Anna Isaac

There we were; huddled like sleep deprived penguins waiting for hall to open for food, and then out of the queue sails the voice of a caffeine-mad vet and a concerned bystander:

“Are you ok?”

“I feel like my eyes are going to pop out. You know that can happen with dogs if you scruff them…”

“What do you mean scruff them?”

“Haul them up too tightly by the scruff of their necks – same thing can happen with cats.”

Oh dear, it’s the time of year where we all go mental, in a bad, sad, boozeless way. Each day I spend nearly an hour queuing for expensive and rubbish food in College, just so I feel like I haven’t spent the whole day alone or in a supervision. I use all my free texts (I’m not cool enough to have unlimited) on asking people if ‘they are coming to hall’ because that makes me sound fun.

The highlight and lowlight of my week was my bedder’s impersonation of the fat girl in her ballet class. Fang has limited English and decided ballet lessons might be a good way to learn more. I’m not sure she will keep it up though; I think she hates this girl too much, especially her “Laaazy face, full food”. Anyway, I was chuckling away merrily while she imitated this chunkster, pirouetting around my room with a very serious expression on her face, until I had a horrible vision of myself. Of how half an hour earlier I had been gobbling a pasty two hours after having eaten a fry up. Then I remembered my ballet lessons as a miserable chubby fourteen year-old. I felt sad and ate a packet of ginger nuts.

Last term I wrote that “a bagel has never saved me from feeling sad. A cookie has never made me feel as though I am loved. I am seriously bored of the idea that a bad day automatically has us females sitting in our pjs/ironic Christmas onesie and practically fellating anything with a high fat or sugar content.”

Well. Apparently that’s bullshit. I just underestimated exam stress. I’ve been eating chocolate like ‘fairtrade’ is a best before date. Bagels do actually make me happy. While my evil wisdom teeth mean I’m not keen to fellate anything just now, if I could I’d be all over those M&S yumyums. At this rate I’m going to have a ‘red wheel’ of fatty food shame on my coffin.

People who think comfort eating isn’t natural and right are either stupid or indecently happy. I don’t care for either group. They’re usually all evangelicals, or me at my worst. Admittedly, I do hate the mood-dictates-pj-wearing hallmark of modern femininity (almost as much as my inability to write without over-using hyphens), but I can’t deny that at the moment I eat to stay awake and to be joyful. In this happy place I look forward to each mealtime with indecent excitement: I can’t hold a book if I am using a knife and fork now can I? That would be disgusting.

This is my exam term. The gym days are over. Hot yoga makes me hate myself. Pass me some fat drenched carbs, coffee and a sense of underachievement. What do you mean that isn’t attractive?!

Here lies

The Poly-

Saturated-

middle-

class-

guilt-

ridden-

corpse

of the fat girl from ballet class.

P.S. And she got a degree that rhymes with ‘bird’ because she spent too much time writing self- indulgent shite and poetry that would make Larkin vomit backwards. TTYL. Exam love, xoxo.