Since leaving Cambridge University Press my body appears to have unhatched a plan to make its bulk fill the home office. Like I need to be cuboid, rather than cuddly human shaped. Now, the dining room we converted to Home Orifice is the size of a Toyota Landcruiser and my arse can just about park in the space, so we have decided to take action (again), and are moving from the Fried Pie Diet of old to the all new Cabbage Soup diet yet again.
Drastic moves of this kind are usually associated with sales deficits, and we have fifty-seven varieties of cabbage soup, like cabbage soup with vegetable stock, and cabbage soup with twenty-year old chick peas, but none of these has quite the same artery-bursting pleasure of fried pies, especially when washed down with Sancerre or decent Burgundy, which are usually symbolic of work-related stress here at Salt.
Historically, work-related stress type situations look like me hunched over a keyboard in the dark (all the office lights have died over the past four years) working on deadlines for adverts, new discounts, cash flows, publicity ideas, direct mail, and all of course while I fit several 2lb tofu pies in my gob looking maniacal in the screen glow at 3 a.m. I am left unsure about recent EU directives about wokplace safety and onion gravy on the keyboard.
You know, the interesting thing about Apple keyboards is their transparency; through the clear perspex one can see old dog hairs, naval fluff and, of course, the residues of two thousand bags of crisps (chips for US readers), flakes of pastry and the compulsory bags of onion rings. Apple keyboards are a form of self-help for those with eating disorders. They are a confession.
New working practices have made such extreme eating behaviours a Thing Of The Past. But, like most office-based workflow initiatives, entropy is more powerful than efficiency, and so we oscillate from Cabbage Soup back to Fried Pie with shocking regularity. It’s strange how bodies could take such punishment in one’s twenties and miraculously avoid putting on the pounds and eyeballs looked bright and shiny in the reflection of high street windows as one sauntered into work. Now, in my early forties, crawling from laptop in bed (surely the chief indulgence of the Home Orifice) down to the Black Hole of Wilbraham, the pounds have converted me to Man With Arse Like Toyota Landscruiser and my eyes look like fag burns in a sofa.
Still, mustn’t lose faith, today’s cabbage soup is not caused by toenail-eating poverty as sales are UP, yes, up on this month last year and heading towards budget. (Sadly, we’re still 44% under the annual sales budget, but the freezer has no pies and so am left in no immediate danger of moving arse into Hummer territory.) But sales increase offers up another danger, the Office Celebration For Hitting Sales Target, or something like that, which involves not Fried Pies, but restrained trailer-loads of goat cheese pizza washed down with horribly expensive Chablis and followed by a van load of Belgian chocolates. This leaves one experiencing a strange mix of self-disgust, self-congratulation and self-belief. There’s no doubt that the Home Office is also a franchise of UK Obesity Inc.
For now, future health dictates that I must try to switch from Landscruiser to Toyota Aygo, and my sense of resolve between phone calls from desperate screaming authors is to stay calm, refrain from loitering in the kitchen, and think pure thoughts about bean sprout and red pepper salad.
