I’d be thinner if I lived at Downton!

I’d be thinner if I lived at Downton!

Wendy Wax

As any writer who’s ever attempted to compose more than a grocery list will tell you, writing is a lonely and largely sedentary pursuit. Unless you can come up with a good enough excuse to evacuate your desk chair – something along the lines of a rapidly approaching natural disaster – you will be expected to remain seated for long periods of time. On most days you will exercise only your eyes, fingers, and, hopefully, your brain.

This makes writing a fattening occupation, which should probably come with a warning label from the surgeon general.

Because writing all too often feels like brain surgery without anesthesia, writers are among the most determined and experienced procrastinators I know. Some writers invest a lot of time and imagination into not writing (we do, after all, make things up for a living) but even more of us turn to food. And I’m not talking about preparing it!

My home is just slightly smaller than Highclere Castle, the real castle where where Downton Abbey is filmed.

Watching the popular PBS drama (which because I’ve written a novel titled WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY may be considered research and NOT procrastination) I realized right away that my kitchen (not to mention the pantry and refrigerator inside it) is way too close to my office.

I was watching Downton Abbey when I realized that if I were a member of the Crawley family, I would be a lot thinner.

First of all, I’ve never seen a scene where Lord Grantham and Lady Cora are standing in front of the fridge trying to decide what to snack on next. In fact, I’ve never seen them near the icebox at all. If I lived at Downton, I wouldn’t be in the kitchen so much either. I mean, who’s going to take all those stairs down to the servants’ hall every time the writing’s not going well? Especially when Mrs. Patmoor might slap your hands for helping yourself once you got there?

Plus it’s really crowded below stairs at Downton. Even if you managed to evade Mrs. Patmoor and Daisy, you could run into O’Brien and Thomas scheming in some corner. Or Anna and Bates stealing a kiss in a broom closet. Or Mrs. Hughes and Carson counting the silver while they shared a cup of tea.

And if you did pinch a stray leg of lamb or a leftover fruit tart and somehow smuggled it up all those stairs to your room how would dispose of the evidence with all those servants picking up after and taking care of you?

It could actually make food not worth the effort.

So let’s say this forced you to hold off until mealtime. You still wouldn’t be able to secretly load up your plate with an extra serving of duck. Or bury your face in a mound of treacle pie. Not when it’s being served by a footman while Carson, your tuxedoed and gowned family, and special invited guests look on.

If I were a member of the Crawley family, Mrs. Patmoor would probably make me low cal/ healthy meals if I asked for them. (Isn’t this why watercress was invented?) And I could walk the extensive castle grounds to burn calories from dusk to dawn.

But it’s not just the procrastinationary eating I’m worried about. There’s a lot of stress and rejection in publishing. And I’ve never seen a single Crawley call the chauffer to bring the car round so that he or she could go stuff his or her face at Mickey D’s.

I don’t know what qualified as ‘junk food’ in the Edwardian era. But I do know that at Downton comfort and sympathy come in the form of tea, which is too often served with tiny little cucumber sandwiches.

Yep, if I were a Crawley of Downton Abbey, I could probably give up my Weight Watchers’ membership and the calorie counting apps on my iPhone. But I’m not sure I could give up those trips through the takeout lane at McDonald’s.