Unappetising schlop

I made myself the most unappetising schlop today. I came back a little wet having ridden to work. Motivating myself with the help of the fact my car insurance has run out. Rushed back to write, M____ working today and tomorrow. It may be that I have been writing a reasonable amount, contrary to my perception of things, because I got on to continue a story I began some time back while I was still reading a novel I heard about somehow which I find to be interesting, but very slow. Cooking was the last thing I wanted to be doing, and I haven’t been keeping up with my plan to write out things to buy which I would then stick to and cook.

Anyway, there wasn’t much in. Just sugar snap peas, some fish that Mum took out of the freezer - I had to come back to watch the house, as they’ll be out - onions, leek and polenta.

I cooked while listening to a Pimsleur Russian MP3. But I didn’t want to take much time out, and so I rushed it a little and didn’t grill the polenta for very long. I was hoping it might come out as a solid mass, but I schlopped out on me.

Still, the fish on onions and leek with a little garlic is quite nice.

Otherwise I lapsed and had a little bread today with the pork sweet and sour at work, and then came back and had oats with rice milk. I didn’t have much in and also I was reading today on the Sunderland autism Research Unit’s website that more research is needed in the case of oats, as to whether it does play a role or not.

I had perhaps three cups of green tea. I succumb when I’m on my own writing etc, as I was again today, doing my piece on nutrition.

It was two eggs in the morning.

No real reactions though so far, aside from being tired from last night’s bout of late night blogging after my slacking about watching TV.

When cooking I did recall to myself that I have been constantly using butter, and sometimes quite large amounts of it, whilst considering myself casein-free. So, again, there is a lapse I have no considered a lapse - you really do have to watch out for those little opt-outs you make for yourself. I ate my two eggs this morning with butter and salt.

Don’t know if I will have the discipline to consistently put images of meals etc, but here is the first image (though there might be some more backdated by the time anybody actually reads this thing). Oh, that reminds me [he says to himself], I had a little twinge of excitement the other day when I was asked to moderate a comment. Wow, I thought to myself, not only do I have a reader, but I may have an immoderate one! But no, it was some automatic link from a Jenson Button website that had picked up a mention of a bloke called Jenson in one of my posts.

I keep meaning to draw little doodles to scan into the blog, but I haven’t managed it yet. That is something else I hope to squeeze into my downtime, but we shall see.

Oh, and two mugs of decaff coffee, which were rationalised as helping me wake up, because two or more will be equal to one cup. I wouldn’t have allowed myself the one cup, because I really do not sleep after it, but there we have it creeping in.

Complacency and idleness - Tuesday 29th May, 2007

I had started to think that I had started this food diary at the wrong time, there being little or nothing to report since I am starting to get it right. I thought I might end up writing more articles and occasional pieces, and that this might indeed be a good thing, to free up my time to other pursuits. I figured I would need to write up a few of the old food diaries I had kept on computer and in my A5 notebook so that I might have more to report.

The last couple of days though, I have been so keen to write that cooking has slipped down the priorities list. I have been eating cereals and slipping up here and there.

I started the day today with the oatiflakes I had bought for Badger, the kitten I had borrowed last week. Someone had to eat then, and they were oats, after all, which as I have written, I rationalise to myself as being relatively harmless. I have been tucking into then now and again, and have finished the pack now. There’s a mental block which more or less keeps me off the corn flakes and certainly the crunchy nut variety, but which doesn’t stop me having these.

I couldn’t settle down to anything after work today. I got up in a good mood because it was quiet. Nobody was about except Badger and a few of the usual holiday folk. A couple of students with nothing much to do back home, or no homes to go to. But the site as a whole - and this is one of the ones I have been warming to - was peaceful and lent itself to barefoot wanders through the dew. I had been working all day on a bit of research into nutrition, a presentation in fact, for the management, and I had been enjoying it, because this one involved a little bit of maths and things I don’t normally get into, Excel and Powerpoint, stuff like that. But back home, when I drove back after a night away, was the usual frustration. M____ needed attention and I couldn’t get away to write. I have been feeling over the last few days that I’m not cut out for a relationship. That I need my space. That I need to make it clear that I don’t want children. I can’t have children. I would never be happy and would only pass on my bitterness to my kids. I have been feeling trapped. And I would only feel more trapped living in a house - I love so much sometimes to be somewhere constantly moving, even with, or maybe even because of, all the hassle we get from the police and the authorities despite our government funding, but then also going back home to live with my folks and be cared for while I carry on with my work - and the idea of living in a house and doing all the cooking, and the cleaning and the shopping that entails disturbs me. I am almost certain I won’t be able to cope with that and keep up the relationship.

I tried several times to  get away and write but the real world kept on coming to intervene, whether it be M____ or cooking or Dad telling me I would have to renew my car insurance! I couldn’t get anything done.

Finally, at around ten M____ went up to bed. I made a hot water bottle for her and took it up, taking my magnesium before coming down to clutch at my A4 notebook with the newspaper column I have been writing as part of my novel. Only I couldn’t focus. I had ideas but I could only watch a documentary on an attempted  reunion of East 17.

The documentary to be fair was interesting, part Spinal Tap and part fascinating study on these working class lads thrown into this world and then dropped again, but normally I am not tempted by such things. I wasn’t tired. Normally I would work. I started, ironically, trying to remember the word, refering to a place in Ancient Greece, that Tolstoy used to describe periods of his life he considered to be characterised by torpidity and insidious ease. And then I saw these lads in backstreet clubs landing parking tickets and thought of how I could not live with mediocrity. I have to make my mark, and for that I cannot afford such moments of indecision and laziness. I have to be bold, take the time of work, not forever drift on into a settled life I could never escape from.

Then I felt the familiar tingle. The pins and needles of the head I feel sometimes. It used to be so familiar.

And I realise that there really is little option. The diet has done wonders for me, and I have to stick to it.

Morning: green tea x 3/4, oatiflakes and rice milk

lunch: beef chasseur, doubtless with wheaty gravy

snack: pear

dinner: salmon, broccoli, corn on the cob, carrots, onion and leek

US vogue for Bipolar diagnosis - draft

I haven’t had the chance to read the New Scientist for months now. It’s one of my favorite magazines, with The Ecologist, which I haven’t read for years since I cannot find it in any of my local newsagents. I have been trying to streamline my life and the projects I am working on, something that I find I am better able to do when I am eating well; I’ll never get anything finished if I am working on so many things at once and reading so many books at the same time. Unfortunately, science is sometimes the thing that gets left behind. I have so many books on science I have bought and not got round to reading, though it is something I always find fascinating. I am in danger of becoming ignorant on the subject despite a reasonably developed natural aptitude for it.

