Constant Craving

In the supermarket I pass a small, boxed chocolate cake and I want to buy it and eat the whole thing. I walk down the street thinking about vats of steamed puddings. I eat a ready-made lasagna for lunch and it barely seems to touch the sides. There’s another in the refrigerator and I could pop it in the microwave and just keep eating, I think.

It’s on me right now, this desire to binge. It seemed to come out of nowhere yesterday afternoon. I was walking home from the Tube, having just been to lunch with an old friend, visiting from the US, and all I wanted was cake. Not just any cake, but cake with frosting. Preferably a layer cake or my favorite Ottolenghi cake.

I’d just had a Sunday roast, but I wasn’t full from it. It was in some bog standard pub by Paddington -- because he had to get on the Heathrow Express and go back to New York -- and it wasn’t very good, but I ate the whole thing anyway, almost without noticing. Well, without noticing anything but that it wasn’t that good and – like an old lady in the Catskills – that it wasn’t very big.

I kept walking, trying to think about where I could go. My favorite coffee place, where I always scrutinize the cakes but have never ordered any? No, there’s a reason why I’ve never ordered any – they don’t look sufficiently amazing. I kept walking.

Any of the chain coffee places near the tube? It was freezing and if I couldn’t think of something specific I wanted, I perhaps shouldn’t go looking for it. I kept walking.

The ginormous Tesco? Ditto, plus I’d almost automatically set myself up for a binge, with the quantity I’d have to buy. Kept walking.

Should I turn around and go toward South Kensington and get a Ben’s cookie? It was freezing (and yes, in that moment I was almost grateful it was freezing) and that really wasn’t what I wanted. (Don’t get me wrong; if it were in front of me, I’d probably have eaten it.) Almost home.

For the first time, though, I was considering and rationally discarding options, as opposed to becoming more and more frustrated to the point of a binge by my inability to get what I really wanted.

I thought about eating the random individual Christmas pudding I still have in my cupboard, but I knew it wouldn’t satisfy anything except the need to feel warm, however briefly. Well, that part, at least, I could satisfy. I went home and had some porridge – warm and stodgy – and decided I couldn’t face the cold again (and it was Sunday night) and I’d deal with procuring cake today.

Except it’s snowing and I’m inexplicably exhausted and I cannot face the trip. Cannot face the trip even for cake? I’m somewhat amazed that I can be this person – and also a person who can decide I will hang on until I get what I really want. The only trouble is, I’m not sure – in the face of all these cravings – how long I can sustain it…