Rin has had new pictures taken ...

... this time by my Significant (thin, but rapidly getting a belly) Other.
She enjoyed the experience, she told me, and I think that’s largely because she’s not self-conscious.
When I got home after my super snapper had been playing at being David Bailey I found that he’d kept his lights and backdrop – and crucially his camera – out.
“Come on, have some new pictures taken,” he gently coaxed. You haven’t had any done for a while.”
As gently as I could I reminded him that there was a reason for this – fat face, fat in the face, fat of face – which he gently swept aside with some mumblings about me talking nonsense.
And then came the clincher, my “aha” moment which I’d dutifully hidden  in my Think About It Later mental store cupboard.
“You can’t hide on the telly. You won’t be able to do your show hiding in a bin liner, will you?” With his point taken, a mild panic set in.
And then, just like I can convince myself that eating an entire tube of low fat Pringles is OK because, well, they’re low fat, with lightning speed I justified my involvement away with a nimble: “Nah, I can do telly. No problem.
“I won’t care what I look like because I just won’t watch it when it’s on.” Easy as that.
Let me clarify the “do telly” line there. I’ve been asked to front a one-hour prime time documentary on BBC One (that’s BBC ONE!) which starts filming next weekend (that’s NEXT WEEKEND!).
Funnily enough, it’s not going to be me looking at the intricacies of the credit crunch, high profile politics, adrenaline junkie holidays or how to Make Me A Supermodel Tonteg.
It’s going to be me blathering on about what I know best.
Specifically, it’s about the psychology of food and the nature of the leak in my head.
But where I say “my head” there, what I’m actually talking about is the 13 million other Brits who are also on a permanent diet and who can’t quite stick to it.
The serious bit of Fix My Fat Head, the show’s working title, is to illustrate, via me and my insecurities and often wonky view of the world, that for many, obesity (how I hate that word) is an outward sign of a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship with food stemming from entrenched psychological and emotional issues.
 Phew! I’ve found all you can eat buffets easier to negotiate.
We can  acknowledge that  anorexia and bulimia are psychological diseases – but it still seems radical to state that overeating and obesity are often rooted in psychological disorder.  
The bods who commissioned it want me to dive (luckily not wearing a two-piece)  into the heart of this controversy,  to show that it’s invariably not what we eat but why we eat which causes so much rumpus.
I’m looking forward to doing it, but I  do have a niggling Why Don’t You? worry, about people  switching off their television sets, going out and doing something less boring instead.
I’ve no trouble with baring my soul – but, as I mentioned, having to look at myself while doing it is another matter.
But maybe the thought of 10 million (gulp) or more people watching me do it, might be encouragement enough to think that I really am fine, just the way I am.
Then again...

SUMMER…

... don’t you just hate it? Not only do you have to contend with restaurants trying to foist seasonal fruits, fresh avocado and petit salad of Japanese Shiso cress on you when what you really want is a big lump of sirloin steak and buttered mash, you’ve got to endure everyone jabbering on about their holidays.
And if you’re a girl, this is always littered with talk about the B word. No, not beef, baklava or bacon baps – but bikinis.
For someone like me, a size 24 and growing, the whole notion of cutting back on carbs and counting calories all year round in order to squeeze my bits and bobs into what basically amounts to underwear as your outerwear while your flesh is womballing free for a fortnight, makes this the season of unpalatable conversation.
If you’re happy and you know it but you really don’t want to show it off in a bikini, summer can be a wash out for the foodie who’s gone too far in the game of indulgence to bare all in a blaze of washboard bellied glory.
I learned a long time ago that I didn’t have the kind of shape – round is a shape, right? – that was made for indulging in fun in the sun (unless that included an all-you-can-eat deal in a five star hotel in the fabled land of Chunky, a place where you didn’t have to undress for dinner).
While normal-sized friends of mine with an appetite for looking good rather than feeling sated and elated would start exercising portion control at least six months before a holiday, nothing would change for me.
Sure, I’d spend loads of time thinking about what it would be like to finally learn to say no to seconds and thirds and trim down to a reasonable size, one which could fit into a bikini and not run the risk of Greenpeace dragging me back into the water if I went onto the beach. But rational thought sometimes doesn’t taste that nice.
Of course I could have gone on girlie trips abroad, one where photographic evidence shows my pals looking divine sipping Margaritas by the pool (Tenerife) while sucking in their tummies (Magaluf) and making a meal (hello?!) out of sucking bits of fruit (Santa Ponsa). But frankly, I don’t have that much puff or patience with peeling.
Realising that having what food I wanted was far more important to me than trying to look like a Baywatch reject, I struck a novel deal with myself from a very early age.
No longer would I spend months of my dieting life struggling to feel more than I am (but not in the hip/thigh ratio, thank you very much) to try to fit into a bather.
I’d go for pure and unadulterated, guilt-free indulgence instead, to a place where you could stuff yourself silly while fully clothed, in mittens, a balaclava and elasticated trousers if necessary.
And in terms of food – look away now if you’re of a delicate nature or were born in the Windy City – I found it in America, where you can get all-you-can-eat buffets on tap as well as on the cheap, and your nails done while you’re waiting for the beef for your burger to stop mooing.
If we are what we eat, then I’m a steak and curly fries girl, piled high in a bid to satisfy the devilishly Desperate Dan side of Han; I’m melted cheese with burny bits skulking on the edges, pleading with me to pick at them. I’m hot pretzels on a cold day, strawberry cheesecake at any time, all-day breakfasts at midnight and always a stack of pancakes short of full.
I’m not a bikini babe – well, you can’t be, can you, if you’re someone whose idea of a fashionable two-piece is fried eggs followed by chips?
I am what you’d call a comfort eater, someone whose pleasure comes not from exquisite cuisine but in real soul food, only with less beans and gumbo, especially when feeding the Judith Chalmers wanderlust in me.
I’ll never forget my first visit to a diner in the US – they had Heinz tomato sauce on the table.
I don’t mean some sachet of a poor imitation of it which is what I’d always found in restaurants in other countries. But the proper, full-fat, sweet, sticky, gorgeous bloody stuff, the juice which transcends cultural difference and squirts a liberal dollop of Home over posh nosh, wherever you are in the world.
In America, the portions are huge, the taste incredible, the dessert menus straight from the fantasy scene of the cinema banquet in my mind.
And you never have to wipe sand from in between your toes to get at it or walk around in your smalls.
My options on my last trip to neon-coated paradise included dough well done with cow to cover (that’s buttered toast to carb virgins), a bowl of birdseed (cereal), a glass of drag one through Georgia to go (cola with chocolate syrup) with Noah’s boy on bread (ham sandwich) served up with a 100 watt smile by the soup jockey (waitress).
I just love the way size really, really matters, as mountains of finger lickin’ badness which taste so good are dished up in that blasé, almost celebratory way kids (or was it just me?) imagine table-buckling party food in Heaven would look.
I couldn’t live in America – I’d be dead by now, crushed under the weight of a dream sequence of me cavorting with a load of Zeppelins in a fog while trying to make room for a certain Eve with a mouldy lid (That’s sausage and mash, followed by apple pie with a slice of cheese on top if you’re interested).
Some would say, of course, that there’s no need to go to America to eat like an American.
Yankee cuisine can be replicated in any British kitchen by mixing peanut butter with mashed up bananas, ladling it on toast and deep-frying it in lard until golden brown.
Mmm, just like Elvis used to make. And it didn’t do him any harm.
Well, did it?

