The diary of a sugar shunner

Day 1:
Monday 16 April
Day 1 of official sugar strike (didn’t actually eat any yesterday either but today is the official start - husband ate whole Easter egg yesterday, I just smugly declined!)
Feeling a tad depressed about being back at work after being on holiday for a week. Walked part of the way to work and felt smug and evangelical (amused self fantasising about all the clothes that would fit me again, come the summer). Mood crashed when actually got to work! Tempted to eat whole box of nuts I bought with me and intended to eke out during the day. Nuts are actually delicious - who knew.
Drinking lots of ginger tea!
P.M - waited a loooong time for dinner.
Danger zone, after dinner, jonesing for some chocolate - ignore it, it will pass, it passed.
Had peppermint tea as a break from ginger tea.

Day 2:
Met friend in coffee shop. On the way there tried to envisage the challenges the cafe would pose - doughnuts and pastries and and pies*, oh my! *Don’t actually like pies, or doughnuts, just did it for the rhythm.
When I got there, my friend was choosing a cheese and tomato toastie, so I joined her just to be sociable ;) No obvious sugar, probably loads of hidden.
Daughter off sick and asked me to get her a Kinder egg, turns out she only wanted it for the toy. Had to suppress natural instinct to eat egg, before quickly squirreling it away in fridge, out of sight. Ate some fruit and nut mix instead. (Probably won’t lose any weight with all the sodding nuts I’m consuming!)
Had early dinner with kids. Satsuma to follow.
20.44 hours and now feeling hungry - yes, despite the ginger tea! Will try and ignore it, failing that, will go to bed at 9!!

Day 3:

Something strange happened today (still haven’t eaten sugar). Went to eat lunch outside and sat at a picnic table, as I was having noodles (easier to eat at a table than on a bench or on the grass). Two young students asked if I minded if they sat there too. Of course I didn’t mind, I said, heart sinking a bit (but you have to pretend to be nice and accommodating). I’d just started reading a book by Megan Jayne Crabbe - Body Positive Power.

Reading about all the *impossible standards that women are supposed to subscribe to, from a very young age. She talked about how she first felt fat or wrong about her body, aged 5! And I remembered - feeling FAT from a very young age and feeling WRONG and unacceptable!
* Quote from book: “What better way to make money than to make half the world feel ugly then sell them the solution?”

 The two students kept up an incessant stream of chatter about food and weight! One of them was lecturing the other; extolling the virtues of protein powder and the evils of sugar. They went on and on about food and weight
I wanted to shout at them that this was a colossal waste of their time and that they should be concentrating on their studies!!!
HOWEVER - this has not made me fall, nose down, into a sack of sugar, no, no, no! I’m not saying that. I feel that, even though it’s only been two and a half days, what I’m doing is looking after myself, by eating healthily, nurturing ma body. Eating more good things like nuts, seeds and fruit (does that make you think of bird poo - or is it just me?). Sugar is a drug-like chemical that alters your mood and rots your teeth, and I’m just trying to be healthy (if I try and focus on that, rather than the weight thing then I might be OK).
Because the thing is - I’ve done the weight thing, many times over - lost it, put it back on again, lost it, ignored it and ate what I want, lost it, put it on again….and I’d been trained, all my life, from a very young age, that losing weight was the magic key to everything - to happiness, success and yes - being acceptable, and it really, really isn’t.
(The noodles were very nice btw, before I bit into a rogue chili)

Day 4:

Ahem - does the previous entry seem a bit mood-swingy? I don’t think it’s lack of sugar that prompted that rant but the genuine dichotomy between wanting to be healthy, lose weight but also fight the patriarchy!
Anyway, today, have had really busy morning - school run, fighting vicious rose bushes, doing two loads of washing, tidying up, so only just having breakfast at 10 am and really enjoying me pre-soaked muesli with plain yogurt and cinnamon - genuinely, no sarcasm intended. Had some really disappointing news yesterday and at one point thought - eating a load of chocolate will not make this any better.
Do I feel any better yet? A little bit. Bowels in v healthy, working order - sorry for the TMI.

