Hats off to the Menders of Ways

Luky;
WHEN my husband was in hospital once, one of his friends used to visit him regularly.
I really took a fancy to this man, who claimed to be a reformed alcoholic.
I always admire people who are not ashamed to admit their failings, and I try to be like them - but there are some things I prefer to bury under a stone.

Not so Steve (fictitious name).
In an accent called Johannesburg Bronx, he started his reminisces, eyes brimming with laughter and eyebrows dancing, "When I was an alkie . . ."
And soon everyone held their sides with laughter from sincere appreciation that a man who by his own admission once plumbed such depths was able to overcome his weakness.
"I had the DT's," he recalled with relish. 
"Crumbs, that was awful.
Mind you, there's a lot of rubbish spoken about those pink elephants you're supposed to see when you're having an attack. 
There's no such thing."
"What did you see, then?" I asked.
"White elephants", he said.
And he added;
"They knew me in the pubs from the Cape to Cairo.
As I'd walk in, I'd shout; "Shake a leg, youse camel drivers.
Give a thirsty man a drink!"
Steve's reform came about when he met a woman - I thought she was breathtakingly lovely, and so did Steve - who paid him the compliment of marrying him and making him the envy of most men who knew him.
I wouldn't advise a daughter of mine to marry an alcoholic in the hope of reforming him, but this girl pulled it off.
Her husband went on the wagon and became a devout churchgoer and devoted father to his children.
He never touched a drop of alcohol again.

I thought a lot about Steve since going on a diet.
When in Lourdes in 1971, I was so joyful that I decided to heed the request for sacrifices Our Lady made to St Bernadette, and gave up alcohol and smoking.
If Our Lady was pleased with my sacrifice, she couldn't have shown her satisfaction in a more baffling way, because I picked up 7 kg over the two weeks, to which I have been steadily adding in the years that ensued.
You don't notice half a kilo over two months, but it adds up over the years.

My husband had long been trying to persuade me to diet, with scant success.
He said that going out with me was like going out with his mother; and what happened to that marvellous self-discipline he admired in me when he first met me?
Finally he got his way, and I began my diet.
I know now what horrors Steve must have experienced when he took the pledge.

I went about my diet in a scientific way.
Before tackling it, I made a novena to St Jude, patron of hopeless cases, that I might be granted the self-control to stick to my diet.
Spadework completed, I collared an acquaintance who had shed 28 kg over four months and asked her how she accomplished this feat.
She gave me her diet, and a Spartan regime it was, for breakfast, a cup of grapefruit juice and a boiled egg;
for lunch, two old-fashioned ounces of meat and and as many vegetables as you liked, except for peas.
Unfortunately for me I only like peas, but then this was a diet, not a picnic.

For supper there was a tiny wedge of diet cheese, and as many salads as you liked.
Your treat for the day was one piece of fruit, and of course the knowledge that in four months' time you'll weigh 28 kg less.
There was one snag to the diet; if you ate one slice of bread, you undid all the good four days of hardship had accomplished.
What a blow for Luky, the baker's daughter!

I had been on the diet for eight days.
On the third day, I took a slice of bread - all right, if you insist, I ate three.
Then again on the eighth day I had a slice of bread - all right, all right, four.
And so after enduring the pangs of hunger for eight days I had accomplished exactly nothing.

Or had I? Weight loss, for vanity's sake, is not the most important thing in the world, but to appreciate the trials of the poor and hungry is just that.
I could not forget the plight of the underprivileged while I was enduring the diet.
And at the rate I was going, that would be forever.