A place at the Table

In the conversation about diversity and inclusion, two things have come to prominence this week.

1) Star Wars actor Kelly Marie Tran felt compelled to delete her Instagram account after suffering months of racist and sexist abuse.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44379473
Chris McCrudden has this to say about the more ethnically diverse Star Wars reboot:


So, to sum up - Diversity and inclusion isn't just about being nice and try to make sure that everyone gets a turn at pass the parcel - it also makes fiscal sense!

2) Author Lionel Shriver criticised the stance of Penguin Random House for it’s goal to reflect the population of Britain by 2025 - in seeking to publish more authors and employ more staff who reflect the ethnic/socio-economic/differently abled make-up of Britain. Her words, in The Spectator, were these:
Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. 
Now what can we safely infer from Shriver’s own words - that she thinks that writers of colour are completely incapable of producing anything of excellence? Ditto anyone with a disability? Or someone who falls into the LGBQT+ catergory. Also - crap education? Not a particularly articulate way to dismiss someone who doesn’t have a university degree, Shriver! (Penguin Random House have got rid of the requirement that their employees need a degree, in a bid to encourage more working class people to their roles. They are also one of the few companies that offer paid internships, for the same reason.)

I attended a PRH insight day last year #WriteNowLive - qualifying for it because I fell into one of the categories that Shriver so vilified - BAME. All attendees had to submit a sample of their writing and, of the 1700+ who applied, 150 were chosen - so it wasn’t enough just to be BAME (or LGBQT, or have a disability), Shriver, they had to see some promise in your writing too! They then shortlisted a handful of folk to take part in their mentorships scheme (I didn’t make this cut), before finally deciding on the lucky few to make the final cut. I say lucky but what I actually mean is the most talented. Because it’s not like the talent, skill, imagination sheer bloody genius isn’t there, it’s because maybe, for a vast number of reasons, publishing has been barred to these people for decades.
I didn’t realise, until I participated in and Unconscious Bias course at work, that people with ‘foreign sounding’ were far less likely to get shortlisted for an interview than people with traditionally British names.

I’m casting my mind over the books I’ve read recently, that have been written by the ‘tick-bos’ people Shriver is so dismissive of and that I’ve loved:

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
A brilliant, insightful book.

Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo
Funny, warm, brilliant. I found myself missing the main character, Barry, after I’d finished it.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
A really important book in present day America and also a cracking read.

Gold from the Stone: New and Selected Poems 
By Lemn Sissay
I’m a little bit obsessed by Lemn Sissay and his poetry is amazing. If you follow him on Twitter he often posts little snippets - ebullient, hopeful little pieces that ‘stoke your soul’ in the way that all great art does.

And do you know what - I know it sounds petty and childish but I’ve loved all of those books far more than I loved anything by Lionel Shriver.

What about marginalised voices in TV. Did you watch A Very English Scandal recently? So good I watched it twice. Penned by Russell T Davies, it was an absolutely magnificent piece of television and Norman Cook’s courtroom speech about how he wasn’t going to be masturbated in a corner then ignored was one of the most rousing I’d ever heard (Not sure how close this was to what the real Cook said in court). Up until that point I’d found Cook an irritating little squirt but when he made that speech he was liked a Gay rights, anti-establishment crusader. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it - the establishment. The predominantly white, middle class, Oxbridge education literary establishment, feeling threatened by the new voices peeping through - they feel they are going to be swept aside. Those ‘other’ voices were always there, Shriver and others, there was Maya Angelou and James Baldwin and Christopher Isherwood and Patricia Highsmith and plenty more...There were always there but Penguin Random House are just trying to remove some of the hurdles to other emerging talent - is that really so bad?
In September 2017 I sat in that large hall in Bristol and the CEO of Penguin Random House talked about his favourite book by an underrepresented writer (something we’d all been encouraged to do). He held up a book by a gay writer (to my shame I can’t remember what is was) and said that when he read it, as a teenager who was gay, it made him feel accepted.
As a child of mixed race parentage, I didn’t see myself reflected an awful lot in the books I read, growing up, but I’m happy that my children will have far more of them to choose from!

