Eating

Food is great. Without it we’d probably all be dead. Winter eating is a whole different kettle of fish though.

I’ve spent the last six months eating healthier and transforming myself into an ‘after’ picture from a sinister-looking Weight Watchers ad campaign, only to emerge from the festive period resembling the bastard lovechild of Jabba the Hut and portly Pop Idol failure, Rik Waller.

The main culprits are chocolate and cake.

The Christmas binge was kickstarted when we acquired a large chunk of rocky road, which was inhaled very quickly. For those who don’t know what rocky road is, here’s a quick recipe:

1) Melt some chocolate in a very large pan. Actually, use a brazier as you’ll need to melt at least 100 kilos of the stuff.

2) Look in your kitchen cupboards for anything healthy you can add to it.

3) Throw away all that healthy stuff. Who needs it?

4) Add marshmallows, Maltesers, chopped-up nougat, Haribo, more chocolate and lard. Lots of lard.

5) Allow to cool and then refrigerate.

6) Eat and enjoy the sensation of your teeth snapping off whilst having a coronary episode.

That was just the beginning of the slippery slope. Before I knew it I was eating a whole Chocolate Orange for breakfast and barely being able to crawl to the fridge for a Famous Names chaser.

Mince pies with brandy cream - each one containing roughly half of the recommend daily calories for a dock worker - were devoured one after another.

That was a good start. I felt my stomach had been stretched to a point where a Christmas dinner could fit into it easily.

“I’ll not have too much,” or something similarly ludicrous was declared.

That’s all well and good, but when a starter of crackers with pate is served and you haven’t eaten for over four hours, you have to eat 150 of them, don’t you?

This meant that the full dinner was a little problematic. That didn’t stop me though. I consumed the full plate (not the actual plate) in the style of one of those trucks that empties a septic tank.

Indigestion? Maybe a bit, but a few cans of Guinness soon washed it away.

The following days have seen two gut-buster breakfasts and two buffets where I was unable to control myself. This means I now look like a Weeble that actually can fall down.

There were also kippers from the Isle of Man at one point. Why they were special I’m not sure. Perhaps they had three legs?

After four consecutive days of massive overeating at various family members’ houses, we’re left with a fridge of leftovers.

While this is very nice in that we don’t need to go to the shops and burn off any of the calories imbibed this week, it means today’s lunch will be a tub of pate, six pigs in blankets, half a pork pie, a slice of turkey, cold sprouts, lemon meringue pie, raspberry pie and possibly a third of a bottle of some Christmas Jack Daniel’s abomination.

That mince pie popcorn and the Thornton’s chocolates might be on the turn too. I’d better eat them, just to be on the safe side.

Thankfully I’ve also got a Gaviscon selection box.