P.G Wodehouse fan rave

I'm having a P.G. Wodehouse (is it pronounced Woodhouse or Woadhouse?) thing at the moment. This has been driven by:

• finding the whole set of Wodehouse Playhouse with the divine John Alderton and the stunning Pauline Collins on it. I love them. Love them. If you like the frocks on Downton Abbey and Miss Fisher Investigates but also like extreme silliness, I recommend them to you as well. If you can find them. see below for a sample. Failing that, read his novels.
• I read Sebastian Faulks' homage, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, which struck just the right note I felt. Given Wodehouse is dead (sob! Ok he lasted til about 93, but still!), there's licence for him to do some tying up, which he does. And it's funny and respectful, and it made me get out 3 of the novels from the library
• Of them I have finished Joy in the morning, which is one of the best Jeeves and Wooster novels
• I have a feeling I may be hunting down the Fry and Laurie Jeeves and Wooster series next. 

I am taking a break before I read more Wodehouse though - I'm reading The Man without a face, by Masha Gessen. It's a biography of Vladimir Putin, which is topical of course. But even 50 pages in, the depiction of the grimness and corruption of post-Soviet life will make Wodehouse's light-hearted froth as welcome as a warm fire on a wet day. 

Quitting dieting

I got an enormous amount out of the city library today - 11 items, but this post is just about two of them.
They are Health at every size, by Linda Bacon, and The emotional eater's repair manual, by Julie Simon. These are related to the decision I made a few weeks ago that I was going to give up trying to lose weight. Which is, to be honest, a decision that is proving problematic. I have no idea if I've gained or lost weight, I have no idea if my balance of 'healthy' days to 'over-eating' days is worse or better than it was - because I'm no longer weighing myself or monitoring what I eat.

I feel anxious tho' - I feel like I'm on a staircase with no railing. The theory of quitting dieting as laid out in Health at every size is that once all foods are 'allowed', that eventually you start eating what your body needs and finds equilibrium. I'm not sure I trust that theory yet! Part of it is that when I made my decision, I happily read the fun, early bits of Health at every size about dieting being a crock, but skipped the bits about actually developing a healthy relationship with food (hey, it was due back at the library). Hence I've got it out again, along with Simon's book to try and engage with that a bit. Possibly I should actually consider buying my own copy...

I don't actually feel my relationship with food is all that unhealthy. I loathe all fad diets - moderation in all things is my food mantra. However I do have times when I just eat, well past the point of satisfaction, with little discrimination. Usually because I'm bored, or really want to do something else, and often, I've realised as a big Fuck off to my normal controlled, well-behaved self! So my eating is at least mildly disordered - along with, I imagine, almost every other woman in the developed world.

I also actually like my body. I think it looks nice. I dress it well. I don't flinch at shopping for togs. My layer of subcutaneous fat keeps me looking younger than I am. But for the last two years, I've been wanting to get to the weight of 69.5 kilos. This is the magic number at which my BMI would be under 25. At that number I would OFFICIALLY no longer be overweight. (I wonder if the Ministry of Health would have sent me flowers?) And over the last two years, I've upped the monitoring of my exercising and what I eat. To little effect - I'm pretty much still the same weight.

Why have I given up dieting? (Why not?) Two big reasons. I got mad again**. Mad at the culture that bangs on and on about weight, the culture that makes women* feel that losing weight is one of the most amazing thing they can achieve in their lives, the judgement about being overweight, the corresponding bitchiness to and jealousy of thin women - just all of it. The other reason is I started wondering what would happen if all the mental energy absorbed by weight watching and worrying was freed up for other things. Very possibly all that will happen, knowing me, is that I'll read more! But who knows? That's the thing with opening up space - you don't know what will fill it.




* and men, but I do feel the impact is particularly noxious for women given the other societal obsession with women and beauty.
** If you would like to feel mad too, with a nice mix of inspired, you could have a listen to Cat Pause (sorry Cat, don't know how to get an accent over the e).