WHAT is love?

I’m not talking about big, grand philosophical definitions but smaller, bite-sized portions we can all understand without too much trouble.
I’m going for layman’s terms here.
Like Love is... Patient. Or Kind. Or All-You-Can-Eat buffets for a fiver. Or Fickle. Or Heartbreaking. Or Totally Rubbish, Thank You Very Much.
Or you can have a look at Kim Casali’s Love Is...
cartoons for some more innocent ideas, such as Love Is... Being His Sweater Girl or some such nonsense. Imagine two formerly naked Oompa-Loompas sharing a
kiss of bliss in an oversized cricket jumper and you’ll get my drift.
I got to thinking about the nature of the L-word – and I’m not talking lard here – when I walked into the house the other day and started to float around like some big-bummed Bisto kid.
As soon as I opened the door after a long day avoiding the distant, sweet cry of yum-yums calling my name from the Greggs shop over the road, and trying to convince myself I was feeling full on two yoghurts and 10 menthol fags, all my good work fell by the wayside when the smell of freshly baked something-or-other hit me right in the chops.
My Significant (thin) Other had made (not so) little old me a coffee cake.
From scratch. Gone out and bought two cake tins too, he had.
And all the ingredients. And some ridiculously kitsch cake stand, standing on Betty Boop-like legs, to plop it on.
“Just because I can, and because I thought you’d appreciate it,” he said, by way of explanation to my gaping mouth.
Just because he can. Just because he thought I’d appreciate it. That’s a coffee-flavoured icing “wow” if ever I saw it.
Nobody has ever made me a cake “just because”.
Granted, and considering I’m always battling with my weight and heavier thoughts about how frankly rubbish I am at dieting or staying balanced in my thinking about myself, it’s perhaps not the ideal gift for me.
In dietary terms, it’s the equivalent of handing an alcoholic a pint of lager when they’re having a bad day and sweetening the pill by saying it’s just one for the road.
Just this once. No more tomorrow. It won’t hurt, will it? Cheers now and all the best to you all. As if!
S(t)O stood in the kitchen and, while asking me how my day had gone while making me a cup of tea, multi-tasked his way even deeper into my heart (via my possibly clogged arteries) by cutting me the biggest slice of cake I’d seen since my last naughty dream.
Then he showed me the pair of trousers he’d also made me that afternoon. Yes, you read that right. Significant (too good to be true) Other has taught himself to sew so he can make me bespoke clothes.
The man deserves a medal the size of a frying pan, if you ask me.
But back to the cake. Looking back now, I don’t think it quite touched the sides as it honestly went down in a wave of gratitude, show, awe, admiration – and, yes, love.
Of course, unlike any other sensible person who would possibly have had just the one piece of cake and put the rest away in a tin for the following few days – ha! now there’s a laugh – I stuffed myself full of even more joy while relating my day.
Before I knew it, buoyed up by all the love in the room and feeling so goddamned sexy because my man had made me trousers AND a coffee cake – so I must be delicious JUST AS I AM, went my sugar-infused and obviously confused reasoning – half of it had gone.
Some would say that by even cooking me the cake was akin to killing me with kindness.
In truth, I think they may have a point.
But when somebody takes the time to show you they’re thinking of you, it would be churlish to throw it back in their faces.
Okay, so I could have handled my delight better and had only an intsy bit of what I fancied, balancing my joy with the much bigger picture of trying to be moderate in everything I do.
But on this occasion I think I was justified in testing – and tasting – the limits of Big, Big caffeine-coated Love.
(And eating for six as there’s load of room for belly expansion in my new trousers.)