Skinny Minnie

Today

I recently read a jubilant status update from my niece who at last, with the help of surgery, some determination and a following wind, has lost over ten stone to make her weight at last "normal".

There's no doubt that one of the ills of an affluent society is overweight. It's a rare person who is able to say "I never think about it". The obesity epidemic is visibly with us. Programmes such as "Supersize v. Superskinny enliven our evening's TV watching. Celebrities punish their bodies to stay superskinny.

We seem to have lost the knack of knowing how to regulate our eating to match our energy output and many of us are unable to judge whether we are too large or too small.

In My Day

In 1972 I worked for the Inland Revenue at Barrington House in Worthing. This was a large building housing a range of Revenue  departments. I don't know how I got chatting to a lady called Hazel. I used to see her on the station platform and wonder with slight envy at her extreme skinniness.

We used to meet up in the canteen for lunch and sometimes popped out to do shopping together. I quickly discovered the inner world of the anorexic. Hazel talked about nothing but food. Her first remark upon sitting down would be, "I can't think what to have for supper tonight." Her lunch would consist of a single sausage and a spoonful of peas. She would spend her lunch skinning both food items (and skinning a processed pea is highly skilled labour, believe me) and poking the remaining mess around her plate for half an hour. I generally feasted more rapidly on soup or fruit as I was trying to lose my post-pregnancy fat.

She described with joy her discovery that she could make an adequate supper out of a jar or two of Heinz baby food. She also described her life, her revulsion at having to engage in sex with her large and jovial (ex) husband and her fury when he had left her for another woman. She told me that she had decided to stop eating to punish him, but it seemed to me that she was punishing mainly herself and her nine-year old daughter.

This daughter was a strapping lass, clearly taking after Dad. Hazel shared a one-bedroomed flat with this child who presumably was given her share of baby food to eat. As Hazel's condition became worse, she told me how her daughter would get up in the night to make hot-water bottles to ease the persistent cramp. She used to say to her daughter "I wonder if I'll wake up in the morning?" I did protest at that; clearly mother-daughter roles were reversed and I felt for this game little girl. But I had no skills or experience that could be of any help to Hazel and, as my own daily life became more complicated, the relationship dwindled to nothing.

I wonder whether Hazel is still alive and whether she got the help she was crying out for. What I do know is that knowing those who carry ten or more stone too much or those whose body and soul are linked by a slender thread has helped me to put my two stone "excess" into perspective. Not that I'll give up the fight!