Morbid obesity for the living dead

Francis leaves early in the morning, shaking me awake before he goes to ask me if I think he should put a sign saying 'gone fishing,' on the car.

"Leave me alone," I answer, lovingly, "I'm in the middle of a dream about making you a cooked breakfast."

"Pity we've not mastered telepathy yet," he says, "because it's probably the nearest I'll ever get to having one." Pausing only to tip me forty quid - "Buy yourself a new set of matching insults, Madam - the old ones are getting very threadbare," he sets off for the airport, making me wonder why I thought watching Sense and Sensibility together would be a bonding experience.

"Forget sardines - what about line-caught firemen?" says Bad Lindy, hungrily, later, when I go round to Vicky's for tea, sympathy and bad puns after the school run. "Do you think they'll ever get round to farming them?"

"Not unless they're critically endangered. Mind you, the way you've been plundering their resources, that may happen sooner than we think," I say. "Sugar and hydrogenated fat special for you, Vicky?"

"No thanks," says Vicky, pushing away the plate - an unprecedented gesture from someone whose idea of a sophisticated tea time snack is half a dozen crispy creme donuts with lard topping.

"You what?"

"I'm thinking of trying this restricted calorie diet," she explains. Bad Lindy starts to back away nervously. "Is there somebody we should call?" she mutters at me. "What have you been saying to her?"

"It's all the rage this year, apparently," continues Vicky, gamely. "The idea is that you eat almost nothing and live forever, or as near as makes no odds. Obviously you have to weigh everything - in fact, they've even come up with a special calorie counter. And you go off sex. But apart from that, it's really, really good."

"Who invented it?" I ask.

"Some American bloke."

"And is he still alive?"

"Funnily enough," says Vicky, "He died in his 70s. Unluckily he got the only disease that prefers its victims half-starved."

"The only one? What about typhoid, dysentry or cholera?"

"Poor sanitation," says Vicky, primly. "No fear of that here."

"That's a laugh given the way your kids leave the loo," says Bad Lindy. "So let me get this straight. You get to lose all your curves, your libido and your taste buds in order to hang around with a bunch of calorie counting skinny octogenarian obsessives. Sounds like joining the undead, except you don't even get to terrify the neighbours with the pointy teeth and rotting skin. Mind you, I don't think their small talk's up to much."

"Well, yes," says Vicky.

"Way to go, girl," says Bad Lindy. She holds the plate out to me. "A little Victoria sponge with your morbid obesity?"

"Don't mind if I do," I say.