In any case, I picked one up a week or so ago. The main story was Climate Change, a guide for the perplexed. On opening it I found that the main editorial was called “Mania for Treatment,” about the apparent overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder in America.

Until a decade ago it was an exclusively adult disease whose diagnosis required serious symptoms, including hospitalisation for mania. Today in the US children as young as 3 are being diagnosed, often based on the observations of worried parents.

I happen to have read a lot about manic depression, or bipolar disorder as it is now more commonly known. In fact I spent much of my adult life preoccupied with the illness, believing myself to be manic depressive. Briefly at university I was on Lithium Carbonate, the preeminent treatment for the disease. The editorial, and the article which accompanied it reminded me of a documentary, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive which was first shown on the BBC anything up to a year ago. This was something I had been planning to write about for the blog, since it raised a number of issues, and so, armed now with additional material, I found it on YouTube and watched it again.

The documentary is one in which Fry talks about himself at times rather too much. This led to one psychiatrist, Oliver James, to speculate that his true diagnosis may not be manic depression at all, but narcissistic personality disorder.0 Whatever the truth of that it is clear that Fry is rather self-absorbed. While this might be understandable in one with such a terrible disease, Fry’s manic depression doesn’t quite seem Byronic, and so while he may be personable as a guide, there are times, when he is expressing his own reservations about treatments he has never himself yet felt the need for, for example, or when he is introducing us to one after the other of his famous friends who talk about their struggles with their moods, and with drink and drugs while simultaneously enjoying lifestyles most manic depressives would love to experience, that the viewer might prefer to have a more detached, pedestrian host. If I am to be honest, I felt little sympathy for Fry when he spoke to camera, leaning on the door of his Mercedes and talking about his depression. It’s not that I feel that wealth particularly keeps one insulated from mental pain, though to a degree it does, but rather perhaps that I find his manner unconvincing somehow, and I don’t see his depression. I can’t feel it.

I am currently working on a short story entitled Lithium Elysium, the latest version of an idea I have had for five years or more when I was facing whether to confront my demons and take Lithium. That was my medical quandary back then when I suffered from, or believed myself to suffer from bipolar disorder. The idea behind the story has stayed with me. My last such quandary was whether to take medication for what I now consider must be ADD with strong traits of Aspergers. Most recently, from September, I took a drug called Strattera, a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. I stopped for several reasons, not least because I felt it wasn’t doing much besides making me overwhelmingly tired at inconvenient times of the day. I suppose I also had wanted a stimulant. Indeed, a mere few days ago I was surfing the internet trying to buy Adderall without a prescription, buoyed on by the fact many writers, including W H Auden and Graham Greene (who was, incidentally, bipolar), have taken the similar benzedrine to write. My writing is so important to me that I would certainly use such a substance if it would help me finish a novel that could then help to manoevre me into a position in my life where I could write without it, eating healthily and having time for exercise and time to write and give time to my loved ones.

            I gave up Strattera, as I gave up Lithium, without consultation, because I wanted further to pursue an area, food, that I believed my psychiatrist had insuficiently taken into account – he had as good as summarily dismissed my arguments for the first few consultations, essentially denying that anything other than MSG, food colours and Aspartame could affect behaviour. I could not pursue my diet and continue to observe any reactions I had from food in the food diary I was only beginning to consistently take, if I could not exclude the effect of the drug from my observations. I also believed that he was prescribing the drug in part because it could be used for both bipolar disorder and ADD, he was keeping his options open, whereas I had been coming to the conclusion that I had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, or that the diagnosis no longer applied. I did not think it was the right drug for me. I had not stocked up on the drug before going away to Prague, and so there ran out. Afterwards, because the severe lulls that came with the drug, the drowsy periods I had experienced, were associated with the first few times I took it, and the time I began to take it again having run out the first time, and because such lulls might severely affect me in my job in which I found I had to be ‘on the ball’ at all times, I did not start back on the drug but really made a push to exclude gluten for good. And lastly, the drugs contains artificial colours! I thought that was a sign of the exact lack of joined-up-thinking that characterised my doctor’s denial of the link between food and behaviour.

            Strattera contains several additives to provide the tablet’s colours. These are:

E172, which is “Toxic at ‘high doses’, and banned in Germany” (http://www.ukfoodguide.net/e172.htm)

E171, similarly defined.

E132 or FD&C Blue 2 which is “Best avoided by people with allergy reactions as it can cause skin sensitivity, a rash similar to nettle rash, itching, nausea, high blood pressure and breathing problems,” and “one of the colours that the Hyperactive Children’s Support Group recommends be eliminated from the diet of children.” It is also “Prohibited in Norway.” http://www.laleva.cc/food/enumbers/E131-E140.html

Finally, Shellac is considered not suitable for vegetarians by some. (http://www.veggieglobal.com/nutrition/non-vegetarian-food-additives.htm)

I had already by this point become agitated by the presence of food colourings in Holland & Barret’s vitamin tablets. It is absolutely unnecessary and so utterly infuriating. For a while I opened the tablets and swilled them around in water before drinking them, but the taste is horrendous and this took too long in my morning routine.

            But the absurdity of this situation in which drugs are seen to be the entirety of the solution to the problem, is so much the worse in America.

            One of the lads interviewed in the documentary, Ian Jenson, who had been diagnosed as bipolar at the age of eleven showed his drugs to the camera, swilling them down with Coke.

SF: “Prozac, [indistinct but clearly another drug trademark], Adderall, Klonopin is like a tranquilsier type?”

SJ: “Yes”

IJ: “This is Ambien which I take,”

SF: “Oh it’s a sleeping pill isn’t it?”

IJ: “Concerta which I take in the morning…that’s like Ritalin kindof.”

Ambien is used by the US air force as ‘No-go’ pills for pilots to relax and sleep after a mission. Amphetamine is used as a ‘go-pill’ to get them to concentrate on their missions. I suspect this is one of the reasons British forces and other members of coalition forces were killed in friendly fire incidents. Incidentally, British troops report than it is routine for American forces to eat at Burger King and McDonalds restaurants both in Afghanistan and in the Gulf.4

At various points in the documentary Fry asks sufferers what they would do if there was a button they could press to get rid of the disorder, to turn it off. Looking at the way mental illness, and, in the case of air force pilots, mental wellbeing1, is treated in America, it sometimes seems as if this mechanistic metaphor is precisely the way that human mental function is viewed by medical practitioners and authority figures – you press this button to turn them on in the morning, and this button to turn them off at night.

