Diets

Human nature being what it is I have managed to work round the lack of bread and also seem to have avoided losing weight. This is not what the bread ban was intended to do, but it is a tribute to the ability of my body to avoid salad and weight loss.

It's a tricky one. The only answer I can see is to use more self-control and less calories.

I sit here. I read the words.

They don't actually seem to mean anything.

If you mention cake I know immediately what the words mean.

Mention salad and I merely shudder.

This morning I went into town to do some errands. These included checking mobile phone prices because mine died on me this morning. It's had a hard life in the last four and a half years so I can't really complain, though I wasn't too impressed by the way the salesman sniggered after asking "May I have a look at your current phone?"

Anyway, as I was looking in shop windows I started looking at watches. I don't know if you've noticed the growing trend but it amazes me how many yards of watch display now feature watches by non-watch companies.

If I wanted a suit I wouldn't buy one off Timex, or designer wear off Citizen or Sekonda, so why would I want to buy a Hugo Boss watch, or one by D&G or DKNY?

I haven't decided on a new phone yet, and I certainly haven't solved the puzzle of why people would pay to have a watch made a clothes designer.

It's just one of those 21st century days when I find myself wishing for a sudden flash of insight.

Or a machine gun. A Heckler & Koch as used by the SAS. That should do the trick, I thought.

Then I checked on their website.

They make bloody watches!

My personal trainer has told me to stop eating bread.

There are some words you wouldn't expect to hear from a dedicated salad dodger like me aren't there?

I'm not paying him, you understand. He owns the gym I go to and he's adopted me. It isn't that he really wants to train me, it's just that the sight of me gradually turning purple on the treadmill before breathing my last sprawled across a Swiss Ball is likely to put people off. It could even be that he isn't trying to get me fit - just to scare me off.

Anyway, it's seven days since I last ate bread. Almost. It's actually six days and twenty hours since the instruction was delivered. My response was to come home, eat three slices of toast with beans for tea and then top up with a couple more with marmalade. It wasn't greed, it was part of a mourning process. So it's really six days and nineteen hours since life was worth living. It seems longer. Since then I have eaten just half a slice of bread and one panini, despite the many offers of sandwiches and toast from the Spawn of Satan that masquerade as my children.

And there we have it, the crux of the matter - sandwiches. Without bread you can't make sandwiches. And without sandwiches...

...you are forced to eat salad.

I hate it. It's one step too far in getting in touch with my feminine side. Besides that, there's something so unBritish about salad. The French and Californians, to name but two expendable groups of people, eat salad. Until I can come up with an alternative, so do I. And I don't like it.

Think about it. Agincourt, Trafalgar, Rorke's Drift, Zeebrugge, D-Day - does salad enter your mind? No, I thought not. That, I think, proves my point.