I have to keep count because my mum is threatening to send me to
CAMP FATSO
if I don’t shape up. And she’s making me go to a
DEMON NUTRITIONIST
to sort out my diet. So this is my
DONUT DIARY
, where I write down what I’ve eaten and my FEELINGS – aaargggh yuck!

As if I don’t have enough to deal with, what with starting Big School next week. (Note to self: Don’t call it BIG SCHOOL!)

To Miss Eleanor Goldthorpe,
fairest of all the world’s godchildren.

Tuesday 5 September

‘
NO MORE ARGUMENTS:
either you see the nutritionist or you go to Camp Fatso in the next holiday.’

My mum could be pretty scary at times. Not zombie scary, but scary like thin ice over deep water.

We’d just watched the DVD that Camp Fatso had sent through the post. It’s safe to say that the DVD is
not
aimed at the kids. It’s most definitely aimed at the parents. We watched scenes of
terrible
torture. Fat kids are made to eat porridge in the morning. Then they are forced to run across miles of barren countryside, wearing vests and shorty shorts. Every five minutes they are compelled to lie on the ground and do press-ups.

For lunch there are leaves. Could be cabbage. Could be lettuce. Could be dandelion. But definitely leaves.

Then there is another cross-country run.

At dinner time the fat kids get fed stuff that looks a lot like the breakfast porridge, watered down.

From somewhere deep in my mind I realize that this stuff goes under the much feared name of ‘gruel’.

No telly, no computers, no games consoles. For fun there is Snakes and Ladders and a jigsaw puzzle of some flowers.

The last scene shows the fat kids lying like corpses on beds so narrow their chubby butts flow out over the edges, like lava.

You know how in
The Lord of the Rings
the Balrog, with its Whip of Fire and really bad breath, is the one thing that Gandalf truly fears? Well, Camp Fatso was my Balrog.

‘I AM NOT GOING THERE!’ I said. ‘NO WAY.’

It wasn’t just the horror of the place – it was the stigma as well. What if word leaked out that I was at fat camp? It’s the sort of thing that destroys your reputation for ever.

‘Then you have to go and see the nutritionist,’ said Mum. ‘You’ll like her. She’s nice. I met her at my power yoga class.’

I looked at my dad. He’d come out of the toilet – where he spends most of his time –
specially
to watch the DVD. He had a sorry, pained expression on his face. It might have been sympathy. It might have been wind. Either way, there was no hope there. He wasn’t going to stand up to Mum.

So now you see why I was sitting in a room that smelled faintly of puke. The puke smell was partly covered over with pine air-freshener, but only in the way that a kid might cover up his mouth after saying a bad word.

Straight away the puke-and-pine combo set off all kinds of scenes playing in my head, most of them involving projectile vomiting over Christmas trees. I guess that’s the sort of imagination I’ve got.

I’d just been weighed, prodded and poked, with me wearing nothing but my boxer shorts,
so
I wasn’t in a great mood. If I’d known I was going to be standing there in nothing but my undies I’d have made sure they weren’t my old T. Rex pants. Yep, that’s a pair of underpants with a picture of a roaring T. Rex on them.

NOTE TO SELF: THROW AWAY, BURN, NUKE OR OTHERWISE UTTERLY DESTROY YOUR DINOSAUR PANTS BEFORE YOU START AT BIG SCHOOL ON MONDAY!!!!

‘How many today, Dermot?’

The lady sitting in front of me smiled. It was the sort of smile that makes you wish you were holding a sharp stick, maybe with something smelly on the end of it. The sort of smelly thing that might recently have been inside a dog. But that’s the sad thing about sharp sticks with
something
unpleasant on the end – you never seem to have one when you really need it.

‘How many what?’

I said that, but I knew what she was talking about. I knew, and she knew that I knew. But she said it anyway, still smiling that horrible smile of hers.

‘
Donuts
, Dermot. That’s why you’re here. I know all about your little problem from your mother. So, tell me, how many donuts have you eaten today?’

The carpet was suddenly really interesting. ‘Dunno. Haven’t been keeping count.’

‘
Roughly
how many?’

The woman was wearing a white coat just like a real doctor, and her name badge said ‘Dr Morlock’, but I reckon she just got a certificate off the internet and she was no
more
a doctor than I was an astronaut.
¹

For a nutritionist you’d have to say that she didn’t look that healthy. You know in those movies where the hero’s making his way along a dark tunnel lit only by a spluttering torch, and then a spiked booby trap sort of whips in front of him, with the remains of the last guy who came along the tunnel speared on the end of it? And it’s basically just bones but with a few tatty bits of skin attached? Well, that’s sort of what she looked like but, you know,
slightly
less dead.

I sighed. ‘One or two.’

Dr Morlock’s smile changed. It was now the sort of smile you’d turn on a kid who had porridge for brains. I resented that. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t have porridge for brains. Or for breakfast.

I shrugged. ‘Three, maybe.’

Dr Morlock stopped smiling. Now she looked like I’d peed on her chips. Except she probably didn’t eat chips. Peed on her lettuce, then. There was anger in her face, as well as disappointment. Her mouth did that cat’s bum thing that some mouths do. It’s not a good look for a mouth. It’s not even a good look for a cat’s bum.

It was all too much for me. ‘Five.’

The true number was five and a half. I’d bought a box of six. The other
half-donut
was burning a hole in my trouser pocket.

Dr Morlock shook her head slowly, satisfied at last. ‘That really is too many donuts.’

I nodded, but that was just for show. The notion of ‘too many donuts’ didn’t make much sense to me. It would be like saying ‘You’ve got too much money,’ or ‘You’re too good at football.’
²

‘What I’m going to ask you to do, Dermot, is to write a diary in which you keep a record of all the donuts you eat.’

‘A donut diary?’

‘Yes, if that’s how you’d like to think of it.’

Mmmm
… that could have been worse. I liked thinking about donuts. It was the next best thing
to
eating them. So writing about them wouldn’t be
so
bad, would it?

‘But not just how many you eat,’ continued the mad nutritionist. ‘You must also write down your feelings.’

‘FEELINGS?!’

Writing about feelings … That was
completely
different. Feelings are for the kind of kids who like flower arranging and cute puppies and poetry. Suddenly I was in a whole new world of pain.

‘Yes,
feelings
, because it is your
feelings
about your food that are the problem here.’

‘Not to me they’re not. I like donuts. Is that a crime?’

‘It’s a crime against good health.’

There was no arguing with Dr Morlock.

‘And I’ve prepared this diet sheet specially for you as well.’ She waved a piece of paper at me,
like
a Jedi with a lightsaber. ‘Why don’t you ask your mother to step in now, and we’ll discuss it together?’

My mum was in the waiting room, reading a yoga magazine. Can you imagine – a magazine about yoga …? It’s like having a magazine about verrucas or belly-button fluff. Truly, old people are weird.

When Mum came in, Doc Morlock lost the cat-bum face and went all smiley.

‘We’ll have a new Dermot in no time at all,’ she said. ‘You won’t recognize him.’

My mum looked quite pleased about that.

DONUT COUNT: