Gwyneth Paltrow helps Mother

‘Like the ‘Play that Went Wrong’?’ asks my Son.  

‘Or ‘One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’?’ says my Wife.  I’m trying to get them to understand how I feel but they don’t get it. Whoever coined the phrase ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ couldn’t do basic Maths.

Our psychodrama plays out across daily life. Food, for example. Once, I was the fussy eater, now she is. Once, she complained I must eat greens, now I find myself lecturing her about her diet. Am I wrong to be frustrated by her refusal to acknowledge that a daily packet of Bahlsen Choco Leibniz Biscuits and twelve cups of heavily sugared tea isn’t a balanced diet? 

I wonder if Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘modern lifestyle brand’ Goop has a solution to Mother’s dietary problem? I plug in the phrase – ’diets for seniors’ – into the site’s search bar but it returns nothing. Clearly, Goop isn’t geared to the challenges of the older generation, but I bookmark an article there about someone called Wim Hof, who is a specialist in Breathwork, a new way of relaxing from the daily grind, in the belief I need to investigate anything which may help me battle my middle aged anxieties. 

Although Mother’s weight is stable, it is a constant worry that Mother doesn’t eat more.  I’ve looked at the NHS guidance and wonder if I can persuade her to eat more of the foodstuffs they recommend.

‘How about porridge?’

‘Only for Scots.”

‘Peanut butter?”

‘For American children.’

 ‘Avocado on toast.’

 ‘Too water intensive.’

‘I just want you to stay healthy,’ I despair.

‘I just want you to mind your own business.’

A recent study has shown that those who eat at least half of their daily calories in the morning are healthier. I suggest she adopts it as a breakfast regime for a week and in return I’ll stop my nagging.

“A regime’s is something you find at Butlin’s or a concentration camp. I’m not keen on either,’ she says. “However, how about sausages? We haven’t had them in a while?”

The reason she hasn’t had a sausage for a while is because they became a banned substance in our house under the new Heathy Foods Regulations written by my Wife and passed with the support of my children at the start of the year by a clear majority of three to one.

Not only are sausages a processed meat, they have nitrates, sodium and fat in them, which I am told are bad for you. I eat them whenever I can, especially in a sandwich, but only when alone and at cafes more than two tube stops from home in case anyone I know sees me. 

Asking me to bring home sausages is no different to asking me to smuggle in an illegal substance. Nevertheless, a few days later, I am grilling sausages for lunch. I have interrogated the butcher about additives and the meat’s provenance, and I am convinced these sausages are about as healthy and ethical as a sausage can be.  

‘Do you remember you godfather John, ‘asks my Mother from the dining table, shaking tomato sauce onto two slices of bread and casting aside the real tomatoes and lettuce which I had draped over the bread.

‘Yes.’

Divorce left my god father bereft of the love of his life and any culinary interests apart from bangers, as he called sausages. He was found dead of a heart attack outside the door of his flat gripping a shopping bag with three packets of them in it.    

‘Wouldn’t have approved of you grilling those sausages. Always fried them.’

Mother has no sense of the risks I have taken bringing sausages into the house. But rather than take umbrage, I take a big Wim Hoff style ‘Breathwork’ and console myself that by criticising my cooking she’s returning to one of her traditional Motherly roles in the family psychodrama – the Critical Cook – and that is good enough for now and, somehow, reassuring.