EATING THE LAUGHING BUDDHA
by Annie Fisher
I’m having supper in a country house conference centre. It’s the first night of a weekend course on well-being and the air is loud with the wine-fuelled chatter of thirty strangers who, as yet, see nothing irksome in each other. I’m sitting across the table from a psychiatrist whose grey eyes and attentive posture suggest he’s keen for me to spill the beans. He tells me he usually charges £150 per hour. I take ‘usually’ to imply he’ll make an exception in my case and decide to start ‘big picture’ with an outline of family history (paranoia, alcoholism, anorexia, health-anxiety, assorted phobias). I’m twiddling one of my laughing buddha earrings and, being in full-disclosure mode, fail to notice when it detaches from its silver hook and falls into my plate of chorizo-stuffed chicken. I eat the little buddha unawares. If the psychiatrist has noticed, he isn’t giving anything away. Do you find you are able to laugh at yourself? he asks, leaning in a little closer. I reply that I am blessed with a healthy sense of the comedic but have tried to curb it since reading about a 62-year-old man afflicted with ‘laughing syncope’ who fainted into a bowl of mashed potatoes whilst chortling over an episode of Seinfeld. I picture the scene I describe (recent therapy has honed my visualisation skills) and begin to splutter with laughter, thereby launching a medley of sausage and poultry, with considerable projectile force, across the table. The psychiatrist excuses himself, tucking his chair under the table mindfully and wiping flecks of pink meat from his cardigan. He says he has a call to make and, in any case, he never eats puddings. My laughter grows louder, heartier. It does not stop. Exit the psychiatrist, with easy grace.
by Annie Fisher
I’m having supper in a country house conference centre. It’s the first night of a weekend course on well-being and the air is loud with the wine-fuelled chatter of thirty strangers who, as yet, see nothing irksome in each other. I’m sitting across the table from a psychiatrist whose grey eyes and attentive posture suggest he’s keen for me to spill the beans. He tells me he usually charges £150 per hour. I take ‘usually’ to imply he’ll make an exception in my case and decide to start ‘big picture’ with an outline of family history (paranoia, alcoholism, anorexia, health-anxiety, assorted phobias). I’m twiddling one of my laughing buddha earrings and, being in full-disclosure mode, fail to notice when it detaches from its silver hook and falls into my plate of chorizo-stuffed chicken. I eat the little buddha unawares. If the psychiatrist has noticed, he isn’t giving anything away. Do you find you are able to laugh at yourself? he asks, leaning in a little closer. I reply that I am blessed with a healthy sense of the comedic but have tried to curb it since reading about a 62-year-old man afflicted with ‘laughing syncope’ who fainted into a bowl of mashed potatoes whilst chortling over an episode of Seinfeld. I picture the scene I describe (recent therapy has honed my visualisation skills) and begin to splutter with laughter, thereby launching a medley of sausage and poultry, with considerable projectile force, across the table. The psychiatrist excuses himself, tucking his chair under the table mindfully and wiping flecks of pink meat from his cardigan. He says he has a call to make and, in any case, he never eats puddings. My laughter grows louder, heartier. It does not stop. Exit the psychiatrist, with easy grace.