16

CHARTERHOUSE CHRONICLE

The diet that leaves you free to eat what you like

By Brendan Walsh

As promised, the No-diet Diet. The Charterhouse Chronicle is an unsparing school of humility. One quickly learns, for example, that there are few things of less interest to a Catholic Herald reader than the self-pitying bleatings of an unsuccessful book publisher, or the urbane ruminations of a liberal Catholic on what should be done about homosexuality (absolutely nothing, broadly speaking, but I can tell that your eyes are already glazing over). You are much more likely to elicit a flicker of interest if you write about what you did on your holidays in Cork. And if you want to create a real flurry of anticipation you have to offer something Big. Last month I ran out of space before I could share a foolproof (and I am in the fortunate position of being able to offer myself to you as a volunteer who fits the job description) wheeze for losing weight while eating what you like, when you like. Thank you for the impatient calls and e-mails demanding to know more. Now I know you really are out there. Our office is on the third floor of an unprepossessing block in Wandsworth, alongside the police station. The drone of the A3 competes with the sound of a crooner auditioning at the entertainment agency next door. I get in early, fold my coat neatly, blow on my hands and start to chip away at the snowdrift of e-mails that has settled in my computer overnight. I spend a couple of hours ducking and weaving my way through them, dabbing some back, squirting others on to smarter colleagues, methodically arranging the remainder in orderly digital piles, like neat stacks of wood beside the fire. I wonder if this is one of those sad bloke things. The homestead swept and ordered, the labourer is now ready to brew coffee and examine the contents of the biscuit barrel. In this fallen world, all is not bitter exile. The mourning and weeping is occasionally relieved by a chocolate ginger or an almond thin. On a good day, the Darton, Longman and Todd office is like the setting for a 10-yearold’s birthday party. On top of a filing cabinet, amid the piles of typescripts and proofs, biscuits, cakes and crisps are laid out, with the odd darkening

Go on, dig in: With the No-diet Diet you need never say no to a digestive PA Photos

banana or neglected packet of nuts to lend the display uplift and virtue. There are folksy things with oats, blue-collar Jammie Dodgers and fig rolls and white-collar shortbread with “demerara sugar” (surely that can’t do you any harm) and Choco Leibniz biscuits from Hanover. We’ve been known to do the Tim Tam Slam, a characteristically athletic and tie-splattering Australian contribution to salon culture: you bite off a corner from each end of a Tim Tam (a chocolate biscuit not unlike a Penguin), dip one end into your cup, take a deep breath and suck up the coffee up with gusto from the other. The biscuit is rapidly soaked through, but, with some trial and error, you will master the trick of tipping it down your neck a split-second before it disintegrates.

One of the sweetest things we’ve published this year is a short, pocket-sized book called This Is Itby Maurice Smith, an irrepressible former Bible-bashing itinerant preacher who in his seventies has found that all the words that once seemed so important to him no longer seem to matter. “Words have become redundant. Now I feel drawn simply to bring others with me into the sense of stillness.” Maurice’s little book describes “the art of happily going nowhere”. Like all wise men, he’s grown suspicious of labels. But I think it’s not unfair to say that Maurice is nudging us towards the celebration of the sacrament of the present moment. It has dawned on me that when I opened the biscuit tin each morning, I would absent-mindedly unwrap and wolf down a KitKat while considering my

selection. Then as I loaded up with two or three treats to carry back to my desk, I would be absent-mindedly gobbling a custard cream or a HobNob to sustain me on the journey. In fact, I realised that I was eating pretty well every meal while doing something else or, in my imagination, being somewhere else, robotically hoovering up whatever was on the plate until it was empty. Eating well, and losing weight if you need to, isn’t necessarily easy, but it’s straightforward. When you are hungry, eat. Eat whatever you want to eat. And stop eating when you’re no longer hungry. That’s pretty much it. Don’t obsess about low carb or low fat; exercise for the joy of it not as a penance. Just eat what you like. There’s just one thing, though – and although it sounds simple, it isn’t, it’s a gift we’ve almost lost. Take your time. Be aware of what you are doing. Gently bring your attention back to the present moment from its restless lust to skive off into an “if only” mope. Don’t gulp that chocolate biscuit down while schlepping back to your desk – carry it with you, unwrap it carefully, and relish every mouthful. When you feel you no longer want to eat, stop. The simple thing I’ve learnt, and of course it’s a very ancient wisdom, is this. It is not what you eat or how much you eat that matters. The interesting thing, the thing to get right, is how you eat. While we’re being a touch parsonical – and I expect you’ve noticed that it isn’t just eating that would benefit from being done with attention and relish –here’s another discovery I’ve made this year. I’ve given up washing my hair, pretty much, with no ill effects, rather the reverse in fact. After 45 years of a daily hose, shampoo and rinse, these days I largely just leave it alone, apart from the occasional teasing rub of the scalp and tousle of the hair and a spray of hot water every 10 days or so. Let your barnet’s natural ecosystem take responsibility for it’s own oiling and moussing and volumising and cleansing. Foolproof.

