A family-sized bag of Minstrels. A tube of sour-cream-flavoured Pringles. A drum of popcorn. Cookie-dough-flavoured Häagen-Dazs ice-cream. A litre of Diet Coke. For one brief moment I actually thought Ocado had extended their home delivery service to include Chelsea cinemas. I had to move my handbag off the floor just to make room for the supermarket sweep of junk food a couple beside me brought to consume while ostensibly watching He’s Just Not That Into You. By the time the trailer ended and the film began I found myself unable to concentrate and was furiously overidentifying with the sentiments contained in the title. Believe me, I just wasn’t that into either of them. I felt as though I’d been forced to gatecrash a bulimics’ picnic. I love public displays of affection — there’s something rather heart-warming about hearing the smooch of a snog — yet I deeply resent paying to sit next to and be distracted by the cacophonous soundtrack of a couple picking-and-mixing their way through a smorgasbord of snacks at the movies. I was sorely tempted to nudge them and suggest they ‘got a room’. Preferably a dining-room.
Eating while being entertained is not just noisy and antisocial; it’s also unhealthy, unnecessary and extortionately overpriced. Cinema and theatre admissions in the UK are apparently enjoying a record-breaking boom, but the feel-good endorphins released by recession-induced escapism are surely compromised if accompanied by calorific binges. Casual eating habits have become the accepted norm and us baby-boomers are probably the worst offenders. We may disguise our disgust by jumping on the Daily Mail bandwagon of middle-class concerns and blame the rising levels of obesity on a lack of education and family values but the truth is we’re all guilty. In the last 20 years we’ve become sloppy eaters. We’ve allowed ourselves to morph into an overfed generation of grazers that can’t really contemplate going about everyday life without being drip-fed instant oral gratification. Women schlep down the King’s Road clutching bottled water as though they’re endeavouring to conquer the Sahara desert as opposed to merely crossing the threshold of Peter Jones. We sip coffee from the grown-up equivalent of beaker cups with the avarice of a newborn, supplement normal mealtimes with needless snacks and think nothing of picking up breakfast from Starbucks and buying our lunch from Pret a Manger.
Now is the moment to start tightening our belts. We’ve got to get back to basics. I’m secretly hoping this new Age of Austerity will put the breaks on speed-eating — especially in public places. There’s something deeply unifying about sitting round a kitchen table eating together, but it’s an act that has become the exception rather than the rule. My childhood was punctuated by mealtimes. Meals were the commas that divided up my day. Strangely, we all need those commas that come with eating breakfast, lunch and diner. They give a structure that’s not to be found by shovelling fast food down our throats. Ultimately that’s just a hollow experience. Unless we’re careful we’ll all end up like the couple in the cinema. Too preoccupied with gobbling down popcorn to concentrate on the real plot.