I’ll have the salad

Not usually one of my favourite ways to spend a day, I spent 5 hours in Bristol’s Cribbs Causeway shopping ‘Mall’ today. More in character was the DVD bargain hunting (Bill Murray’s ‘Broken Flowers‘, Nicholson’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, and De Niro’s ‘Taxi Driver’ in case you’re wondering), and the gadget browsing (PDA’s and Ericsson Blue Tooth headsets).

As inevitable as the ‘Hi, How are you today?’ from the chirpy Disney Store greeter, lunch had to be had in the Food Hall. Now this was fascinating. In Soho Coffee there was a divide of the sexes going on. The alpha males, dark grey suits and luminous spotty ties, were straight into the fridge for saladless baguettes and Mars bars. The women meanwhile circled the salad bar, placed thoughtfully in the centre of the place, in their peasant tops and frilly skirts. They looked longingly into the chocalate selection, but went for cucumber and the short skinny latte. The thing is, they’re clearly going for the salad as a low-calorie alternative (‘I must watch my waist, Phoebe’). They opted for the ‘small’ or ‘regular’ size bowl, and then try to cram every last piece of salad into it. Seriously, it was like watching a Tony Hancock suitcase-closing sketch. The salad was already an inch above the topline, and still they put a little more in before trying to do something scientists in full-scale laboratories and safety goggles have been unable to do for decades and shrink the food to make it fit.

Here’s the thing ladies: It’s not the healthy option if you eat twice as much! Go on, have a Mars Bar…