Summer’s ending – and the delusion that a new me might be possible is back | Emma Brockes

The start of a new school year always awakens my resolve: time to be more disciplined, less cluttered and nicer to the catsSign up for our new weekly newsletter Matters of Opinion, where our columnists and writers will reflect on what they’ve been debating, thinking about, reading and moreEvery year at this time, I think of a quote from the Bible, but which I know from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, in which seven-year-old Jeanette stitches a needlepoint sampler decorated withthe inscription: “The summer is ended and we are not yet saved.” We are not yet saved: no, not in this house, where I experience the back-to-school week in September far more urgently than New Year’s Day as the time of year for a behavioural reset. New school year, new me, new cast-iron conviction I can put the rocky road on the top shelf after I’ve used it in my girls’ packed lunches and not get it down until tomorrow.This is the first and most pressing item on the list: diet. Ten days out from Iberico ham night at the all-inclusive buffet in Spain, and I’m still more jamón than woman. It wouldn’t have mattered 10 years ago. But you can’t stuff your face with cold cuts and eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner (what? I’d paid for it, am I not going to eat it?) in middle age without triggering intense thoughts of death. And so this morning, after the drop-off: a return to the thrilling self-denial of two slices of misery bread from the health food store (fibre content: dysentery level). And a resolve to settle on a stable position re chia seeds, once and for all.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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