TV tears

I hate to admit it, but I cry at the television. A lump building up in my throat, my face feeling heavy, and my nose going all fizzy; these are my warning signs. It could be anything; a soap, a documentary... I've even been known to cry at the news. My eyes go pink, and I feel a tiny tear teetering on the edge of my lower lashes. Silently - oh, so silently, it falls, creating a ridge in my make-up where others might follow, leaving a short, sharp and rather pathetic splash as it hits my lap.

My Mum always cried at the television too. Something sad would come on the telly, often a sob story that connected with her life in some way and I'd glance over at Mum, watching as her eyes streamed but no sounds came out. It was always elegant crying, never anything too noisy or dramatic.  Although, I used to feel uncomfortable knowing she was upset and so would generally do one of two things. I'd shuffle about for a bit pretending I hadn't noticed, thinking that if I pretended I hadn't seen, I wouldn't have to think about why she was crying. Or I'd get cross, and point out the obvious, rolling my eyes and stating clearly; "Oh, Muuuuummm.... You're not crying again, are you?" Because then, more often than not, she'd wipe her face with the back of her hand, sniff and mutter quickly, "Course not!"

On Sunday, I watched the final part of the new drama series, Titanic. I should have known better (after all, we all know she sinks...) and true enough the final episode proved to be a sob story to challenge any other. As lovers clung to each other wading in crashing currents, fathers kissed their children goodbye forever and Italians got locked in third class cabins (yes... really), it wasn't long before I sensed that huge lump building in my throat. I pulled the blanket on our sofa tightly around me.  
It's only the television, don’t be silly. 
My lower lip wavered a bit. I pursed my lips together tightly to keep them in place, which only made my chin start to quiver. I watched as those poor people lost those they loved to the deep dark sea. I hung on every last word that was uttered when wives found out far too late, that they had been loved, without taking my eyes off the screen for a second.

I soaked it all in, and then sobbed it out. Tears streaming down my face, until I had a very soggy sleeve.

By the time the picture panned out from the lone lifeboats in the middle of the Atlantic and the credits began to roll, I'd forgotten I was in a small flat near Wimbledon with Liam sitting next to me. I was there, in the lifeboats with the women and children, waiting to be picked up.

"Are you crying?" Liam asked, teasing me. He put his hands on my shoulders, and turned me to face him to get a better look.

It was only as I went to reply instinctively: "Of course not!" just as Mum had, that I stopped myself.
I wasn't crying because it reflected anything particular in my life (I don’t have a husband, children, and have never even sailed on a ship). I was crying because it was sad.

"Yes. I am crying because the Titanic sank." I replied.

Suddenly it clicked, and I realised that I am just like my mother; an empathic - and very soppy - soul.

Time

I'm sitting in the car, wearing my new, dark red converse trainers. They're so new they still have perfect white soles - there’s not even a scuff. I'm sitting in the car, because it's pissing it down with rain outside and I'm at my little sister's football match.

The text I received from my Mum earlier in the morning went like this:

I am going to leave for Kate's football about 10. KO is 10:30. Can you get here near 10?

Being the sister who liked warm duvets and Disney films on a Saturday morning (rather than running around a cold wet football pitch in studs), I didn't realise that KO meant 'kick off'. I also didn't realise from her text that I'd be coming to watch the match, come rain or shine.

I peer out from the backseat window, raindrops smudge my picture of the sodden muddy pitch containing a dozen fifteen year old girls and a football.
It is definitely more rain, than shine, I think as I hug my leather jacket around me to keep warm. The zip broke ages ago, but I love the way the leather is all worn out and snug. I can’t bear to throw it away.

My eyes run along the sodden side line of the pitch, scanning mothers in anoraks and dads with huge multicoloured golfing umbrellas; all giving up their Saturday morning to support their girls. There are a couple of women who have bought deck chairs along. They hoick up their wellies and push their glasses well and truly to the top of their noses (to avoid any drips falling from their hoods); shuffling about to find the best spot. All of them are wearing suitable shoes.