Richard Dreyfus, who Steven speaks to about the medication he uses to control his manic depressive illness has a similar story to Ian Jenson.

“So you are on a pharmaceutical regime. Can you tell us what you take?”

“It’s different things. It’s things having to deal with manic depression and ADD and concentration and sleep and anxiety.”

“And lithium.”

“Lithium was the very first thing I took, for many many years. And now 20 years later, 23 years later, I am just about not taking it.”

Fry repeatedly talks about the problems of Lithium Carbonate phrophylaxis, the primary treatment of Manic Depressive illness. He does so in a way that makes me very uncomfortable. Lithium works, and as numerous experts attest, it reduces the risk of suicide, perhaps the only drug that reliably does so. And yet there is a stigma surrounding the drug. A stigma that very directly led to the death of one beautiful and intelligent young woman shown in the film – a section of film that is very moving, and hard to watch. A stigma that Steven, if anything, by parading his own dilemma about medication, does nothing to dispel. Indeed, Steven talks up some of the facets of the internally-complex myth against Lithium, such as by stating again and again that once on it, an individual should stay on it or risk an increased rate of relapse (this is true of the first year).

            Still, in Dreyfus’s case we see the truth of the long-term nature of the medication used to treat bipolarity. This raises some serious issues since though we should give short shrift to baseless myths surrounding medication, and though we should endeavour to banish the stigma around effective medications and their judicious prescription, we should certainly thoroughly investigate all the alternatives and be sure that we only have recourse to medical interervention when it is absolutely necessry. Lithium, though very effective, is toxic, can cause excessive weight gain and acne in young children. Methylphenidate, which is an ingredient in Ritalin and the Concerta  used by A Jenson, has been associated with stunted growth. “Valproate can trigger excessive hair growth and, in adolescent girls, polycystic ovary syndrome, a leading cause of infertility.” Two of the medications Ian Jenson is taking in the film are listed as for short-term use. And so, we must return to the question posed by the New Scientist, which was told by one paediatric psychiatrist that “only 18 per cent of children referred for a second opinion actually had bipolar disorder,” are many of these diagnoses entirely spurious?

            According to Fry, “Consultants in Britain don’t agree with labelling children at such a young age. The norm in Britain is 19.”

Dr Kay Redfield Jamison, whose excellent book Touched with Fire, Steven Fry is seen reading at one point, said in a question and answers session following a lecture in 2000 that “The Average age of onset of manic depression is 18, probably younger. Which means a lot of people get sick much much younger than that average age.”2 So, clearly, this would fit in with Fry’s observation that conceivably, the spate of bad behavious and thieving he famously went through and was expelled from school for might have been avoided had he been diagnosed earlier. And yet there’s a big difference between the age at which Fry was expelled from public school, and a child of three years old who has barely had a chance to blow raspberries out of turn.

            Jamison, manic depressive herself, elaborates. “Mood disorders are unlikely to hit in primary school, but they certainly do. And the things that you should be concerned about would be sudden change in academic performance, or the ability to concentrate, total inability to attend to what a child is supposed to be doing, crying, anger, rage, physical violence, withdrawal from other people.”

            “Also, the symptoms, basically, in many respects like you see in depression or in agitated states in adults.”

            A reassuringly exhaustive list which, if followed, and especially when followed with an eye to heredity, since manic depression rarely – as good as never – occurs wihout having been often comprehensively telegraphed by a family tree heavy with anecdote, would preclude the scandalous failures outlined in the article.

            Kiki Chang, the consultant who diagnosed Ian and Tod jenson (at the age of six and eleven) has some reservations with the apparent trend for diagnosing bipolarity at a young age, “Once you get down to age two or three it’s very normal to have complete discontrol over your mood. Tantrums and crying one minute and laughing the next minute.” In this he echoes the concerns of child psychiatrist Gabrielle Carlson, quoted in the New Scientist who demands “when children are only 2 to 4 years old, how can they be ‘grandiose’?” Nevertheless, Chang, like one Susan Resko, executive director of the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation who is quoted in the New Scientist defending the diagnosis in the cases of children as young as 5 or 6 years old, believes that early intervention is justified:

“…I certainly have colleages who are clear that they see it in three year olds… Certainly I have seen children who I think were four and a half who fit the bipolar criteria. They’re having wild mood shifts and they’re having unsafe behaviour. They’re not functioning, they’re not developing correctly. They’re losing a lot of time in their normal development.”

This idea of ‘normal’ development is something I personally find disturbing. Normal development for me, with my specialism as a writer, involves vicissitudes and involves sometimes anger and resentment: life is patchy, difficult at times. And besides, the early clashes and developmental slips of Einstein, Churchill and Eddison formed their character. It’s difficult to imagine now how such a man as Samuel Johnson could come into being even in today’s England without being dosed up by some concoction, as we can see from this description by novelist Fanny Burney upon meeting the renowned Dr Johnson at the home of that other ‘eccentric’ Sir Isaac Newton, a man who was so determinedly a creature of habit that he would give his lectures irrespective of whether anybody turned out to see them, wrote in her diary:

“His mouth is almost continually opening and shutting as if he was chewing. He has a strange method of frequently twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands. His body is in continual agitation, see-sawing up and down; his feet are never a moment quiet; and, in short, his whole person is in perpetual motion.

“His dress, too, considering the times, and that he had meant to put on his best becomes, being engaged to dine in a large company, was as much out of the common road as his figure; he had a large wig, snuff-colour coat, and gold buttons, but no ruffles to his shirt, doughty fists, and black worsted stockings.

“His attention was not to be diverted from the books, as we were in the library…having fixed upon one, he began, without further ceremony, to read to himself, all the time standing at a distance from the company. We were all very much provoked, as we perfectly languished to hear him talk; but it seems he is the most silent creature, when not particularly drawn out, in the world…. Dr. Johnson being taken from the books, entered freely and most cleverly into conversation; though it is remarkable he never speaks at all, but when spoken to; nor does he ever start, though he so admirably supports, any subject.”

(One thing that might stand out in this report is that Johnson stands out from the crowd as a remarkable individual by virtue of his lack of ruffles on his shirt. It may be considered what the contemporary and future analogue of these ruffles might be.)