I AM officially too fat ...

... to shop in M&S. They go up to a size 24 – you know you’re EXTRA special when your size is the only one in the shop which is differentiated with a light blue hanger tag.
But it seems I’m not that special anymore. Just fat.
It made me wonder how I got from where I was two years ago – two and a half stone lighter and feeling like I was on the way to finding my better self, to say nothing about seeing my feet for the first time since 1971 – to where I am now.
And that’s a bit depressed if I’m being honest. But down that I may be, I’m still not doing much about it. And that’s the worst thing of all to consider.
Not even my disastrous, too big to look nice shopping spree wasn’t enough to shock me into activity. I kind of feel resigned. And I hate, hate, hate it.
The trouble with honesty, however, is that people either appreciate you for it or they think you could shut up and do something about why you’re blue in the first place.
My mother has a saying for it. She says you simply have to “pick yourself up and shake yourself down”.
I have a saying for it too. But I can’t repeat it in polite company.
Angelina Jolie doesn’t have a problem with being candid, and you never hear of anyone telling her to shut up.
People just coo: “It’s great that someone so beautiful should be so open. It’s amazing, with some of her past troubles, she is willing to share her darkest hours with the world so that people can learn from her mistakes.”
Me? Well, I just get letters from people telling me to either have more sex to burn up more calories (I had an offer from a pensioner with nice penmanship just the other week, Han fans), others banging (no pun intended) on about something to do with me shutting up and getting a life, or women (and some men, it has to be said) totally relating with my life’s dilemmas.
Sadly, I don’t get letters from personal trainers who live near Caerphilly or surgeons who want to practise gastric banding on a willing participant.
(I’d have it done in a heartbeat by the way. But my nearest and dearest won’t let me. And as much as I can cope with disappointing myself, I can’t bear putting them through the worry. Besides, isn’t it cheating? As if I’d care!)
But not Angelina. She doesn’t garner such derision.
She can admit to taking a rainbow of drugs – “I’ve done just about every drug possible. Coke, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, everything. The worst effect, for me, was pot. I felt silly and giggly, and I hate feeling like that. I remember taking LSD before I went to Disneyland. I started thinking about Mickey Mouse being a short, middle-aged man in a costume who hates his life. Those drugs can be dangerous if you don’t go into it positively” – and being a bit of a wild child, pre Brad Pitt and her mother earth look. But still people are forgiving.
It must be the lips.
The new mum of twins has said in the past that she’s happy to share the shape of her inner demons with the world as she thinks it’ll help others and she isn’t ashamed of being human and all that entails.
(Although she’s apparently asking for £5m for the first pictures of her twins, with the money going to charity.)
They’re not so understanding of a girl from the Rassau with “issues” though.
I’m no Jolie, it has to be said. Neither am I particularly jolly these days.
I am, however, still eating, still feeling ugly (there, I’ve said it) ... and still sharing.
And still wishing you could buy patience by the pound next to the pork pies in Tesco.