Guilty Pleasures

No, not those ones. Mind your own damn business.

In the late 1980’s, expectations were high that we were on the brink of discovering strong nutritional links to cancer, and consequently, clear and simple dietary guidelines to reduce one’s risk of developing certain cancers. I recall attending a meeting discussing one of the difficult issues of the time (and still a difficult issue), that of actually measuring people’s dietary habits at an individual level. There are obvious reasons why measurement of dietary intakes is difficult, involving patterns of recall of intakes on the part of the subjects of the research, and general difficulties in assessing amounts consumed and frequencies of consumption.

Consumption not be done about it?

Apologies, I had a sudden return to my childhood there. But there are more difficult issues, involving human psychology. Number two son, who is a psychologist, informs me that there is a phenomenon known as demand characteristics, whereby the subject of the research gives a response which the subject, consciously or unconsciously, feels is expected by the researcher.

That sounds a bit specialist. Think of it this way. If you were taking part in a survey of alcohol consumption, would you tend to overestimate or underestimate your intake? You too? Well, well.

To come back to the late 1980’s and research on diet and cancer, I was at a meeting in Southampton, in (I think) 1987 on measuring diet, when I made the point that if asked about my dietary preferences, I would express enthusiasm about cabbages and parsnips. If asked about drinks, I would extol the taste of a good Gevrey-Chambertin, and when quizzed about literature, give pious thanks for Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens and Samuel Beckett. However, in reality, on an evening alone, I would be happy with some cheap lager, a packet of wine gums and an Agatha Christie.

My point was that in research, perhaps self-reported diet is skewed towards what the subject thinks the researcher would approve of. But it reminds me that most of us have guilty pleasures, things we enjoy that we either feel we shouldn’t or that we might not be too willing to admit to our contemporaries. Here are a few of mine.

First of all, I drink more than I should. It may not be all that good for me, but it helps me go from day to day. I feel we all walk a tightrope over depression, mental illness and so on, there but for the grace of God, and regular infusions of lager seem to help me to stay on that tightrope. A year or so ago, Linda found this website where you enter your weekly alcohol consumption, and it returns the country that most corresponds to your intake. She put in her own estimated consumption and was classified as Lebanon. She then put in what she guessed (‘estimated’ would over-dignify her gross exaggeration of my modest habit) was my weekly consumption, and I was assigned Belarus. Google it.

In terms of literature, television and film, I am a sucker for crime stories, whether gritty policiers or classic country house whodunnits. I can quite happily watch an entire two-hour episode of Midsummer Murders (or Midsummer Rubbish as Linda calls it), or a Poirot episode that I have seen time and again, just for the terrific character acting of David Suchet. If I went on Mastermind (which I wouldn’t for fear of laying an egg, following which my name would be mud until the end of time), I might choose the Poirot or Marple novels of Agatha Christie as my specialist subject. Here are two Agatha Christie quiz questions for you. Don’t Google them. The answers will follow below.

1.       In which Agatha Christie novel is the murder victim found post mortem to have tertiary syphilis?

2.       Why might you have missed this detail?

In terms of food, I’ve already obliquely referred to one guilty pleasure, the liking for wine gums and other jelly sweets. I should also confess that I am a member of that brave minority of people who can eat and enjoy a doner kebab while stone cold sober. There used to be a kebab shop a couple of hundred yards from my work and I used to have a doner kebab for lunch once a fortnight. It is closed down now, sadly. Incidentally, eating junk food is OK for your health as long as you don’t eat it every day. So shut up.

On one social evening before the pandemic, the conversation turned to musical guilty pleasures. I admitted to a liking for the rather squeaky clean folk music of the 1960’s, exemplified by Tom Paxton, the Seekers and others. You feel a bit of a wimp expressing a liking for this stuff. However, it could be very moving and was very professional. Listen to this number by Tom Paxton. Didn’t he have a terrific voice? Wouldn’t you love to be able to sing like that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2ANwbmLHgM

All this talk of guilty pleasures brings me back to the subject of my dad, who continually barges into this blog. As I get older it scares me rather how I increasingly resemble him. He too carried a liking for cheap sweets into adulthood and later life. He had similar tastes in comfort viewing, cop shows, Rumpole of The Bailey, and so on. He too liked crime fiction, although he gravitated to the more cerebral novels of PD James, rather than Aggie and the golden age writers to whom I return. On looking at photographs, I also find that the similarity of our physical appearances rather takes me aback. And I have these in common with him: specs, dental plate, hearing aid, big hooter, baldy head, too much pop. What a catch, eh?

Thanks for sticking with me through all that guff upstairs. Here are the answers to the questions above.

1.       A Pocketful of Rye.

2.       In those days, tertiary syphilis was referred to as general paralysis of the insane.

Have a good weekend, all.