Fat Mum No More

New Year's Eve. Having spent a goodly part of the past two weeks feasting, drinking, carousing and generally living high, I am feeling a bit worse for wear. I also have a stinker of a cold. I'm sorting through a vast pile of vile-smelling undergarments belonging to the Axis when the Kong appears, nonchalantly chomping on what I later discover is the last of a half-pound box of Roses. As I wrestle with his Batman costume, which has inexplicably become entangled with an old sports bra of mine that contains an alarming number of hooks and eyes, he saunters past and addresses me. 'Mum. I love you. You got a big fat bottom.' The two statements are apparently not connected. He proceeds back downstairs to demolish the next diabetes-inducing Christmas present he can lay his hands on, and I sigh, knowing that he is right. It's alright for the Axis - they have inherited their father's tall, slender build, and need never worry about their weight. Daddio is a man who can eat a whole box of cream cakes at a single sitting and apparently inhale a lasagne in seconds but, despite being six foot three, has never been described as anything plumper than 'gaunt'. Fat does not cling to that man. I suppose from that aspect, I chose well; my squat, round genes had to be cancelled out somehow, and he does also have a very symmetrical face. Accordingly, the Axis are gorgeous, and use this fact to their advantage wherever possible.

I don't enjoy this advantage, however, and my South Asian genes are not designed to process the huge amounts of dairy and wheat that they imbibe as a UK resident. Consequently, although I am frequently told what a pretty face I have (ha!), I am, well, plump, to be kind to myself (which, as I frequently tell the Axis, you must be, because if you aren't, why should anyone else?).  Just before Christmas I embarked on a bit of a health kick, initially to impress a date, but then, I found I was really enjoying it. My heart rate was down, so was my dress size and, for the first time in my entire life, I discovered that I could not only run, but I liked it. I felt better than I had for ages, and in only a few weeks my confidence shot up - I went from being someone who'd never leave the house without at least one cardigan to easily conjuring up alternative uses for wrapping paper that would very definitely upset the vicar and probably several of the neighbours too...life was fun again. However, being something of a greedy idiot, over Christmas I have wrecked it all - hence the Kong's comment.

It all started with my birthday weekend. I packed the Axis off to Daddio's and somehow resisted the lurking temptation of a few quiet drinks with GBF and Slut Drop (our partner in crime, so called because of her extreme proficiency with that particular dance move), knowing full well it would never end there, as the three of us have extreme difficulty shutting up once we get together. Instead, on the Friday night I did a moderate amount of exercise, treated myself to a Chilli Chilli Bang Bang pizza and had an early night. On the Saturday, I was going to have a leisurely day around the house, pottering, perhaps going swimming, before going to karaoke with some friends later. Well, I thought, I'm knocking on a bit. Meeting up later and not staying out too late is good for us. Time to chill.

Like that was ever going to happen. By lunchtime I was in the pub eating steak and chips with GBF and telling jokes so filthy the teenage boys next to us were looking a bit revolted. Thus began a weekend of complete overconsumption that seemed to act as a warm-up for Christmas. Two turkeys, ten gazillion gallons of booze, several ex-boyfriends, a few bouts of oedema and a lot of cadlike behaviour later I had to concede defeat and am now sitting here writing instead of playing the bodhran and swilling Guinness with friends. The Axis slumber upstairs (the Kong got his just desserts when he was sick from eating too much chocolate) and I ponder the situation.

How to do it? Simple, really, use the calorie-counting app one of the Drunken Mums showed me. As our various children skipped, hopped and punched each other in the face around us, we fiddled about with our smartphones. 'It's so easy,' she said, as the Kong twatted her daughter over the head with Buzz Lightyear, to howls of disgust. 'You can measure everything really accurately. And actually, once you realise what you're doing, you can save loads of calories dead easily.' 'And use them for GIN,' noted another mum darkly, having noticed her son was about to plunge headlong down the stairs on a tea tray. 'Or wine,' added another. 'But the real benefit,' continued the first mum, seemingly oblivious to her daughter turning the oven on behind her and sticking her head in it, 'is that when you do exercise, you log it, it links it in, and then you can have more calories. Darling, don't put your baby brother in the oven. We're having chicken kiev for tea.'

