Trip
I’ve been on another trip with students, and I’ve come back much more settled, and looking forward to my move to new accomodation. I’ve been jokey with M____ again, playing around, and she has sensed that I am looking forward to the move. This could perhaps be taken as proof conclusive of how I am sensitive to changes in my routine.
By and large I was ok there. I took a lot of food with me and for the first time really anticipated the difficulties I would have with food and compliance to my diet. After all, I am away a lot, and came to feel that I was using trips and birthdays and celebrations and the like as excuses for non-compliance. Especially a problem, I am coming to see, was that I was using non-compliance in one often less avoidable sense as an excuse for non-compliance elsewhere, particularly with smoking and caffeine: I am tired from not sleeping from eating cheese and drinking beer, so I need nicotine or caffeine to perk myself up. This despite having proved this logic flawed again and again.
I did have a little caffeine over there, but not as much as I have elsewhere. I had batter with fish, and black pudding which contained oats and wheat flour. And I had flapjacks most days. But otherwise I did better than I often do, and didn’t feel myself drifting off quite so much as I have in the past.
I have been back a couple of days now and I have fallen into the old rationalisations. Yesterday I had a decaf coffee, telling myself I fancied the taste. I had it with sugar, because I had sugar a couple of times in Wales and didn’t feel any real ill-effects (before I have noticed that the effects of sugar are cumulative). I then had another, unconsciously (as I admitted to myself once or twice before repressing it) wanting the caffeine. This morning I woke very tired, as I tend to do once this caffeine vicious spiral has taken off, and eventualy succumbed to a full-strength coffee with sugar. Soon after (and no less tired) I began to feel that I was drifting while reading Bleak House, I can’t recall the reveries, but they were there.
I have wondered whether I should ditch the idea of full food diaries and simply record days of compliance. Ie. caffeine - 3 days, gluten 4, dairy, 7, beer 3, spirits 5, nicotine 24. This would then simplify the record and all slips would be regarded as such with neither decaf coffee nor flapjacks regarded as somehow borderline cases. It would also help me in interpreting the evidence since I rarely/never look over old diaries and am only able, therefore, to interpret a single day’s reactions. I am sure there could be a good calculation too to record the resultant mood and concentration, perhaps involving the day’s results plus some fraction of the preceeding days. Some months ago I became possessed with the idea of trying to input into Microsoft [reveries of playing guitar for everyone at work, triggered by Blind Melon’s No Rain, but continuing from regular soundchecking reverie] Excel. I couldn’t manage it, and it became just one of the many hundreds of structures I have attempted to impose on my life that have fallen by the wayside, along with the transparencies I was hoping to draw graphs and pictagrams on and all the rest of it. This blog is the most successful so far!
One thing I noticed from Wales was that the sores in the corners of my mouth completely cleared up.
But I’m still rather out of it. I’ve just been reading an interesting article on M.E. and food intolerance http://www.ldmeg.org.uk/jb/food.htm which I found after looking up caffeine intolerance, wondering how much of my problems may stem from this. I intend to follow the writer’s advice regarding sprouted seeds, indeed I’ve just ordered a book she suggests, The Sprouters Handbook by Edward Cairney from E-Bay and I may go and buy a couple of things in a health food shop later when I’ll be dragged to Mardy Hell by M____. Now though, I think I should go and write an article in my other blog that I’ve been meaning o write for a while.
Oh, one piece of news: I have decided to go for a position at work which I’m led to believe would involve cooking with students.
