The Fat Bloke Diaries

Episode Fifty-One – Somewhere in My Heart

My name is Shaun, and I have an addictive personality.

I’ve never smoked a cigarette and I’ve never taken any non-prescription drugs. I have certainly indulged in alcohol over the years though not to the stage where I’d class myself as having a problem. Others may have said different at some stages of my life, especially around the point when I took jellies and slightly bloated oranges into the office. The former didn’t always set well and the latter showed the needle marks if you looked carefully. Both helped me get through the day, as did the strangely pale bottle of cola under my desk.

These days I still drink more than I should (probably), and for the wrong reasons (definitely), but I’m confident that I can say ‘no’ to alcohol, at least I can when the night is young. After a few bevvies, I’m much less likely to step away from the bottle. But there are some things that I partake of much more than I should and which, in the long run, will do me much more harm than the occasional beer.

Many of us have things that are guaranteed to mess us up yet we feel incapable of doing anything about it. Superman has Kryptonite. Whitney Houston has Bobby Brown. I, when in weight-loss mode, have cheese.

I've said it before, but it's true: it all comes down to willpower. I can resist everything except, as dear Oscar said, temptation. Especially in cheesy form. For some people it’s heroin. Others crave nicotine. Yet more have a self-destructive relationship with the demon drink. And I can’t pass a Lincolnshire Poacher without at least a little nibble.

I’m not belittling others’ addictions. I know that I’m nowhere near the level of many people who would be classed as addicts. But where do you draw the line between addiction and a difficult to break habit? A friend of mine doesn't like cheese. To me, that's like saying he doesn't like breathing. Cheese is delicious, yet it can’t be healthy in the amounts that I’ve been known to consume it.

When I go to my local deli, do I really need to take so long browsing their cheese section? And is it really necessary for me to sample everything on the counter? Do I really need that Cornish Yarg or Shepherd's Purse Byland Blue? No of course I don’t need it, but I want it. I want them all. Even when I’ve had so many that the combination makes me feel more than a little queasy, I still want to try just a few more. So should I simply avoid the cheesery? Or try to wean myself off it? Maybe I could work my way down from an entire truckle of White Stilton to just one measly Dairylea triangle a day?

I really ought to take heed of the health issues involved. Sometimes, when I'm enjoying my fifth helping of a particularly delicious Wensleydale, I get attacked by pangs of remorse so intense that I can actually feel my arteries hardening. I don't think my heart could ever get so cold that it needs to wear its own fleece, could it?

I need to change my perception of cheese. I need to associate it with something disgusting, like having a mental image involving Anne Widdecombe and a curiously whittled block of parmesan. And maybe the massed pipes and drums of the Coldstream Guards.

After the fund- and awareness-raising I’ve done for the British Heart Foundation, you’d think that I’d know the dangers of full-fat cheeses by now. And you’d be very right. I know the hazards of a high cholesterol diet and the associated risk of coronary disease. I’m aware that I’m at risk of high levels of triglycerides in my bloodstream, thereby increasing my chances of a stroke. And I know that the more hard cheeses I eat, the more chance there is that yes actually, my bum will look big in this.

Boredom plays an award-winning support role in this presentation of waist destruction too. Let's set the scene: I'll be at home watching TV. It's mid evening and my meal is digesting merrily away in a rumbly manner. Suddenly I decide that I'm not really watching the film, I only put it on because Sandra Bullock's in it and... you know. So I get up. I walk towards the stairs, fully intending to go and get a book or maybe do some writing. Only before I realise what's happening I'm in the kitchen, buttering a chunk of delicious crusty bread and there's a selection of cheese already on the plate. Now at this point I do understand that I could dump the lot, that I don't actually have to eat them, but that would be such a waste when there are so many starving children in the world. So I wander back to the living room, plate in hand, and munch through it. Any enjoyment has been killed by the miserable knowledge that I've lapsed yet again. And the film is still rubbish.

Doesn’t that sentiment sound as real – and as depressingly sad – as any bout of whiskey remorse?


© Shaun Finnie 2009
 

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