P.M: Had a reaaallly long day! When I went to pick the kids up, the teacher called me in because older one had just had a massive nose bleed. She daughter seemed OK but was covered in blood and it was stressful.
Then her and her sister decided to act like little demons at bath time.
Had some of husband’s homemade lasagne for dinner - v nice, but he told me that when he was looking for lasagne sheets in the cupboard, he’d stumbled across a box of Thornton’s continental chocolates. He told me this yesterday and it was fine, I wasn’t tempted, but now I CAN’T stop thinking about those chocolates. If I wasn’t doing this diary, if I hadn’t gone public with this, I would just eat some chocolates! I wouldn’t  ‘go mad’, just have a couple but alas, I am being watched!!

Day 5:

It was so tempting but I didn’t have any chocolates last night.
However, my husband had bought a cheeseboard selection - he’s joining me in quitting the white stuff and decided that we’d get our excess calories from cheese instead! Nothing wrong with cheese but I wasn’t really hungry after dinner but I did have a few pieces of cheese - the one with cranberries in it (the closest I could get to eating something sweet). Is my husband a FEEDER? Hmmm….
Years ago I decided to outlaw the use of moral language around food - I tried to never say things like “I’ve been really bad and eaten a whole Easter Egg” or “I can’t understand why I haven’t lost any weight - I’ve been good all week.” But one rule I try to live by (not always successfully) is to not eat when I’m not hungry. Sounds simple but not always easy - programmed to clear plate, encouraged to order a starter at restaurants etc. The trouble with things like chocolate and ice-cream is that they are not filling, so you can eat them when you’re full up, but they are very energy dense.
Husband has said to me, half-jokingly, a couple of times this week - “What’s the point of life without chocolate!?” And “Are you telling me you’re never going to eat another slice of cake?”
Well, what I’m trying to do is not rely so heavily on sugary things, but have them as an occasional treat, a la the sanctimonious health advice. So, I will have the odd ice-cream or slice of National Trust Victoria sponge at the weekend, in the future, after this initial period of cold turkey.
Didn’t pre-soak any muesli so had slice of seedy bread toast with almond butter instead (delicious!). But craved something sweet afterwards - first time this week craving for sugar had started that early. Had a little bit of dried fruit and nut mix. I know - dried fruit packed with sugar, blah, blah, blah but dried fruit also has lots of iron so bleh!

I think I’m gonna leave the diary there for a while, friends. Thanks for reading ‘til the end - I can imagine it’s been a bit tedious in parts. I’ll check back in this time next week, with photo evidence of my glowing skin and shiny, lustrous locks!

Have a great weekend!

Kicking the habit

The Sweet stuff

So, friends, do you remember when I said that I wouldn’t write about weight any more? When I said that it was anti-feminist to focus on it? I flirted with the body positivity movement and tried to embrace my shape. I still think that this is a good way of thinking; being accepting and kindly disposed towards your body has to be healthier than hating it - right? And this piece isn’t about weight*, not exactly, but about trying to cut sugar from my diet.

* I mean, it’s always there; that blushing, blustering elephant in the room; trying to hide in the corner, teetering on a footstool. No point in trying to deny it, really. Come into the light, elephant, show yourself!

Yeah, so it’s a little bit about weight, cutting out sugar, but it’s also about teeth and hair too. Because I have this bizarre expectation, which has no scientific basis, that eliminating sugar will make my hair shinier.
And the elephant - the weight thing; it’s not just about appearance or even health, it’s also about the thing of your clothes not fitting any more. It has a pragmatic aspect to it - I can’t afford to buy a load of new clothes.

