We have gone through the Gateway That We Thought We Would Never Pass.
We might even have changed our lives for ever.
We are going to have a go at Healthy Living.
We have contemplated the advice given by the consultant at Monday night’s clinic. Actually there was hardly any of this at all, because he was tired and rushed and world-weary, so we made up for his deficiencies by consulting the all-knowing Doctor Internet, who had not just spent an hour fighting through rush hour traffic on the motorway, and who had lots to say on the subject.
It took a while to find this advice, because of Hard To Spell Disease being hard to spell.
When eventually I found it it turned out that there was reams and reams of information, ranging from the frankly mental through to the uninspiring, but in between this there were some interesting suggestions.
The doctor, in between scribbling on his notepad and wanting to look at my feet, explained that if you exchange butter for a special cholesterol-lowering margarine spread, it helps the drugs along, a bit like taking Ecstasy and drinking half a gallon of water. He suggested that I try this.
I thought that this sounded disgusting, but when I mentioned it to Mark he said that it might be better than dying, and perhaps we should give it a go.
I have always been entirely revolted by the idea of margarine. I mean utterly revolted, vile, oily, poisonous stuff. I was not at all sure that it would be better than dying, if the choice was between eating a tub of Flora and passing away painlessly in my sleep it would be a close run thing.
This revulsion, incidentally, has not been helped by a story told by Number One Son-In-Law, left over from his military days, which I shall repeat here, because it gives you a little flavour of margarine.
When the brave young chaps of the Royal Marines visit one another’s actual homes, that is, houses with gardens and chimneys, not barracks, they play a game called Hide The Poo. The object of this, as you may be able to guess, is to do a poo somewhere in the house where it will not be discovered. The poo stays around as a surprise for the homeowner at some later date.
The all-time winner was the chap who carefully scraped the margarine out of the tub in the fridge, refilled the tub and then put the margarine back on the top.
I keep a close eye on Number One Son-In-Law when he visits.
Anyway, this story of military heroism has done nothing for my affection for margarine, and I have carefully omitted it from my diet ever since I was well-paid enough to afford butter.
Of course, cholesterol-lowering grease spread is not quite margarine, but it is pretty much the same idea. I was not at all sure about it, but this morning we went to inspect the Co-op to see if they had any.
They did. It was even more expensive than butter.
We resolved not to bother, and marched out, but across the road in Sainsburys they had the very same product on Special Offer, at less than half the price. This turned out to be considerably cheaper than butter.
We bought some, and took it home to spread on swirly bread for breakfast, and actually, to our complete astonishment, it was quite nice.
Mark went back and bought the rest of the tubs, whilst it was still on Special Offer.
You are not supposed to use it in baking but I tried it in biscuits anyway, and it worked perfectly well. I made ginger biscuits with it, and they were fine.
After that I felt adventurous and tried it in chocolates. I made dark salted chocolates with chilli in them. I usually blend these with cream, but because of the Healthy Living Project I used Greek yoghurt instead, and I can tell you now that they were absolutely divine. I mean really superlatively good. Mark and I ate two after dinner this evening, and they were so rich and wonderful that there would have been no possibility of eating more, although we both thought about it quite hard.
I had never thought that healthy living could actually be pleasant. I made swirly tomato and onion bread this afternoon, and we ate it dipped in sesame oil, which was ace.
We have got peanuts and olives, and I have made fruit porridge for breakfast.
Pretty soon we will be unrecognisable.
