Food, inglorious food

It’s at this time of year when whatever issues I had as a teen, forced to finish a groaning plate of food in front of an audience of concerned, well-meaning diners, rears up like a latent bulimic into a porcelain throne.

Food, for my family at Christmas, is like a competitive sport, and the eating doesn’t cease, from morning till night. This year, treated as we were to a festive stay at the murder-mystery-tastic country house Chilston Park Hotel in Lenham, Kent, ideal for real-life Cluedo, after an unusually storming year for my father, eating meal after meal at the groaning 12 foot library table, I grinned and bore it as best anyone could being waited on hand and foot by an obsequious waiter who’d drawn the short straw of the Christmas shift. How could I not be delighted as canapes melded into a six course lunch followed by cheese and mince pies, coffee and then a buffet dinner? It was a modern vignette of Upstairs Downstairs and the Edwardian inequalities it daintily, and without too much strenuous objection on my part, highlighted, was a pleasant break from my real life grind. My digestive system, by contrast, was working overtime. My recent diagnosis with IBD had the doctor put me on a strict FODMAPS diet: a confusing regime of complicated carb avoidance that randomly assigned fruits vegetables and grains as either good or bad. It is unsustainable at the best of times, but here, as I dutifully avoided bread and nibbled the fillings in pastries, it felt churlish to refuse dishes handed to me on a silver platter. It was death-by- chocolate pudding in the library under a candlestick.

But I paid the price with crippling indigestion, trumbonious wind, and a sense, albeit pyschosomatic at this juncture, that I was somehow less comfortable in my skin, let alone my clothes.

A somewhat picky eater as a young child, I was the thin black sheep amid a herd of comfortable grazers, and was regularly pressed, cajoled and insisted upon eating more than my fairy whisp slip of body could handle, living as I could quite happily on fresh air, sunshine and penny sweets. Only my oft skeletal granddad, considered to be anorexic, who, now it appears, had Crohns, recognised my need to feel empty.and sustained us both on Fisherman’s Friends and Werther’s Originals.

As a teen, I flirted with eating disorders as much as any girls’ school swot with minor mental health problems and bad skin, but then I went on the pill, discovered an appetite, and, with the university boozing that followed, became more an aficionado of carby cuddles and guilty exercise than diets to maintain, sometimes unsuccessfully my hitherto slim build. But as adulthood unleashed more an more problems with food allergies and candida, brought on no doubt by the antibiotics I swallowed like sweeties to get a grip on my skin problems, I began to resign myself to a sugarless life, gulped down with lashing of retch-inducing kefir. Now, it seems I have Crohns too. Partly genetic. Partly lifestyle: I wasn’t breastfed and my gut biome was all but eradicated in my teens. Food in my thirties is again a problem.

By yesterday, I was filled to the brim with fizzy wine, and eczema began to appear round my eyes – a sign my liver had well and truly had enough. We left the hotel through driving rain to head south to my sister’s, who was ready to offload a fridge full of leftovers and pasty encased oven bakes, and given her own rather restrained festivities, was also ready to let her hair down. I miserably joined in with the eating, feigning delight at the bountiful spread, picking at turkey and stuffing for the fourth time in a week. Ma, who’d baked a Mary Berry cheese cake from scratch complete with tempered chocolate holly, was justifiably proud of her creation, as well as a champagne cocktail she’s tried out to much applause on her friends back in the States. I was handed a glass, and I dutifully sipped, griping at the resolute bubbles of noxious gas that had been escaping me all the way from Kent. I nibbled a tiny sliver to make her happy. My eyes began to itch, and the kids, raucous from late nights and even more presents began to squawk and turn concentric sugar-infused circles. I went upstairs and vomited.

Sick with the excess, and the eager hospitality that I was too rotund and ungrateful to enjoy. Fear that my hard battled-into jeans would come undone and the knowledge that a sparse January was on the cards did nothing to cheer me up. For anyone with food issues of any flavour, this time of year is hard to negotiate, and even a brisk walk in the country can do little to reignite the necessary festive cheer.

This morning I picked on blueberries in anticipation of yet another dietary onslaught, as well as a day spent sofa surfing and cramped in the car for the long drive home to London. I wish I could enjoy so much largesse with more gratitude and enjoyment, but for myriad reasons, at this time of year, I just end up feeling overcooked and scroogified, longing for it all to end.