Emotional Eating

There was a time when I would think - you’ve had a hard day - you deserve this! Before shovelling in some chocolate, and being aware of this attitude doesn’t stop you doing it (I’ve found). We are programmed to seek out food that is sweet and fatty - a survival instinct from our hunter-gatherer days and our instincts haven’t quite caught up with our sedentary lifestyles, where food is available at every corner.
I’d say that my diet is generally healthy -  I'm a fan of vegetables and all things wholemeal but this is scuppered by high biscuit/chocolate/cake consumption. So, when I say I’m going to cut out sugar, I’m not talking about eschewing fruit, milk or naturally occurring sugars. I’m not going to scan sandwich labels or bread wrappers for hidden sugar either, but at this stage, I’m just going to cut out biscuits, chocolate and cake (yikes). I’ll avoid honey too, because, although honey had good, antiseptic properties, the more sweet stuff you eat, the more you crave, so I’m going to try and go cold turkey.**
** Artificial sweeteners are the work of the devil!

I’ve Googled ‘ways to deal with sugar cravings’ and received all sorts of advice about zinc, cinnamon, protein, nuts and water. I suspect that I will eat a little more fruit than I did before. The danger time is the evening, after dinner, after the kids have gone to bed. That habitual, cognitive association of chocolate with ‘a treat’ - my reward for dealing with whatever that day has thrown at me (like a monkey flinging its poo). More deeply ingrained, for me, than any of the adult crutches - like alcohol. The instant lift. How to recreate it without nudging yourself towards type 2 diabetes? Or eroding the coastal defences in your mouth. Will ginger tea cut it?

 I’m hoping that going public with this will help me adhere to it.
Yes, I often try things and find they haven’t had the life-changing, ground breaking effect on my life that I envisioned, in a massive flight of fancy, but, if I can stick to this, my teeth will thank me. Also, I’ll be setting a better example to the kids, instead of hypocritically lecturing them about the evils of fizzy drinks (when I’d happily snarf down half an Easter Egg - one of theirs no less!! Bad, bad mother!). I can tell them, with irritating sanctimony, that they don’t need sugar and neither do I….

This picture perfectly encapsulates my over-inflated expectations

Advice for my younger self

I wrote this piece for a writing magazine; the remit was to write a letter to your younger self - what would you say to her? What advice or reassurance would you offer?  I never got anywhere with the submission - hence sharing it here, on my blog. Not that I want you to think that this is just a dumping ground for stuff that others have rejected or anything like that - oh nooooo, I’m quite circumspect about what goes on here, don’t you worry.

Anyway, it’s a very short letter (I think it had to be) but it’s succinct and, even though it’s advice to my younger self, it still stands today. It might seem a bit weird - and self-obsessed but remember that this was for a writing magazine and the onus was on giving your younger self advice that might help in their future career.

I’ve subsequently met quite a few teenagers who remind me of my younger self - cripplingly self-conscious and lacking in confidence and a sense of direction, so this is for them as well as for me. And maybe it’s for you, too...


Dear younger me,

You used to wish that you could buy bottled courage but don’t wait until it’s readily available  - just pretend! You wanted to be an actor, once upon a time, so act as if you know what you’re doing. This is going to work for you, unconsciously, anyway as loads of people, in your first proper job, are going to tell you how calm you seem.  And you know what those manuals say - Calm breeds calm. 

Write every single day, don’t wait until the moment feels right, just do it. Don’t avoid writing courses because you feel that it’s something that can’t be taught - there’s always something to learn.

You’ve got this, chum, you can do it, just try to not obsess about what other people think of you and  soldier on. You’ve just got to keep the faith. I have faith in you.


So there you have it - perhaps just a slightly extended version of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’.

HAPPY EASTER!

Dear Literary Agent

Thank you for your reply but did you really have to say that you didn’t feel ‘passionately’ enough about my work to represent me? When you say that – and you’re not the first (which makes me wonder whether they teach you the parlance in agent school) it makes me feel that you found my writing dull and turgid.

My husband said that trying to get an agent is like going for a new job. You have lots of interviews and don't get the job, until suddenly you're successful and then everything works out for the best! But imagine turning down an applicant for a job by saying – We’re afraid we didn’t feel passionately enough about your application to offer you an interview. Or, thank you for coming in for the interview but we’ve given the job to the person we felt more passionate about!!

