25 September 1997
My dear folks,
Me & Mave are striding the straight & narrow, me trying to undo the effects of a festive week in Portugal, Mave needing to do something about a lifetime of good living. (Yes I know that’s shitty grammar; but if the “from my wife and I” school can get away with it, why not “me”?) The fat feline had no sooner guzzled his ration of breakfast biscuits than he came to complain about the meagreness of the portion. Having made no progress on that score, he started calling for supper mid p.m. I compromised by feeding him an hour earlier than usual but rather less than he’d have liked. I tell him that between us we’ll crack it but he is of the “fat cats are beautiful” persuasion & a very unwilling participant in any dietary regime.
The government has declared that eating too much meat & too little fruit/veggies is a cause of cancer & has urged the nation to cut back on the former (not more than 3 ounces a day) & consume more of the latter. Jones already knew this. The minister concerned made the point that meat is highly nutritious & that the government is not recommending that people stop eating it, just that they limit their consumption. The meat industry, already decimated by the impact of BSE, is horrified at this further blow. Its outraged spokesmen have denied any links with cancer, pointing out that meat has been an essential part of the human diet since Adam sat down with Eve to the first barbecue in the Garden of Eden.
Whether Adam was a meat-eater is moot. I guess Adam himself was a bit moot. I have been wondering whether Adam was Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal or “one of us”! I may discover this tonight when BBC 2 is airing a documentary programme that apparently points to human evolution originating in Asia rather than Africa. (Some scientist has done a calculation of how long it took Noah to get all the earth’s species on board the ark; allowing 10” per couple, he reckoned some 20 months!)
I have had a purposeful day, managing to complete half a dozen long overdue tasks. So I have a heightened sense of virtue. The front-door buzzer works again, the blighted creeper has been sprayed, the painter has been paid, the ironing ironed, Mavis’s pooh-box has been renewed, numerous letters have been writ, faxes & emails despatched & phone calls made. (Another half-abandoned snail-mail correspondent has just joined the email fraternity, bringing joy to my heart! By the way, I have discovered how to avoid getting email addresses all over the page when one despatches the same letter to numerous correspondents: by putting just one addressee in the “To” line & the rest in the BCC line [blind carbon copy].)
Mid-p.m. I took an hour off to raid the health & fruit shops, returning with supplies sufficient to sustain me over the next 3 days of night shifts (so to speak). The sun came out & I treated myself to two cups of cappuccino at a pavement cafĂ© while I perused The Independent. My irritable throat has been going away after the briefest of flings. Fingers crossed! My last such episode was even briefer, amounting to several hours of sore throat followed by two loud sneezes. End of story. As a long- time sufferer of persistent colds that go through interminable sore throat, runny nose, & congested chest phases, I’m pleasantly puzzled. Can I be getting healthier? It’s hard to know. Certainly, the people of Indonesia and Malaysia are not getting healthier. We’ve been carrying endless packages about the lethal effects of the smog now blanketing the region – terrifying story, arising from a combination of El Nino & human abuses. I give thanks for present mercies.
Blessings
T
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