Photo by Jorge Zapata on Unsplash

A couple of years ago I went to Europe and ate enough bread to gain ten kilos over a swift three-week period. Each time we wandered into a new restaurant for lunch or dinner, within thirty seconds, an entire bowl of it was in front of us. Most bread is good bread, in my opinion, but in Paris it was the most delicious fucking thing I’d ever eaten. Have you ever tried Parisian bread? If so you can probably relate. The restaurant owners may as well have been drug dealers — it’s a wonder that anyone even leaves them to look at the city, but instead becomes trapped in a desperate state of wheaty dependence. To make the situation worse, my girlfriend is allergic to gluten, and my attempts to coerce her into consumption didn’t help. This left me with no choice but to eat double servings, twice a day. If there was Eau Du Baguette on sale at the airport, I would have probably drank it.

When arriving in London to spend some time with my family, my dad took me by the wrist, marched me upstairs to the bathroom, pointed at the scales and demanded that I get on. I was fatter than him for the first time in our lives, and he wasn’t about to let that go without some drama. With tentative movements I guiltily positioned myself on the device, and every rising kilo widened the stupid grin on my father’s face. I protested that they must be broken, and that he should really consider shopping somewhere that sells better equipment. I’d never been that weight in my entire life, and I wasn’t above using denial as a coping mechanism for my new-found bulk. I declared that my scales back home would give a more honest answer. I wasn’t about to be called fat by a man who ate a strawberry Cornetto for dessert every fucking night.

In truth, I’m getting a little older now, so unfathomably tasty French bread isn’t entirely to blame for my expansive paunch. I half-expected it to magically disappear when returning home to my regular diet, but it seems she’s a keeper. No amount of sighing and gentle rubbing seems to be reducing it, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to put on some shorts, strap on my shoes, and go and buy some salted caramel ice-cream to help me forget about it.

Getting older never really bothered me, but getting fatter does, and that’s basically the same thing. My hearing is getting better with age though — in the right weather conditions, I can detect the word doughnut from up to fifty metres away. A few days ago I heard the rustle of a packet from a shady alley, and ended up mugging a homeless person for a Sausage & Egg McMuffin. Every advancing year seems to strengthen my insatiable greed; I’m on a drum-beaten war path to the rich and sugary land of Diabeetus.

My delightful girlfriend claims to like the additional person that I’ve merged with, as though she wasn’t into the scraggly lolly-pop headed Ethiopian who she was dating before. I can’t figure out whether she’s being honest or kind, either way, she’s appears to also be a keeper.

I think the biggest problem I have with my fresh mass is how much width it’s added to my face, a point that again, my dad delightfully pointed out while on a recent Skype call. While I never considered the distance between my eyes to be extensive, the extra sections that have been tacked on either side of them mean that I now look like a youthful George Bush. I may as well have two closely grouped, tiny white pins in the middle of my stupid democracy-pushing face. The resemblance is so close that a passing Iraqi took off his shoe and slung it at me. Is there an exercise that you can do to tone up your face?

Unless I can muster up the motivation to exercise, I suppose I’ll have to live with being rotund. Circles can be cute, right? I’ll go with that — cute.