Addiction

My name is Stephen Blake and I am an addict.

I first became addicted when I was 6 or 7. It was my mother who got me onto the stuff. In her defence she probably didn’t realize the potency of the substance or my susceptibility to it. At the time “addiction” wasn’t a word that was particularly bandied around regularly at the nation’s breakfast tables so people thought little of my daily cravings.

Now though addiction is an all too common concept. In fact it is almost the norm. We are all addicted to something or so they say.

For me, ladies and gentleman, the vice of choice is chocolate.

Up until now I’ve always made light of it. It is even been a source of humour. When Karen and I go out for a meal (on the rare occasions that we have both the money and the energy) and order an after meal coffee it is always amusing to see the waiters mistakenly assuming that it is Karen who has ordered the hot chocolate and me the coffee. Why guys are deemed less likely to have a sweet-tooth is puzzling.

Anyway, I am sure I have mentioned in the past that I need to have “a chocolate bar every day”.

This is a lie. A falsehood that I have deliberately been bamboozling myself with.

If I was to assess the situation empirically I would have to admit that I must get through at least 4 chocolate bars a day. Sometimes even more.

Is this excessive?

I mean compared to say 25 or 50, 4 hardly seems like a health crisis. And yet a tiny sense of worry is beginning to flower on the herbaceous borders of my mind. Too much sugar. Too much sugar. Diabetes. Diabetes. It is like a mantra of impending doom.

Biologically the human body isn’t really engineered to process sugar. I know this. And yet my craving is such that I just don’t care.

My body shape also works against me. I am a “slim Jim”. Always have been. I can eat as much as I like and be as unhealthy as I like and I never put on any weight. I have the metabolism of an Olympic mouse. Hence there are no outward signs of the damage I might be doing to myself. My veins could be clogging themselves to death and I wouldn’t know a damned thing about it.

It’s a scary thought. But one that can easily be cancelled out by a Cadbury’s Boost or a Caramel Chunky Kit-Kat.

In my favour though, I went and had a blood test / weight ratio test thingie at my local doctors a few weeks ago. I was finally ready to bite the chocolate-free bullet if my health required it. But – gasp! – my blood pressure and weight relationship were on such good terms that the phrase “extended honeymoon” barely covered the depth of their mutual respect and contentment.

I am exceedingly fit. It seems I am not an obvious candidate for a heart attack.

Hence I rewarded myself with a Mars bar.

So where am I now on all of this? Well, my theory is that my natural paranoia and neuroses is counteracting any harmful effects that my chocolate excesses might be inflicting upon my body. My worry is eliminating the build up of sugar based toxins.

So provided I continue to feel guilty about it I can continue to munch my way through the sweet counter of my local newsagents on a daily basis.

Which changes the nature of my habit completely.

It is no longer an addiction. It is a form of Catholicism.

I am a holy man and my rod and my staff are Curly-Wurlys.

Please bring me some chocolate when you next come to confession.

The Mormon Invasion

So we'd made it to Friday evening. The kids were in bed. The washing up had been done. All the chores were out of the way.

It was Quality Time at last. Curled up on the sofa. Big bar of choc. Jasmine Harman on TV shaking her impressive decolletage over various locations in the South of France.

And naturally the doorbell rings.

Cold callers.

Pains in the effing A.

I did the net curtain twitch and took a quick deco.

Two young guys. White shirts. One in a blazer. Both with neat little back-packs hung from their broad shoulders like turtle shells. Even before I'd heard the American accent I knew they were Mormons.

Here to spread to Word of God and save me from myself.

Well sorry. I was too tired to be saved so I ignored the doorbell.

It went again. A second time.

OK. OK. They were being persisent. But in my house that doesn't always pay. I was more determined than ever to ignore them.

Doorbell chimed for a third time.

Jesus!

(Though I kept my voice down when I said that.)

When are these guys going to get the message? Tom was asleep in bed and I really didn't want him woken up by two well-meaning God-botherers. I resolved that if they tried a fourth time I was going to march out there and give them a piece of my mind.

