Land of the scarecrow, home of the hungry

This morning was clearly a time for the emaciated to be out and about. They were all walking down my street. I've never seen so many people who look like the either have an eating disorder, or a terminal illness. Not since I last accidentally tuned into America's Next Top Model on TV, anyway.

At first it was just one person. There was a woman walking the other way with a friend. Her collarbones stood out proudly against the loose folds of a vintage dress that ought to have fitted snugly around an hour glass figure. She was hollow cheeked, but rosy in spite of it, happy enough as she chatted away to her friend about something in a language I didn't pay enough attention to recognise, other than to note that it wasn't English.

A little further on my walk to the tube I caught up to a middle aged couple out for a leisurely stroll that was in stark contrast to my usual morning bolt against the clock. She was roughly average height and build, with a kind of relaxed look to her. He looked like he ought to have been at home in bed, or rushed to hospital having just been released from months of captivity. He was shrivelled and shrunken, but only horizontally because he was well over 6' tall. His trackies flapped around his ankles, accentuating both his height and his extreme scrawniness. Adding to the bizarre effect was a pair of shoes that were obviously far too large for him. Or at least they looked that way. The two sauntered along arm in arm, though, happy enough pointing out the flowers in gardens to each other. He might have looked like he hadn't seen sun for a year - more pale and sallow than anyone I'd seen before - but he seemed to have an appreciation for nature that argued otherwise.

Thinking I'd seen more than enough skeletal frames for one ten minute stretch, I was surprised to find two more getting off the bus, entirely separate. They were the fashionable types you see sometimes, not travelling together, not even knowing each other, but coincidentally stepping through a door at the same moment. It looked like there should have been a wind blowing somewhere, a photographer directing their movements as he snapped away for Vogue, Bazaar, or something similar. They were that kind of edgy fashion that you know costs a lot of time, effort and money to achieve. They were also that kind of look that makes you think their expensive clothes would look better on a coat hanger than it does on them. The coat hanger has fewer sharp angles than an emaciated woman, after all.

All of these people before I'd even reached the end of my street. Feeling grossly inadequate with my horrible urge to eat, resolving to climb off the dieting bandwagon before I ever got to that point - as if it was something I needed to seriously worry about - I headed over to Tesco's where I was being forced to buy my lunch by the horrific combination of my usual morning tardiness and the end-of-the-month-looming lack of cash. Sure, I had enough bulk that I probably could have made all four of the scrawny brigade look healthy, and still not reached their point of dead-for-a-month hollowness. But at least I'm not in any danger of snapping in two, or being blown away by a strong wind. And although I'm having a fat day (well, a fat life, really, let's be honest), I'm happy enough with that for now. That and the knowledge that if I worked really hard at not eating, I could probably look like them. Yes, I too could look sour-faced and miserable on a beautifully sunny morning instead of my usual angry glare at my watch when it tells me I'm late again. But why would I want to do that?