I spy my Mum, hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm, leaning on my brother, who at twenty-four, is a good two feet taller than her. His hood is up, and I can easily picture his expression from the way his arms fly up in the air each time Kate runs for the ball. Even through glass window of the car, I hear him yell Time! Time! to my little sister across the pitch.

My sister is easy to spot; the one with a big white number 12 on her back. She's also tall, and one of the only girls who seems completely unafraid of the ball. I watch as she thunders into this tiny twig of a girl who instinctively flits out the way just seconds before she might get squashed. I remember when I was Kate's age. I'd been picked to play in one lacrosse match for my school's B Team. I hated every minute of it. My Dad had stood at the side line yelling, "Get in there! Tackle her, come on!" I was a skinny little thing, looking up at this gigantic girl lassoing her stick around her head and thinking I'd rather be anywhere else in the world than on that cold, muddy pitch, about to be whacked.

I'm feeling hungry as well as cold now. I fumble about in my huge handbag for a moment, finding only the remnants of a crushed pack of Polo mints at the bottom. I peel open the foil carefully, picking out the big pieces, popping them in my mouth before dusting off the sticky crumbs that have fallen across my lap.
Slightly more satisfied, I turn to look out across the field again, and that's when everything stops.

There's a tiny, but familiar figure way across the field. I hadn't noticed him at first. Well, he is wearing an anorak just like everybody else... I lean up close to the glass, so my nose presses against it and it goes all steamy.

It's my Dad.

I know it's him for sure, because he's kicking a football around with a tiny gangly person with no coat on, who is unmistakeably my littlest brother.

I look instinctively over to my Mum, wondering if she's seen him.
Mum must be having a fit that Henry has no coat on. After all, it is teaming down with rain. I imagine her hissing something along the lines of, "What's he doing allowing him to run about with no coat on in this weather?"
I stare for a minute at the man I haven't known for eight years. Everything about his stance and the way he moves is familiar, yet completely alien to me. I watch as he kicks the football with his left foot, arms still clasped tightly behind his back as if he either isn't able (or isn't willing) to let himself go completely.

A long whistle blows. The girls, muddy and cold with flaming red cheeks run over to the pile of jackets and water bottles splayed in a heap in the car park. Sodden spectators begin to wander over to hear the manager's team talk at half time, clearly relieved to be half way through and able to start moving their toes again.

I begin to panic as I notice my Dad is also striding towards the car park. As he gets close enough, Henry spies me peering out from the car, and gives me half a wave, his hand shooting down quickly to his side in case my Dad sees him.

I don’t know what to do. I hop out the car, forgetting my perfectly white soled converse trainers and land clumsily in the mud. One arm flies up instinctively to protect me from the spitting rain, as all the court orders, injunctions, tribunals and solicitors letters hang like clouds above my head.
Henry runs over and throws his arms around me. I love the way my little brother smells; damp and Henryish.

When I look up and let him go, Dad is standing directly in front of me. I don’t know where to look, or what to say. Instead, I scan his face, taking in each new wrinkle that I hadn't remembered seeing before. Mum is busily fussing over my sister, looking for her asthma puffer, doing anything rather than look directly at him. My other brother, George is concentrating on his boots, arms crossed, puffing his chest out to make himself look bigger. He doesn't need to, really. Dad seems smaller than I remembered him. After an awkward minute nobody's spoken, so I croak a weak ‘hi’. When he replies, his eyes look pale and watery. His hair is greyer and he seems somewhat frail. Maybe that's what fighting does to you.

My brother takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it, holding his hand up to shelter it from the wind.
"Alright, George?" My Dad asks.
He nods his cigarette in response, his eyes still fixed on his boots.

As if it was the most normal thing in the world to be standing in a field in the pissing rain with your ex wife and your estranged children, Dad then turns to my Mum, and asks casually; "Do you remember Paul Duskin?"

I watch as Mum, the natural communicator of the two, hesitates, taken aback by his casual tone. She grips her umbrella even more tightly to compose herself, before rushing a very animated; "Oh, yes! Didn't he play for your old football team? The tall guy?"

