I've Got Insomnia or Was I Dreaming It ?

I cant sleep. That’s why I’m writing this rubbish at 3am when I should be tucked up in bed with the dog snoring. Sorry….I don’t mean my darling wife. Shadow likes company at night so sleeps on the floor at the bottom of the bed….but he does snore !

Anyway, I’m in a horrible, debilitating, downward spiral at the moment. I have to go to bed at 10pm because I’m knackered, sorry, tired. I fall asleep immediately (which is a good thing) but then I wake up at 2.30am bright-eyed and bushy tailed. The next night I have to go to bed at 10pm cause I’m knackered and so it goes on.

The last time this happened I was stressed up to the eyeballs. I had a meaningful job which had its own stressful moments (like - would the clients leave early enough so we could get to the pub before 6pm), my swimming pool was leaking and I knew it would cost thousands to fix it and I’d run out of money for the new house and had to keep slowing the builders down until I’d raised the cash to pay them – this is why it took 5 years to build !

I’m sure this diet thing the family are on also does not help. How can one possibly sleep when one’s body is crying out for food in the middle of the night ? Even Shadow is complaining about the noises my stomach is making. I’ve also come to the conclusion that a couple of glasses of the old vino at night helps. It was probably no coincidence that when the wheels fell off my wagon the other night (I’m on the wagon – get it ?) when Tan came round and we did our bit for recycling by emptying a few bottles, that I slept like a baby. I don’t and wont take pills to help me sleep – sleep is not my problem. It’s the timing and the duration which is the issue.

Like I’m doing now, I look at the clock in my office and think will I get back to the land of nod by 4am ? Will I be a grumpy old bugger again this morning killing wasps for the fun of it and slamming the cats’ tails in the doors ? Or will I take Tan’s advice and read the Guardian on-line. That’ll fix the problem !

Obesity – Eliminated at a Stroke

I should really patent this posting or copyright it or whatever it is you do to protect a brilliant idea but in a sharing, magnanimous gesture, feel free to use it, spread the word and make the world a better, thinner place. People would eat less food, we could then export more or give it away to starving nations. I would then get the Nobel Prize for something or other, write loads of books on it and be feted everywhere I went for saving the world. I would attend dinners worldwide as a guest speaker and pile the kilos back on after losing a shedload through my startling new discovery.

So what is this brilliant method of losing weight ? First a short intro.

I wouldn’t say I was fat but I have put on quite a bit of weight since I retired last year. I’ve tried to work out why, as I don’t eat any more than I did before and if anything, I drink less alcohol (BT drives you to drink !). I suspect, although I didn’t know it at the time, that I actually did quite a bit of walking in and to and from the office, climbing stairs, running to the pub at 5pm and….. I don’t do any of this at home. Yes – we live in a beautiful area for walking but walking is boring – I much preferto tear around on my scooter. If I ran to the pub here I’d be dead – it’s 3 miles away. I reckon my body is just changing. From a Michelangelo David sort of shape to a fat git sort of shape as shown in the pictures above.

Now I have to say that my beautiful bride has also put on a little bit of weight but I put that down to her euphoric state of finally, after years of chasing, getting her man and celebrating with a few chocolate bars. You know women – they eat when they’re sad and they eat when they’re happy – they just eat. They’re all on that seafood diet – they see food and they eat it !

So – the family are on a regime as we call it in France, but after 1 week and actually losing 2 lbs on the first day, I have become bored with it. Why is it that all low calorie foods taste like wet cardboard ? Even the pictures from the Weight watcher’s web site (which is now our internet home page - how sad is that) are misleading. Ok, there’s lots of nice colours but when it’s on the plate and you’re shovelling it into your mouth, it just tastes like a shredded duvet with some colourful sautéed curtain material thrown in for interest. Lettuce might be good for you but it’s the most boring food on the planet. Couscous might also be good for you but if I want to eat sawdust I’ll go to the wood mill and sit below the circular saw with my mouth open.

