Free Odyssey In A Teacup by Paula Houseman

unexpectedly jam-packed with fat. All these guests, God help me , were lard-arses! My cacomorphobia kicked in and I began hyperventilating. I needed Ralph; I needed a paper bag; I needed a size E cylinder of compressed oxygen; I needed ... something!
    The choice to sit on the end of the pew against the window wall was not a wise one. I was between a megabuttock and a hard place. I couldn’t leave; I also couldn’t stay.
    From years of living in a hostile environment, I’d learned that when I was physically cornered with no way out, the only real avenue of escape was through my imagination. Even this can be an obstacle course when it feels like you have a whole village of little Sylvias in your head terrorising and lambasting you.
    What to do ... ?
    Ralph had told me that deep breathing helped him to relax. It was worth a try. So ... ooooohm for six seconds, wheeeeeew for six, ooooohm , wheeeeeew, ooooohm , wheeeeeew ... I felt a bit calmer, but the noise was still there. Other stuff started filtering through, too. It was a strange mélange, which included deviant thoughts and the sound of music: Rain-sprinkled roses, kitty-cats’ whiskers; oeuf, pest! Woolly mitts, creamy ponies; Zelda and Neville having sex; strictly missionary position—he’d be lost in the folds; flying wild goosies, schnitzels ‘n’ strudels ‘n’ noodles; reverse missionary cowgirl position—Neville the noodle would be pancake; screwed, either way; thinking about my favourite things and not feeling so ba-a-a-ad.
    It worked. I no longer so felt ba-a-a-ad. Then there was an encore, but it was outside my head, in real time. The organist started playing Wagner’s Bridal Chorus , otherwise known as Here Comes the Bride .
    As kids, we used to sing a parodied version of this:
     
‘Here comes the bride
all fat and wide
She slipped on a banana skin
and went for a slide
Here comes the groom
thin as a broom ... ’
     
    How prophetic. As the bridal cortège made its way down the aisle, I felt bad again. Here came the three bridesmaids in yellow (looking like a bunch of genetically modified, record-breaking bananas), and here came the bride. All fat and wide.
    ‘Doesn’t she look a vision?’ whispered the woman next to me.
    What? Come on! She weighs thirty stone on a good day. When she’s not retaining fluid! ‘That she does.’ Those words gurgled and drowned in a soup of bile in my mouth. I should have opened this mouth of mine years earlier and put Zelda in her place. Just once. Then I wouldn’t have been left with a long-suppressed, smouldering anger that had mutated into cynicism.Now, I could only watch helplessly as my bête noire lumbered down the aisle in her frou-frou, good girl white gown. Her rolls strained against and bulged over the ruched bodice, the seams of her dress screaming ‘eek, eek, we’re stretched to breaking point!’ And with the frilly, princess ballgown-style skirt, Zelda looked like a sumo wrestler coated in fluffy, whipped egg whites.
    Her fiancé, Neville, was fair-haired, tall and ordinary looking. His only real distinguishing feature was a bad case of acne. And like in the song, the groom was indeed thin as a broom, but he wasn’t coming (not till tonight, anyway). He was already there at the end of the aisle waiting for his bride under the chuppah, a silk canopy held up by four poles. The chuppah symbolises the Jewish home to be established by the newlyweds—open on all four sides for hospitality. Neville was beaming as his bride joined him under the chuppah. They stood opposite the rabbi, and because they were facing the congregation, we had a clear view of their faces. Again, I was overcome with a wave of anxiety facing an assailant that always seemed to have the whip hand. She believed it; I believed it.
    This time I escaped. I switched off, numbed out until half an hour later when Neville and Zelda were man and wife. One hour after that, I was hovering on the outskirts of a fleshy-peopled foyer at the