Heathrow injection

If someone were to find my wallet they would be forgiven for thinking two things: firstly that I could use a little more cash and fewer credit cards. Secondly they may believe I was Colonel Sanders in a past life – my wallet is literally filled with restaurant cards and vouchers for food...and often covered in grease, despite the hoards of moist towellettes I keep in my handbag.

Whilst it is perfectly natural for a woman to be besotted by food, I live in a city where most of us don’t even walk up escalators unless they are the moving kind and therefore we cannot possibly burn off all the discounted food we eat.

If you are planning to move to London you will invariably be warned that on arrival you will be given the infamous ‘Heathrow injection.’ It is even more painful than it sounds. This term describes what happens to people who move here: as soon as you get off the plane you will almost immediately put on weight. This is true for most of us; I do spend far too many work hours pondering how it is that Elle McPherson has managed to escape this fate. In the vain hope that her skinny genes are contagious I recently moved into a flat around the corner from her. It appears I have not been able to prove my ‘slim by osmosis’ theory. As I look down at the zipper on my jeans, I note it resembles a python that has just swallowed a large marsupial. I am definitely more Colonel Sanders that Charles Darwin.


There are over 6,000 restaurants in London. People may wonder how they all survive. That is easy; as obsessed as we are with food, the one thing we will never do is cook. Many new build flats are not even being built with kitchens, just enough room for a fridge and a hot plate. This suits me perfectly as it gives me more room to store my cookbooks. I own 12 cookbooks and haven’t used one. This is somewhat fitting as these books have all been written by chefs who have TV shows rather than kitchens. Chefs in London are now of the same social standing as rock stars, apparently whipping up a hollandaise is up there with penning the lyrics to ‘Hey Jude.’

The increase in cookbooks written by cooks who don’t cook has increased the number of organic stores, which are now scattered around London. It has also fuelled our need to drop the word ‘organic’ into every sentence we utter. Not buying organic is more frowned on in London than adultery; shag your brains out, but for God’s sake make sure that carrot came off a traceable farm.

Every week I buy a vegetable that I don’t even recognise and leave it on the sideboard in the kitchen as decoration. People comment and I feel as though I have impressed them with my knowledge of exclusive, funny looking vegetables. I used to be peer pressured into smoking, now I feel pressured into buying aubergines. I have a three a week habit. Despite all this, when I am alone I secretly trawl the local fast-food joints looking for my next culinary hit. The choices are endless. Anything you could hope to find in polystyrene or plastic wrap is at your fingertips.

Since it came to light that the banks had been lending cash to anyone with a pulse (I don’t think they checked), more and more cash strapped Londoners are turning to junk food for comfort. Every major fast food chain has reported increased profits and there isn’t an organic radish in sight. So the upside to the recession is that in addition to blaming our parents, our moods and the weather, we can now blame the economy for our poor eating habits.

I am not sure whom we blame for the store ‘Iceland.’ During my first week in London I decided to show off my domestic skills and had a dinner party. I cooked a lamb roast, as winter was rapidly approaching and as an Australian I am obliged to consume at least a herd a year. My guests had a little trouble cutting through the meat on their plates but were too polite to comment. One finally asked where I bought the meat from. When I replied ‘some supermarket called ‘Iceland’ all five off them dropped their cutlery, one so violently that they cracked their plate. I did not know that Iceland was called Iceland because everything was frozen (could have guessed) and that Kerry Katona was chosen as the spokeswoman because she was the MOST respectable of their customer base. The rest can't afford her crack habit. The store survives because that lamb roast cost me £3…. it also cost me a dinner plate and several knives. So I gave up cooking, no need to cook when there are so many other culinary options for Londoners – Pot Noodle has just launched a kebab flavour noodle. The only downside is that I can't claim to have burned off any calories walking to the kebab shop anymore.

Caesar once said that his army was unstoppable because his men were always well fed. If we Londoners are full of something as unnaturally sounding as ‘popcorn chicken’ what will our fate be? I will ask the banker begging on my street corner what he thinks.