Oliver has been asking about anorexia.
This was prompted by a YouTube video on the subject, in which somebody sang a song about it.
He showed me the video, which was startling. It was a song performed by a young man with long, pink hair. We both watched it carefully, pausing it occasionally to discuss compulsions, and body-image. When it finished I explained as much as I could, and then we looked up articles about anorexia on Google.
One striking picture showed a thin girl in front of a mirror. The girl reflected in the mirror was not thin. She was round and wobbly, just like me. This was the way that she believed she looked, because her brain was misleading her so that she did not notice she was thin.
It occurred to me, optimistically, that perhaps I have been suffering from that sort of brain-deception. When I look in a mirror, the person who looks back is very definitely spherical in shape. It could be, I thought hopefully, that my own brain is misleading me, and that perhaps I might be thinner than I thought.
Oliver assured me that I wasn’t.
I told him that the way to stop people dying of anorexia was to think that fat people were beautiful as well. If everybody thought that fat was lovely, then perhaps people would not be horribly unkind to themselves in order that they might become thin.
Oliver thought very carefully about this, and decided that he probably agreed. He is so excruciatingly thin and uninterested in food himself that he finds it very difficult imagine anybody eating for pleasure, or not eating at all because they think that they are not thin enough. He also pointed out that I have completely and absolutely forgotten to feed him at all since he got home, and that it is a good job we have got crisps and popcorn in the cupboard, otherwise he would be looking like the girl in this side of the mirror by now.
I put some potato cakes in the microwave, apologetically, and he ate them along with half a box of strawberries whilst we talked.
I have done far too much eating for pleasure, which is what is behind my current unenthusiastic getting-thinner-and-fitter campaign.
I ran up the fell again this morning, slowly. It seems to be very difficult at the moment, and I had to stop and walk rather more than I should have done. I reminded myself, several times, of the Gordonstoun motto, More Is In You, in an effort to persuade myself to try harder: but if there was more in me then it was staying there, and I had to walk the last bit across the park and through the village.
I discovered Oliver contemplating this same motto on my return. He has been sent a form to fill in, which lists some interesting questions for him to answer, probably, I expect, to give the interviewers a starting point when he goes for interview.
It starts with the obvious question: why do you want to come to Gordonstoun?
Oliver has answered, truthfully, and rather splendidly, I thought: “because I want to find out what more is in me.”
His headmaster, in his practice interview, had asked him what he thought that he would bring to Gordonstoun, and Oliver said that he knew that he absolutely must not reply: “a suitcase,” but it was jolly difficult.
He has got to go back to school tomorrow, and then there is just one more week before he has finished for the summer.
The picture is of the dogs on my run this morning, taken as an excuse to stop running for a moment or two.
