The Food of Love

She’s in danger right now, isn’t she?’ Her words squeaked. ‘Yes,

window of respite before he rose. She

I have been reminded that back in the day, eating was to provide fuel for work, a necessity of life as mundane as bathing or sleeping. Pleasurable, sure, but when did it become such an obsession? We are bombarded daily with adverts, images, ideas and offers, all urging us to eat more, eat better, eat different, eat cheaply, and then ironically the list of diets available to us to help balance the overconsumption are so varied and many that they are too numerous to list. Here’s an exercise: try to name six members of the current cabinet. Most people struggle after three. Now try naming me six diets. Easy, huh? As a food lover and writer, I can say that the eating, preparation and sourcing of food has been a lifelong pleasure. I believe that one of the greatest expressions of love is to cook for someone. For

I went away and drew up a list of all the things you wouldn’t have to suffer if you weren’t here anymore. It was something like this: No more illness, no more struggling to be healthy. No struggling – period. No loss: you would never have to grieve the passing of another. Heartbreak! How lovely not to have to wake in the morning with a heart full of fragments and eyes full of grit. No ageing – here’s a universal truth: the older you get, the more life loses its sparkle, loses a little of the magic. The endless, wonderful possibilities of youth where everything and anything feel possible – that fades . . . But then I considered all the things you would not experience: Falling hopelessly in love. Your wedding day. Knowing the blessing of a child. Seeing the sunset in places far and wide. Earning the right in old age to become eccentric, even cantankerous. Getting properly drunk on champagne. Sleeping in a meadow, by a brook. Decorating a room. Waking wrapped in the arms of the one you love. Fresh caught lobster, eaten on a dock. Being old enough to know better, but still laughing so hard at nothing much that you feel dizzy with happiness. Oh, my darling, this list is endless, it stretches on for infinity . . . And

She gasped when she recognised it as envy. For the briefest beat of time, she had wondered what it might feel like to have no children, to not have the worry, the desperate fretting that had accompanied every waking moment since walking from Mrs Janosik’s office. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to think that! She closed her eyes,

don’t want her to go away, to be in a hospital with people like that.

You are poorly, so poorly, and now your tummy hurts.

Beauty is on the inside, beauty is goodness and it is nothing to do with a number or a dress size or a shape.