It isn't normal for my parents to even talk, let alone reminisce. Henry (clearly not as dumbfounded as the rest of us by this rare exchange between our parents) seems to have found a toy gun from the car and begins shooting foam pellets at the girls huddled around their manager for the team talk.

I’m jumpy, nervous; I fiddle with the zip on my jacket and wait for something to go wrong.

My Dad continues.
"Yep. Really great guy. A wife, nice family... Died last year."
"Oh no... How sad." Mum pipes up appropriately, her voice slightly shrill.

He allows for a dramatic pause, which makes me wonder where he could possibly be going with this. 

"...Yes. He died from lung cancer...” Lowering his voice in disgust, and nodding disapprovingly at my brother, he adds; “...from smoking."

My Mum winces. My eyes flit between my parents and my brother, who is getting redder by the minute. He's picking at my brother. Picking where he absolutely, one hundred percent shouldn't. I dig the white toe of my converse into the mud, and wait for 'the scene' to happen.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, there's loud POP! followed by a dull thud.

Everyone stops.

My Dad has taken the toy gun off of Henry and shot George square in the chest. 

My brother's lips curl up at the edges. He tries desperately to pin them down. My Mum stifles a laugh.

And without the faintest warning, eight years of anger is dispelled across a rainy football pitch. Because we could finally allow ourselves - for just a few minutes - to forget.

Diary of a FODMAPee : Week 2

So I'm craving. They said I would, but I didn't realise it would be this bad. Mostly I'm craving these things:

• Nandos
• Pizza, pizza, pizza
• Mini Eggs
• Doughnuts (odd, because I never really ate doughnuts before)
• Biscuits (the custard cream variety in particular)
• Guinness 

The cravings are bad when I'm at home, but I can always just pop out to the kitchen and sort them out with a hazelnut kernel or a Nutella smeared rice cake. (Yes, I know it sounds sad.)  But the trouble starts when I'm out and about. Eating out on the FODMAP diet is an absolute nightmare. I've become the difficult customer. The fuss pot. Everyone thinks it's because I'm trying to lose weight. I receive such disapproving looks being a size 10 dress size sitting in Wagamamas and asking to see the vital statistics of my itame rice noodle soup.


Two weeks in, and I'll have to hold my hands up to having given into my cravings only twice. But really, I've been quite good.

The Good - Day Ten

I'd gone for a glass of wine after work with Liam, and after picking out a nice Malbec (chosen second place to a cold pint of Guinness) we settled down on one of the sofas. Liam picked up the flyer on our table and mentioned casually how it was £5 pizza night.

"It's okay, I wont get one..." He said, in a sad sort of voice.

The cranky craving voice inside my head was all indignant: Of course you won’t get one. If I can't have a big wheaty pizza, you can't either!

But I remembered how he'd graciously eaten quinoa and celery dinners the past week as moral support, so I smiled weakly and said;

"Oh go on, get one. I don't mind... Really."

I half meant it.

Although, as the bartender bought out the most enormous gooey, cheesy and tomatoey pizza, with whopping amounts of pepperoni on top, I began to seriously regret it.

"I bought one with extra pepperoni, so you wouldn't feel too bad." Liam said, picking up his knife and fork.

That was true, I hated pepperoni. Although, today... looking at this pizza, I would have eaten the lot (vegetarian or not). It smelt amazing.

After he'd devoured most of the pizza (whilst I clutched my big glass of Malbec, eyeing every mouthful and shaking slightly), he sat back and rubbed his belly, having left a row of half-eaten crusts around the edge of his plate.

I felt like one of those dogs who sit under the table at tea-time. 

I turned to him, before suggesting rather hopelessly;

"Do you reckon it'd be okay if I suck the crusts? - I could spit them out after?"

"Um. No. I don’t." He said.

So I didn't. 

The Bad - Day Fourteen

It was Sunday, and I was in a foul mood. Perhaps because it was one of the most beautiful sunny days we have had in London all year and I was stuck in Westfield Shopping Centre, or maybe I was in a strop because I'd lost my debit card, and couldn't buy anything. It was busy, so everyone seemed to get in my way and none of the mirrors in the changing rooms made me look good in anything. As all the shops started to close at 6:00pm, Liam turns to me.