Brendan Walsh is the editorial director of Darton, Longman and Todd (brendanw@darton-longmantodd.co.uk). Feedback is welcomed but please be gentle

NOVEMBER 23, 2007 THE CATHOLIC HERALD

END COLUMN

Fr Ronald Rolheiser The Last Word

Marking an anniversary

This week marks the 25th anniversary for this column. The Western Catholic Reporter, out of Edmonton, Alberta, published my first ever column on November 15, 1982. Glenn Argan was its editor then –and still is. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for giving me a chance to publish a column, long before the days of websites and blogs. Back then, we wanted the hard feel of paper in our hands. There’s still something special to that feel. It took six years to catch on with another newspaper, The Compass, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Today, the column is carried in more than 60 papers in a dozen countries. So, after 25 years and more than 1,500 columns, it is perhaps wise, both for scrutiny and celebration’s sake, to return to the beginnings and to have a look at what fires burned at the origins of this. When I first set out to do this kind of writing, I did it because certain fires burned within me and I began writing for the same reason that most others write: I needed to. There’s both a selfishness and an altruism in that. No motivation is perfectly pure. Why does anyone write? A lost soul on a lonely island needs to put notes into bottles and float them out to sea. Who knows? Someone might actually find a note and read it. Rescue ships might be sent. The bottle might come back with a reply in it, or its finder, as helpless as its sender, might take consolation in knowing there are other shipwrecked exiles. Instinct tells to put notes into bottles and float them. Obviously this has survival value. What fires burned within me then? I was 35 years old, pathologically idealistic, lonely, living in a foreign country, less than fully at ease with my celibacy, and compulsively driven by a restlessness that was energising and dissipating both at the same time. And this dictated that the column should have a certain slant. Let me quote from my first column, where, in the light of what burned within me then, I gave the column both a name and a mission. Twenty-five years ago, I wrote: “I have chosen to call this column, ‘In Exile’ [a name it still retains in most newspapers]. Superficially, I have chosen this title because I am now living in Europe, far from much of what I consider as home. For more significant reasons, I have chosen this title because all of us live our lives in exile. We live our lives seeing (as St Paul puts it) ‘as through a glass,

darkly’. We live in our separate riddles, partially separated from God, each other, and even from ourselves. We experience some love, some community, some peace, but never these in their fullness. “Our senses, egocentricity, and human nature place a veil between us and full love, full community, and full peace. We live, truly, as in a riddle: the God who is omnipresent cannot be sensed; others, who are as real as ourselves, are always partially distanced and unreal; and we are, in the end, fundamentally a mystery even to ourselves. “In that sense we are, all of us, far away from home. We are in exile, longing to understand more fully and to be understood more fully. The asphyxiating ambiguity of the riddle we live in slowly tires us. Daily our hunger for consummation within the body of Christ intensifies. We feel so distanced from so much. We would want to go home. “And, while we are on this pilgrimage, our perspectives are only partial; our vision, even at best, only that of the ‘foreigner’, one out of the mainstream, who does not fully see nor understand. “From this exiled perspective, I will offer my reflections. I will try to write humbly and honestly. “The column itself will take a variety of forms. Margaret Atwood once said: ‘What touches you is what you touch!’ I plan to touch on a lot of things, stuff of all kinds. “Mostly I will offer reflections on various theological, Church, and secular issues. (That about covers everything!) Occasionally, however, prose will give way to poetry and more serious reflection will be replaced by satire. As well (though not often) I will offer a review of some book. “The reflections will not be in any way systematic. If there is any one umbrella under which these diverse reflections might find a home, it is precisely in their title, ‘In Exile’. All of them, in their own way, are trying to untangle the riddle, to end the exile, to help get a pilgrim home!” Twenty-five years after writing this I have to suppress a smile as I read these words. They really are melodramatic! Yet the same idealistic, restless, pilgrim fires still burn inside me. I mean those words as much now as I did then. Thus, as long as health and publishers continue to smile on me, I will continue writing from precisely this perspective.