I have no time for the early anti-psychiatry movement, for R D Laings and others who blamed parents for their children’s mental difficulties, but I do think there are many parents in the Western world, and especially in the US, who latch on to quasi-Taylorist ideas of an ‘average’ child’s development, that is, that children should follow any number of developmental steps, and then push for interventions the second one such point is missed. Such parents are, I believe, so fretful about the competitive world that awaits their children that they are liable to hothouse them and to raise them in a way that may be at times neurotic and pushy and which will very often then precipitate the kind of putatively aberrant behaviours they are ever-vigilent for. The film Garden State is one film which highlights this concern, but also Igby Goes Down, basically a modernised version of Catcher in the Rye, a novel I suspect may have been written by an author who suffers from ADD, and which also deals with a child on whom there are many expectations and who ends up with psychiactric problems, covers some of the same ground. Both are, incidentally, very watchable.

            The problem of hyper-vigilence, that is, of parents and close relatives looking out for the symptoms and prodromes of, for example, mania and depression is a serious one that often exacerbates an illness by making normal social interaction impossible and engendering neurosis and anxiety. It has been shown that the prognosis of those with serious psychiatric disorders, no matter what they are, tends to be worse for those who return to live with parents and close relatives, and much better for those who live with friends. I feel strongly that the loose usage of psychiatric categories in the American media, and the equally loose and inconsistent use of psychiatric disorders in American fiction leads to a situation in which many parents become hyper-vigilent in this exact manner, creating and then exacerbating situations. If a family home becomes like the Stamford Prison experiment then I would not be surprised to see ‘mood shifts and unsafe behaviour,’ indeed, I might be surprised if I did not see it. No doubt I sound like I am traducing American parenting, but we live in a very dysfunctional society with a very dysfunctional culture, and in the exact same way that children may become difficult and moody in the family unit, the family unit may become dysfunctional as a result of the way our society is structured.

            We do live in a very competitive world and there can be few people who are sane who do not have at times an overpowering anxiety due to this fact. Parents in Britain are known to fight and resort to all manner of behavious for places for good (state) schools for their children. Parents are asked to deal with all manner of information, to make difficult decisions from whether to opt for MMR to how to best ensure their children are fed, something that is a logistical nightmare as any reader of this site must know or will soon learn. They are then asked to deal with information about all manner of psychiatric disorders detailed in the latest editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders and the drugs that friends and celebrities are taking and swear by.

            The New Scientist expresses the concern that some of the children diagnosed with bipolar disorder may indeed have manifested symptoms of it as a result of medication, either because they were misdiagnosed as having ADHD or given anti-depressants.

            Dr Kay Refield Jamison answers one question on this topic thus:

 

I’m loathe to get into specifics… In general, people who have classic manic depression are more susceptible to adverse effects from anti-deppressants in general.

 

            She also broaches the topic of ADHD:

 

One of the concerns, one of the major public health concerns now, I think – particularly in the States – is the overdiagnosis of ADHD, of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

 

And many kids who have a history of bipolar illness – and it is a very genetic illness, early onset tends to be particularly genetic and particularly difficult to treat.

 

And kids… the last thing you want to do with those kids is put them on stimulants. And that’s been a real problem. I was in Chicago not too long ago, there was just a horrifying situation.

 

We were talking to a priest who had just done a funeral mass on an eight-year-old child who had … whose mother was bipolar, father was bipolar, and he was diagnosed with having Attention Deficit Disorder and he hanged himself.

 

And it’s just … this is something a lot of us are seeing increasingly as people that should have been diagnosed clearly as having manic depression as young children, but just because they had problems with attention or, quote, ‘acting out’ or whatever, are being misdiagnosed.

 

I personally and professionally don’t know that teachers ought to be in the position of having to make a lot of clinical calls. Because they’ve got other demands on their time. They’re not clinically trained to do so … but just acting as a sort of general triage system of picking up on those things and, you know, sort of pointing kids in the right direction.

 

            So here we have two issues, the possible triggering of manic and hypomanic episodes by the overzealous use of medications, and the use of strong drugs on very young and vulnerable children largely at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry (which, sadly, has power enough to make both parents think they know what they need, and doctors think they know what the answer is). The New Scientist puts forward several reasons for this trend:

            They range from the broadening of the definition of bipolar disorder, to the trend of viewing everyday behavioural difficulties as a medical problem. In the background is, as ever, a pharmaceutical industry that encourages drugs to be taken up for a broader range of disorders and by new patient groups (New Scientist, 15 April 2006, p 38).

            Some would go further. Many people charge that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders upon which American psychiatrists base their diagnoses far from the objective scientific guide it claims itself to be. In the words of one reviewer on the Barnes and Noble website:

 

The DSM IV-TR is a great book to promote diseases that fit the armaments of medications that the pharmaceutical companies would like physicians to use. The problem with the whole DSM serie [sic] is that it is mostly subjective and based on speculation. The DSM is not based on hard empirical evidence but on a consensual system by few well-connected psychiatrists on the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies. These same psychiatrists also happen to belong to the American Psychiatric Association and/or work as hired guns/consultants for the APA, which also happens to receive yearly funding or gifts from the pharmaceutical companies $500,000 worth. The whole process is deceitful and shameful!!!3

 

I could write an essay on this alone, and in the future I am sure I will do just that. For the moment though we will return to Fry documentary and another issue that it raises.

            Jamison, who I respect very much, has spent much of her career defending Lithium, and persuading others to take it as she herself has done for many years. I suspect she would have been quite critical of Fry’s handling of some of the material in his documentary in which his own discussion of his dilemma, whether to take Lithium or not, and his celebrity friends sometimes got in the way of the subject at hand, but one thing in the documentary did arise which took me right back to my early days of research into nutrition around five or six years ago. This is because Fry meets Liz Miller, a woman who was twice locked up in ‘Bedlam,’ Bethlam psychiactric hospital in London during manic episodes. She was sectioned and describes the time social workers, police and doctors knocked on her door to overpower her as being “just like the KGB calling”. Since that time, though, she has found that she can maintain her illness without drugs, by supplementing her diet with omega III fatty acids.

            Everybody has heard by now of these oils, which are contained in oily fish, and which can be supplemented in our diets. The reason she gives for their efficacy in such disorders as manic depression is their use by the body to build cell membranes in the brain which are more permeable to chemical messages than those constructed from other dietary fats. This was the same thing I read of those years ago.

            I never killed myself of course, and neither did I attempt to do so. I did experience very serious depression. I retreated from others and walked around on my own, bunking school to walk around zombie-like for hours at a time. One day at school I copied something from the board and found myself writing the word “suicide” automatically. I saw no future for myself and despised myself. If dogs barked at me I thought they hated me, and I couldn’t blame them.

