Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Forget carbs, It’s pretend eaters who make us fat!
IT WILL be just one piece of sourdough bread. But as I pop it in the toaster this morning, it will prompt a flurry of anxious thoughts. Is sourdough less fattening than other breads? Aren’t I meant to be fasting till lunchtime? And should I even be eating bread?
And I regard myself as someone with a relatively sane attitude towards food.
Like many people, I spend a lot of time trying one kind of eating regime or another. Not as strict as a diet, but something intended to curb the amount I might otherwise shovel in. So currently it’s intermittent fasting, where you only eat during eight hours of the day (half the remaining 16, I hope to be asleep). Frankly, it hasn’t made much difference.
We’re a nation of dieters – no carbs, no fats, no sugars, Weight Watchers, Slimming World. But the real troublemakers are the pretend eaters, who lure greedy folk like me into tucking into more than we intend while eating next to nothing themselves.
These are the women (and yes, it’s usually women) who always order the chips at lunch. ‘I can never resist chips,’ they say with glee, as they gingerly pick at a couple before moving the dish towards their companion, and never going near it again.
Or the ones who always suggest ‘sharing’ a pudding – then take a minuscule mouthful of sticky toffee and leave the rest to their less disciplined lunch mate.
Pretend eaters want their trim shape to appear effortless, rather than the result of the near starvation they actually practise. If you say you are trying to avoid breakfast, they can’t imagine how you can manage without three meals a day – they’d be starving (safe in the knowledge that you weren’t around to witness their actual breakfast of a single ‘bulletproof coffee’).
Pretend eaters don’t arrive anywhere without a bag of cupcakes or an expensive bar of chocolate they won’t allow you to leave unopened. And they’ll always insist they can’t eat a mouthful because they overindulged the night before.
As hosts, they are lethal. They’ll invariably add a delicious tea piled with cakes to the three huge meals they are already providing.
And will almost certainly dish up the most fattening food imaginable during your stay, while pushing a tiny portion around their own plate.
Pies, pastas and starchy puddings are their drug of choice – urging t he guests to fi nish everything up to prevent them, so they confide, creeping down, Nigella-style, in their dressing gown to gorge on left-overs. As if…
No one will get my Blahniks off !
SOME people filmed me at home the other day. As soon as they walked in, they asked if they should take off their shoes. Where did this no- shoe thing come from? I would no more offer to take off my s hoes on arrival than I would suggest removing my dress. Sure, it’s understandable if you have a slew of arrivals straight in from a muddy walk or a party of kids coming in from the playground. But the idea our floors can’t cope with a bit of everyday dirt baffles me.
And it’s even more ridiculous given how many homes have wood or stone flooring, where sponging off the odd footprint is the work of seconds.
I have a suspicion my reaction is probably snobbish. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Apart from anything else, having everyone shuffle around in their socks is deeply unattractive.
If God had intended us to go shoeless, he wouldn’t have invented Manolo Blahnik.
Oh, for a peek inside the Royal handbag
ONE of the mysteries of the world is why the Queen carries her handbag everywhere with her, even when she’s at home.
In each photograph of her at a Buckingham Palace audience (last week she was meeting the High Commissioner for Grenada) that trusty black Launer bag is dangling from her elbow.
Put it on the floor like the rest of us? Never. Hand it to a hovering lady- in- waiting? No, she always keeps it close to her body – and I’ve never seen her open it to fish something out.
How fascinating it would be to know what’s inside.
Blacked- out cyclists make me see red
THE clocks going back means longer evenings – and so more hours when my chances of colliding with a cyclist are increased.
The number of them pedalling around with no lights and wearing head-to-toe black is absolutely terrifying for car drivers.
Helmets might help when a cyclist has been knocked off, but surely it would be better by far to make it mandatory to wear some high-vis clothing and switch on a light, so they stand at least a chance of being seen on the dark, wet nights of winter. And so we car drivers don’t have to exist in a state of perpetual anxiety.
Terrible torment behind the glamour
A NEW biography of the British couturier Norman Hartnell focuses on his tragic life.
He was talented and original (even said to have influenced Dior’s New Look) but behind the scenes was a tormented cross-dresser with a taste for violent sex.
I’ve no doubt that the book is well researched, but I’m not going to read it. The image I want to keep in my mind is the House of Hartnell’s froth of luxurious silks, satins and some of the most incredible royal gowns of the age. Not hardcore fetish wear.