I have a confession.  Something that many of my old teams and bosses would agree on; I’m not a great ‘completer finisher’.  I’m the one with the best intentions;  the memory reminders of birthdays and the corresponding cards that don’t get sent; the business ideas which are researched, modified, written and then never put to fruition; the one who  starts a project, gets bored and is distracted by the next shiny thing.  I’m the person who is awarded certificates but rarely diplomas because there is always  something else new to study, who half-reads books and then their final pages because there is always a new book waiting to be cannibalised.

There are lots of us out there.  Most of us know we have this problem so we put strategies in place to try to stay on track to see our initially exciting  task through to the end.  By then we are probably crying with boredom tears and dragging our feet out of bed in the morning.  It  gets done but it can be a bit slapdash and made merry towards its conclusion (unless you have OCD,  but that’s another story).  Our reward for sticking with it is our system being flooded by intense feelings of satisfaction and relief.

Folks like me are  best suited to working in change as the change within the change is what keeps us motivated.

I know all this so when I gamely announce I’m cutting all sugar on October 1 for a month, I have bought the journal, downloaded the app, cleaned out the fridge reorganising its now healthy contents and hidden all the temptations.  During  week 1 I am evangelical;  studiously reading labels in the supermarkets and taking 3 times as long to do the weekly shop.  Craig eats more green stuff in a week than he’s done for the past 3 months.  Week 2, I’m batch cooking on Sunday and feeling very virtuous.  This is the week where I join a health studio and start going to classes back to back, working through the associated aches and pains of a body that somewhere in its muscle memory knows it’s just a fad so to go with it until another distraction comes along.

Week 3 and the 19th of October is designated international Day at school.  The day where you bring in the taste of home for other parents, teachers and pupils to sample.  Generally the preceding day is intense as you connect with your memories of comfort and home as you stir and shake, smell, touch and taste your offerings.

Scotland, like Barbados, is rooted in sugar.  We’re not known for our salads and vegetables.  We like our sweets, stews and starch.

Correspondingly, I make Tattie scones, Macaroon Bars, Tablet and Fairy cakes.  The latter being my concession to belonging to the UK as I have brought pre-prepared iced Union Jack flags back to the island.

I boil the potatoes for the scones and the Macaroon bars.  I am not tempted by the kilo of icing sugar mixed with potato that makes the fondant.  I am stoic when melting my favourite dark chocolate and oven roasting the desiccated coconut.  But when you put it all together and they come out of the freezer looking so tasty, one tiny piece in the mouth doesn’t count.  Surely?

By now I am boiling the sugar, condensed milk and vanilla essence for my Tablet.  I’m using a new recipe which guarantees success;  after all why use the recipe handed down from generation to generation when there is something new to try?

I follow these new steps to the letter, measuring each ingredient carefully, completing each step as instructed (this is not normal behaviour given my more ‘instinctive’ approach to cooking).  It doesn’t look the same but I gamely pour it into the baking pan to set.  But it doesn’t.  I have to taste it.  This doesn’t count either as it’s a necessity and not a need.  Least that’s what I tell myself.  Of course it takes several tastes before I finally accept that its gritty and I have to start all over again.  This time I use the family recipe and it all goes to plan.  Apart from I obviously have to taste test it to make sure.  One square is not enough to convince me.  It takes several squares before confirming it’s a good enough offering.

My system is now flooded with sugar as I move onto making the Fairy Cakes.  Now as a wee girl, the reward for helping my Nana do her twice weekly baking, is to get to lick the spoon or clean the bowl.  Every time I bake, which is not often as my boys are not big into cakes, I connect with Nana as I swipe my finger round the uncooked mix, popping it into my mouth and thinking of her soft, large, floury, welcoming arms.   An entire bowl of uncooked fairy cake mix is now shouting at me; “Love me. Enjoy me. Eat me”.

I have no willpower.  I go to bed wired from my sugar cacophony, convincing myself that it’s just been a blip day.

My blips and slips continue over the next couple of weeks.  Yesterday I ate a Mars bar, drank a rum sour and enjoyed a piece of rum cake.  To my mind once you’ve sinned once, you might as well make it a day of sinning rather than a mouthful.

I also know it doesn’t matter.  For I am lucky enough to wake up today.  And it’s November 1.

Salad anyone?