            It is only recently that I have come to be agnostic on the question of whether I was manic depressive or not. There is no history in my family of the disorder as far as I can see, and though I don’t know much about certain sides of my family, I think I would probably know. There are signs of Asperger’s disorder, of obsessiveness, of reclusiveness, of a lack of social skills, of lack of concentration, of the underachievement of ADD, but I know of no one who killed themselves or experienced hospitalisation. What I can say is that there were times I was grandiose and I showed real lack of judgement and impulsivity, pressured speech and euphoria. I became paranoid and religious, things assumed significance and connectedness all around me. I remember one time beginning an article intended for the New Scientist in which I think I wrote (or intended to write) that as a writer, a creater of worlds, I could see that the Gaia theory of James Lovelock, with its interconnectedness, was very much the way that we creaters, meaning myself, but also God, would go about things. I prayed, and prayed, reluctantly, that I might be the reincarnation of the messiah – telling myself that it’s not such a great gig after all, and that there must be few takers, that God would be grateful for my celestial CV. I sent off money, cash, to publishing companies with one or two sheets of typewritten paper, trying to get their attention, telling them I was going to be a sensation.

            The development of my problems seemed textbook. It is so long ago now that I cannot summon it but in snatches of this and that. But when I first swung up, I remember it being pure. I said to myself, so this is what contentment, even happiness is. But then later, it was never quite so simple. There was the irritability, the drive, the anxiety. Nothing stayed still. My impressions of people, my philosophy changed and changed again. There was nothing firm. Nothing to work on.

            Now I can clearly see that ADD could take on many of the features of manic depression in a certain individual since it could provoke a reactive depression – one that is a result, that is, of some outward life events rather than an organic disorder itself – which might easily become cyclic with the seasons and their natural endowment of pessimism and optimism. Those who suffer ADD have many things to become depressed about. They are gifted again and again with more ideas than most people would have in a lifetime, and yet they are less able to see them through, since they become distracted and restless, unable to be consistent in their fidelity to one single project. They may be gregarious and extrovert, but may be gauche and lacking in social skills and decorum. This is especially so if they have traits of Asperger’s. Consequently, they may lack friends. People may reject them, hate them with a passion most people hate with only once or twice in their lifetimes. This is not now a question of denial. If anything I have been reluctant to acknowledge the possibility that I was myself mistaken when I approached doctors those years ago with the concern that I was manic depressive having recognised so much of myself first in a biography of Spike Milligan, and then elsewhere. Most of my identity has been established with manic depression a part of the mix. For years I felt I could not have children, could barely involve myself in a relationship. It was a deep dark secret, and I myself became deep and dark and secretive. When I hid “manic depression” it meant that I had to dissemble about those points in my life that “manic depression” had interfered in my life. The times I had left college. The times I had been hidden away from the world, writing and praying and masturbating and speaking to no one. And manic depression followed me, stalked me. I went to live in the Czech Republic and the house in which I first went to learn the language, a house owned by one of the other students, was the house of a talented actor and comedian, a manic depressive, a house that had been taken from him by the communists who claimed, wrongly, he had been pro Nazi. I felt too that I had come back from the edge through a supportive family, of course, but also by my own wit and intellect, my research, and my insight into myself and my sangfroid. I had felt too, as Miller does, that the prognosis of manic depression is contingent very much upon lifestyle – if you self-medicate, whether through drink or drugs, it will worsen, whilst if you eat well, supplement with omega III fatty acids, and exercise regularly, you can survive, even thrive. Throughout university I went to the gym regularly, ran on occasion, and rode my mountain bike sometimes. I was active, and paid attention to my diet and my lifestyle. I felt too that the categories and divisions of the DSM were socially-constructed to a degree. I remembered times when I passed through isolated patches of, for example, obsessive routines that were commented on by others. I felt that one disorder could, to a degree, morph into another, that mental disorders could be seen as organic in origin but expressed contingently depending upon any number of factors from lifestyle to personality. I was privately derisive of those such as my girlfriend who told me that manic depression was so bad I certainly could not have had it. So much of it was there, and had there been any scope to deny it I would have done so years before when I was confronting myself with the evidence in the medical library of my university. Writing had saved me. Modern research had saved me. But also I had saved myself. Now it is a question of six of one, half dozen of the other. I may have been manic depressive, and I may not. What is certain is that my symptoms, in terms of mood, were ameliorated by my supplementation of omega III fatty acids and Spirulina, or blue green algae. What is certain, too, is that one set of symptoms fell away, leaving my brittle personality, my anxiety, my tendency to solecisms and non sequiters, to neologisms and reveries, absolutely intact. I still experienced depressions. I still do. Sitting in the house today, working on this, I have been down. I couldn’t be with people, because I have a compulsion to write, to express the ideas that continue day after day to press down on me, but I have been down nonetheless, possibly because I am writing this and not the fiction, the novel and stories, I carry around with my day after day; possibly because my personality was formed over such a period of fluctuations of mood; possibly because there remains an infirmity in my brain. I don’t know. What I do know is that it is now, today, and for the last five years or so, so much more stable than it once was from my fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth years, that it is incomparable.

            The documentary shows Fry shopping with Miller in what looks to be a farmer’s market. She is buying fish, and cheese. She tells him that she has been continually warned that by not taking medication, she risks relapse. And yet for fifteen years she has managed to avoid that eventuality. On reading up on the internet those years ago. On looking at the links from a bipolar critical thinking forum which I subscribed to which helped me self-monitor for thoughts skewed up or down, I believed that however terrible manic depression is, still, at least I had been born at the right time, on the cusp of a revolution in treatment. I learned so much more clicking through those forums than I did studying my degree.

            Another part of the documentary piqued my interest was one in which Fry met another old friend, celebrity chef Rick Stein. Stein has always come over to me as more likeable and more genuine than most chefs, and here he was talking about his father, who killed himself by jumping off a cliff. He was manic depressive. Of course, Rick worried that he might inherit the disorder. He did not. And of course, so often where manic depression has led to suicide, its tendency to be passed on is all the more strong because of the stress that inevitably accompanies a parent’s suicide. This needn’t happen, of course, but it seems to me that this scenario presents the maximal probability of inheritance. What’s more, as Stein goes on to say, his father always considered him as being the most similar to him in the family, and so, worried over him.

            Rick is a chef known for his fish dishes. He seems to cook little, or nothing else.

            This is perhaps little more than idle speculation, and indeed on watching the film the second time today I saw that his father was pictured in a fishing boat himself. I ondered how much fish he ate. I would like to ask Stein some questions myself, and hope to do so in the future, to establish what he thinks himself about all this.

            In any case, I believe that though Lithium is a reliable drug, still, all possible avenues should be explored and Omega III supplementation and diet are among the most promising areas for further research.

