The emotions in question right now are those engendered by what has so far been a cack-handed performance by Scotland against Italy. I turned Radio 5 off in the car just after kick-off, sickened by all the “rain in their faces, cold air on their skin” comments from the BBC team. A pity: the Italian goal in the second minute must have shut them up quite superbly.
Well? Can it transform your emotions?
Thus far, two days out of five and three away from my trip to the White Bear… almost embarrassingly so, yes. But with side-effects.
The first impact came shortly after lunchtime on day one. I was halfway through the miserable, soul-destroying journey to my Surrey clinic, when I suddenly began to feel much better, without any particular reason for doing so. The daylight – grey from the wash these days – brightened, my vision sharpened. The latter was only so much of a good thing. My eyes have felt as if they’re trying to focus for a couple of days now, and it’s giving me a headache.
In an obscure way, things have begun to feel that bit more possible. I’m coming into this brief experiment on the back of a benighted year in which little has gone right and much disastrously wrong, and this is a welcome shift. It doesn’t have to be much to dispel a considerable amount of gloom.
Later that afternoon, I fell abruptly asleep in my office in an interval between clients. I am feeling alternately energetic and in-a-good-way sleepy. I fell asleep again today, but around that put in what might be my best day’s work for a year.
I’ve been feeling damned hungry before dinner, but that is really down to dinner having been very late (10.45, owing to work commitments), not any imbalance in what I’m eating.
I was up extremely early this morning, but despite a disturbed night, felt extremely refreshed. I’m curious as to how tomorrow morning will feel.
So far, my feelings are that I’d recommend some parts of the regime and not others. A breakfast of fruit in yoghurt and honey with some nuts tossed on top is no time to prepare, delicious, and there is the whole world of fruit and yoghurt flavours to play with to keep things varied. My family have had the same two slices of toast and coffee for breakfast for half a century. All that’s ever changed is the spread (1991, from St Ivel Gold to Anchor Spreadable..)
At this time of year, salad for lunch is fine for five days. I work with people who have the same Boots sandwich for lunch as they have had for five years, ever since they stopped making Chicken Tikka .. But over a longer period, I’d think about taking other routes to the same destination. Proper vegetable soup with home-made bread; Italian ways with roast vegetables and pasta; stews and salsas.
My gut instinct is to have the evening meal as the diet-free zone, a time, as I mentioned in the first post, for conversation, wine, flavour and warmth, life rather than attempts at life. But my steamed vegetables will be OK for five days.
Still 1-0. I think Britain will be sitting out Euro 2008, don’t you? But if it stays that way at Hampden, I hope the press and fans will remember a truly brave effort in an horrendous group. I know I will, and I’ll remember the delighted disbelief after victory in Paris. Happiness from quite unexpected places..
UPDATE: Israel appear to be winning. That’s really rather cruel of them, don’t you think?
UPDATE 2: Good for Scotland. Although it looks like defeat, it’s the right kind.