Dear reader, are you old, like Lois and me? Is your memory not what it used to be?
Well, here's a bit of tip from me. Get a mattress with memory foam - it remembers things that go on in the night that Lois and me have forgotten about by the time we get up, if we ever knew them in the first place, that is!
Things like which side we lie on, how often we change sides, how often we toss and turn, or roll over, or kick each other, how often we fall out or get pushed out, how often there's a bit of a tussle for the duvet, how often we find ourselves with our feet at the pillow end - all that kind of malarkey: the only problem is that the mattress can't tell us in the morning - it tends to be pretty tight-lipped, but I think scientists are working on that, so watch this space!!!!
A simple printout on our desks by 9 am - is that too much to ask haha!!!!
Well, today we take delivery of another "memory foam" product (see picture above), a mattress topper for our guest bed, the one in which our daughter Sarah sleeps when she comes to stay with us at weekends.
Lois and I aren't sure what it is that sometimes keeps our accountant daughter Sarah awake at night when she comes to stay with us at weekends - it could be toner cartridge issues at her office, or maybe something completely different, we're not sure.
Just to be on the safe side, we know that the single bed she sleeps on isn't the best quality - it's been putting up various guests of ours for a decade or two. We don't want to buy a new mattress or a new bed - call us "skinflints" if you like! Instead we're going to try the "cheapo" option of a mattress topper with memory foam. It arrived earlier today from Panda of London, and Lois and I try it out this afternoon for our nap, and it seems good to us, so fingers crossed !!!!!
And meanwhile we make a resolution to calm Sarah down about any possible cartridge toner issues at her office. After all her manager Ken Browning is worrying about that, that's what he gets paid that obscenely high salary for, isn't it - the story was even in the local Onion News for Worcestershire. Did you see the article? You must have done. It was the lead story just a couple of days ago - remember?
16:00 Oh dear - this is when we make our first mistake of the day - we order a shed, not realising that by doing this we are simply accelerating the growing "climate change" crisis that everybody's talking about, and that we are literally helping to "destroy the planet".
Yikes !!!
some typical "climate change" worries
With hindsight I can see that Lois and I are not in most lucid frame of mind when we decide to order the shed. It happens too soon, maybe, after we roll off Sarah's bed after our nap - in case you're interested, we'll interrogate the mattress-topper later about how the nap went: all data are stored, even though they are not "retrievable" for the moment.
So the order for the shed goes in when we're still feeling a bit "dazed", and not thinking clearly about the future of our planet. Forgive us????
The facts are: Lois and I downsized to this new-build house in Malvern 14 months ago, but our tiny back garden is still looking "unfinished" to put it mildly. We've had a patio and a garden path put in but we haven't got round to ordering a shed - till now. Lois is gagging to start her vegetable growing this year.
And the lovely Emma at D&M Sheds of Evesham has promised that our shed will be delivered in about 3 to 4 weeks or so, which is exciting. Who doesn't thrill to the sound of a shed being put together!
the current "half-finished" state of our tiny back garden
I think you can probably guess from the above photo where we plan to put our 6ft by 4ft shed, when it arrives, can't you. Yes, you've guessed it, at the end of the path in the bottom right-hand corner of our so-called "garden", just past the raised beds - not exactly rocket science is it. After all, there's not going to be much point in our path, unless it leads to something. Do you get my drift?
Then the bombshell news comes in, in the form of an email from Steve, our American brother-in-law, quoting a report in the Guardian.
Lois and I have our doubts about this story, which is based on a new study from the US. After all, people make paths and set up sheds for all sorts of reasons, not just for veg-growing. Are they saying we shouldn't build houses either, and all live in tents or caves instead?
And anyway our raised beds are made from old railway sleepers, so that's okay. Plus it makes us healthier to eat our own fruit and veg, so we don't make as many trips to doctors and hospitals - have the study-authors thought of that? I think we should be told, don't you?