 

 

 

Dr Liz Miller, incidentally, has a website through which she gives medical consultations: http://www.med4u.co.uk/index.htm , and you could do worse than to click through her Amazon listmania and read a few of the reviews http://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-medical-student-reading/lm/R2583Y1PTVCX75/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_full/026-3502337-7590007 .

 
0 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1929064,00.html , James does seem to have an axe to grind of late, and does have form in what seems to be a dangerously hubristic way of diagnosing people without seeing them, since I believe he once wrote that Mandelson may be suicidal having been chucked out of office. Perhaps he can be forgiven for his occasional tendency to talk sense, and I did at one point read his column and was really looking forward to reading his book. It may be that he has become bitter after his contracting of ME, and that the endless didacticism, ideology and vitriol he comes out with are a result of this. But then I have ideology, vitriol and perhaps didacticism of my own, exemplified by the fact no doubt that I believe his ME could be seriously ameliorated by a similar diet to the one I follow myself. And Christ, will people please stop thinking that writing Blair’s name into some neologism or twisting it one way or another is somehow a mature way of expressing dissent! 

1. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/amsus/zmm/2007/00000172/00000001/art00013;jsessionid=2paggdxce9he0.alice?format=print&token=00541a280eb2d4cdf34e26634a492f2530332976335a666f3a7b2f2d4063767c6b635d7d6b6cc95547db

2. http://aladdin.unimelb.edu.au/speeches/jam-trans2.pdf

3.  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=0890420254&TXT=Y

 

4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2007386,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,1271361,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1256511,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,2036079,00.html

Rather more satirically, http://www.thetoque.com/world_issues/20060301/mcdonalds_recalls_ship_from_persian_gulf.html

 

 

 

Sunday 27th May, 2007

08:30 1 green tea

09:00 pear, banana and peanut butter buckwheat pancake

12:00 yoghurt oat flapjack!

13:00 green tea, home-made quinoa salad with red pepper, red onion, chopped broccoli, olive oil and lemon juice

17:00 salad, as above, with decaf coffee

I’ve felt fine all day, despite shopping and the horrible weather. I have been eating a fair bit of oats recently. Lots of flapjacks - some at work which are quite sugary, and others not so bad. I have felt no real ill-effects so far, and I am consistently telling myself that it is not too bad, since oats contain a lower amount of gluten than wheat, and indeed some people say that it contains a different form of the substance. Indeed, though I have not caught myself in this particular rationalisation I had a revealing reverie, a conversation in my head in Eat., the place we ate today at lunch, and where I asked if I could tuck into a home-made salad since I could not have anything they were selling. Before I asked this, I practised the question in my mind, as I do sometimes, and had a variety of responses from the imaginary employees of this chain. “We’ve got flapjacks,” “yeah, but that’s gluten,” “no it isn’t,” he denied the fact, and then stuck to this assertion. Still, I’ve as yet had no noticeable reaction to it. Which is good. Perhaps it can be an occasional treat.

I haven’t been consistent in applying the category “slips” to food diaries in which I have had caffeine, like today. This is due to the fact I find it hard to completely ween myself off, despite the repeated observation that it doesn’t do me any real favours - yesterday for example I had quite a few coffees, or, a green tea and a couple of coffees, and felt a little shaky. It is inconsistent but I suppose that if the category is to mean anything at all, I will have to exclude this most consistent of my failures for now and perhaps add it if I make any progress later.

Improvised quinoa salad:

quinoa, boiled in water until water absorbed.

red pepper, finely chopped

red onion, finely chopped } these three in a ratio of, say 2:1:1

broccoli, finely chopped

olive oil, liberal dribble

lemon juice, pepper to taste (I used the juice of one whole lemon for what would make three or four normal servings).

Eat. home-made salad in chain eaterie.

We took the train out to Brum today to do so shopping. Horrible horrible weather! Saw N____ on the way and tried to make conversation with him. Not always easy. He probably thinks I have been ignoring him since I’ve come back from Prague. Probably doesn’t know I’ve been ignoring most people. He seems to have come over a little bitter again, but he was as chatty as he gets.

Anyway, it being horrible outside I couldn’t just grab my lunch - a home-made salad rustled up before we took the train in - as I usually would outside somewhere. We went to Eat., around the corner from Selfridges, which my brother informs me, incidentally, when I texted him to tell him one of our students, one of the best high wire artists we’ve had, had been seen climbing up the outside of it, was designed by the Czech architect that has now designed the Octopus, a radical design for a new library in the otherwise conservative city. Anyway, I said I would ask if I could eat my own food there, since I had food intolerances and was buying food for my girlfriend and both of us were having drinks, and eventually, on finding one of the staff who wasn’t rushing around, I did so. He thoughts for a second and said, ok, so long as I didn’t make it too obvious.

Ok, so this may not be any great epiphany for many who would no doubt routinely ask, but many people might not think to do so, and I am perhaps not always up for asking such things, and I was quite impressed by the way it was handled by the guy behind the till, who didn’t ask anything else and quickly aquiesced though he hadn’t heard of the food intolerances I mentioned.

I sat there eating, and enjoying my quinoa salad, and wasn’t remotely selfconscious despite the pair of us speaking Czech and the probability that people were looking over thinking that we were thrifty Poles.

I had a couple of reveries of persuading staff at various establishments that I should be able to eat, or helping out others who happen to be asking the same question. Pointing out that with my drink I would be taking up a place anyway, and that I cannot eat the food they sell, and would be happy to do so would they only introduce a range, pointing out that the food is home made, and not branded, and offering to put a token amount in a charity tin, which might be similar to their mark-up on food.

In any case, it was far more pleasant than hiding away somewhere in the Bull Ring with people rushing all around and eating it off my knees.

I would encourage anybody with food intolerances to try this. It is an entirely reasonable request if you are having a drink or with others who are eating, and it raises consciousness of the issue, and points out a vacuum in the market companies should be only too glad to fill.

Polenta crutons

I made polenta the other day for my tagine. I could have saved just a little to put some crutons in soup. Of course I didn’t, though. I need to be more creative in terms of planning what left overs can be used for what, to always have some kind of momentum behind me. My schnitzels, for example, could be followed by stir fries, since I always have egg left over from the wrapping that could go into egg fried rice.

It’ll come, given time.

on Friday 19th May, 2007

Seems like it was an age ago this, though it’s merely the next day. Friday was a difficult one. It was the last day of term and a few of the more well-balanced of us went to the pub after training. Since work is a nightmare for there being a whole bunch of cliques I didn’t want the hassle of betraying my own favoured clique by going on about food intolerances. I wanted to get away from our current pitch and Gizmo’s mess not because of the food - as much as I complain at times I do like the guy, and I like his food, and mot importantly, I can consistently eat a lot of it - but because of the horrible atmosphere of training days. Not only are we stuck there in a windy marquee but the politics is horrendous.

