Stuffed in Sheffield

I had to get up at half-past five this morning as I've been working in Sheffield, which is forty miles away, all day, helping with the assessments of qualified doctors who want to train to be General Practitioners - - better known as GPs or the family doctor! It's a three-year training and it takes a doctor with particularly good communication skills to do it - - or it should do - - hence these assessments.

I've grumbled before about places where the doctors get one meal and the actors (otherwise known as simulated patients, patient simulators or roleplayers) get another one which is far inferior.

Not so in Sheffield. I'd worked there before and advised the others from Leeds, who hadn't, that the food would be great. And it was.

We were greeted with towering mounds of bacon sandwiches, sausage sandwiches and veggie sandwiches, plus some croissants and Danish pastries and a big bowl of fruit.

I'd had my usual vast vat of porridge, with frozen raspberries thrown into it, before leaving the house. So with tremendous forbearance, I thought, I resisted the bacon sandwiches and had a Healthy Apple instead. I am still waiting for someone to give me some kind of award for this incredible display of willpower.

Anyway, this fought off starvation until the coffee break, when I weakened and had two ginger biscuits.

On to lunch and masses of quality sandwiches appeared - - lots of different kinds - - here's a photo I managed to snatch of just a few of them, as they were being unwrapped. There were lots of things that you might actually want to eat - - - egg - - - chicken - - beef - - cheese - - that kind of thing, all very nicely done and not the usual mayonnaise-between-two-slices-of-bread at all. There were also samosas and onion bhajis and such.

I had to snatch the photo before the marauding army of doctors and actors descended (now look, I wouldn't call myself an actor, I'm a roleplayer, but most of them were actors, and it's quicker to write than "simulated patients" though admittedly this explanation is rather longer).

Afterwards there was cake, of course. No, I didn't eat it, because sadly I'm still diabetic. When my hand reaches out for such things I have to give myself a stern talking-to. "Are you still diabetic, Daphne? Well put it down, then."

We staggered on until the afternoon tea break when any cravings we might have had for scones with cream were suddenly fulfilled.

Just time to eat a bit more fruit, and a few biscuits before the final session at the end of the day. It was a long day: I arrived before eight in the morning and didn't leave Sheffield until six o'clock, so I haven't been home for very long.

I did pretty well at resisting all the things that are bad for me, apart from the ginger biscuits and half a scone. The day was hard work, but the people I was working with were lovely.

There's something about food that either really helps, or really doesn't. When I've done jobs where we've worked hard all morning and then been presented with a few curling sandwiches, suddenly everyone's grumbling and wanting it all to be over.

Today everyone was good-humoured and ready to work hard, because we felt that we were treated with respect, and our work was appreciated, because we were very well fed.

There's a lot of truth in that old saying that we're only three missing meals away from a revolution - - when you're hungry, that's all you can think about, and you'd do just about anything to get food. I think that the food that we eat, or that we're given, is really important - - and the people running today understood that. Thank you, Sheffield. I won't be having much tea tonight.