"I'm really hungry. Do you fancy a Nandos?"

I shot him a look, pissed off he'd mention one of my forbidden foods at a time like this.

But he carried on;

"Look - you can have the chips ('cos really, they're just potato), corn-on-the-cob, maybe mashed potato...? Even chicken!"

"But I'm supposed to be a vegetarian..." I trailed off.

It's been a bit of an issue being a vegetarian and on the FODMAP diet. I'd need to eat about a hundred eggs a day to get my daily dose of protein, as I'm not really a fan of fish. The dietician shook her head when I told her I'd decided to go veggie since Christmas for 'ethical reasons'. She looked at me like I was nuts when I told her I didn't really like fish, and I only liked 'seriously cheesy' omelettes covered in tomato ketchup.

The letter she wrote to my GP set me straight (and covered her own arse) stating in black and white how she strongly advised me to eat chicken, fish and more eggs. Perhaps a trip to Nandos was a good opportunity to break my morals in order to get healthy.

"Okay. Let's do it." I said to Liam, and beamed for the first time that afternoon.

I hadn't anticipated the temptation of Nandos sauce. Everyone who's been to Nandos knows that their spicy sauce is quite simply, incredible.  That sauce - a secret recipe, a hot, peri-peri dream that tingles on your taste buds and stamps you with a loyalty to Nandos that doesn't ever budge, believe me. Trying my luck, I walked up to the counter to find the manager.

"Excuse me; I wondered if I could see the ingredient list for the Nandos sauce?" I asked politely.

"You've got allergies?" The manager asked.

"Kind of."  I said, as he thumped a gigantic catalogue-style book on the counter.

He flicked through the pages, listing all the diets that could eat the sauce.

"Wheat free... soya free... egg free.... All fine. No problems with the sauce." He said proudly.

As I felt embarrassed enough asking in the first place, I didn't like to explain that my diet was a complicated one, which wasn't even on his list. I simply said:

"What about onions and garlic? Does the sauce contain those?"

"Are you allergic...?" He began.

"Um. Well. No..." I said, blushing.

"...because if you’re allergic to onions, I really wouldn't eat that sauce."

"Right, thanks." I said before scuttling back to my table as quickly as possible.

Liam looked at me, expectantly.

"So....?"

I turned red. 
"Well he didn't say it was 100% ok, and he didn't say it wasn't."

"Oh." he said.

There was a pause, where the good and the bad angel on my shoulder had a minor row. The bad angel won.  

"Do you reckon I could claim ignorance on this one..?" I said, wrinkling up my nose.

And without waiting for an answer - I did.

Delivery Man

He walks into reception, just as I'm about to start packing my things away at the end of the day. He's a fair bit older than most of the other couriers who drop packages off at my reception and almost limps out the lift to prove it. He looks kind of grubby, his luminous jacket covered in all that soot dusting about London, and his hair looks like a mass of wire wool that continues around his chin to form a Santa-like beard. 

"Hello!" I sing, making a point of smiling at him.  

I think I've seen him before. I vaguely remember that unusual heavy-duty luminous jacket with the big pockets.

"Hello, again." He says in a low, gruff voice, (confirming my wondering). His accent is heavy, although I'm not quite sure where in the world I'd place him.

He hands me the parcel over my desk, with a friendly, "And 'ow are you?"  

"Oh, I'm fine, having a nice afternoon. How are you doing?" I reply automatically, and so was quite surprised when I heard him answer;

"Terrible." 

My eyes widen. I look at his face. Wrinkles piling up on top of each other, his mouth has slipped into a sad thin line. Come to think of it, he looks a little like an Arabic version of my Grandad. As he sighs a long sigh, I notice a slight twinkle in his eye.

"Oh, no! That really is terrible." I say, happy to play along. "What's making you feel so bad?"

He shrugs and raises one hairy eyebrow. 

The tone of his voice lowers into to a whisper as he hands me his tablet to sign.  "Aaah... It's my job." He says sadly.