There are a couple of main courses I would have had at the pub, but I normally go there and go for the two for one, and this time everyone was just having a portion of cheesy chips which is hardly worth it, and the one guy who has having a main had already ordered. It was pay day and I could easily have stretched to it but the food is nothing to shout about, and I begrudged the money as much as I would a taxi. I had a beer, telling myself I had bit of a yen for it (Christ, I keep on translating back from Czech into English when I reach for that phrase), and a couple of honey flapjacks.

We had a bit of a chat, and I didn’t have too much to say, so I was disappointed in myself. I didn’t particularly like the beer, and when I left the pub I was feeling woozy, not ready to drive and to rush back to get ready for the wedding. I bought some wrapping paper and wandered around for a while before driving back to my folks’.

We did end up rushing for the wedding. M____ finished work an hour before it started half an hour away and then we had to go for a bottle of bubbly (and God did I begrudge buying that!) and then rush off to pick up Pak and A____. We sat there waiting in the car, only for some idiot to pull up and park barely a metre from the front of our car on the other side of the road when he had a clear two car lengths ahead of him, so that cars swerved past us beeping their horn. I was very irritable waiting for the pair of them the ten minutes or so it took them to get ready a good fifteen minutes after he’d wanted us to turn up, already running behind. The way I was feeling, unable to listen, and with a pins and needles feeling in my head, I felt my irritability was from the beer. All was fine when they got in. I was chatty and calm as I drove, and they navigated with a pretty good sense of where they were going. We got there a little late.

After the wedding we dropped them off for the reception and came back, glad, for food. Glad because we thought we’d be out all day from mid afternoon. I made a basic filling to go in the pancake mix I had left: tomatoes, peppers, red onions and mixed beans. It tasted pretty good considering. I had three. This after having gulped down two bowls of an oaty cereal I had bought for the cat - poor thing didn’t eat any of the cereals he was used to while at ours.

I drank water and orange juice at the reception. It was a mixed affair. I had wanted to go a little late and play with the kitten for a while longer back home while I digested my food, but M_____ wanted to go and come back early. We turned up to this big old Mitchel and Butlers pub with some of the lovely old styling remaining, the touches of stained glass windows over etched windows reading in door and out door, and lovely marble tiling. It’s been done up of course, being part of a popular run into town. Tentatively I opened the door to the restaurant section, looked in at a crowd of formally dressed people sitting round a number of tables, scanned across them, and then came out again. I couldn’t go in. I hadn’t seen anyone I knew but M___ had. I persuaded her we should go and order at the other bar. Having done so, and having paid through the nose, I told her I couldn’t face it just yet, and went to sit down.

Aside from the restaurant there are two rooms, one with a bar, and one with a serving hatch. At the end of this one room we were in, the larger of the two, was a large plasma screen or LCD screen or whatever it was. We sat under it on the only remaining sofa. A kid was lounging at the other side of the room looking over our heads. He was pissing us off sat there looking right at us in his football top.

M_____ kept on telling me all these people were from the wedding. I kept on dismissing her, saying I didn’t recognise them. Of course they are, she would tell, they are wearing dresses and suits. But of course they are I said, it’s that kind of wannabe bar. It is. But whose was this bored kid in this case with this expression of disdainful frustration? She kept on saying she didn’t want anyone to come on through and see us. She wanted to drink up and walk through. I wanted to drink up and leave and never leave the house ever again. I wasn’t in the mood for company, nor to make conversation with a bunch of people with BMWs and crass private number plates we have laughed at in the past, people who I didn’t know. I’m not good with people, I said, and not with people I don’t know. I muttered in Czech about being social phobic, about how difficult it was for me the last party we had gone to, so many months ago, when I had turned up full of dread walking past a room full of people sitting down having conversations sat in random formations where you could end up talking to any silly old bastard and stuck with them. I cried on the drive home from that night. I had had nothing to say to them - old friends - nor to her. On leaving somebody I had hardly met started making conversation and saying she had heard a lot about me in a way that suggested she was the right kind of sympathetic, but at that point I had already made a thousand clumsy farewells.

[Reverie. Getting a phone call at work and smashing up a couple of things. Breaking my phone. Changes into getting a phone call about M____ having been hit by a car. She’s ok, though I don’t know it yet. I smash the window to our caravan and pull the door off its hinges. This after reveries in which I hear that a woman at work I bumped into last night has come to believe that I fancy her, perhaps because of my embarrassed attempts to make conversation.]

I was sat there for ages. This gangly dreadlocked bastard in his only lairy shirt looking awkward surrounded by these men about town, and speaking Czech.

Finally, she convinced me. People were already stood up on the other side of that door. We were heading that way when we bumped into Pak. He was making for the toilet. We chatted for a while and then went through to meet his girlfriend and one of our ‘managers’ ‘copers’ some have been known to call them, ’scopers’ others who still take to the ironic un-PC thing (after Scope, the new name of the Spastics society). Pak and A____ soon left to get cash. I made some awkward conversation with him while M____ stood there proving herself right that she was even less able to make conversation with new people than me. We exhausted our topics and he made his exit.

We lasted until just after eleven, helped by bumping into a couple we had met about a year before. A Slovakian girl with her husband, a pleasant geeky sort who works in telecomms. I learned again that I really don’t understand Slovak at all yet. But even so, it was a relief.

We were about to take our leave when Pak said he had a cigar for me, and well, why not. Henry Winterman. We went outside to one of those horrendous gas burning monstrosities that will do for our planet what smoking does for our lungs when the smoking ban comes in in July, and chatted for the ten, fifteen, twenty minutes it took us to smoke. A____ and M____ chatted away inside, and she came alive a little. We talked about the girls. About his back, which he’s done in, about work and how we love it and hate it, but how he is coming to hate it at the moment having had some of the worser students in his caravan for some time now. I enjoy chatting to him, and was glad of the cigar. It’s something I’ll have to do more of, perhaps, to keep me sane, smoking, and chatting. I talked about how I have been a virtual recluse since coming back. He talked about how he found it hard, since he says A______ doesn’t like him going out with the boys all that much. We talked about how it will be when she goes back to Poland to finish her studies. About how he might then regain his balance he’s lost from having had to give up his Tai Chi.

We chatted like I need sometimes. Like I could do with more often. I was thinking today I might be able to get it sometimes when Lucie gets her pub. She was here  today with her bloke to pick up the kitten:( And she’s easy to talk to, as is he. Nice people. And conversationalists at that!