www.ronrolheiser.com

CROSSWORD 0007

By Alun Evans

QUICK ACROSS 5 Self-service eatery (9) 8 US coin, one-tenth of a dollar (4) 9 Not suitable for food (8) 10 One who manages (business, club, etc) for the benefit of others (7) 11 Former French countship on the Loire (5) 13 Talk foolishly or boastfully (5) 15 Fellow missionary of Paul (7) 18 Medication for asthma, for example (8) 19 Heavy, durable furniture wood (4) 20 Inactive (9)

QUICK DOWN 1 Gently stroke (6) 2 Followers of the third son of Jacob and Leah (7) 3 To father, as in the Authorised Version (5) 4 The larger wing or tail feathers of a bird (6) 6 Faithfully depicting (9) 7 Body temperature (5,4) 12 Guiding principle (7) 14 Particularly baffling problem (6) 16 Tumult (6) 17 Biblical reference: a confusion of voices and other sounds (5)

CRYPTIC ACROSS 5 Most of December it's about one who expects the Second Coming (9) 8 Piece of information to chew on, say (4) 9 Vulgar exercise about the Parisian British by a Scots chap (8) 10 Police turn round rest, have sorted out the ne'er-do-well (7) 11 Legally stated and contractually-related? (2-3)

13 Machine to work on hill, backwards and forwards (5) 15 Shout out to get a tot for one who's always blubbing (7) 18 Zealous at first, apostle is showing little enthusiasm (8) 19 Will this roll do for Cinderella? (4) 20 Prophet's torso Ezra desecrated (9)

CRYPTICDOWN 1 Little publicity is needed to draw attention (6) 2 Puzzle to make more complicated (7) 3 Nag one who's good to go on the river trip (5) 4 A serious meeting in a part of the ship (6) 6 Place of worship on Ganges you find odd (9) 7 Garbage from the Vatican is given prominence in decree

(5,4) 12 Grounds for building being aborted (7) 14 Old chief executive, about fifty, when getting tense is a wild thing (6) 16 Float on the deepest part of the river when docked... (6) 17 ...an action not applicable primarily, but an important one (5)

SUDOKU 0008

Use digits 1-9 to complete all rows, columns and 3x3 boxes

By Alun Evans

CROSSWORD ANSWERS

Cryptic answers to No. 0007 Across: 1 Bloodsucker, 9 Oppress, 10

Aroma, 11 Tense, 12 Inspire, 13 Apos

tles Creed, 16 Twelfth, 18 Scats, 20

Spain, 21 Private, 22 Crash-landed.

Down: 2 Lupin, 3 Overeat, 4 Sistine

Chapel, 5 Crass, 6 Emotive, 7

Portraitist, 8 Haberdasher, 14 Open

air, 15 Caspian, 17 Fines, 19 Agate.

SOLUTION 0007

Quick answers to No. 0007 Across: 1 Subtraction, 9 Acrylic, 10

Larva, 11 Negev, 12 Eyesore, 13 Shrove Tuesday, 16 Amsdorf, 18 Petal, 20 Otter,

21 Awnings, 22 Consistency. Down: 2 Unrig, 3 Tel Aviv, 4 Ancient of

Days, 5 Tulle, 6 Our Lord, 7 Rainy season, 8 Safety glass, 14 Risotto, 15 Expunge, 17

Orris, 19 Tunic.

Winners (0006 Cryptic): Celia Redknap, Oxford, Mr M Burke, Haverfordwest Winners (0006 Quick): Maggie Penfold Hill, Milton Keynes, Robert Pell, London

To win a book of the Editor’s choice, please send completed crosswords by Thursday to the address below. There is a prize for both the cryptic and quick crosswords. Please mark envelopes either “cryptic” or “quick”.

All crossword quotations are from the Jerusalem Bible (1966), as used in the Lectionary

Editor: Luke Coppen; Deputy Editor: Freddy Gray; News Editor: Simon Caldwell; Arts Editor: Mark Greaves; Features Editor: Ed West Published by Catholic Herald Ltd, Herald House, Lamb’s Passage, Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8TQ. Tel: 020 7448 3600 Printed by West Ferry Printers Ltd, London E14. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper A one-year UK subscription to The Catholic Heraldcosts £52.