I get that publishing is different (to many other businesses ) and that when you take on a new author it’s always a risk and you have to feel that you are fully behind them in order to promote them to a publisher – I do understand that, but if I had my way I’d alter the phrasing of your knock-backs. Hmmm…what could you say instead? You’re shite…ha, ha, ha, no, seriously, let me think; It didn’t grab me…my client list is full (mendacious)…
Actually, no -  you’re right, it is hard to write a rejection letter that is both honest and tactful….

But why am I putting myself through all of this? Why am I putting myself forward for endless rejection? Is it time to just give up now and live a muffled kind of half-life, inured against pain? (And, yes, I do know that there are many things more painful, in life, than a rejection letter from an agent, thanks.)

Why don’t I just give up? There are a few reasons:

• I love writing and feel that I have something to say.
• I have a kernel - a little nugget of self-belief. I’ve always loved reading and sometimes, when I review something I've written and put aside for a while, I think - ‘This is actually quite good’. I realise that loving to read books isn’t enough to make you a good writer (otherwise people who watched a lot of sport would be good at football), but I do feel that I can look at my stuff objectively and say that’s it’s as good as anything else out there. That may sound arrogant but it’s true. (You may be reading this and thinking - She’s deluded, maybe she should just admit defeat and give up as it’s obvious she’s not good enough to make a living out of this, otherwise she’d have been picked up by now. And yes, I’ve had those thoughts myself.)
• This is my thing, my goal, the dream that keeps me going, keeps me trying, keeps me living. Each rejection cuts me down, temporarily, but I always get up again.

Then, there was that one industry person who said that he loved my writing and that it made him laugh out loud. But what if he was just being nice? Tactful? Letting me down easily. Is it like dating (casting my mind into the dim and murky past) where you meet someone and you get on really well and they seem to be really into you but then they don’t call and they ghost you...?  Was the editor I met just not very comfortable with critiquing so he just covered this up with loads of positivity?? But at the time he seemed so enthusiastic and he really seemed to get what I was trying to impart….argh, argh, argh!!!!

The other day, author Joanne Chocolat Harris wrote ten tweets about self-doubt. She does these series of tweets about writing, periodically, and they are often very helpful.
This was one of the most encouraging and inspiring of those #tentweets:

She also retweeted this:

So, thanks Joanne and Julia Carpenter (from the tweet)! I’ll keep ploughing on!*

*Disclaimer - I'm not comparing myself to Jordan Peele or Joanne Harris, just using the quotes for inspiration.

International Women's day: talking point

I read an alarming statistic on Twitter this morning, it said that domestic violence killed more women in the UK, between the age of 16 & 45, each year than breast cancer. So I thought it would be fitting to share that fact on International Women's Day.
https://twitter.com/WeeMissBea/status/971516332519796737

Other alarming facts have been filtering through over the years: that the perpetrators of large scale acts of violence and terrorism often have a history of violence against women. The Manchester bomber and the Florida school shooter are the most recent examples that come to mind.

Why isn't this link being talked about more? It seems obvious - in the way that many people are aware that serial killers seem to start off by torturing animals, surely it is a gruesomely logical train of thought that someone who is capable of slaughtering their fellow humans must have shown some indication of brutality in the past. Which is why domestic violence must be treated seriously.

If you look at the historic legal implications of domestic violence, it makes sobering reading. Before 1850, a man was legally permitted to beat his wife with a stick, as long as it was no thicker than his thumb.
There are more specific and accurate stats here:
https://www.mmu.ac.uk/equality-and-diversity/doc/gender-equality-timeline.pdf
And how about violence towards children?
Even now, it's not actually illegal for parents to smack children, in England, although it is in Scotland.

I was going to go on to talk about the shocking incident that has happened recently in our neighbourhood - a ‘family annihilation’ I think they’re called, when a man (and it always seems to be a man) kills himself, after he has slaughtered his whole family. I don’t want to diminish the horror of what has happened but I don’t want to write about it; it’s too depressing.

