I WAS asked the other day, seeing as how I'm prolific on the writing front, if I ever worry about burning out. No, I replied, I worry about starving.
I didn't mean this facetiously at all. Ask my wife. I really am obsessed with food. Food food food. Even while I'm eating a perfectly good breakfast I'll be thinking what's for lunch?
It's not that I starve myself on meagre portions of oats. In my book, if it's not fried, battered or covered in chocolate, it's not worth eating.
Nor am I Mr Fatty. Quite the opposite. In Belfast I'd be called a skinny melink melodian legs. Here in more refined Bangor I'm just dead thin. This occasionally helps me to delude myself that I'm actually quite healthy, but deep down I know that cholesterol gathers just as handily in the arteries of a thin man as a fat that if I continue the way I'm going the day will come when I'm sauntering down to the pub for lunch and I'll just explode.
They used to advertise Milky Way as the sweet you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite", and that's pretty much how I feel about all chocolate in fact I can't write unless there is chocolate close to hand. Others might use chocolate as a diversionary tactic to keep them away from the computer I believe it is an essential part of creation. Without its close contact I cannot begin to write because I will only worry about emerging from my study to find that a Dairy Milk famine has begun in my absence the connection between Mad Cow Disease and the full pint of fresh dairy milk that goes into every bar will have been established while I was tangling with a stupid character and a silly plot and I will have doomed myself to never experiencing that exquisite taste again.
I feel much the same way about Diet Pepsi. I don't try to mask the fact that I am an addict. When we go shopping we buy packs of 24, which is normally enough to see me through a couple of days. Like a lot of fools, I have conned myself into believing that anything with the word "diet" on the side must naturally be good for you, and that the more of it you take, the healthier you will be. It amazes me that the marketing people haven't yet devised Diet Benson & Hedges. Everyone knows that cigarettes do make you thinner, eventually.
I suppose the one saving grace is the fact that I have never smoked not since I was 11 at any rate, when we used to get on our bikes and race down to Groomsport where we'd find a bush and smoke ten Embassy Regal in five minutes, all with out inhaling, and then strut about spitting like real men. But then I went home and found out that my dad had collapsed breathless while playing cricket for the Civil Service and sworn off the fags for life.
I don't think it was the fags at all, it was charging about playing cricket when he was too old for it that and staying up all night manning the confidential telephones. That was in the early days of the Troubles when civil servants were expected to play the dual roles of Good Samaritan and Spanish Inquisitor few of them were cut out for it. The tapes are still sitting about the house somewhere I really must give them a listen sometime.
However, dad filled that yawning gap in his life with Polo Mints, and I was the sucker ordered down to the shop every five minutes to replenish his supplies, and it was the thought of going through that cold turkey as attractive as those two words are to me today that put me off smoking.
So I'm not altogether a lost cause, and maybe once a month my wife will sit me down and say right, healthy eating begins on Monday. This is generally a Tuesday when she says it, allowing me the best part of a week to stock up on my supplies of sugar and fat, culminating in a Sunday night visit to McDonalds where I have discovered the delights of hot apple pie and ice cream smothered in caramel sauce. And all for just 90p. Or two for £1.80.
This healthy eating regime generally lasts for about three days and involves lots of salad and bananas, though not at the same time. There are also certain exceptions which I insist upon. The first is a good breakfast. I'm sure Alpen is lovely, but I find the energy and goodness provided by Sugar Puffs essential for getting me through the long, strenuous hours making things up on my computer.
Diet Pepsi goes almost without saying. Not Diet Coke, or Virgin Cola or any of those own brand versions. The real thing (but not die real thing). In a can. Not a bottle. Nor a glass. It must be ice cold, rising to room temperature as the day progresses. Every ten minutes I will raise the can to my ear and give it a little shake to make sure it is still fizzing. This is a hangover from childhood when I lifted the dregs of my plastic beaker of Coke and downed them in one, only to discover that my mum had for some unknown reason poured cold tea into it. I don't think it was an attempt to poison me, but I've not drunk tea since, and I soon switched to Pepsi.
My wife can also tell you that I have started to gulp when I drink Diet Pepsi in public. Big gulping sounds. I cannot help it if you have a loud gulp, just try changing it, it's impossible subconsciously I am telling people to stay away from my can it's mine.
THE guy who asked me if I was worried about burning out was sitting in the audience at the Druid Theatre, where I was a reading on the last weekend of the recent Galway Arts Festival. What I didn't know until later was that the man sitting next to him was Michael D. Higgins, the Irish minister of culture, although how much culture he got out of all my swearing and ranting against that well known charity organisation Noraid I don't know. He was a perfect gent about it, anyway, came up and shook my hand afterwards.
All of our ministers are bored English fly by nights, endlessly repeating the same jargon, so it was nice to meet someone with a genuine interest in his job. I thought briefly about discussing the Noraid thing with him in more depth, or indeed the state of Irish fiction, but I think he could tell when he looked into my eyes that I was really thinking about the terribly small size of the breakfast dishes in Galway's Jury's Inn.