The Social Worker's Scarf

I thought I'd had the unexpected pleasure of being chatted up today. Before I stank to high heaven of dry-fried herring. On reflection, he could just have been genuinely impressed by my scarf. He was very attractive, with a cool hat and a cool baby and a soft American accent. This is what made me mistake his interest in my non-descript, hand-woven scarf for flirtation, he couldn't actually love my scarf could he? I mean, its a nice scarf. I bought it in an emergency when we had 2 cm of snow this year and I wasn't equipped for it. It does the job. Its just a bit 'Social Worker'. A bit 'Sensible Shoes'. A bit 'Earnest and Worthy'. I was a bit taken aback that someone so hip would be so impressed with it. Perhaps he thought I was Miss Marple, or thinks that this is how we are in England, always commenting on one another's scarves. "My, what a nice scarf Ms Jones!", "Why thank you Mr Smith". But it wasn't the Home Counties circa 1930, nobody was wearing carnations in their lapels. So, I assumed I was being chatted up, by a sexy bloke with a cute baby. So I can't really account for what happened next.

"Oh, thanks" I said, "I call it my Social Worker Scarf". I think I said it wittily. Its not that I have anything against Social workers. He clearly didn't get the humour and laughed a bit unconvincingly and asked "why?", I thought this gave him away. "Well, you'd have to see it with the beads". He started on about "what does a Social Worker's scarf look like?", and the whole joke began to fall apart. I was blinking anyway because I have been persevering with Dostoevsky's The Idiot at night under an eco-bulb. I had wanted to mention the baby, which seemed only polite. I had intended to tell him "what a beautiful baby Mr American!" but it would have been a lie, because I couldn't actually see it. I had thought I was going blind, but Graham says it's because the print is so small. It is too, I had wondered why it had taken me so long to read it. Apart from the fact that I loathe it. The only thing I do enjoy is the humour, and I can admit the genius of his characterisation. I think, for all my misgivings about Dostoevsky, he would have understood about my Social Worker Scarf. He might also have understood about the awkward exchange at the coffee counter with the softly spoken American.

I've not heard that Dostoevsky was much of a looker. Its hard to tell with all that facial hair. The man who pretended to love my Social Worker Scarf had a bit of that too, but he didn't get the joke, even when I described the beads. This is why a good-looking man, with or without facial hair, however good-looking and however cool his hat, and however cool his baby isn't always enough. Its the humour that matters. My husband gets it.

Oily fish

It has been several months since my last, and final, unfortunate encounter with a mackrel. I felt it was time to give the humble Herring a chance. All the whole food experts and nutritionists and all the good people out there eager for healthy brains, guts, hearts and so on recommend the very thing that strikes fear into my heart and a projectile vomit message to my stomach.

Oily fish.

Those of you who have read my previous post will be familiar with the wildly enthusiastic Patrick Holford. He is the big time believer in the power of food to transform our lives. He is the man who swears that an oily fish several times a week keeps the Doctor at bay. Knowing Patrick he would eat it with it's head still on, eyes blinking, such is his passion for fresh produce. I chickened out and almost cried with relief when the fishmonger offered to take off it's head and insides. The Mackrel had come complete with it's innards and I had forgotten to take them out during the last fateful liaison with an oily fish. I was embarrassingly grateful to see The Herring headless and gutless.

I had thought that with the head and eyes missing and the fish offal scraped out I was on to a better start. No. Not so. Patrick didn't help me, because he forbids sea salt and additional oil. The only mention of the word 'butter' is somewhere on the graph of 'foods that KILL' under 'dairy fats'. Perhaps he is concerned that if he types the word 'butter', even under the chapter on Heart Disease, he might remember that comforting smell of sizzling golden butter warming on the stove. God alone knows what would become of him if he remembered the taste of a hot, salted chip or the texture of a newly baked loaf of white bread. Yes...you guessed it...white bread is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Even on its own, its wrong. You can forget all about the fresh zing of home-made marmalade....because of the sugar...WRONG!

I love to get sanctimonious about what I percieve as my Puritan eathing habits to my heathen husband. A man so addicted to freshly ground coffee, Yorkie Bars and sausage rolls that I often remind him of his mortality and threaten to avoid his funeral when (not 'if') he dies before he reaches 45. The man is moderate really, but I do enjoy whining about his buttered crumpets, sighing about his occasional bowls of vanilla ice cream, tutting about the emptied biscuit tin, and we all know why, don't we? Yes, its because I'm jealous. I'm jealous of every single mouthful, and I'm jealous that he doesn't care a stuff, and I would love to be so unconcerned with my health, my body, my spare tyre.