Around the block

Dear Reader,

Prepare yourself for another volte face. (I love the expression ‘volte face’ and really wish I had the elan to drop it into general conversation more often, ditto ‘elan’) Yes, sorry to be so inconsistent but I want to talk about food, body issues and dieting. I did say that I wasn’t going to write about weight any more, what with its preoccupation being ant-feminist and such, but then I wrote a blog post about trying to give up sugar and the subtext was very much - I really want this to make me lose weight!
Whilst in the process of writing a diary about living a life without sugar (an ascetic monk’s progress), I read Megan Jayne Crabbe’s book Body Positive Power, and it instigated an instant, inner revolt. I started getting angry; about societal pressure and the patriarchy and stuff. Plus, I didn’t feel any better for having eliminated the white stuff; in fact I had a massive attack of thrush, but that’s another story… Megan talked about Intuitive Eating and recommended a book: Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch and so completed my total about-turn.

Firstly, forgive me for repeating myself but here is a bit of
History:
I went on my first diet aged about nine or ten*, I didn’t really call it a diet, I just stopped eating crisps and chocolate and other ‘fattening foods’ and I duly lost weight. As I’ve said before, I found the approval of other people - their congratulating me on my weight loss, utterly intoxicating. And when I say people - I mean the grown-ups, because although other kids delighted on calling me fat, I don’t remember any of them applauding me when I ceased to be so. This early diet was the first of many - Weight Watchers, The Rosemary Conley Hip and Thigh diet, Intermittent Fasting, Slimfast, to name a few! Plus other unhealthy methods such as having nothing but a can of diet coke and a packet of ‘low fat’ crisps for lunch.
*Statistically, the more children are made to feel bad about their weight and encouraged to change their eating habits/diet, the more likely they are to be obese in later life. (Either that or more likely to develop an eating disorder like Anorexia or Bulimia) That’s right folks - body shaming not only doesn’t work, it triggers exactly the thing that the ‘well-meaning’ commentators are trying to halt - it makes you fatter! If you don’t believe me, read the book.

I read The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach, and I tried to take on board what they were saying. I ditched the diet lingo, the attributing of a moral value to food, I tried to stop saying that I’d been really ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when I’d eaten a lot or not but I didn’t stop trying to reduce. I stopped saying that I was on a diet and started saying that I was trying to ‘be healthy’ instead. And yet, and yet, I still tried to be thin, be various means. The ‘not dieting’ methods included listening to a hypnosis CD, intermittent fasting and calorie counting and they all worked, initially, I lost weight, and then I put it back on again and felt like a massive failure until some other new fad or ethos would come along and I’d think - maybe that will ‘work’.

Going Forward
I’ve known for some time that traditional dieting is bollocks; https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/dec/14/healthandwellbeing.health
I’ve even read a book called Dieting makes you Fat by Geoffrey Cannon. But what is the alternative, I’ve thought, if you don’t want to be gargantuan?  I didn’t trust myself to totally ‘let go’.  None of the books seem to offer a viable alternative.   What would happen when you forgot about restrictions and ate whatever you wanted??
If you follow this blog, you might remember that a couple of years ago I posted about losing weight through calorie counting - logging it all in My Fitness Pal, and doing a lot of walking, monitoring it all with my trusty Fitbit. The thing is, I still do loads of walking, that hasn’t changed, but what has changed is that I got bored with weighing out all my food and meticulously recording it, so that went to the wall, along with all the other diets/’healthy eating’ plans!
You don’t know the  pure joy of rebellion until, on a day when you’re only supposed to be eating 500 measly calories (on the 5:2 plan) you just say Fuck It! I’m going to eat!!
Apparently - it’s just this sort of (inbuilt) mindset that makes all diets doomed to fail.

Intuitive Eating
What they say, in Intuitive Eating, is that all diets fail ultimately because our bodies are programmed to fight starvation. Your body goes into lockdown and starts hoarding any fat you have left. (They say it more scientifically than I do). Also, as soon as you tell yourself that you ‘can’t’ have something, you just want it even more. They cite the fact that many people indulge in ‘last supper’ mentality, binge eating, the night before embarking on a new diet, gorging on all the things they plan to ban. This is also what happens when people ‘cheat’ on their diets; it often triggers a binge.
95% of people regain the weight they’ve lost (and a little bit more usually) but instead of blaming the diet, they blame themselves for being weak-willed.
***Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong!*** I don’t know about you but this sounds VERY familiar. Just recently I was telling a colleague that I’d lost a lot of weight with calorie counting, only to regain it because I’d got fed up of logging everything. I said all of this with an apologetic/self-deprecating little grimace; the implication being - I am weak willed!