What I’m going to do instead is share the Just Giving page of comedian, Richard Herring, who is doing stirling work toady on Twitter, replying to every single goon who asks, belligerently  - ‘When is it International Men’s Day, then??’ With the response ‘It’s the 19th of November’!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/November19th?utm_source=twitter

Extraordinary people: part 2, Lemn Sissay

Dear reader, like me, do you enjoy a ‘triumph against adversity’ story? If so then come this way, you are in for a treat!

I recently had the great honour of attending a talk given by the poet and playwright, Lemn Sissay. I'd watched a YouTube video of Sissay, reading some of his poetry, before I attended his talk, and he has an immense presence -  his energy and charisma bombard you from the stage. 

Lemn Sissay's story is certainly compelling - it is shocking, devastating and, ultimately, hopeful.

He was born in 1967. His mother was from Ethiopia and was studying in Britain when she found herself pregnant and alone. She was placed in a mother and baby unit and strong armed into giving Lemn up. He was placed in foster care, and, although his mother never signed the adoption papers, his social worker told Lemn’s foster parents to view it as an adoption. Lemn was named ‘Norman’ at the bequest of the social worker who placed him in care, also called Norman! The foster parents were fiercely religious Christians. Lemn remembers a happy, joyful early childhood, where he felt the whole world ‘smiled at him’; as described in is his interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06gthsz

His world was ripped apart when, aged 12, his foster parents decided that he was too naughty and gave him back into care, with no further contact. (At the talk I attended, he said that they didn’t even hug him goodbye.) He cites standard, childhood/adolescent indiscretions like staying out too late, taking biscuits from the tin without saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and smoking, for the reasons his foster parents had for viewing him as some kind of demonic force or evil Trojan horse, designed to bring their family down from within.  He went from being part of a family (the couple who'd fostered him had gone on to have 3 other biological children) with grandparents, aunts and uncles, to being placed in a series of children’s homes. He was the only black child in these homes and suffered much brutality there. The social worker who came to pick him up from the foster family pulled over into a lay-by and told him:

‘None of this is your fault.’

Lemn started writing poetry, aged 12 and at 17, when he left care, used his dole money to self-publish pamphlets of his poems. His reputation spread by word of mouth and he was picked up by a publisher, aged 20. 

He used the proceeds from his book sales to fund his search for his biological family. At 17 he had been given some of his records and found that his mother hadn’t wanted him to be adopted and that his name wasn’t Norman Mark Greenwood but Lemn Sissay.

Lemn Sissay overcame extremely difficult circumstances and the most horrendous rejections, from both his foster parents and biological family, to become a successful writer and broadcaster and the Chancellor of Manchester University. There was a picture of him in his Chancellor robes, on a screen at the talk. He grinned as he turned to it and said:

‘That’s what a care leaver looks like.’

Someone in the audience asked him how he’d got to where he is today; how he’d overcome adversity and he listed giving up drinking and undergoing therapy as the best things he had done.

It's difficult to imagine what it must feel like to be jettisoned from the family you've grown up in, by the people you called 'Mum' and 'Dad', and then to go on to have a difficult reunion with your biological mother. It must have taken enormous drive for Lemn to promote his poetry, which he sold to miners and millworkers. As well as being hopeful, his story is inspirational; demonstrating the power of perseverance!

As he says in the introduction to Gold from the Stone - Canongate Books 2016,

'I am not defined by my scars but by the incredible ability to heal.'

The talk was attended by academics, students, social workers and care leavers. It was a very emotional experience as people shared their own experiences of being in care or of fostering, themselves. It was also one of those illuminating, life-affirming events that make you glad you attended. It felt like a privilege to hear Lemn’s life story, as well as the stories of the other care leavers, and listen to him reading one of his poems. My only regret is that I didn’t wait around for the book signing!

https://www.waterstones.com/book/gold-from-the-stone/lemn-sissay/9781782119456

Extraordinary people

Dear reader, I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while; I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a topic that doesn’t merely involve a stream-of-consciousness outpouring of thoughts and preoccupations. I really wanted to write about other people, but I realised that, even in writing about others, I’m going to be presenting them through my own filter of feelings and perceptions, but such is the nature of any kind of writing, right? Until I can get those ten thousand monkeys with typewriters onto the case, you’re just going to have to bear with me! So here we are, a potted bio of a couple of (in my opinion) surprising, extraordinary and for the most part, obscure, people.

