The zombie in me trying to get out

We must all have heard of the saying " burning the candle at both ends " well this weekend I took that phrase quite literally. We had been out to dinner with friends in the small canal town of Stone on the Saturday night and things went so well that we were still there at around 2am on Sunday morning, and the punchline was that I had to get up early on Sunday morning to head up to Merseyside for a seminar with the Utility Warehouse which started at 09:30 so as we arrived back at our house around 3am it literally gave me 3 hours of sleep before I was up again planning another trip. By 7am I was beginning to look like a product of a George A Romero horror show, complete with pale and flaky complexion. I felt that I just needed to bite someone on the neck to get into full character and I was lurching round the house in a rather somewhat nonchalant and non directional manner. If there had been any warm blooded human in my radar at that point then I'm afraid it would have been " dinner time ". My wife, thankfully for her was peacefully sleeping upstairs, I knew this from the periodical snoring that was coming from the bedroom. Even zombies have their limitations don't they ? During the journey I seemed to be driving like Morgan Freedman in the film "Driving Miss Daisy" slow and ponderous to the degree. By the time I had gone through the workshop and the social period at lunchtime, I had even lost the will to be a zombie and felt like one of the " undead " instead. When the day finished at 3pm I headed back to the car and surprisingly crashed out in the front seat for 2 hours before I was even stable enough to take the wheel for the trip home. Ah these are the days you remember, when quite frankly at the time, you just wish that the day would be forgotten. What a strange perception of a very unusual weekend but it just shows that I do need further training in maintaining stamina throughout the day, over to my dear wife for inspiration......ah unfortunate, the snoring from the bedroom remains strong and unlikely to cease anytime soon !!!!!! 

Summer foods and Sunday teas

During this spell of good weather in early June, my mind goes back to those days when Sunday roasts and afternoon teas were much part of the weekly routine as strawberries and cream on a sun tanned day in July whilst watching Wimbledon. The family meal of the week was a much anticipated event for me as a young teenager, I was, after all, an unrepentant glutton in those days, the days when I welcomed mayonnaise into my regimen and realised the significance of prunes in a healthy typed diet. In the summer months it was , of course, much hotter and therefore less need for stuffing my face with carbohydrates of every description, but the one thing I do remember was the inordinate supply of quiches and pastries, the start of my rather unhealthy desire for such foods and then buffet food came into the picture and the varying different meats and cold cuts of so many unusual products became a fascination for me. No wonder in later years my middle aged spread became more middle aged than I had hoped for or expected. It taught me one thing though, that having some discipline even with something as great as food promoted a better lifestyle and more ability to become immune to less frightening illnesses and complaints. It was a sobering thought, and one that I could identify with, much later on in my life.
     You only realise how deadly food can be when you see what people put in their mouths regularly. It also made me realise in a strange way that eating plenty of yummy buffet food in the summer months can be as deadly as eating far too many fish and chips, kebabs and takeaway foods to wile away the winter months in front of a box!! Strange how at the time, we never think in those terms, only to regret it later in our lives when we pay for our profligacy and stupidity in a much greater way from a health point of view.

Home birds

In many ways, I am a home bird, I love to wander around the house in a truly slovenly way without worrying about ceremony and protocol and Sunday fits that bill to a tee. I often allow myself the luxury of lying in until a far later time than usual before tumbling downstairs( not literally) to lurch into a more in depth breakfast and sometimes a chance to look at the Sunday papers, a habit I have got out of of late but it stills has a quiet fascination for me, more so than just getting the news I want on the internet, that global machine that pervades our every minute of our lives nowadays. Don't get me wrong, the internet is an amazing tool that can help us in so many ways however the simpler pleasures of just sitting down turning pages of a broadsheet and drinking tea whilst listening to the solitude of it all can at times be really efficacious in an otherwise ruthless, ever noisy world of ebb and flow. Deadlines to make, people to see, socialising to do, but on Sunday it is different and the reasons are so much more relevant to recharge and realise that your body and you are more in tune than any other day of the week. For me, the day of rest is just that, and a home should be a haven for you to develop some quality time for tranquillity and serenity in the ever growing world in which we all live. Take heart from the peace and quiet afforded to you by the basic tenet of reading a newspaper calmly and without stressors whilst helping your body recover from the ravages of the week just gone. Ah bliss....!!!

The World Cup 2010

As the impending competition hurtles inexorably toward us, my thoughts turn to weekends and the whole concept of peace on those days. Don't get me wrong, I love football as much as the next man however on a day which used to be one of the sabbath, it does seem rather churlish to puncture the quiet and solitude of a bright summer's day with the noise from tooting car horns and St George's flags unfurling and billowing in the gentle breezes off the roofs of cars driving around . Now some may say that I am a killjoy and am not patriotic, well there is a semblance of truth in that statement however I may say that to me, and it is only a personal reflection on life that Sundays always used to be special, a time for families and a time for reflection after a very busy week at work. I could never ever understand this mentality for patriotism, after all we all live on clods of earth, just different clods around the globe. How does someone get so worked up over a clod of earth, and quite frankly I prefer a good roast lunch on a Sunday with a decent bottle of wine and good conversation before I consider watching football. Society has changed over the last 50 years and in many respects I have to accept that, however reflecting back to the days when families could get round a table and engage in witty and verbal social intercourse during a social occasion like a family meal, I wonder whether we are now missing out on something beautiful and in many cases far more valuable than the high pressured, power crazed sresses of the current day. Ah well.....memories !!! no one can take those away can they ?

Quiet and relaxing

Weekends are always the time of the week that you can let your hair down, the time to be cool, relaxed and quiet. As the birds sing in the gardens and trees and the gentle breezes of the summer ripple through the landscape, you think to yourself, what an idyllic scenario, just think about it--No cars, little noise, and all you can hear is the sound of the wildlife and the flora. The thought of all those regular lifetime features like personal computers, televisions and shopping at one of the big supermarkets is almost abhorrent on such a beautiful day of the week. Sometimes it just takes motivation to do something different on the rest day. Ah well-- back to the garden and the gin and tonic getting pleasantly more and more relaxed until I'm past caring......