You’d think this would have the unintended consequence of weight loss. Londoners were slim during the Blitz - and cabbages weren’t nearly as expensive back then.
However, there seems to be something about perceived scarcity of food that makes you eat more. In fact, studies show that stress and food insecurity and stress about food insecurity leads to higher BMIs and obesity.
It’s a paradox and also a social phenomenon based on class.
Rich people, who don’t have to worry about access to high-calorie food, can just have a teaspoon of caviar and leave it at that, because they know the cook can always make them a burger later if they really want one. Poor people are more like, "must eat all the pies now while there are still pies to eat and thus drown my anxiety in lard", seeking comfort in inexpensive food with low nutritional value.
Tell you what there’s not a scarcity of out here in Port Chalmers at the moment, though, and that’s tourists. I’m house sitting at Port for a month, looking after two black cats and living in a large Victorian house at the bottom of a long path overgrown with blackberry. Fairy tales are made of such stuff.
Pedalling to work in the mornings I pass retro buses coming out to collect the tourists from the cruise ships. (Do the tourists know these buses are retro? Or do they think Dunedin is some kind of Pacific Cuba where new imports have been blockaded for 50 years?)
Every afternoon the streets are filled with confused Americans - "I think it’s medieval," they say of Iona church - and cruise ship staff shopping for local delicacies.
The 4 Square manager has become something of a cult hero, after he refused to let them clear out the store’s supply of eggs.
In Devon tourists are called grockles, while over in Cornwall they are called emits. The correct collective noun is a flock of tourists - and watching them swarm the queue for the bus to town, you can understand why some locals might want them to flock off.
The cats are psychopaths. They have adopted me as their queen and bring me gifts of fealty - mostly vermin. For some reason they never eat the gallbladder and just leave little purple organs on the living room rug. It’s bloody disgusting.
I can’t see the point of cats. When they’re not showing you their butthole, they’re breathing their carrion breath in your face while needling holes in your sweater. Although I do like it when they come and sit next to me in the evening and purr, even if it is only to make up for a day spent hunting things, eating them whole and puking them back up.
One cat is very sick and must have medicine daily or it will die. The healthy one will become very ill if I give it this medicine accidentally, and they are identical. I thought about shaving a patch off the sick one to aid identification, but it’s very hard to shave a cat if it doesn’t want you to.
I use a lot of positive reinforcement. "Thank you for not killing something today," I say when I get home. To be fair, they might have just hidden the body under the floorboards in a Rillington Place manner as a sop to my gag reflex, but it’s the thought that counts.
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One of the cats likes to flop down on the keyboard, shedding copious amounts of black fur, rubbing himself over me in a proprietary manner that would be unacceptable in a man of such short acquaintance.
While he does this there’s usually a simultaneous screaming noise from the garden, meaning the sick one has picked a fight with the next-door neighbour’s moggy again. The fact that he’s living on borrowed time has made him fearless, and he’s constantly screeching "Bring it on! You think I care?!" at all comers.
The cats would find the idea of food insecurity ludicrous. There is, after all, a servant with opposable thumbs living on the premises, ready to apply can opener to tin of tuna at their whim. They also seem to have scant regard for the concepts of mercy and decorum.
People say you can learn a lot about life from animals, but I’m not sure "think only of yourself" and "eat it even if you can’t digest it" are mantras to live by.