The secret. It’s soooo simple. All we need is some brilliant scientists to ……. make lettuce taste like sausages and make sausages taste like lettuce and let each food keep its own calories. Then fat people like me can stuff their faces with lettuce and it will taste delicious and I wont pile on the kilos. People who love sausages, to the detriment of their shape will find them boring and will change to lettuce and get thin. Get them to make pizzas taste like natural yoghurt and vice versa. Get water to taste like a really good Chablis and vice versa. Get baked beans to taste like couscous and vice versa. Get deep fried Mars bars to swap flavours with bananas.

Show me someone eating sausages, chips and beans and I’ll show you a happy, joyful person. Show me somebody on a diet eating that low-calorie stuff and I’ll show you a miserable git.

Award for a Job Well Done – Canyoning !

People often ask me to go canyoning but I refuse – here’s why.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to win a BT award. The award was actually the icing on the cake because all that year I’d worked in Paris, staying in a great hotel and eating wonderful food in restaurants all over that beautiful city. This annual award is a trip for you and your partner to some exotic place in the world with no expense spared. Previous trips had taken in Bali, a Kenyan safari, Las Vegas, San Francisco, so we eagerly awaited details of our trip.

A few days later the envelope arrived and I ripped it open to discover that we were going on a cruise……………… round Nice, Monte Carlo and Cannes ! Talk about a busman’s holiday ! Our disappointment was tempered by the fact that BT had chartered a huge yacht for the 24 BT award winners, their partners and corporate hangers on and the accompanying blurb made the yacht sound fantastic.

As I already lived in the area where the trip was to be based I advised BT not to make any travel arrangements for me or J and that we’d make our own way to Monaco having heard that people were to be bussed from Nice airport to the ship. I thought I’d be a bit flash and arranged for J and myself to travel there by helicopter at my own expense, only to find that everybody was ferried to Monaco by helicopter – BT was keeping that bit a secret !

On board, the yacht was terrific. Just big enough but not too big, and once I’d looked at the itinerary which comprised Nice, Cannes and Portofino I decided that I’d just spend all my time on board having a great time …..at the free bar ! The first night I stayed there until about 2am and retired to my cabin absolutely (ship) wrecked. J was already asleep and I was in a coma before you could say, ‘another G&T please’. After what seemed like minutes there was a loud banging on the cabin door. It was 8am and the organisers, whom I knew from other trips, wanted me to show the coach driver how to get to Pont du Loup and the stretch of the river Loup where they do canyoning. I protested but it did no good. There was a senior BT exec on board who wanted to go canyoning and I was the local – I knew where to go. As it happened, the coach driver knew exactly where to go, it was a ruse to fill the last place on the trip and as I was local they thought I could act as an unofficial tour guide. No chance. As soon as we were on the coach I was asleep.

It only took an hour to get to the river where we were all presented with wet suits. Now I always thought wet suits were called that because you could get wet in them – stupid – it’s because the last person to wear it has peed in it which is what you do to keep warm in the water ! That’s why it’s always wet inside - yuck ! Anyway, trying to get a wet suit on at the best of times is difficult. You should try it when you’re still drunk from the night before. Eventually with some help I got it on and we set off for the river. Down a steep, dangerous track, along some slippery rocks, over some dead trees and we were there – the first waterfall.

Now if anybody out there wants a cure for a hangover – here it is. Put on a peed-in wetsuit and then throw yourself off a waterfall into an absolutely freezing 15 foot deep pool, which, given that it was October meant the water must have been about 5 degrees. A strange sense of euphoria swept over my alcohol soaked body as I debated whether just to drown or float back to the surface. Needless to say, I floated back up where another 12 waterfalls awaited me.

That night as I regaled my ship-mates with my near-death experience I vowed never to do it again. Below is the web-site of the Canyoning company in case anybody reading this wants to try my hangover cure.

http://www.descente-canyon.com/canyoning/canyon-photo/2932/photographie.html

Here is the web-site for SeaDream II, the yacht BT chartered for us. And don’t say ‘no wonder BT’s charges are so high’ !!

http://www.seadreamyachtclub.com/about_us.htm