What is intuitive eating?
It’s eating what you want, when you want it. It’s stopping eating when you are full and not feeling that you have to clear your plate. It’s eating a biscuit, if what you want is a biscuit, and not trying to quell your cravings by eating 10 rice cakes, 2 apples, a bowl of spinach and then a biscuit! It’s not banning any type of food - our bodies need carbs and fat, as well as vegetables, fruit and protein. It’s not feeling guilty about eating anything - unless you’ve stolen it (and I guess not even then, if you’re poor and starving). It’s not feeling fearful of any food. It’s eating what you want to eat as opposed to what you think you should eat. It’s respecting your body and being kind to it. It is refusing food when you're not hungry and not just having something to be polite. It is waving goodbye to dieting, for good!

Does it work? (Will I lose weight or become gargantuan?) I don’t know, I’ve only just read the book. Time will tell, I suppose. One thing I have found is that, once you give yourself permission to eat anything you want, you seem to eat less of it. (eventually, once you get used to it) Goodbye scales!

We need to talk about Morrissey

This machine (seems to) support fascists

They announced on the radio this morning that it was coming up to the 30th anniversary of the release of the Guns n Roses album Appetite for Destruction. I curled my lip in distaste - a reaction as automatic as veering away from a bad smell. But the thing is - I bought that album, in my tender teenage years, I was finding my way, musically, looking for something a little bit different, and I kind of stumbled on rock (can we class G & R as heavy rock?)  and I felt deeply conflicted when I first saw the album cover.

The cover, as I’m sure you are aware but I’ll remind you anyway, features a cartoon depiction of  a half-naked woman, slumped on the floor, unconscious, with her knickers round her ankles. The implication is that she has been raped by a robot. The image is deeply unpleasant, gratuitous and, yes, I’m going to drop the ‘m’ word, misogynistic. Even if I hadn’t  considered myself a feminist, at the tender age of fourteen, I’m sure I would have been disgusted at something which had such blatant disregard for women.
I only liked two songs on the album anyway so I didn’t have to feel conflicted about listening to the music and trying to forget about the imagery. The music was hugely unimaginative, repetitive and painful to listen to. I gave it away and found my way to the more soulful and subtle Indie music, with it’s androgynous, willowy men and empowered women. I no longer had cause to feel ashamed of any of the albums in my collection (we’ll gloss over Wham: make it Big - I did go through a period of being deeply embarrassed by that but now I’ll happily claim it!).

But of, these days, oh Morrissey!
I keep wanting to scream and I’m sure it’s been said over and over on Twitter and other places, but:
And your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight!
You stupid fucker!
I’m thinking of starting a support group for those of us who hate Morrissey but love the music of The Smiths - who is with me?
Because I’m a bit lazy and a bit of a technophobe, I haven’t removed the music of The Smiths from my MP3 player. And every time one of their songs comes on (I always have it on shuffle) and I don’t fast forward the track, I think - oh no, I must skip past this but I really like this song! And then I feel slightly grubby and hypocritical. I feel so torn - Marr’s guitar and wall of noise and some of Mozzer’s lyrics versus present day Morrissey’s racism, xenophobia, ill-informed views and general dick-headedness.
Can we separate the man from the music? Or must I purge my music playing thingumybob of their whole oeuvre? I don’t have a problem with Johnny Marr, he still seems like a good (vegan) egg.

Johnny be good

Do you know what I’m referring to? I’m loathe to cite Mozzer’s lunatic pronouncements and insensitive claptrap, could you do me a favour and look it up yourself? The final nail in the coffin, for me, after years of trying to kind of ignore the mealy-mouthed racism, was when he compared the massacre of teenagers in Norway at a political camp in 2011, by a far right gunman, to battery farming. I don’t agree with battery farming, or eat chicken but I would never compare the cruel slaughter of children to farming practices. Surely any right minded person would have been sickened by the massacre? It didn’t even seem as if he was placing animals at the same level as humans, but in his lack of sympathy, that he was placing them above humans.

