Survival of the fastest

Inner Goddess: Slow down, for heavens sake, your Weetabix does not have legs!

I’ve read about it, Paul McKenna advocates it and I try my best to do it, but I find eating slowly really, really hard.

I don’t even have the excuse of being one of those so-rushed-off-my-feet people. I could eat at snail’s pace if I wanted to but, oh no, put a bowl of chow in front of me and before you can say ‘was it a bird, was it a plane?’ my plate will be cleaner than your brightest Daz whites.

I used to be quite proud of this finely honed skill. I went through some of the toughest survival training on the planet to acquire it. Not the SAS, not MI6, no, I went to the big mama of all survival training...

...a girl’s boarding school.

Let me just briefly sum up dinnertime etiquette…

“Hold on to your ugly green gym pants girls and prepare to toughen up! You’re not here to enjoy your meals. No ladies, you’re here to learn to fight or starve. Don’t like it? Lump it! Trust me, a month from now you’ll be begging for more of that snot coloured, nutritionally void cabbage. Now, let’s say grace…”

You laugh, you think, yeah right, it can’t always be this bad - our parents are paying good money for this educational incarceration. But sure enough, by week three I could have taken out Muhammed Ali to stake my claim to that cabbage.

Revolting chow made sure I never got fat at boarding school – that came later - but devouring my dinner in seconds lest the vultures attack sure did turn out to be a tough habit to break.