Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, February 5, 2003


SPRATT THEORY ON LOAD SHARING


Jack Spratt could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean,
And so between the pair of them,
They licked the platter clean.

THE old English nursery rhyme has always been a favourite of mine if only as proof that opposites really do attract and can live in harmony without coming to blows over whose turn it is to clean the dishes. Jack was presumably the healthier of the two although in my book of nursery rhymes, the illustration made him look craggy and mean while his wife was apple-cheeked and jolly. Or was that Old King Cole? In the drawing, the Spratts also had a dog, poor thing, that obviously had missed out on the scraps again. Between the Spratts and Old Mother Hubbard, dogs did not fare particularly well in nursery rhymes. The other day I ran into a friend - let's call her Jill Spratt - who moaned that she was still eating the leftover Christmas ham from the freezer and was crushed by guilt at having lost no weight in the past month. Perhaps if she ate less ham... Size has been a sensitive issue with Jill for as long as I have known her. Her plump legs in tights look like a couple of black puddings yet she mostly wears short dresses. What can she see in the mirror in the morning? She also constantly complains that dress sizes are not designed with real women's bodies in mind. Let's just say she has wide hips and leave it at that. After 11 months of determined over-indulgence, Jill chooses February to have an alcohol-free diet month because it is the one with the fewest days. This year, to save her the trouble, I have developed the Spratt Theory - a new load sharing formula especially for couples. The formula gives each couple a combined weight of 127kg (20 stone) to share around between them as they wish. They could go 50-50, at 63.5kg each, or if one partner weighed, say, 82kg, the other would be allowed 45kg. The thought came to me over a few drinks after meeting a couple of friends who I had not seen for a while. On the previous occasion, the husband was in good shape, even athletic, while she was on the flabby side. Now, in the space of a couple of months, the tables had turned and she looked fantastic and he was as fat as a stuffed goose. Yet, after doing some quick calculations, we found their combined weight had remained exactly the same at, yep, 127kg. Somehow their fluctuating weights had become a synchronised balancing act. Perhaps they could afford only enough food for one of them at a time and it was his turn to eat. Jill liked the Spratt Theory. Her Jack was so thin he could hide behind a power pole. Her weight problem therefore was his fault. If he really loved her, he would put on weight in order to reduce hers. Fat chance. "Isn't that just typical,'' she said, "the woman always has to carry more than her fair share of the load in every relationship.''