Food porn

Day 6 and 110 kilos.

On Friday morning I took the chief to the local hospital for a routine check up. I was still “hungry like the wolf” and yet again was tantalised by images of food wherever I went. “Advertise here to a captive audience of 500,000” trumpets an advertisement on one of five televisions in the waiting area of the hospital. The next thing I hear is: “and today we welcome Paolo Stromboli the CEO of Pasta Fresca”. Paolo strolls into shot, greets his loving audience, launches into a discourse about his restaurants with gratuitous images of lobster linguine, spaghetti carbonara, and ravioli before declaring in his extravagant accent “and today I’ll be showing you how we make our fresh pastas”. Oh thank god for that thinks I – this is just what I needed. For the next ten minutes I am subjected to this battering of both visual and audible delight because there are five televisions. I can escape the visual by playing Sudoku on my wife’s iPad but not the audio. By the end of it my stomach is howling and I have to swallow constantly to avoid drooling as my saliva glands go into overdrive. So here's a good tip for any of you entrepreneurs – hospital audiences really are captive.  Good place to advertise.

After I had dropped her at work, I went home to get on with the CV document which I have now discovered has to be completely re-formatted so that it can be turned into an eBook. The hunger remained with me but apart from the runs to the fridge to fetch water – the imagery was not impressed upon my mind. However the chief called at 530pm and asked if I wanted to go to watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This seemed to be an excellent idea that would allow me to get out of the house and so I said “yes”. After checking, we found that the only cinema showing it at a civilised time was in a mall in Serangoon.  We hoofed over there on the bike, parked outside the mall and walked in.

Big mistake! Why they use the term "mall" – I really do not know. A cathedral of food would be more appropriate. It seemed to me that there was maybe one regular retail shop for every two food outlets. Today just gets better and better thinks I. I quickly pushed Asya to the lift because I was beginning to feel a little agitated. In we got and sure enough there are two giant posters advertising two different restaurants by showing explicit pictures of their signature dishes. I use the word explicit because my lust for food is becoming almost pornographic.

The lift doors opened before I melted down and we dashed into the cinema to find that the film had already started. I should tell you by the way that one of the side effects of fasting is that the sense of smell becomes rather acute. I’m not saying that you could put a harness on me and take me out hunting for truffles but I would know if you put a wheel of ripe Brie 100 metres upwind of me. We took our seats and my nose was assailed by the olfactory overload of smoky bacon crisps, butter popcorn and hotdogs. This was food porn at its most primal and and it almost made me weep. Somehow I survive without breaking but it’s a damned close run thing.

Here’s another one for the entrepreneurs: develop a line of popcorn and crisps in bags that don’t rustle to be sold specifically to cinemas.

I mentioned it the other day but the last time that I did this – it was plain sailing after the first three days were done. This time, whilst the first 3 days were not easy the last two have almost broken me. I have had to summon every ounce of willpower to stay strong. If this hunger doesn’t go soon then I’m really not sure that I’m going to be able to do this.