skinny love....

Ridiculous thought I know it sounds, I’ve started eating more healthily. After two hundred and fifty years of eating whomever I liked, whenever I liked, I started to take my health more seriously. You might laugh, but the old adage that you are what you eat is true for me too. Human blood is my only food, but you’d probably be amazed at how much that varies in quality. Trust me, over the years I reckon I’ve tasted it all. Long before you people knew about blood typing, I knew that people tasted different. Most people taste broadly similar, I suppose: your O-negs and your A-pluses, in the main, I’d guess. But just once in a while you’d savour the taste of an altogether rarer flavour. I’m not saying that B negative is nicer than your more common-or-garden blood types; it just tastes different. It definitely does.

Perhaps one blood type is better for you than another, I don’t know. What I do know is that the quality of human blood varies enormously and it has a knock-on effect on those who survive on it. Compassionate farming is in vogue at the moment, with well-to-do liberals pretending to care enormously about the quality of life of the meat that they’re about to eat. The better the life, apparently, the better they taste. Well, that’s definitely true of you, so why not pigs and cows and chickens? If I thought it would help and I had the time to spare, I’d give you massages and feed you beer soaked food too. Whatever works.

It might be new to you people, but we’ve known it for years: you are what you eat, and when we kill you, we are what you eat too. You know that kebab isn’t doing you any good, but when you’ve had a few, you just can’t help yourself, can you? I know how you feel. Once in a while I can’t resist an unhealthy snack either, but more often than not it leaves me feeling bilious and regretful and I always swear I’ll never do it again; it’s just not worth it. But I do. Every Friday night. Just like you. Let me tell you, having your hangover isn’t much fun for me.

Things used to be different. Diets were simpler and the air was cleaner. People ate what they grew, breathed fresh country air and everyone was happy. Then the industrial revolution came along and suddenly food was cheap and mass-produced, people lived in cities and we were all on the slippery slope to poor diets and even poorer health.

I’m immortal, for goodness sake. I shouldn’t have to be thinking about my diet, even at my age. Perhaps it was my imagination, but by the time all that tinned American convenience crap flooded the market in the 1950s, I was definitely starting to look a little flabby. By 1970, I’d actually started jogging in an attempt to keep myself in shape. Can you imagine?

You think that healthy eating and vegetarianism were your ideas? Hardly. You think we’d be happy eating this sort of junk food for long? It’s alright every once in a while, but it was rapidly becoming ridiculous and something had to be done. We were hardly all going to suddenly move to the third world and their simpler diets, were we? Let's face it, if we hadn’t intervened, you’d still be stuffing your face with burgers without a thought for the consequences. The consequences to me, I mean. I don’t really give a damn about you any more than you really care about the pig that laid down its life for your morning bacon sandwich.

You think it’s a coincidence that you all started jogging and eating salads? Not likely. I’m not sorry that smoking turned out to be bad for you either. It was certainly bad for me. Leg-warmers and Lycra wasn’t a great look on anybody, but I was prepared to overlook these fashion disasters in the pursuit of a healthier diet. You’d do the same.

So the next time you down that revolting wheatgrass shot, as you grimace, be sure to think of me and raise your glass to my health. Think of it as the greater good. It is a far, far better thing that you do, than you have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that you go to, than you have ever known.

Cheers.