There are a few similar dilemmas surrounding music and musicians but I don’t feel as emotionally attached to anything that Snoop Dog has produced as I do to The Smiths, because, when I first started listening to them (years after they’d disbanded) The Smiths appealed to the lonely, misunderstood outsider teenager in me. As they must have appealed to many marginalised people and now Morrissey is attacking those very people! I should really metaphorically, scatter all their albums into the sea but I can’t quite make that final cut.

Does anyone else feel the same?

I’ve compiled a little list of artists/bands who evoke similar emotions to The Smiths and can offer an alternative:

Radiohead
The Beatles - (particularity anything from Revolver and Abbey Road)
Kate Bush (ah, she’s a fan of Teresa May, you say…)
P.J. Harvey
Bowie
(some of) Joanna Newsom (if I’m in the mood)

It’s a bit of a scant list, maybe when I start the support group we can introduce each other to other bands, over tea and biscuits, bands with great, quirky, imaginative lyrics and amazing sounds. I do like other music, by the way, lots of other stuff, but I’m trying to think of stuff that holds the same power; the power to harness a mood of wistful nostalgia and yearning. Perhaps, after all these years, it’s time to leave The Smiths behind, along with Shaders and Toners and heavy black eyeliner and consign it to the same place as that Guns n Roses L.P.

The rise and fall of Ferdinand Monkey

Let me tell you a story. I’ve got this cuddly toy - let’s call him Ferdinand Monkey*.
*not his real name
Ferdinand, as his name suggests, is a monkey and I bought him on impulse, one morning when I was walking through Woolworths (remember them?) on my way to work. Someone had placed Ferdinand on the edge of a shelf so he looked like he was sitting up and he had a very friendly, engaging face. I was going through a bit of a difficult time on my life and although I’d had a brutal cull of all my cuddly toys, a few years prior to this, at that time I felt the need to get back in touch with my inner child. He was only a fiver! It may seem childish and pathetic but Ferdinand, who shall hereafter be known as Ferdy, bought me comfort, and I figured it was healthier to fixate on a cuddly toy than to eat whole cakes or drink bottles of wine.

A few years after I’d acquired Ferdy and his brother, Forbes, I joined Facebook and when I joined Facebook, Ferdy joined too, he had his own profile.

Ferdy proved very popular - he had far more Facebook ‘friends’ than I had; most of them fellow cuddly toys. It was all a bit of silly but harmless fun and I enjoyed his interactions with the other toys - or ‘faux furries’ as members of the group called themselves. There were oscar ceremonies and parties - someone created a picture of Ferdy in a tuxedo, escorting another ‘faux furry’ down the red carpet. A bit childish, you might think, but all very friendly and somewhat imaginative.

The thing about Ferdy was that he embodied everything I wanted to be - he was a Zen Buddhist and yoga practitioner; he was peace-loving, amiable and way more chilled than I could ever hope to be. He only ever said positive (albeit somewhat surreal) things. When I was getting a bit stressed about something one day, my husband turned to me and said ‘What would Ferdy do?’ In the same way that someone might ask - ‘What would the Buddha do?’ My husband used to get a bit disturbed by my Ferdy fixation, even saying ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome monkey?’ When I’d taken Ferdy on a mini break with us. But on the whole he didn’t cause any problems (Ferdy, not my husband).
Yes, I had fun with Ferdy and the rest of the faux furries, then one day, without warning - Facebook deleted his profile. They said he breached their community standards by not being a real person or something and I thought  - WTAF?!? Because, ever since I joined Facebook, I saw racist or xenophobic memes that other people had posted, shared or liked (I did report a couple of them) and still see them now. Yeah, yeah  - freedom of speech and all that but stuff that would make me feel physically sick; angry, bile-filled vitriol was allowed to fly but not my fantasy profile, my peace-loving monkey avatar. And I’m reminded of that now, when I try to share my blog on Facebook; which I’ve been doing for four years, and I write a fairly innocuous piece about me trying to give up sugar and Facebook removes it because it thinks it is spam!! Yes - Face-Cambridge Analytica scandal - book thinks that my blog breeches community standards! And yet - still with the racist memes, Facebook!

I’m going to try and post this now - let’s see if it gets deleted…..

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