The phone call came during Coronation Street. I depressed the Pause button on MySky and wondered what manner of human could possibly ring at such a sacrosanct time.
It was John from The Chaps.
We were wondering, said John from The Chaps, if you would write the liner notes for our new CD.
Of course, I responded brightly, I would love to.
We will pay you a fee, said John.
No need, I replied.
Well, we will give you something, said John.
Pavlova, I replied - give me pavlova.
I wasn't joking.
I have been dangerously obsessed with pavlova for five decades.
I think it would be fair to say I am the only Type One Diabetic in the entire world for whom the wretchedly sugar-sodden pavlova is a favourite food.
And it has often intrigued me how I have arrived at this point, how I have maintained a wild-eyed, lung-pumping lust for pavlova through assiduously learning not only about diabetes, but merely of right foods.
How is it possible a rational man of my age with three-quarters of a university arts degree can eat a large size Cowells pavlova from New World in six hours? It would be convenient to blame all this on the recreational drug abuse that reduced so many of us to mouth-frothing aphasics in the 1970s, that period when the Chinese Nobel medicine prize-winning scientist Hung Wri discovered Munchies, an intestinal disorder which accrued from severe marijuana abuse.
I frequently fell foul of a mid-sized creamed pavlova from the Cowells Coffee Shop in St Andrew St, and these would be devoured in one sitting, often without breathing.
But I think the seeds of the pavlova obsession were sown much earlier, during a savage, sugarless upbringing for which I am still paying the price.
I have a psychotherapist friend in Wellington who believes our life is a succession of cycles and bonds which must be successfully met for us to develop properly.
Working with the severely dysfunctional, she takes each patient right back until she finds the broken bond, the unfulfilled cycle.
She repairs that, or tries to, so behavioural improvement can begin.
I had an effectively sugarless cycle in the normally sugar-filled years of 5 to 15, initially through my mother's abhorrence of unworthy food, which was everything from white bread to toothpaste, and then, from the age of 12, when the diagnosis of Type One Diabetes made me believe that if I tasted sugar in any form I would die a horrible death, horns sprouting from my head as I did so.
Around 15, I realized I could sneak the odd ice cream and not fall into a coma, and by adulthood, I had worked out empirical medical formulae involving high exercise and extra insulin injections which could absorb massive sugar hits and maintain satisfactory blood sugar levels.
And from then on, I began living the 5 to 15 year cycle I had so tragically missed out on.
I am still locked irreparably into this reprehensible thing.
It is probably important at this point to mention my gall bladder was removed at the age of 29.
I was in Wakari Hospital with a bevy of archetypal gall-bladder patients (the surgeon, slipping into technical talk, described them to me as fair, fat and 40) who expressed astonishment I was there.
You are young and thin and male, squawked one of the women, who had clearly been on cake since birth.
I could have told her about the pavlovas, but it just made more sense to look dismayed and open my palms.
I was very dishonest at 29.
The diabetic clinic at Dunedin Hospital might also have dismay and open palms when they read this, given that they have erected a catwalk down there for me to parade on as an example of all that is good and true in Type One Diabetes.
I will concede worthlessness.
I just love pavlova.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
