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Aileen Eager this week takes a look at the struggles of both mind and body.

‘Do you know’ said this man to me, ‘do you know Marilyn Monroe’s dress size?’ He had the air of a man who had made a wonderful discovery, hugging a secret, yet dying to let you in on it.

So when I answered 18 he looked crestfallen, his illusion shattered, almost ready to dispute it. Like it’s my secret, you have no right to know. In his own private image, apart from her obvious assets, Monroe was fragile, a waif, a wisp of a woman. ‘She was a big girl, you know,’ I added by way of explanation to soften the blow, further ruining his secret image and watched him walk away disgusted.

An unpalatable truth for him and for me is coming down the line when people will say: ‘Marilyn who?’

Tricky things, dress sizes. ‘It’s not you, it’s the brand, all their sizes are small,’ the sales lady will comfort you after you have failed to force your way into your preferred size 14. And that is supposed to help you hate yourself a little less; help you forget the chocolate binges that have undoubtedly come home to roost on your hips.

It seems to be one of the inevitable facts of life that from an early age the pull of gravity on our bodies literally pulls us out of shape, aided by years of unhealthy dieting. Some, both men and women, get away with it. I am thinking particularly of June Brown (EastEnders’ Dot Cotton) and Cliff Richard, the Peter Pan of show business - both appearing on last night’s Late Late Show.

In any case, it is all irrelevant now for I have recently read and apparently it is official: the average British woman is a size 16. Major UK stores Debenhams are the authors of this little-known truth and to back it up they have introduced size 16 manikins to all their stores, including presumably their Irish stores where for the purpose of a little shopping expedition we become average British women.

To explain the difference in spelling, manikins I take to be the ageless, lifeless models displaying women’s fashion-wear in up-market stores.

Mannequins on the other hand are creatures of the catwalk, hungry emaciated figures, their skeletal bodies strutting on long spindle legs almost too thin to support them (giraffe legs, my home help lady calls them), pouting, unhappy faces scowling at the cameras. What is it with these women - is there something in their contracts, a kind of misery clause?

Food is important. As well as being vitally essential it is one of the last joys in life. Long after your dancing days are done (unless you are Cliff Richard) there is the joy of taste to comfort you - for those of us lucky to have food.

TV channels bring us wildly contrasting images - a plethora of cookery programmes, channel after channel, interspersed with haunting pictures of starving children. Huge brown eyes seeming to plead why not you, you in the shelter of your warm dry home, you with full and plenty, why me? And there are no answers.

Two teabags. And what you may wonder are two teabags doing in the middle of all this. Simple, and yet complicated. I have just been to the kitchen and taken out tea bags and left them ready beside the teapot. Why is that important, couldn’t it wait until morning? It could - but it would be too much to do in the morning. Even that little task. In a typical bout of depression anything that will help me face the morning, make it more bearable is worth doing.

Right now half of my mind is on what I’m writing. The rest is on the TV where Brendan O'Connor is discussing depression with two handsome healthy young men who look like they shouldn’t have a care in the world. But they have. Both are dealing with chronic depression. They have long, long lives ahead of them. That makes it harder. Tell someone, they said. It is important to tell someone.

And now I’ve told you.

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