Smack on the Bum nuts!
EATING is a drag when you’re single. I think it’s mainly because the consciously uncoupled lose interest.
Feeding time rolls around at the end of the day, every day, and, quite frankly, we just can’t be bothered after a while. So we fill up on beer or heroin. This is why single men are either dead skinny or obese. Or just plain dead.
I get the same feeling at the end of the day as I do when my car’s fuel light comes on. Do I really have to find a shop/garage to buy food/ petrol to put in my stomach/ tank?
It’s a hassle that I can do without. At least with a car you only have to fill up every few weeks. I’d like to be able to do the same with my body.
Hang on. Let me check something. Hey! It’s possible. An Indian rights activist known as the Iron Lady of Manipur was on a hunger strike for 16 years.
No, wait. She was force-fed through a tube in her nose. That doesn’t sound like much fun at all, although my dentist assured me this week that most of your taste buds are in your nose.
I suspect he was lying through his perfect teeth, otherwise you’d have top end restaurants offering to pipe your meals through your schnoz for maximum enjoyment.
Women would go mad for it. They’d be able to eat and talk at the same time.
I keep coming across stories warning that single people are doomed to die earlier than those with partners.
Oh, yes. Death is stalking us lone sharks. And it comes in many guises. Poor diet. Drinking. Operating heavy machinery while drinking. Driving while drinking. Eating badly while drinking and operating heavy machinery. And now, loneliness.
In case we weren’t miserable enough about being alone, Dr Richard Schwartz, a Cambridge psychiatrist, and his wife, Dr Jacqueline Olds, have gone out of their way to tell us that it’s also going to kill us.
It’s not clear if he was quoting Dr Schwartz or veering off on a drunken frolic of his own, but the Boston Globe’s Billy Baker wrote: “Loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke and the progression of Alzheimer’s. One study found that it can be as much of a long-term risk factor as smoking.”
Yes, I can see how sitting on my own on the veranda with my feet up not smoking cigarettes or being shouted at by an angry woman is shortening my life span.
Sure, I get the odd twinge in my heart, but only when I think of past wives. And I pretty much only forget things when my brain becomes full and I need to make room for new stuff.
I think food is killing us a lot quicker than loneliness. The longer we go without a partner, the more rubbish we eat. Also, the more rubbish we talk.
It’s a vicious circle designed to leave us hopelessly incompatible with little more than cheeseburgers and women who quote from The Secret.
In the hope of staving off a premature death, I went on a mission this week to buy healthy food.
I have considered exercise, of course. That’s always the first port of call. But there was a piece in the morning paper about Virgin Active’s latest research.
The introduction said that many women between the ages of 25 and 34 would rather look slim and toned in their holiday photos than be fit enough to run a marathon.
I don’t know what this means. If I was slim and toned I could run marathons all day long. I wouldn’t, though, because I’d be in a bar trying to impress women with my slim, toned body.
The story quoted a fitness expert who ran through what you should be capable of achieving, from your 20s to your 70s.
In my age bracket, you should be able to “run at a moderate pace for 60 seconds without stopping”. I reckon I could do that, but I’d need some kind of reward or have a Doberman or policeman chasing me.
“Do five burpees without stopping.” Give me a yard of ale and I can burpee the national anthem. Next.
“Lower yourself into a cross-legged position without using your hands, then return to standing.”
Don’t be ridiculous. I have only ever seen children, yoga instructors and very stoned people capable of doing this.
So I went to the nearest health shop, which is called Food Lover’s Market. I used to go to Woolworths but it’s another 200m down the mall and I can’t risk the extra distance. Not with being single and on the verge of a stroke.
It was Whammy Wednesday. I missed Manic Monday and Trippy Tuesday. It seemed to be pretty random. Buy a gem squash and get four watermelons free. Buy a box of mangoes and get a banana.
Two crates of peaches and take the cashier home.
I don’t know. It was all written on blackboards and something terrible must have happened to me at school because I can’t look at blackboards for too long.
There was half a litre of “virgin olive oil” which even I know is better for you than the six litres of sunflower oil for only R100.
On closer inspection, I saw the olive oil was produced in South Africa. Look, you won’t find a more patriotic person than me, but I am wary of anything produced in South Africa apart from boerewors and marijuana.
Under ingredients it said: “Vegetable oil (olive fruit)”. What? How do you get vegetable oil from a fruit? What is an olive? What am I? Who are you? Why is the universe expanding? When will the sun die? It was all too much and I had to sit down in the nut section for a bit.
A man came along and asked the nut lady, “Do you know what donkey carrots are?”
It seemed to be an odd question to ask the nut lady. She shook her head slowly and edged behind the macadamias.
I got up and bought a massive amount of heavily salted cashews and a kilo of Smack on the Bum nuts which, upon application of my reading glasses, turned out to be Snack on the Run nuts
She didn’t mind. Her eyes suggested her brain was still processing donkey carrots.
I wandered deeper into this cave that wasn’t Woolworths and never sold handy microwaveable meals that would help single men die sooner.
The vegetable section is terrifying. Sweet potatoes in three colours. There’s nothing sweet about the madumbi. It’s a blunt instrument. The rural poor regularly use it to bludgeon each other to death.
Then the ginger. Oh dear god, the hideously disfigured ginger. It belongs in a home for disabled vegetables. At the least, screen it off so that sensitive shoppers are spared having to gaze upon its mutilated limbs.
And what is it with red, green and yellow peppers? Pick a colour, guys. You all taste the same.
Nestling up against the pretentious peppers is the garlic. Plump, white and wanton. Take my cloves off, they whisper as you pass. No. I shan’t. Get thee behind me, devil veg.
I liked the fish section. There was a piece of dorado resting on ice for R5. There isn’t much you can get for that kind of money and it’s reassuring to know that you can walk into Food Lover’s Market with a R5 coin and walk out with a sliver of dorado. You could braai it in the parking lot over your lighter.
There’s also wine for R20 a bottle in case you want something to wash the dorado down and hasten your departure from this mortal coil.
Inexplicably, you aren’t allowed to buy any wine before 9am or after 6pm or on Sundays, which are the only times you ever really need wine.
They also sell moisturising cream made from buchu. It makes you smell like fynbos and once or twice a year you burst into flame. When it comes to rejuvenation, it’s a small price to pay.
The best thing about Food Lover’s is that they have loads of tills. Twenty in this shop. However, this being South Africa, seven tellers are off sick, five are on their smoke break, two are on leave and one is in the back being treated for ginger-related post traumatic stress disorder.
In the end, I bought nothing but nuts. Cooking is beyond me at this point. I might need to rethink this business of being single.
Winter is coming and I’m going to need food and warmth. Both are conveniently provided by women, who apparently also help stave off heart attacks and Alzheimer’s.
I’m in the process of wrapping up the remains of my second marriage and can’t wait to get started on my third.
I’m looking increasingly like a cross between Bob Geldof and Nick Nolte and if I leave it much longer I doubt I will be able to find a woman prepared to do anything at all for me without a sizeable down-payment.