Guilty Pleasures

I’m shocked, shocked! at the widely-held perception of me as a cantankerous biddy. I simply can’t imagine whence this dreadful calumny sprang, but I present for its refutation these examples of things which give me enjoyment, albeit the kind of enjoyment that comes with its own measure of guilt.

Who doesn’t like singing along to songs with rude lyrics? Probably quite a lot of people actually, but I’m not one of them. Don’t let my prim, purse-lipped mumsiness fool you – on the rare occasions I’m at home or in the car without the little pitchers, and the mood strikes, I take a certain gleeful delight in providing tonally-challenged but lusty accompaniment to Sir Psycho Sexy, sharing a good-natured mofo with Jack Black, or cataloguing a range of sexual behaviours with the original cast of Hair.

Join me in my sinful confession and admit it, most of us love a long soak in a full, hot bath. Now I know we’re in a drought, so before you form a lynch mob and come at me with pitchforks and blazing torches, allow me to hastily explain that a bath for me is generally a birthday/Christmas/imminent delivery of baby sort of indulgence, certainly not a daily, weekly or even fortnightly thing. Moreover, to prevent the guilt from completely overwhelming the pleasure of the experience, I take certain…measures…to offset what in these days is an extravagant use of water. Short showers, letting yellow mellow, plunking the children to bathe in my lees, even the occasional homebound day with no shower. Are those gasps of disgust I hear? Hey, I said it was a guilty pleasure, not a pretty one.

What would my life be like without far too much chocolate? A lot less sugar-crazed and liable to make the creators of the healthy food pyramid faint with horror, I suspect. As it’s the New Year, and as I don’t seem to have been not-pregnant long enough since 2003 to regain a reasonable weight and figure, I have resolved to eat more healthily when the super energy-burning powers of this round of pregnancy and breastfeeding begin to wear off. What a shame there’s still about a kilo of chocolate stashed in the house. I wonder who’ll selflessly rid the Polony pantry and fridge of that delicious brown scourge?

In these days when celebrity gossip is peddled as essential world news, we all seem to absorb at least a vague awareness of the latest proof that money and fame don’t buy class or happiness. And usually I’m content to glean these smug reminders from slow news days and months-old magazines in waiting rooms, but when it comes time to waddle off to the maternity ward to birth my latest babe, my overnight bag is simply not complete without a stash of trashy magazines. I know they’re a waste of money I could better spend on a nice book, I know they encourage my nasty streak of Schadenfreude, and I know they keep paparazzi vultures in their despicable line of work. But isn’t that the point?

Guilty pleasures – they’re wrong, but they feel so right.