1.
Ambalavaner Sivanandan

OK, so I’m going to be cribbing from the Guardian obituary of Ambalavaner Sivanandan a lot here, which brought him to my attention, but I was really impressed by this man’s legacy. I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never heard of him until he died. This is their summation of him:

Director of the Institute of Race Relations who helped change the way Britain thought about race

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/07/ambalavaner-sivanandan?CMP=share_btn_fb

His story is extraordinary, and has a particular resonance with me because his cultural background is so similar to my father’s. Sivanandan was a Tamil from Sri Lanka, who came to Britain in the 1950s. Hindu Tamils are in the minority amongst the majority of predominantly Buddhist, Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and, according to the article, Sivanandan dressed as a policeman and waved an unloaded gun around to protect himself and his family from a Sinhalese mob. After coming to England and witnessing the anti-black race riots in Notting Hill, he is quoted as saying:

“I knew then I was black, I could no longer stand on the sidelines: race was a problem that affected me directly. I had no excuse to go into banking or anything else that I was fitted up to do … I had to find a way of making some sort of contribution to the improvement of society.”

This quote had heavy resonance with me. No just because he strove to stick his head above the parapet and try and effect a change but because he also used the phrase 'I knew then I was black'. I have long been aware of ‘black’ as a political, rather than a factual or descriptive concept, but it was very interesting to me to hear this man describe himself as such when many of my Sri Lankan relatives are so resistant to the term to define themselves.

The statement - ‘I knew then I was black’ also struck me because it expressed something of my own childhood feelings of ‘we’re all in this together’. To put it another way, I was always shocked that one ethnic minority group would discriminate against another when surely they knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of discrimination. I felt the same about homophobia - how could someone from any minority background, who knew what it was like to be attacked, verbally or physically, be homophobic? Yes I was naive but it was all well meant and I look back on this period of naive idealism with a certain amount of fondness. (I was a genuine bleeding heart liberal from a very young age.)

But enough about me (I told you this was going to be very subjective!). Ambalavaner Sivanandan was responsible for the investigation into procedure which dubbed the police force at the time of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, as institutionally racist. Or, to quote the Guardian article:

His writing was key to ideas that later entered the mainstream with the publication of the

Macpherson report in 1999, which concluded that the flawed handling of the death of Stephen Lawrence was because of institutional racism – defined by Siva as “that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions – reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn”.

He was also responsible for many memorable aphorisms, such as “We are here because you were there” (relating to post-colonial migration) and “The personal is not political, the political is personal”

I gave the obituary to my dad to read and asked him if he’d heard of or knew Sivanandan (not as dodgy as it sounds - ‘Oh, this man’s from Sri Lanka as well, do you know him??’) Because my dad was part of a fairly large community of expats when he first arrived. Sadly, he (my dad) didn’t know him but he did tell me how to pronounce his name properly, so it was useful to broach the subject.

Siva's legacy lives on.

2.

James Barry - (Margaret Ann Bulkley)

https://www.facebook.com/StylistMagazine/videos/10157863207694572/

I was lying in bed one morning, trying to put off the inevitable hour of waking, looking through Facebook on my phone, when this video from Stylist Magazine popped up. The video is about a woman born in 1795, who, because of her gender, was barred from going to University, let alone studying medicine, and decided to pass herself off as a man so she could go to medical school. She joined the British army, became a well-respected doctor, travelled the world, was instrumental in effecting many reforms, and was the first surgeon to perform a cesarean in South Africa. The truth was only discovered after her death and the army were so ashamed that they suppressed the records for a hundred years (bloody men, eh, can’t stand to be shown up by a woman!).
The video is highly entertaining if you'd care to have a watch.

So, I think that will have to do for now - this is the first of a multi-part series of forgotten trailblazers (possibly, if I can't think of anything else to write.)
Many thanks for reading!