M_____ chatted away too, and she was surprised how much A____ opened up to her. Pak had been a little sharp with her the day before when they were buying clothes, and it had surprised her. Surprised M____ to. C’est la vie.

We came home. All of us played with the cat. He had sprayed his shit all up the wall from his makeshift litter tray. I videoed him on his last day, cuddled him and we talked. Dad was back from fishing. Mum from dancing.

I cleaned up, and then I slept well.

I think I was in a good mood.

Friday 25th May, 2007 08:40

My brain continued to be very active last night and I couldn’t turn off easily to go to bed. I managed only to write a few notes with the kitten about and had a million ideas in my head, remembering old ideas and the context in which they were written/thought up, remembering back to my bohemian days a few years ago and how I could write them up. A few reveries too I haven’t sufficiently captured.

 Reveries this morning centered around training, since we have training today now that the students are gone. Talking about IQ tests. Expressing my opinions in a meeting about them. Asked what they are, replying they were invented by psychologists to prove how uniquely intelligent they are, since they are measures of verbal and mathematical reasoning and these are both areas that the discipline of psychology deals with whereas almost all other disciplines centre on one or another. Saying it is as pointless as asking for a measure of personality “has Mohammed Ali or Shania Twaine got more personality, expressed as a number.” Talking about emotional intelligence and saying once again, why express it as a number, it is a nonsense. and so on and so forth, though, of course, much more in depth.

Green tea, chicken breast and a pear this morning, not having had time to prepare anything with the kitten needing attention. It has been decreed that he will be sent home today.

Thursday 24th May, 2007

I had a pretty good day today, getting on on the whole with the students, and ending up at an amazing gym with one of them, where he goes to play football on a Thursday - the complex was incredible, and not the kind of thing I expected here in the Black Country.

The cat experiment is ending in failure, I think, and also I’ve spent a couple of fruitless days because of it cat watching. He’s cute, but it looks like he’s going back.

Tagine for breakfast, with green tea. A Coffee later, and also flapjacks. I was feeling starving. The tagine is very tasty, but perhaps not completely filling. I am on the whole eating less than I used to though, by a factor of as much as three, I would guess. Tagine again for dinner.

Dad was talking about stirrabout again with Mum. She used to have it as well, and used to call it by the same name.

M_____ is a little upset. I am spending less time with her. We did go to the shops, though, and I was surprised at myself how good and restful I felt there, until a lot of thoughts descended on me I haven’t remotely managed to get written up - it would literally take a full working day to dictate them. People would surely think I exaggerate, but that is the truth of it.

I spoke to my brother today. He talked about my wanting to take a sabbatical. He thinks if it were just the summer this might not be too bad, but said I was like him, that I become quiet and moody when I am criticised by anybody. No, I said, lying.

He is angry with himself and depressed. T____ is away. He was talking about how he gets nothing done in these endless days of his stuck in the house without a contract. He procrastinates. Well, I’m the king of procrastination.  I told him when I last had a bit of a slip and had a few Ginsters pasties and the like I did exactly what he describes and just sat at the computer not reading anything, nor able to move away from it. I told him my diet helps. He said he might try it. I would obviously feel guilty if he had a similardisorder all this time and was dealing with it less well than it seemed. I have suspected it numerous times, from his possession of books on Speed Reading, given to him, he said, by a kind of study support unit at his university which he attended, as I did myself, and his talk of how I read much quicker than he does (something I suspect is not true at all), and his possession indeed of numerous books from university he has never read, books that may have been compulsory purchases, by the way he can be irritable, and much more. I would feel I should have told him more about it, but I did tell him what I have been doing, and besides, like Mum says, we O’Gara’s don’t listen to anybody.

[reverie of being with a student on a forthcoming educational trip and asking to be excused, to go for a walk by myself.]

The flapjacks didn’t seem to cause any real negative reactions. I did have lots of ideas but did not become restive and irritable etc.

I should have been noting the vitamins and so on I am taking. Since I have started the blog, I have been taking Vitamin B6, Magnesium and flax seed oil daily.

Oh, yes, and lunch of Dahl with loads of lentils, or something.

Wednesday 22nd May, 2007

I woke up at five-ish this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I needed the toilet but was wide awake. I did get to see a young fox strolling around - too slow to take a picture - and get Alf some CDs burned for his birthday. I was even thinking how it might be a good thing to get up so early every day given as you can get so much done with few distractions, and I always get up a good hour before I have to leave for work to have a decent breakfast, but also to do a couple of things before I go in, because I can’t stand getting up and going straight away. Many writers use that morning time when nobody is up. We’ll see. Not sure I’ll get into that routine, even if M____ does do many shifts getting up at stupid o’clock.

This morning I had a coffee, and then tucked into a chicken breast and an egg after my alarm went off at the normal time, 7:30.

I had a green tea when I got into work.

At lunch I couldn’t have either of Gizmo’s efforts. I felt bad in a way asking if his fritters contained gluten - he doesn’t tend to understand intolerances and sees people who have them as fussy, but he tries hard to cook food the lads will eat. I went to Tesco and had their humous and carrots. This after an investigative programme yesterday found that Tesco’s food, along with other major names, is far from subjected to the standards we might expect. A manager came in, finding me eating, and reminded me of it as I was tucking in.

So lunch consisted of a little salad, carrots and humous, Kettle crisps and cashew nuts.

For dinner, I made a tagine with polenta and fish. Relatively easy and, I thought, very tasty. I did use butter but it was otherwise gluten/dairy free.

I had to cook it with a cat in the house, and with a M____ having left in a huff because I couldn’t give her a lift due to said cat. I have “borrowed it” to try and convince M____ et al that it’s a great idea. Of course I am spending much of my time at the folks - like today, since the sun has been on the caravan all day, the fridge is playing up and I couldn’t face it. My dad in particular doesn’t like cats, and said so, though he has just been won over a little by the little guy going up to him as he tried to go the the toilet just now.

On eating dinner (and ignoring the sleeping cat by his side), Dad remembered how he used to eat Corn Meal as a boy in Ireland (with the many cats his mum tended to take in). They would have it as supper, and call it stirrabout, as they would put it on the fire and keep it stirring to prevent it becoming lumpy. They used to call it Indian meal - he doesn’t know why - and it came in bags so big they would use them as pillow cases.

I didn’t sleep last night, or rather, got off, finally, to sleep, but woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep as I normally would in part perhaps because of the muesli I had after a craving for something sweet, or something out of my new routine after dinner yesterday. Of course, being late May, it was also bright by that time.