Feeders

Home Baking

I remember once seeing a trailer for a TV documentary about ‘feeders’. As far as I can gather from the 30 seconds of footage (I didn't watch the programme itself) there are people in America who demonstrate love for their massively obese partners by bringing them obscene amounts of food, to the point that they’re practically immobile and just lie in bed waiting for more burgers to arrive.

If I understood correctly, there are some deep-rooted psychological conditions involved, and I fear my colleagues may be suffering something related. The kitchen at work has a dedicated area for communal cakes, and fresh bakes are added daily – sometimes tasty bought ones and sometimes home-made. There’s such a cake culture that I feel guilty if I don’t partake, and this is especially the case as the walls are adorned with slogans like “in cake we trust” and “cakus uniticus”. I don’t want to be the skinny guy in the corner who doesn’t fit in.

But now I’m having to live with the side-effects. I was up in the hills the other day – feeling slow and full of fat but managing to waddle around a bit, and I found some terrific looking bits of rock that I’m pretty sure nobody’s climbed yet. Once I would have thrown some gear onto my back and headed out to the rocks to sample their delights at the earliest opportunity, guns and abs a-blazing. Alas, I fear that it’s no longer my six-pack that’s rippling, and that I’ll be lucky to lug a bouldering mat into the hills, let alone to climb anything when I get there. At this rate it’ll take a winter of hard training to reach my previous form (meagre as it was…) and by the time I’m ready John Watson or somebody else will have stolen in and picked all the ripest plums.

Maybe there are clinics for the rehabilitation of feeder victims...

RB