I tried it, it worked. So now, here I am, my blissfully un-size-ist children calling me fat to my face, and I have decided that, like a Frenchman's breakfast, un oeuf is enough. The Chinese takeaway I had for tea was an unpleasant struggle and I am more than ready. I am going to be lithe and slender by this time next year. Hmmm. OK, this might be a bit of a reach. But I can run 4k already and will do a race in April. I can do it, I think, and open up the laptop to place an online order with Sainsburys for ten tons of fruit and veg.

It's nearly midnight, and the bells of the local church have been going for half an hour. I turn off the lights and open my curtains so I can see the fireworks that are flying up all around us. I feel very lucky and grateful that now, I'm able to think about such things as diet and fitness when 12 months ago, things were in a very different, deeply dire state. As my elbows get colder from leaning them on the windowsill, I notice a noise behind me. It's the Kong, woken by the fireworks, clutching his toy rat and looking a bit shell-shocked, big brown eyes blinking in bewilderment. He brushes up to me and points at the window. I lift him up onto the wide windowsill and he burrows into my neck, much as he did when he was a tiny baby, as we watch the fireworks.

'Mum,' he says, 'I love you.' This time, that's it. Happy New Year to my wonderful sons.

Conspicuous Consumption

The excesses of the season have got to all the inhabitants of Axis Towers. While I have lost my voice completely following a couple too many dry sherries, the Axis have taken on a slight crazed glint in the eye and the ability to prick up their ears at the slightest rustling of what may be wrapping paper within a two-hundred-yard radius. They then charge over any old ladies and dogs smaller than a racehorse in order to lay their sticky little mitts on a PRESENT, no matter what it is - the virtue is in the getting.

I find watching this spectacle fairly dispiriting, so was happy to let the boys go to Daddio for Christmas Day so I didn't have to watch their inner Gordon Geckos manifest over huge piles of Playmobil. I managed to slow their present-opening here at Axis Towers so that there was not too much screaming, and I had hoped that this signalled an end to the consumerism, but no.

As I was recovering from a night of extremely bad behaviour on the Balchinator's sofa, the telephone rang. It was a somewhat exasperated Daddio, apparently calling from some kind of witches' coven judging by the background noise of incessant demonic laughter. When I'd calmed him down, he finally spilled what the problem was. 'Your eldest son is hatching EVIL and GREEDY naughty boy plans!' It transpired the Pie, proud recipient of his first wobbly tooth, was planning to lie in wait for the tooth fairy, kidnap her when she arrived by tying her up with his tape measure, and hold her to ransom for as many gold coins as he could get. He also stated an intention to marry someone who does not want children so he can accumulate as much treasure as possible for himself. Daddio was speechless at this mercenary streak in our previously loving and considerate boy.

I was too, and was about to demand the Pie come to the phone to be firmly admonished and booked in to Basic Human Decency 101 at Sunday school when I stopped, and thought. He's a bright lad. He's seen this before, and now he's decided to do it. He's seen what happens when you don't, when you stop and consider other people before seeing to your own needs, and he's obviously decided that the prevailing attitude - 'I want that, I'm having it, I don't care about you' - is the only way to get ahead.

He's wrong, right? Right? I'm going to tell him he's wrong, but how many times is the opposite view demonstrated to him over the course of the year, the month, the week, the day, even? How many times do I do it? Do we all eventually succumb to this?

One of my New Year's resolutions was going to be to stop letting people upset me so much. I'm a sensitive soul at heart and I'd decided I was going to be a little bit more selfish and tell everyone to kindly cock off if they were going to behave badly. But now, I find I have to reconsider. I don't want them to be selfish, arrogant little jerks. I want them to be nice to people and for people to be nice to them in return.

Niceness, however, can be a big front for utter bonkersness. Recently, someone asked me for my phone number, and if I would like to go out on a date. Shocked, but not unpleased, I conceded. At about 4am the phone rang and there was a voicemail. The next day, I listened to it with my friend. Instead of the pleasant and complimentary chap I had given my number to, there was a very, very drunk woman, with some giggling in the background. 'Hello. I have your number on my phone. I was just wondering if your last name was Hands and if you would like a good fisting. Give me a ring. Bye...'.

Well, I wasn't going to stand for that. Time for revenge...