The joy of weight loss

00:00 05:19

Philip Hensher has narrated this article for you to listen to.

It was a few months ago. I was coming back from my morning walk with Greta in Battersea Park, so it can only have been half past ten in the morning. A familiar neighbourhood figure zigzagged recklessly across the road towards us. He had something like a sense of purpose about him.

‘Have you got –’ he paused and reckoned – ‘£5? To get something to eat?’ Five pounds seemed an ambitious amount. I thought I’d answer the implied request and not the question he’d actually asked. ‘I’m not going to give you £5,’ I said briskly. He looked about as ghastly as usual – that yellow-grey, oily quality of the long-term heroin aficionado. Once he had knocked on our front door, claiming to be a neighbour from number 31 in need of cash for the electricity meter or something.

‘Ah go on,’ he said. ‘I just want £5.’ ‘I’m not giving you any money,’ I said. ‘It’s only £5,’ he said. ‘What you going to do with £5?’  ‘No,’ I said, walking on. A diabolical expression took hold of his face. ‘Ah off you pop, you fat sod,’ he said. ‘Go on, then. Wobble, wobble, wobble.’

Greta and I went off, wobbling in a dignified way. I got home, gave her her dinner and went to take a look in the mirror. It was true that I had had breakfast at home and an hour later yielded to the thought of a bacon sandwich in the park café. These days, telling a stranger that his avoirdupois could give G.K. Chesterton a run for his money counts as a hate crime – you fatphobic chump, I’m calling the police.