‘Perhaps it’s time to address my lockdown eating habits’

Seeing myself in the hairdresser’s brightly lit mirror after four months of blissful lockdown ignorance was something of a shock. I’ve been living with a blown bulb in the bathroom for roughly the same time. There’s no excuse, I know, for such laziness. I know how to change a light bulb. Obviously there was a subconscious, psychological benefit to living in the dark. But I can no longer put off the end of my hibernation. Despite my cynical belief that Johnson’s road map would have brought us to a dead-end by now, it seems that we’re still on target for a further relaxation of lockdown measures, including the possibility of overseas travel and with it the distant promise of a summer holiday requiring something other than heavy knits and a cagoule. I’m not talking about bikinis and shorts – they’d have to be part of a prison uniform before I could be compelled to wear either – but I used to quite like my arms. Alas, I seem to have gained my quarantine 15 from the elbows up.

“Drastic measures needed, Minky,” I told my hamster, who never misses an opportunity for a spot of cardio in her wheel. Though it doesn’t seem to make her happy. There’s something menacing about the way Minky looks at me when she’s done a few spins and who can blame her, conned back into captivity by a smear of peanut butter in a humane mouse trap, when she could be living free beneath the fridge. Talking of the fridge, there’s plenty of research to say that when it comes to fitness you can’t outrun a bad diet. Perhaps it was time to address my lockdown eating habits.

I began by chucking out all the things that have made lockdown worth living. Well, I didn’t really throw out my wine. I put that in the loft – likewise my crisps and my biscuits. Out of sight, out of mind. I would have to hope that the pest expert really had done something to stop the mice getting in when he spent an hour up there on the day he came to mouse-proof my house.

Next, I ordered a delivery from EverythingButTheKale.com, the vegan ready meal specialists, whose lime green boxes I’d been spotting on bin day with increasing frequency. The meals looked great on the website, though, despite the site’s name, a great many of them did seem to incorporate the dreaded green leafy veg. Whoever did the PR for kale is a bona fide genius. Though it seems to have been somewhat eclipsed by jackfruit. I’d never tried jackfruit so I added a portion of “no-porkies” to my order. The website described it as the perfect vegan alternative to pulled pork.

Then I sat back and I imagined myself a month hence: a slimmed down vegan version of myself who only used wine bottles for toning up her triceps.

My EverythingButTheKale order was delivered by a young chap on a bicycle, wearing a lime green t-shirt, who looked like a very good advert for his produce. Having rung the bell, he placed the box on the doorstep and took a respectful Covid-proof step back.

“Thanks,” I said, picking the box up and hurrying to get back inside.

“Hang on! I need to take a photograph to confirm delivery,” he said. “You can be in it, if you like.”

“What?”

“Just a quick snap, then if you give your permission, we’ll upload the photo to our Instagram account. Every week our followers vote for a ‘plant peep of the week’ to get their next box of vegan loveliness for free. Want to go for it?”

I didn’t have to think about it for long. I was wearing a sleeveless puffa jacket over my pyjamas (when oh when will it be warm enough to discard the down-filled layer this year?).

“No thanks,” I said. “Does that ever work? I mean, do people actually let you put them on Instagram?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Loads of influencers have shared our hashtag. We’ve got a whole community of Plant Peeps.”

“#ShootMeNow,” I thought. I needed to make sure that Saskia at #Yne never heard about this. I did not want to find myself moderating an on-line root-based beverage squad.

“Enjoy the goodness,” said the boy on the bike as he set off to his next delivery.

The urge to blow a giant raspberry at his receding back was strong.

I decided to eat the pulled jackfruit first. The instructions said I should let it defrost before heating, so I put it on the kitchen counter while I went for a sanity stroll; the one lockdown habit that actually makes me feel better. I made the mistake of stepping out without checking the street via my peephole first. Brenda was warming up for a run.

“Care to join me?” she asked.

“I would love to,” I said. “But…” I waved my hands vaguely in the direction of my knees.

“Oh, I understand. My knees used to give me so much trouble until I lost some weight.”

She was not directing that observation at you, I chanted to myself every step of my walk.

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I noticed the smell the moment I stepped back inside. Not mouse pee but something far worse, if that were possible. Something rotten. Something akin to that “bottom of the bin” taste of the collagen sachets that were making no difference whatsoever to my skin but may have been encouraging my chin hair. The smell was coming from the jackfruit. Perhaps it would be better cooked.

It was not better cooked. I managed to choke down three mouthfuls. It tasted every bit as bad as it smelled, with an added layer of terminal decay. Maybe it was off? No. The packaging suggested that there were still two weeks to go before the “best by” date.

I had to climb up into the loft to retrieve some biscuits to take the taste away. While I was sitting in the loft, eating Hobnobs, I received a WhatsApp from my goddaughter, Caroline. “Did you read my dossier for Matt Hancock about taxing high-sugar foods?”

That’s when I discovered I can fit three biscuits in my mouth at once.