Unfortunately too many people in this land, and in these times, will be able to remember going without food for a day. Few of us would wish to miss even a single meal.
After just a few hours, your stomach rumbles and begins to ache around its emptiness. While ravenous, it becomes hard to think of anything else, except feasting.
Through the day your energy runs lower and lower and you can do less and less. Eventually you hit the ground and must sit, lie down and sleep.
Now imagine doing that all over again the next day too. Then imagine going without food for a week. Then two. Then three.
John Bryden, the chairman of Lochailort charity Kirsty’s Kids, is going into his fourth week of hunger strike.
We have been following his and his family’s story. You can read it on page one of last week’s paper and on page one this week too. Whether you agree with John’s cause or not, he could not believe in it more.
How desperate must someone get to go on hunger strike? How powerless must they feel, after other avenues are exhausted, to opt for this ordeal?
How long can a human endure it? How long can both sides hold out? How and when will it resolve? We do not yet know.
But we do know this cannot continue for much longer. Something has to give.