Greed

(NB... it's happening, isn't it? Just like I foretold... I've got a boyfriend, and I'm happy, and I'm not writing here so much. Bad Johanna! Must keep at it, cos I actually love splurging this venom out at you lot on a much more regular basis than I have been. At least 6 or 7 oh-so-inspired ideas for topics have risen in my head, half formed, and then the moment has passed cos I was too busy kissing or giggling or generally having fun (how vile, as dear Morrissey would say) and now they'll never see the light of day, and the world will never know. What a tragic loss for the world of 'art'! However, I am now awake at silly o'clock thanks to my dumb-ass curtains that are made of sheets, and so, you lucky, lucky people, I shall write.)

So... do you ever get days (or weeks, or months, or years) when it feels like ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT is food? I really hope so, cos I do. A lot. I know this is probably a tired subject for a girl to write about, but, well... this story is old, I know, but it goes on. (Wow, two Morrissey references in the first two paragraphs. Am I really 33, or just a 14 year old in a really bad wig?)

I try somewhat hard to eat properly. (I was going to write 'really,' but I was bought up to believe that it's a bad idea to tell outright lies.) Sometimes, however, I do try really hard, and then I lose weight and then, aside from the general angst and ennui that 21st Century living brings with it, I'm happy. The thing is, I actually enjoy eating healthily and once I get into it, it's honestly not a problem. Fruit? Yes! Vegetables? There's literally not one I don't like! (Unless chili is a vegetable, something I've yet to have the proper confirmation on). Berries and yoghurt for breakfast? Brilliant! All I ever drink is water (well, and gin and wine and jagermeister (not altogether, you understand), but hey ho) and so generally my meals are as healthy as you like.

But snacks. Ahhh, snacks. Those are my downfall. Cheese is private enemy number one. And to be honest, calling cheese a snack is a bit like calling Madonna some bird I heard about in the 80s once. When I'm in a cheese phase, I eat entire meals made of it. But I pretend it's still a snack so I can have my dinner as well. Brie and Port Salut and Applewood, oh my! And the slices have to be thick, and the crackers have to be laden with more salt than the dead sea.

See, salt... that is my downfall. I'll eat chocolate if I'm properly depressed or if someone's actually waving it in my face and insisting, but I'm not really that bothered about it. I don't like dark chocolate, and I hate any chocolate flavoured things... chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate pudding... euch. Too rich. I'm not a fan. But show me some salt and I'll probably snort it and break your arm for some more.

Peanuts... pringles... pretzels... podgy, podgy Johanna. (Although that, I admit, was a slight bit of the old artistic licence for the sake of alliteration - pretzels, at least those yummy Penn State ones, I have recently discovered, and some of you may be interested in this, are practically no fat! Two Weight Watchers points per bag, which is better than one of those fakey Go Ahead bars which pretend to be good for you but aren't especially. And yet, gullible moron that I am, I continue to Go Ahead and eat the darn bars in a bid to give myself a surface level of feeling better about my evening gluttony; a surface level I dare not poke too hard for fear it will collapse. But back to the point in hand, they're almost as good as crisps, those pretzel things! Almost!)

Where does this greed come from? I wasn't being sarky when I said that sometimes all I think about is food. I may have literally just finished stuffing my face with whatever snack I had just fallen upon, and already I'm plotting my next move to the canteen or Pret to get the next thing, even though I'm so full it hurts a bit. What's it all about, Alfie?

It's especially hard when people lay delicious snacks out on a table for you and then you're expected to ignore them. I never understand this. It happened a lot when I was in the dark days of freelancing on various magazines, and it happens now at the job I have on Thursday mornings... a lovely, lovely lady buys biscuits (another weakness) and crisps and nuts, literally by the bucketload, and spreads them out for us all to eat every single week. And I swear to god, everyone else not only ignores them, but seems happy to do so. This used to happen at the magazines as well. It was like a competition to bring in the most delicious snack, followed by a further, secret competition to see who could ignore them the most convincingly. Whereas I, despite my best intentions, surrounded by such bounty, literally cannot think about anything else and find myself going to the printer or the toilet every 15 minutes so I can come back with handfuls of goodies. And then I feel sick, and then I feel fat, and then I feel ugly, and then I hate myself, and then I realise that food is the only one who will still be my friend when I'm as weak and disgusting as I am, so I go back for more.

A lot of it - as is the case for so many of my problems - is booze fuelled. Once I'm drunk, all cares about being thin and pretty and healthy and happy with myself fly out the window and are entirely replaced with a vampire-like need for salt and fat, a need which is seemingly never, ever sated.

Keen followers of my blog will remember that my last entry was all about how I've gone off the form of fun that has been my mainstay (ha ha, I wrote mainstain at first there, chuckle chuckle) for the past 18 years. And I'm still feeling pretty happy about that decision. But I slightly fear that the greed that fun always unleashed in me has merely been transferred to food and that in 6 months I'll weigh 22 stone and be begging someone to give me some insuffalatable diet suppressants to restore me to my former self.

Meantime, I'm gonna stop waffling. It's time for breakfast.