781213 Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures
(Lycidas by John Milton)
Without making too obvious a play for your sympathy, I do have to tell you that tonight I have been specially let out of custody for this broadcast.
I was only allowed to be here on condition that A) I wouldn't use the privilege to make an escape attempt and that B)
That the BBC officially undertook to deliver me back immediately that the show was over.
Which just goes to show you how strict some of these health farms are these days.
Just like everybody else who's ever wound up inside one, I never really believed this could happen to me.
Nevertheless just a scant couple of weeks ago there I was standing on a weighing machine in the commandant's office. And while he was looking through my dossier he said to me, "You seem an educated man. What makes you do such things?"
Now I said, "It's just something inside me I suppose sir. All my life I've desired beautiful things. "
And he said, "What sort of beautiful things?"
I said, "You know, roast potatoes, baked bean sandwiches, rice pudding with hot marmalade."
He gazed down at what the scale was registering. And he said, "Look what it's got you. A hopeless addict. When you walk out of here I promise you one thing. You'll have kicked the habit. The hard way. Cold turkey."
And I said, "With hot chestnut stuffing?"
He sighed and turned to his chief dietician, Nurse Duggans, the one we called the Enforcer."
And he said, "Book him. Block eleven."
Well, thirteen days I've done there now. And I can tell you this. If you've never been at a health farm, you just never believe what happens to people there. Those inmates, or UMCOWS as they're called. That's for the initials U M C O W Standing for Upper Middle Class Middeweight. They'll go to any length in their cravings for calories.
One middle-aged estate agent suddenly went berserk from hunger and they caught him trying to inject raspberry ripple ice cream into a main artery.
In the exercise yard the incorrigible eaters, on the outside they may be solicitors, bank managers, marketing executives, but here they're just known as the heavy mob. And what they're made to do is stand there doing running on the spot for sometimes as long as seven, eight minutes.
The only thing that sustains your sanity is that the sheer hunger keeps making you drop off to sleep. And in those hunger sleeps you get the most fantastically sensual dreams. One night, I remember, I dreamt I was running barefoot through a field of fried chips.
Now I don't want to make this too much of a sob story but mainly because although I have to go back there tonight, actually not only am I due out tomorrow, but on the way here my family managed to smuggle me a whole half carrot, inside which I found a note giving me the most stupendous good news.
While I'd been inside, two restaurants have opened in our high street. One is a French bistro whose dessert folly styles a whipped cream meringue pudding that's so enormous that portions are served from a small forklift truck. While the other is an Italian pretoria which features not just spaghetti, cannoli, fettuccine and lasagna, but a brand-new dish which combines all four of them.
There are so many calories, apparently, that they only can be counted on an eight-digit calculator.
So, as I say, don't waste too much of your sympathies on me because although it's back to diced turnip tonight, t omorrow, ah tomorrow, tomorrow the French puds and pastas new
Denis Norden
December 13, 1978