"Pardon us for living", is Lois's comment - and I agree with her.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
19:45 Lois disappears into the kitchen to take part in her church's weekly Bible Seminar on zoom. When she emerges from the session we wind down for bed with the second programme in the wittily-title Channel 4 series, "Around the World in Eighty Weighs".
A group of 6 overweight Brits who have failed in their attempts to lose weight in the UK, are being taken on a world tour at Channel 4's expense, experiencing different cultures and cuisines to see if this can give them the motivation to lose a few pounds.
Last week our 6 overweight Brits were in Japan - a land of smallish, slim people with a healthy diet, and after a combination of Japanese food and and an exercise programme the Brits managed to lose collectively 2 and a half stone (35lbs or 16 kg), so about 6 lbs each.
This week they're on the Pacific island of Tonga, a land of "fatties". Over 90% of Tongans are overweight, they're the third heaviest people in the world, according to the programme. Our 6 Brit fatties immediately feel at home. In Japan everybody was staring at them, whereas here they can see that they're just like everybody else, just "one of the crowd".
Tongans certainly eat the wrong sort of food and they eat a lot of it,
They also they have a lot of sex, but not enough, apparently - it burns off only 3.6 calories a minute, and the Tongans don't do it long enough or often enough to outweigh the vast amounts of unhealthy food that they eat. For calorie-burning sex, however, a minimum standard of fitness is required, and one of our Brit couples, Russ and Marisa, decide to pass on that recommendation, and just have a nice sit-down instead.
Oh dear! Still, losing one calorie is still something, isn't it, a "step in the right direction. It's "better than a slap in the face", as people say. I didn't realise that Lois and I were losing the odd calorie ourselves, when we're just sitting here watching TV, which is encouraging, to put it mildly.
The tragedy of it all is that centuries ago Tongans had a really healthy diet, living off the things that grow there, or swim there - the fish in their waters are a great dietary component, for example.
Unfortunately, it was discovered apparently about 50 years ago, that the country could make more money exporting all these healthy local products. After that the Tongans themselves were reduced to eating a lot of cheap unhealthy food that the Government imported in from countries like New Zealand.
The Brits' host tonight on Tonga is a woman called Winnie, who herself weighs 47 stone (660lbs or 300kg) - can that be right? And Winnie explains how, because of their unhealthy diet, Tongans are very susceptible to disease and death - and unfortunately they make this worse by their tendency to avoid doctors and hospitals..
Winnie is just as bad as her fellow Tongans in this respect, and although she takes our 6 Brits on a trip to visit a local hospital, she herself can't bring herself to step inside, and says "I'll see you when you come out". What madness !!!!
At the hospital they hear about some horrific cases - Tongans who fall victim to terrible diabetes, so that the slightest cut or blister can lead to death, or at the very least, to legs and arms having to be amputated. Life expectancy is pretty low, at just 67 years,
This week's strategy by Channel 4 is to try to frighten the 6 Brit "fatties" by this visit to the hospital, and then expose them to typical Tongan family feasts, including a whole roast pig, and challenging them to exercise self-control, so that they don't end up in hospital like the other poor victims.
It must be working to an extent, and I think the visit to the local hospital has motivated them, because they manage to resist having too much of the "family feast", and just have modest amounts.
And at the group weigh-in at the end of the week, the six Brits discover that collectively they've lost another 3 stone or a little bit more (44lbs or 20 kg).
Result !!!!!
the group weigh-in at the end of their week on Tonga
- they discover they've lost about 44 lbs
In the next programme in the series the 6 overweight Brits will be travelling to Texas, where I imagine the problem will be different - for the weak-willed, too easy access to unhealthy takeaway food maybe? Well, we'll see.
Lois comments how little choice the ordinary Tongans have. It's not their fault that the country exports all their healthy local foodstuffs, fish included, and imports cheap rubbish from Western countries like New Zealand. She points to Scotland where a lot of high quality local produce and all the salmon caught locally is sold to London and the better-off regions of Britain and abroad, leaving the ordinary Scot to subsist on cheap junk food and assorted other "rubbish".
a recent Scottish Government health survey from 2020
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzz!!!!!
