NO MORE DAIRY

For medical reasons, I’ve had to give up dairy for a while. It’s already led to some tricky emotions.

“Ooh you might be able to eat this lemon drizzle cake!” says Sammy excitedly, scanning the list of ingredients. Her eyes flick across the back of the box, while mine widen with excitement.

“Ah, nope!” she proclaims, discarding the packaging and moving onto the next delicious-looking thing. Yes? No, not that either. Boo.

It’s been a weekend of birthdays, and that hasn’t helped at all. I’ve seen plates of loveliness whizz past like a bakery conveyor belt - nope, nope, nope, nope. Milk, butter…. nope. Here’s a banana.

I even found myself at Costa, poking through the packets of biscuits on the counter. Each packet I picked up had the world MILK printed in tiny bold letters in the list of ingredients. Everything nice in there, it seemed, had something in it that came from a cow. In the end I just had a black tea and sipped it while I revised UK motorways.

I’ve got two weeks of this. After that? Maybe more, maybe forever. And it might be, it just might be that I’ve already eaten my last piece of real cheese.

You know, when I think about that, it feels like a black hole has opened up and I’m tumbling into it. What do you mean, no more cheese? Aaaaahhhhhh… I echo, as I fall into the gravity well. How can the world even be bearable without cheese in it? I mean, after oxygen and wireless Internet, surely cheese sits up there in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?

The worst part of it is that last week I tucked into a lovely lasagna at Mamma Mia’s, then enjoyed two mini banoffee pies. I was buttering my toast, guzzling cream and licking the mayo off my jacket potatoes like there was no tomorrow. Well. Turns out there was a tomorrow, and in the greatest shock of all, it turned out to be the next day. Don’t you just love it when that happens?