Healthy Apppetite

Some people say I have a "healthy appetite", but I prefer to call it "eating an entire 16 inch pizza while the delivery boy finds the right change".

I once went to a wedding where the female guests were served a different menu to the male guests. No joke. While the women nibbled lettuce, fish, and sorbet––in that order––the men shoved down tiger prawns, slabs of beef, gravy, roast potatoes, thick chunks of chocolate cake, custard, cream, more custard, crème brûlée, and deep-fried Mars Bars topped with pistachio ice-cream.

I was starving.

The bride's name was Scarlett; I forget the groom. I didn't know either of them, just got dragged along as the date of someone I did know. His name was Tony and he was trying to get into my knickers. He said that taking me to weddings was a good way to go about it; that it would soften me up a bit. But he was too good-looking, too charming, too flighty, and I wasn't about to become another notch on his bedpost. Well, I once let him go down on me for half an hour or so, but only out of sheer boredom. I drank with him, played pool with him, and went to ridiculous weddings with him. But I never fucked him.

So he dragged me from marquee to marquee and this time the bride's name was Scarlett and I was starving. "Psst!" I hissed at the maitre d', as he swooshed by with his white cloth and silver platter. "What's going on with the food here? I'm starving!"

"What did you expect, ma'am," came the reply, "at the wedding of a character straight out of a 1940s board game?" His lips pushed against my ear as he spoke, so as not to alert Reverend Green.

I let it go; polished off Tony's Mars Bar and knocked back seventeen flutes of Moet to make up for it. But you can rest assured that, come my own wedding day, my top priority will not be colour-matching the serviettes, or stacking the perfect champagne fountain, but tracking down Miss Scarlett and force-feeding her pork crackling topped with Baileys, tagliatelle, and whipped cream.