Manor Born.