Then we heard a strange jangling sound. The sound of keys being pushed through our letterbox. The Mormons then headed over to next-door's house.

I went into the hall to investigate.

Sure enough, there was a bunch of keys lying on the mat. Not the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven I might add but our own house keys. Seems Karen had accidentally left them in the front door keyhole when she'd arrived home an hour or two earlier.

Boy did I feel guilty.

I'd been mentally slagging off these pure-hearts in my head and then they go and save me and my family from burglary and God knows what else.

Shame on me.

Thank God I hadn't answered the door though. I'd have felt even worse if, mid slag-off, they'd handed me the keys personally with a cheery, "There you go, sir." Their halos would have blinded me. I would have had to listen to them then. My guilt would have had me honour-bound to repay their kindness by listening to a sermon or two and maybe even admitting to the fact that I do own at least one Osmond record (admittedly it's "Crazy Horses", the one they released when they were desperately trying to raunch themselves up to increase falling record sales). I know how guilt makes me behave. I may even have invited them inside and offered them a cup of tea and a biscuit whilst chastely switching Jasmine off in favour of the The Chelsea Flower Show.

But thinking about it some more... maybe the way it happened was the right way?

I mean, I suffer a little post-irritation guilt and learn a lesson or two about the kindness of strangers... and they continue on their rounds taking pride in the fact that they've perfomed a Godly act of kindness in the face of total heathen ignorance.

Everybody's happy.

Isn't that how religion is supposed to work...?

Passionate

I’m greatly impressed with the BBC’s new rendition of The Passion. It looks good – sumptuous, I guess, would be the right word – and the dialogue and acting is really superb. They’ve got the feel of it just right. No surprise to learn then that the production team involved are the same highly skilled souls who brought Rome to our TV screens last year.

The Passion is both a difficult and an easy story for a director to interpret. Easy because the story is so well known and emotive of itself that it already connects with a huge audience (even the irreligious among us must surely appreciate the beauty of the story’s message) and difficult exactly because of the same. The story is so well known it’s almost been done to death. It’s too familiar.

And yet to quote an old saying, the BBC and HBO have managed to inject new wine into an old wine skin and, as a consequence, have come up with a deeply satisfying beverage.

A top class cast, beautiful locations, fantastic costumes (the costume department of the BBC’s Robin Hood please take note) and a skilled writer have all produced what is one of the best adaptations of the Easter story that I’ve seen for a long time.

All the old traditional motifs are there. I’m happily ticking off each event as it occurs – the Easter story is so ingrained since my school days it’s like re-visiting an old friend – but the writers have bulked out these Biblical checkpoints with elements of easily understandable human frailty and manoeuvrings. There is an inevitability about it all – but it is the inevitability of real human weakness rather than the work of two-dimensional cartoon automatons lifted straight out of the sparse text of the Bible.

There’s talk of controversy afoot too – apparently the director has filmed Jesus being crucified in the foetal position stating that there is strong evidence that this is how the Roman’s did it. Personally I think such details are irrelevant but it’ll be interesting to see how it is handled.

It’s a shame that the director didn’t take a few more risks elsewhere though. As good as Joseph Mawle is in the role of Jesus he does nevertheless conform to that deeply trad and probably deeply inaccurate view of Christ as being white with western features and blue eyes. Even I can see that such a notion is (a) unlikely (b) possibly imperialistic and (c) offensive. But then maybe the same argument should be applied here as to the arrangement of the crucifixion? Nobody really knows what Christ looked like so does it matter? Doesn’t the significance of the message outweigh the minutiae of its details?

My only gripe is a small one. James Nesbitt. He’s a brilliant actor and I really like him... but I just can’t cope with his Irish accent coming out of the mouth of Pontius Pilate. It really jars. I’m just waiting for him to splutter, “Bejasus are you Jesus? Would yer be after coming down to the pub fer a pint?”

Not so much Pontius Pilate as Padraig Pilate... and as we all know, Guinness does not travel well.