Toe-Nail Salad

11th Feb - detox update - I have decided to maintain my healthy eating plan. Buoyed up by my half stone weight loss (and ignoring the ensuing third of a stone weight gain after five days of being off it), I have decided detox is my friend.

I’m afraid I may have let it all go a bit this weekend though. I went out and met some old friends on Friday after work, which was the start of the decline. Since leaving London for Cambridge and returning, it appears that my old London friends have shunned me. I felt like a social pariah sitting in the bar, with no one really that interested in talking to me. I therefore ended up gorging myself on a massive bowl of noodles with salmon so that I would have something to do other than feel a bit left out.

By the time it was 9.30pm, I was both tired from a very busy week at work and from trying to join in conversations about parties I hadn’t been to and people I didn’t know. So I left for home, picking up a bottle of wine on my way and cursing that it wasn’t a screw top so that I could tuck into it right there on the tube.

But not to worry – I made it home, resisting the urge to ask my fellow tube travellers if they might have a corkscrew, please. At home, I kicked off my shoes, grabbed the biggest wine glass I could and proceeded to down the bottle within half an hour.

Needless to say I woke with a bit of a headache the next day – but was drinking again by 5. Over the course of the weekend, I did in fact manage to drink my body weight in alcohol and eat several bucket-loads of curry. Hence the return to detox – which I managed to not start today after having been a little disorganised about lunch.

Having eaten above-mentioned curry on Brick Lane yesterday, then being unable to resist buying delicious (but hugely calorific) Indian sweets, I had no money today as well as no lunch. Scraping around my purse, the bottom of my bag and my office drawers, I managed to find £2.25, giving me enough to buy myself a salad in the canteen and leaving me with 5p for something really extravagant.

Today (unusually), it was dee-licious (it’s not healthy despite being called a salad, I should point out, so I’m really not being as virtuous as I might sound). Although I did find myself chomping on a lot of things which resembled toe-nails. It took me some time to work out (with great relief) that it was actually chopped up lemongrass. Phew.