Eating For Australia

My diet and eating pattern these past months has rivalled the benchmark I normally set at Christmas time.

Apart from all of the obvious reasons, it’s a shame the Olympics have been postponed this year for me… I reckon I could have almost been on the team if eating were an Olympic sport. I have totally embraced and fallen in love with the isolation home-life thing, but it’s a very big change from what we all normally do. The working online part saw rapid adjustments to how we operate, and I think many would agree that time spent doing ‘work’ became far greater because the office was on tap 24/7. That meant getting to the computer at 7:30am or even before that wasn’t out of the norm, and that ducking back to the desk, or office, or wherever you had the workstation setup, just to check emails, reply to someone, or solve a little problem became more prevalent. I was neither more or less efficient, just magnetically attracted to doing work because it was right there. The drive from work to Millthorpe not only clears the head but forms a physical distance barrier from my work life to my home life – that’s been missing for well over two months.

With the first coffee downed at 7am straight after breakfast, the second coffee came on most days before 8 o’clock, a dangerous precedent because with the second cup comes morning tea. Chocolate and biscuits at 8am? You betcha. Then, when ‘real’ morning tea came around, the third coffee would have as it’s accompaniment something like a big chunk of home-made banana bread – heated up with a dollop of butter on it. No sooner was that scoffed than thoughts turned to lunch. Should I take a break from the desk and make a nice salad sandwich on grainy bread? Nope, that’ll take too long. I know there a frozen pizza there, that’ll be just a few minutes to heat up and I can stay at the computer and get a bit more done.

With lunch done by noon, a short break to bring in the washing and check the mail had me thinking about those choc chip cookies that my youngest made yesterday. I should only have two, but they’re delicious, so maybe just one more.

Beer o’clock is normally 5 o’clock. But a global pandemic has been a little bit like a daylight-saving world, where not only did beer o’clock get wound back an hour, but it moved from Friday and the weekend to just about every day. And, after a hard day smashing out work at the computer, you can’t have a cleansing ale without some potato chips, and some crackers and Tara dip. Then, when the other two members of the household arrive home, it would be rude not to have some afternoon snacks (and maybe another beer) with them, wouldn’t it?

[As an aside, we must have a strange weather pattern moving through here as well because, after being in trakky daks for 8 or 9 weeks, I reached into the cupboard to wear my grown-ups trousers again and they look like they’ve shrunk a bit. Darn weather.]

So here I am, ready, willing and fully pumped to represent my country with passion and commitment in the newly formed Olympic sport of Eating. Who would have thought I’d be in prime condition for this after just eight weeks? I know the AOC have put selections for Tokyo on hold for a while, but I hope they don’t leave it to long, or I’ll lose my form. I better order my blazer and my green and gold eating lycra in one size bigger, just in case I end up working from home again and go another ‘training’ spree.