Avoidable Mistakes

 

Julia was fat.  Like most fat people, she was on a diet theoretically but, as usual, the diet was riddled through and through with all sorts of concessions.  Bread was restricted to two slices a day, but that did not stop Julia from filling up with toast.  Potatoes, no more than two per day, were supplemented with a good heap of chips at the next meal.  The diet was, furthermore, applicable to mealtimes, and for the mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack, something more had to accompany the drink of tea or coffee – perhaps a packet of chocolate biscuits or a sausage roll from the cabinet as she passed along to the pay desk.

 

Julia was, furthermore, demanding.  Her insistence on getting what she wanted was couched in such reasonable persuasive language that it was often difficult to refuse.

 

She developed phlebitis.  We did our best to rest her in bed, but she insisted that she was well enough to be taken to the dining-room for meals.  This did not surprise us.  Had we delivered her meals to her chalet with our ‘Meals on Wheels’ service, the helpings would have looked like the minute samples sometimes met with in shops which are promoting a fresh product, beside Julia’s usual intake.  Eventually, the doctor ordered her to remain in bed with her leg up for two whole days.  She protested; her meals would be cold; she had such a delicate stomach; it was imperative for her to be able to select her meal from what was served.  We were adamant; doctor’s orders had to be obeyed; besides, we thought that even two days of sensible dieting might have some small shrinking effect on that tremendous flabby bulk.  The meals, served as appetisingly as possible, were demolished at top speed, in spite of the inhibitions of the suffering stomach.  Julia’s moist eyes testified to the emptiness she was feeling inside but we hardened our hearts.

 

She sat bolt upright in her bed with her eyes on the pathway stretching towards the paradise of eating at the top of the Camp.  She waved jovially to all who passed and shouted pleasantries, like a plump pink spider in the centre of an inviting web.  It would have been impossible, without making an announcement over the tannoy system, to request everyone to ignore the diplomatic requests and suggestions about purchases at the snack bar and it was a matter of hours before Julia had a substantial stock of eatables of all kinds in the bottom drawer of her chest in the chalet.  The party staff paid her frequent and unexpected visits until, inevitably, someone pushing open the door from an unexpected angle, caught Julia with a large box of chocolates on the chair beside her bed and, before she had time to drop the newspaper over it, had demanded who had brought ‘that’ in to her.  Julia’s reaction was disconcertingly immediate and unembarrassed.  “Oh”, she said, “they are for my visitors.  I am getting dozens every day.  I cannot let them keep me company without offering them something”.

 

The leg improved gradually, and it was no more than a couple of days before the doctor told the exuberant Julia that she might get up as long as she was wheeled anywhere outside the chalet.  So we had no further excuse to exclude her from the large dining-room.  We made an excuse to place her at a table under surveillance, so that there would be plenty of room for people to get past her wheelchair.  Our efforts were all in vain.  No more than fifteen seconds behind a turned back was sufficient for Julia to prepare a slice of thickly buttered bread and put it under the innocent looking serviette beside her plate.  We gave up in the end.  We comforted ourselves that the massive meals were probably consolation to a neglected and lonely life.  She seldom saw her daughter or her son, and one often wonders where the lack of interest starts, in the temperament of spoiled children or a self-indulgent mother.