Duvet Dieting

I have chanced upon a potentially wonderful new way to lose weight without counting calories, avoiding potatoes or breaking into a sweat in the gym. It doesn't require any special equipment, expensive supplies of vitamin compound or public humiliation at the weekly weigh-in. It's something that we all do to a greater or lesser extent every day. It involves giving up reading at night. Easy? Huh! I'd have more chance of quitting breathing.

I've been reading as long as I can remember, long before I started school. My mother jokes that I came out quoting the notes on her birth chart ( and she could have pushed a bit harder if you ask me). I'd completed the reading scheme by the end of the first year of infants and started on the reference books in what was laughably described as a Library, a random selection of shabby hardbacks accumulated over a period of about 50 years stored in a folding bookcase in the corner of Mrs Cleary's class. It was here that I displayed my first and subsequently unrepeated anal behaviour. I sorted it according to the Dewey Decimal system over a wet playtime. Mrs Cleary always treated me like the child from The Omen after that.

At night, I'd be allowed to snuggle into bed with a book for about half an hour. Lightsout was always just as I was getting to a really good bit, George and Timmy would be leading Julian and the other soppy two into a dark, forgotten cave to discover a smuggling ring or the bully at Mallory Towers had just fallen splat in a puddle as she'd tried to cheat at lacrosse, later it might be Pip and Miss Haversham or Heathcliff that kept me hungry for more. I'd turn the bedside light back on as soon as I heard the door close at the bottom of the stairs, only turning it off when I heard the sounds of my parents coming to bed - even then, if it was a really really gripping read ( I was doing 2 Wilbur Smith's a week at 10) I'd wait until they'd finished in the bathroom and turn it back on.

Dad caught me out one night when I'd forgotten he'd walked to the pub. Normally, I'd hear the distinctive rattling of his truck coming up the hill and kill the light before he turned the corner. That night, he took the bedside lamp away. If I stretched my foot out of the corner of the bed, I was soon able to pull the dangling light switch with my toes. I got found out with that one too so they unscrewed the bulb. They thought they'd cured it for months until one night they found me wrapped foetally around The Hobbit on the landing. I think they pretty much gave up after that.

I still do it, thinking nothing of sitting up til 4am if the book warrants it, and it frequently does but today scientists announced a link between obesity and lack of sleep in childhood. It can lead to hormonal disturbances apparently.

I was sent another interesting article today too. Proof enough that I am not a fat, miserable cow after all. I'm just really tired and in the wrong job.