I tried today, I'm sorry Patrick but I really tried. I managed the tasteless splodge of saltless, sugarless oats this morning by going wild and adding some walnuts. They didn't help much, and by 11 am I was reaching for the pumpkin seeds all over again.

health food phase

It would be hard to describe Patrick Holford's NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible to anyone unfamiliar with a pumpkin seed. It is even harder to imagine of what Patrick Holford's OLD Optimum Nutrition Bible might have consisted. I suspect the NEW one is even less 'fun with Patrick' than the OLD one and this is a reliable assumption because it would be hard to imagine anything less enticing than this NEW ecyclopaedia of joyless eating. The fact is that Patrick's presence in our home marks a return to the 'Health Food Phase' I went through in my teenage, vegetarian years. This was a phase much embraced and ecouraged by our mother who was ahead of her time in her eco-friendly, recycling egg-shells, organic home grown honey ways. We were raised by a woman so devoted to the medicinal benefits of honey that she even proposed it to my sister as a cure for breast cancer. It didn't go down well.

I am not sure how long my relationship with Patrick is going to last. I have developed an alarming passion for pumpkin seeds, so it looks promising. I am a woman who likes to plan ahead. I have started worrying about my bowels and osteoporosis, and so I now force a bowl of my least favourite food down my neck every morning. Until I met Patrick I was starting to come to terms with my unwelcome companion over the breakfast news, oiling the waters my bowl of oats with double cream, maple syrup and almonds. My mother, of course had her porridge made with water and salt. She probably had honey as well. But Patrick says, no honey, no maple syrup and no double cream. I'm allowed almonds, but only twelve of them in the afternoon with a piece of fruit. So my explorations of the possiblities of porridge have been reduced to a mean teaspoon of flaked almonds. Perhaps this is why pumpkin seeds have become so alluring.

Patrick Holford's NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible found it's way into our home shortly after a chance encounter with a licqorice and peppermint teabag and a bout of Swine Flu. Not the most orthodox of romantic encounters, certainly not 'dinner a deux' over a bottle of Bordeaux. Luckily for you as a lifelong amnesiac I have forgotten the details but suffice to say that the teabag and the bout of Swine Flu between them somehow weaned me off caffeine and I never looked back. I developed an insatiable appetite for liqcorice tea, though I never have worked out how to spell it, as you can see. As a consequence I had to trawl Health Food Shops to fuel my craving. As a further consequence I suddenly had to beg the unhealthy looking owner if I could use her toilet. She looked alarmed, I suppose she may have been concerned that I was too toxic, but she was, of course, ethical and allowed me to use it, eco-friendly recycled loo roll and all.

All this was a recipe for an slightly unexpected conversation about this bizarre craving for this tea which I had discovered by mistake. "Oh" says the unhealthy-looking Health Food Shop owner, "that is because it is particularly good for chest infections". I obviously looked dumbfounded. She went on "If you have been suffering with Swine Flu and chest problems then your body is telling you what you need". I was polite, but I knew the packet said something like 'aids digestion'. Either way, she didn't have any for sale. Which you or I, whether familiar with the pumpkin seed community or not, would have thought unremarkable in itself. "Well", says I, "who would? its a bit odd after all!". "No, no, if you had come in yesterday I could have sold you loads, but we had a lady who came and bought our entire stock of Licqorice tea, so we've run out, if I'd known...". Well, how could she have 'known' she would have a sudden rush on Licorice tea?

The nut addiction followed shortly after this strange development in my personal habits. I went back to my thin pale friend in her wrapped up in scarf, hat and gloves in her lightless, ethically heated and therefore freezing cold shop. I asked her about our bodies and why they suddenly start asking for things. She started to look alarmed again, like the last time when I demanded to use her low-level flush wc with its water-saving device. I wanted to explain that I meant nutritionally speaking, not the satisfaction of carnal instincts. She fully understood this because I came out carrying a copy of Patrick Holford's overambitious claims. Patrick displays absolutely no signs of carnal instincts. Even his sex life is rationed according to how much it depletes his levels of zinc.

A lady came in for a couple of crates of cider vinegar, another of our Mother's eccentric tastes. A friend had read somewhere that drinking cider vinegar helped to curb our appetites. A friend had, she said, lost a stone just by drinking cider vinegar. Patrick would have been appalled because our kindly earnest Health Food seller advised her to swill it down with a couple of spoonfuls of honey. To my horror I joined in the conversation. "My mother swore by it and she lived to be 79 and she wasn't fat" I said, which was disingenuous because she did also die of a hideous cancer, which even honey couldn't cure and she kept her weight off by scuttling around after my father.

I can't deny feeling a bit cynical. In the section about living a long life, he advises 'avoiding heavy traffic' and I can't help feeling I'd rather die young than count out my almonds in an Old People's home. We shall persevere, perhaps me and Patrick can work out a compromise, where I don't die of boredom and lose all my friends to an over-zealous nutritionist.