Open Writing

It has been said, and I am sure there is some truth in it, that you are what you eat, in which case we had better be careful what we slip through our jaws. History and literature are replete with cautionary tales that provide the wary with ways to escape the consequences of injudicious ingestion, if they will but pay heed to the counsel.

Way back in the Garden of Eden, long before the Romans or the railway came to England, Eve ingested something she ought not to have done and blamed it on the Prince of Darkness. "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat," said the hapless Eve, when confronted with her peccadillo, for which, it is recorded, she and her husband were awarded their just deserts by being summarily discharged into the desert for eating a dessert that was embargoed.

Homer wrote of the lotophagi who ate the honey sweet fruit of the lotus tree, which resulted in their forgetting friends and homes, losing desire to return to their native land, or do anything but eat more. Heady stuff!

As Alice made her way through Wonderland she came to a huge door through which she must pass to reach the garden, but the massive key was too far above her to reach. As she considered her plight, she cast her eyes around, looking for a solution to her impasse, and her eye rested on a small glass box under the table.

Hoping that it would be useful, she opened it. Inside was a very small cake, of a size hardly enough to choke a wren, on which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. `Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'
What happened was that Alice expanded like a telescope and shot so high that she said goodbye to her feet fearing that she was fated never to see them again.

I was familiar with these examples, but they did not immediately spring to mind as I knelt on the brilliant green of the upper lawn of ‘Briony’ tending the flower beds, nor even as I became aware of the gentle approach of the Malone’s youngest son, the charming Edward, for he often took interest in my work, and we conversed like old friends. Nevertheless, what happened next took me by surprise.
As he reached my side, the afternoon sun turning his blonde hair into its own burning likeness, he took from hands from behind his back and thrust towards me a stick of brilliantly yellow seaside rock, wrapped in cellophane.

"Eat this," he said, with all the gravamen of an Eastern Potentate, "It will make you cheerful!" Sitting back on my heels and dropping my trowel into the fertile loam, I received his gift with effusive but heartfelt gratitude.

Edward returned his hands to their place behind his back and smiled. He was, perhaps, eight years old yet his infant wisdom extended to cheerfulness and, presumably, its opposite. I found it curious that one so young should equate cheerfulness with eating. Unwrapping his gift, I ate it heartily and with thanksgiving. He smiled his approval.

As I have thought about that incident, I have come to realise that young Edward was wiser than he knew. He had established a scientific fact by observation and experience. Surely the harbinger of genius to come..

Had the young scientist noticed my energy level drop perceptibly, or had he noted that my mood had become more sombre? I cannot say. I had not been aware that they had, but I was not a scientist. I did not ask him at the time, because I was overwhelmed with his kindness and generosity. Both characteristics that bode well for his future and for those who are fortunate enough to be his companions.

There came a time when I started to experience a lack of energy around noon. I felt down and tired. I told my symptoms to a fellow nurse and she advised, "Your blood sugar is low. Eat a Mars Bar !" She did not tell me that it would make me cheerful, but I found that by eating a Mars Bar around lunchtime my problem vanished. This was worth investigating.

What I ascertained was that I already knew the answer, but I had not made the connection. During the Mars Bar incident, I was a psychiatric nurse at St Clement’s Hospital, in Ipswich, Suffolk. I was, therefore, no stranger to serotonin and its precursors, which were responsible for maintaining excitability between neurones, affecting our general mood directly when present in sufficient quantities.

Working from six in the morning until two in the afternoon meant that my normal lunchtime was delayed. Consequently, my circulating blood sugar level fell, I was lethargic, and my mood lowered a degree or so. A Mars Bar or a stick of seaside rock was a readily available source of sugar and its effect was almost immediate.

Although its effects on me were not as dramatic as those suffered by Alice, nor as far-reaching in consequence and duration as those of Adam and Eve, they did the job and set me up until I got home and put on the feed bag.

How remarkable that the outcome should be so accurately predicted, both by a qualified and highly trained nurse, and also by a child who was equally competent in diagnosis and treatment, and who even furnished the necessary remedy.

When the writer of Proverbs said, "he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him," perhaps he anticipated young Edward Malone.

Copyright © 2005 Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED