This is not the serious piece to be written on addiction,
especially as overworked A&E is currently seeing healthy young women making themselves ill by injecting black market prescriptions for fat busting, weight reducing drugs. But I am addicted too – to good manners.
I want to shout for joy when somebody – regardless of age, sex, class, colour – behaves gently and sociably.
A young Asian man with one item in his hand waved me with a small basket full, forward at the supermarket. “Thank you” I said “but why ?” “Because I want to” he said. “My compliments to your mother” said I, grinning. And yup, I know – chanelling Queen Victoria and I don’t care.
I can’t say don’t care without seeing the line of my mother’s mouth pursed in disapproval. She forbade don’t care, I want and I told you so, the latter producing steam from both ears simultaneously. “Such a miserable thing to say” she’d hiss. It was just taboo.
I am addicted to coherence,
especially in scripts. Once you have asked yourself “What is this all about ?” you have admitted it lacks clarity. And if it is not clear or the style doesn’t grip me, I am not staying. Forget how many other people think it’s wonderful. As my father said “just because there’s just more of them, it doesn’t mean they’re right …” Thank heaven for books.
I am additionally addicted to voice. And that’s like music and beauty. It’s in my ears not yours and there it is.
I am addicted to taste but I have ceased buy jam – partly because I then have to buy bread to put it on -though mostly because it may say raspberry on the label but all I can taste is sugar. Raspberries grew in the back garden
– good fruit is just a joy. You can finick about with various kinds of sugar, lemon juice or weak Earl Grey, mint perhaps … but if the fruit tastes good, it needs nothing but washing.
Last week’s steak was from a very unhappy cow. It tasted of nothing very much. And in anticipation of disapproval, let me explain that elderly women easily incur anaemia and iron supplements often cancel efficacy by passing through with alarming speed and prejudice- so I eat lambs liver, and the odd piece of red meat. I like it. While Pam the Painter ate a vegiburger the other day which she said tasted of door mat.
I am addicted to dark chocolate,
a chocolate tree
almonds and ginger. I was in love with almonds before they were wonder food, when I had to peel them for the Christmas cake. I was in love with the ginger in biscuits, chopping the root and variously using it. And I keep bars of plain chocolate with hazelnuts in a plastic box in the fridge.
I am not addicted to nuts as such but at this stage I would miss them. I eat them every morning with dried fruit, plain yogurt and fresh fruit. I am not “eat the whole lot at one sitting” addicted about anything. There is no pride in this, I am not specially disciplined, it’s just the way I am
I am addicted to colour. Failure or success in my wardrobe as far back as you care to go is to do with colour. I abandoned black for khaki
when my hair went white – though paler, the sallow tones in my skin (I wept over that word !) are constant. I look endlessly at complexion colour, at lipstick, at hair colour, at the modifications in between colours and I get jump for joy excited when I see somebody who has matched or not tried to match a difficult shade of cream or grey.
I am addicted to leopards. It is probably easier to tell you animals I don’t like (fewer) and I am not very good at insects beyond bees and the dung beetle, nature’s Sisyphus. I am addicted to stories – the human revenge on social media. I am addicted to joy and laughter, the symbolism of green shoots and the hope of better days to come – how else to get out of bed in the morning ?
Annalog 