Pep Pills

I fantasised about becoming a beatnik after I left school, even though beatniks ‘dug’ jazz and were so old fashioned, they were already stagnating in the dodo-dead Age of bebop. I visualised myself wearing a black and white striped Matelot top, a black beret and long black dirty hair, while reading extensionalist literature, lying down on my unmade bed. It really was all a fantasy, because I don’t have black hair. I could have dyed it coal-black I suppose, like Goths do nowdays. But, my hair was mousey, and I wanted to be a platinum blonde. At school, I poured a bottle of peroxide over my head, which made my hair go a luminous green. In the sunlight, it looked like I had a frizz of spinach on my head.

I used to be bonkers about pop music, and loved to read about pop stars in the cool teen magazines of the day. I had no intention of taking drugs like my idols did while I was at school, but I must have been very influenced by their illegal habits. For, I do remember buying Pro Plus pills to help me keep awake all night while I was cramming for my exams. And, when my mother was trying to lose weight and went to one of the fashionable slimming doctors in Harley Street, without her knowing, I helped myself to some of her prescribed slimming pills. As a result, I was speeding for days, which was very convenient, as to Mum's delight, I fanatically cleaned my bedroom for hours.

After I left school, it was the vogue for teenagers to go to slimming doctors too, especially if they had become engaged and wanted to look svelte on their big wedding day. I’ve always been slim, but I never felt skinny enough in the Sixties, so once without Mum knowing, I made an appointment with an expensive slimming doctor, whom all my friends recommended. What a quack. He injected me (with what I never knew) through my tights and gave me some slimming pills, which unfortunately weren’t as powerful as the ones I had stolen from Mum. By this time, her slimming doctor had been struck off, and this doctor I went to soon got struck off as well, shortly after my appointment in fact. And, I’m not surprised.

I was ordered to eat grapefruit and hard boiled eggs for a year, which I did for almost one day. But, I was so ravenous that after midnight, I sneaked down to the kitchen and wolfed down the remains of Mum’s Cordon Bleu chicken pie, which she had served at her dinner party the night before. And, I didn’t even like her fancy pie, what with all that yucky, gooey mushroom sauce she drenched the shredded chicken in. So much for that fancy slimming doctor. I felt very bad tempered and jittery after I went to see him, and couldn’t stop eating for a week. I only forced myself to stop when I went shopping and saw my podgy reflection in the changing room mirror. But, a good thing came out of it. I was never tempted to take another slimming pill for the rest of my life. There was no need, especially when I discovered Macrobiotics. I discovered that if I only ate brown rice for a week and smoked like a chimney, I might not have been able to walk up the hill, but I looked pleasingly skeletal.



Copright: Frances Lynn 2006