The Camera Never Lies. It Fibs.

When, ten years ago, I pondered asking the Karcher power washer people to sponsor my blood pressure, I went to the doctor who told me to lose weight. I considered joining a gym, but that consideration lasted nanoseconds when I remembered how much I hated school P.E. lessons.  I tried jogging but found that I spent most of my time thinking about how far I was running and actually counting the lampposts I passed on each street. In the end, I decided to stick to the form of exercise I liked most: walking.  To make things a little more challenging I decided on a daily conquest of one the steep Wade roads that led from my house in Inverness and up past Milton of Leys and into Daviot Woods. My first attempts were breath-taking. So much so, that I barely managed a few hundred yards. By the end of that first week, though, I was reaching the top of the hill and already the weight was starting to fall off. Suddenly, I was addicted to this walk and, being a tight-fisted so and so, congratulated myself on all the cash I was saving by not joining a gym. 

After the first month I had lost a stone and the same happened the month after that and the month after that. After six months, I had lost more than five stone and my doctor congratulated me on my efforts as she declared my blood pressure – and a few other assorted ailments – were now under control. 

I’ve let things slip from time to time, but the experience gave me confidence that, whenever my weight started to climb towards those old Michelin Man levels, I knew what I needed to do to sort things out. 

Which is where I am today with the bathroom scales telling me it’s time to get back on that hill and cut out some of the sugary nonsense I've been scoffing since the summer.  Alas, here at the high point of my girth is when my friends at Paths for All decided to feature my walking for health story in their new online exhibition Humans of the Walk.  I had hoped they might ask for an old photograph of me because I’d have chosen that one where, if you squint, I look like James Bond striding across the beach in Jamaica. Well, maybe in my imagination. Instead, a new up-to-the minute photograph was commissioned with me standing on a footbridge at the Ness Islands looking wistfully towards the river (or the pastry-laden coffee shack) . I tried as best I could to disguise my bulk under a distracting red jacket, but, as they say, the camera never lies. It just fibs a little. 

Besides, it’s not as if that photograph was going to make headlines, was it? Unless you include this piece in the Sunday Post. Yikes.  

JZ

No Guilty Pleasures

Inviting Nigella Lawson to be a guest on our new ‘Ways to Wellbeing’ series was, admittedly, a long shot.  To be fair her publicity people took a week to consider the offer before letting us down gently and politely. I’m guessing the dozen or so You Tube views we’d garnered for the first episode was not the clincher I might have imagined.  Still, as I headed off to her stage show in Glasgow, I knew I’d be viewing Nigella’s performance through the ‘wellbeing’ prism. What would Nigella have told us had she agreed to be lightly grilled by me and my co-presenter Nicola?

The stage at the King’s Theatre was suitably festooned in golden fairy lights as Nigella appeared to rapturous applause.

  “Stop that or you’ll make me blush,” she warned us. She then explained the format for the show would mostly consist of her talking, interrupting herself and then answering questions from the audience. Those among us who hoped a makeshift kitchen might be wheeled on from the wings were to be disappointed . Nor would there be free black pudding meatballs or slices of bitter orange tart. Instead, the first half of the show was devoted to Nigella’s philosophy of cooking and her insistence that there should be no such thing as guilty pleasures.  To that end she shared a poignant story about her mother who, relatively young, was diagnosed with a terminal illness just two weeks before her death.  During those final two weeks she told her family that this was the first time she’d been able to enjoy the food she loved without feeling guilty or worried what other people might think. At that point Nigella turned to the audience with a clear message about enjoying all that life has to offer while you can:

  “No one should have to wait for a terminal diagnosis before they stop feeling guilty about food.”

In the second half of the show Nigella, literally, kicked off her shoes and curled herself into the embrace of a red shell-shaped chair. From there, sipping from a glass of Campari and soda, she answered questions that had been texted from the audience.

This was the most entertaining and revealing part of the evening as Nigella told us, among other things, that Scotland had the best chips, that she liked Irn Bru (but could happily live without it) that square sausage was ‘genius’ and that she is not “the kind of cook who holds back the one secret ingredient that makes food taste delicious”.

  There was a moment of audible shock in the audience when she revealed that the large store cupboard seen in her TV shows is just a set.  At that point she got to her feet to pace out the size of the actual larder she has in her home.  She guessed it was about a metre wide and two metres long but confessed she wasn’t good at maths.

  Then came the story of her biggest cooking blunder. This involved her making a meal for her old friend Salman Rushdie during the period when the author was in hiding from Iranian assassins.  An oven malfunction resulted in a small explosion which then prompted Special Branch officers to burst through the front door of her small flat. Nigella herself emerged from the smoking kitchen with blackened eyes looking, she said, like Lucille Ball in that old TV comedy show.  And yes, most of us in the audience were old enough to get that reference.

As for ‘wellbeing’? Put it this way, as the show ended I was glad there had been no wheeled on kitchen or cooking demonstrations.  Who needs free cake? What we got was a valuable reminder that life is all about the times we share with family and friends and how often food - the cooking of it and the eating of it - is central to those special moments and memories.

JZ

Can We Survive Until March?

Our friends at the White Cottage Tearoom are taking a well-earned break over the winter. A big thankyou to them for being among the first to support our Valued Volunteer scheme. Gosh, how we’ll miss those Sunday morning fry-ups and pots of tea that come with free top-ups. I’m not sure what we or our Puffin Partners will do with ourselves until March, but we’re open to suggestions.