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I do not understand myself at all. I am like a very weak-assed version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My Dr Jekyll is a good man who looks after himself and eats healthily and my Mr Hyde is a very bad man who eats too many biscuits and chocolate. I think Robert Louis Stevenson could have had a proper hit on his hands if he'd gone this way. Instead he is forgotten and no one references his books any more
The bit I don't understand about myself is the switch in me that gets flicked one way of the other and what makes it stick. Before Christmas I had a great run of being healthy, after a holiday where I'd admittedly over-indulged and it wasn't until convincing myself that I could eat a couple of Quality Street at Christmas without going back to the dark side, that I completely went back to the dark side.
It's not like I didn't have a lifetime of experience to tell me that I absolutely cannot eat a couple of Quality Streets and then not eat ALL the fucking chocolate in the world.
Since Christmas I have been determined not to carry on eating sweets and biscuits, but the chocolate switch was stuck on on and I failed EVERY SINGLE DAY.
And with Easter approaching, you'd assume I was absolutely fucked, unless I could consume so much chocolate that I was sick and the switch might then reset.
But nope, somehow around last Tuesday the switch flicked back of its own accord and suddenly I have no interest in biscuits or chocolates or eating my kids' Easter Eggs, even though they've got the ones with mini eggs crushed into the big egg in a perverse assault on the egg community. I presume the big eggs give birth to the little ones, so then to have their offspring crushed up and pressed into them must be quite the trauma. Which came first the big egg or the mini egg? The big egg.
I said egg.
Anyway, this time I am putting glue in the switch mechanism so that I will never eat chocolate of under 90% again (very dark chocolate is fine and does not flick the switch). I am embarrassed by how much weight I have lost this week just from not eating sweets. There's no way I am going back this time. I may have said that before in this blog. But this time I mean it. You never thought I'd give up booze for 63months did you? Might have a whisky to celebrate. There's more than one switch.
I did, however eat something that may have risked my health today. Catie was making dinner this evening (we are an equal opportunities relationship and I make the dinner in my turn) and had made salmon fillets for us all, with the adult ones having a nice spicy topping. As she served up the fish, one of the slippery buggers fell off the spatula and hit the kitchen floor.
Now we could have split the other one and maybe nicked a bit off of each of the kids fillets, but Catie had worked hard on this and I love her and didn't want her efforts to go for nothing. Is there a three second rule for a moist bit of fish?
I told Catie that I would still eat the fish and did my best to scoop it up off the not entirely clean kitchen floor. I had fallen quite near to the floor cupboards which is the place where most of the detritus gathers and where shoe-fall is greatest and also where the animals lick around in the crud. I thought I could maybe rescue just the top bit of the fillet, but it all fell apart as I tried to gather it and so most of it touched the ground.
But I couldn't let my wife down and even if that meant killing myself by eating contaminated floor salmon then that was what I was prepared to do. This is the woman that applied unguent to my crotch rot almost exactly five years ago. And I couldn't break my wedding vows to eat potentially dangerous food so that my partner wouldn't feel like they had wasted their time cooking.
I am a man who ignores the three second rule and use by dates, but even I wasn't sure that I was doing the right thing. I didn't rescue all the salmon, but enough of it and I ate the lot and didn't notice any extra bits of grit or hair.
I did find myself thinking about that kid whose story pops up on social media all the time, who ate a slug for a dare and ended up being paralysed by a parasite. At least I would be famous if something similar happened to me. I'd be known as the floor salmon guy. I don't think even Catie would think - "Ah, he did that for me, what a guy!" She'd think, "Oh you fucking idiot, you did something ridiculous and now I have to look after you as well as the kids."
When I was putting Ernie to bed I did suddenly feel quite nauseous, but food poisoning has always been a great way to start a diet. As is, I imagine getting some rare parasitical illness that leaves you unable to feed yourself.
The nausea passed and so far I am no more paralysed than usual. And the floor salmon was delicious.
