My confession

14st 7lb. oh dear. I am sorry. Must do better.

Anyway, at the beginning of the week, I said I would make a BIG confession. It involves food. It involves greed. In my defense, it was a long time ago and I did learn from it.

I suppose, as a child, I was a petty thief in the making. I clearly remember my brother and I pinching 2p off the back of the Aga and getting discovered. Our punishment was that he wasn't allowed to go to Saturday club at the cinema at all although I was allowed to go but no pocket money for sweets in the interval - I suppose the parents must have thought he was the ring leader (which he could well have been). On another occasion, my younger brother and I pinched a large packet of Victory V's from the village shop - only to discover that I didn't like them. I have never worked out why we didn't throw them in the bin instead of making him eat them all - resulting in the doctor at 2am with my mother thinking he had appendicitis.

However, my true crime came at the age of 11 when I was away at boarding school. You see, each half term you could take sweets back to put in the "tuck cupboard" and then a couple of times a week after tea, we could take an item out of the cupboard as our treat. I have said before that I was a skinny child with a pathetic appetite but I loved sweets (still do!). Well, we usually went back to school on a Sunday night and our sweets didn't go into the tuck cupboard until after breakfast on Monday morning, by which time little Miss Piggy had usually eaten most of hers. However, I had the misfortune to share a room with a very well off girl who bought loads of sweets back but who was really quite indifferent to their charms. She used to sneak some of hers to the back of her knicker drawer and put the rest into the tuck cupboard. Well, you guessed it. I tried and tried but I couldn't resist. The little neglected treats were screaming from their prison, "Eat me, eat me". So, when I happened to find myself alone one afternoon, I quietly sneaked over to her drawers, bent down, heart pounding, opened the drawer, removed the tin, opened the lid, selected a mini mars bar and....der, der, deeeeer (drum roll of drama)......in walked matron. "What are you doing?" she bellowed. "Umm. Umm" came my pathetic, inadequate reply. She gave me a lecture about stealing and said we would say no more about it. I was mortified. I cried. I didn't sleep properly for weeks. I never mentioned it to a soul. I never forgot it. But, the incident took me out of the underworld of crime and out into the world of honesty and integrity. I think I went the other way - I have always had a propensity to give away rather than hoard and am scrupulously above board.

The matter did not, as matron had promised, end there. Five years later, when I was about to go into 6th form, I was being considered for Head of House, a position of some responsibility. I was gaily coming down the stairs one day towards the end of term, just before the announcements of prefects, when I over heard my housemistress (she of the most incredibly scaffolded, gravity-defying bosom you have ever seen!) discussing candidates with the headmistress. Conversation as follows:
Headmistress: "Well surely Elizabeth is the obvious choice."
Housemistress: "Well you would think so on the face of it but (confidential voice) she steals you know".
Headmistress: "Good gracious. You've never mentioned it. That does put a different complexion on things."
Housemistress: "It was some time ago."
Me: "Some time ago. I was eleven. It was one mini mars bar (which I had to put back). You can't hold that against me!"

I didn't of course actually say that. I stood on the stairs (out of view) rigid with mortification and then burning with injustice.

I was made Head of House (but never Head of School - could have been the thieving but......more likely the boys!).

Anyway, confession over. This will not come as a shock to my mother as I drunkenly confessed it to her some years ago.

Lesson learnt: Greed will catch up with you. It stays with you for life. I still feel the shame of that 11 year old (and 16 year old)!

E xx