"Your job?" I take the pen from him and quickly scribble my signature. He nods as I hand it back to him. 

"Oh no! You know, you really shouldn't be doing a job that makes you feel terrible... Surely you can find one that makes you feel happy on a Friday afternoon!?" I say smiling at him. 

Always a fixer, I pause from my work for a minute to give him my complete attention. After all, he seems such a sweet old man. "Okay." I say, tilting my head to the side and looking pointedly at him. "So, if you could do anything, anything in the world, what would you really love to do?

And quick as a flash, he looks me straight in the eye and says;

"Have lots of sex." 

Diary of a FODMAPee : Week 1

I am a wheat-free, lactose-free, vegetarian. God, help me.
It's one heck of a label, and one that brings up the same query, no matter who I tell:

"So, what actually can you eat?" They ask, scratching their heads.

My answer: "Rice..."

Don't worry, it's not just rice.

The mystery stomach pains I've had over the past goodness knows how many years, has finally been whittled down to probably being food allergy related. And so I'm on a specific diet called the FODMAP diet, which eliminates all fermentable carbohydrates from your diet. These are (in some people) foods that don't seem to digest properly in your small intestine. So I'm on this diet for eight weeks. But just in case I'm also intolerant to the moo-juice, I'm off milk too.

Right now, my kitchen cupboards are clear of anything naughty. I've done my big shop, bought wheat-free pasta for an extortionate £2.50 a packet, listed my suitable vegetables and stuck the list firmly to the fridge. I've said my goodbyes to chocolate and cakes and had my final cup of milky tea. It's my first week, and so I'm raring to go.

Lets see how long it lasts, shall we?

Day One 

My first day on the FODMAP diet and I take a detour through Sainsbury's past the bread and cakes section, just to have a sniff. Only a sniff, mind.

I'm swinging my plastic carrier bag containing my wheat-free, lactose-free, vegetarian packed lunch ready to pop in the fridge once I get to work. It's all pre-prepared, which means no stress and no possibilities of me falling into temptation and wanting what I can't eat.

Each morning, my daily routine getting ready for work is a timed-to-perfection rush. I know I need to speed up the hair dryer if I take too long in the shower, forget the jewellery if I'm indecisive about what to wear, and if there's only five minutes left, I ditch the straighteners because I just have to clean my teeth. However, this morning my list went like this:
  

• Shower
• Dress
• Teeth
• MAKE LUNCH

I loved having a packed-lunch. I felt like one of those special few at primary school who got to take a packed lunch to school. Those kids whose Mums spent loads of money on the latest lunch-box fads, like Frubes and Cheesestrings. You know, the cool ones who sit on the packed-lunch table. I always remember peering across my lunch- the suspicious reeking brown stew steaming across my plate, to the wonderful treats being pulled out of those kids' lunch boxes. I'd turn green at the swap of a Marmite sandwich and the exchange of a Club chocolate bar for a Twix. 

Because I'm on this diet, I've got one of those clicky-topped Tupperware boxes with the separate compartments as my lunch box. At 7:00am this morning I was grateful for this simplicity. So I pulled out my wheat-free bread, lactose-free butter and start spreading. Cutting my cheddar cheese into long strips and dolloping Heinz Salad cream all over it, I make the almost perfect sandwich (only not quite because wheat-free bread tends to have loads of holes in, which make for a bit of a mess). This fills up one compartment. Slipping a Babybel and one strawberry Lactose free yogurt in the other two, I'm pressing the lid firmly on and finally ready to go. 

Not bad for my first day, I think positively. Grabbing my keys I glance in the mirror and slightly horrified at the sight of me, I slick a bit of mascara on as a last minute thought. 

My usual walk to work means I pass a big Sainsburys. This morning the smells of wheaty wonder wafting through the air were enough to turn anyone's head. So I go in. Just for a sniff, mind. 

And I come out with Lactose-free milk. Because today is Day One. And I'm being really good. 

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To find out a little more about the FODMAP diet and what FODMAPs are, I've found this website helpful.