"You Got Hundreds, I Got Thousands"

Well, in a short while, Fee trivia lovers, I will be off to the CO-OP to spend £80. Because IF I spend £80 I have a receipt which guarantees that they will give me £8 back.

It isn't a bad deal, but I have to do it now. This day. March 19th 2014. If I do it tomorrow, March 20th 2014, I will not get £8 back on the £80 I spend. Which would probably mean I wouldn't spent it. 

Hmm. Am I at the mercy of CO-OP in this matter? I mean, it's not hard for me to spend £80 on provisions, given that there are 8 members of this household at the moment. Just one member can manage to snaffle £10 in no time at all. And also I personally prefer to shop at CO-OP though my good wife prefers The Tesco. I despise The Tesco (not it's lovely staff I hasten to add, but the company) though I am not precisely sure why. CO-OP for some reason, is a purer entity in my head. 

But all the same, I am being coerced just a little bit. Perhaps I wouldn't spend anymore in the long run anyway, but if CO-OP  really wants to reward my custom, perhaps they could consider giving me random money, after random bouts of shopping. This would make me even happier than the present system, in which I have to keep hold of a very perishable piece of paper AND beware of the date AND try to time my £80 shopping trip needs with that date. Random gifts of money, in comparison, would feel wonderful, and would almost guarantee my return. 

As a side note to all of this I would like to report that after many, many shopping trips I am somewhat of an expert at guestimating the amount of shopping in a trolley WITHOUT even adding it up as I go along. I can just look and KNOW. Last 2 trips I was within £1 of the correct amount. One was slightly below resulting in the quick addition of a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate to the list. Shame. If I'd been a bit more out I could have justified a bottle of red. 

The line "You got hundreds, I got thousands" as well as being bad grammar is also a line on my Fee Come's Fourth song Have Your Cake And Eat It - September 4th 2012

"Give Me A Sweet Cacophony"

I like the sound of words. Together. 

Sweet cacophony. Mmmm. I don't know who invented the word "Sweet" (someone invented it!) nor the word Cacophony. I wish I'd made that one. And I'm not even sure if the inventors would have liked their words to be joined together in holy matrimony. But fortunately they don't have a say in the matter. 

Nobody does. There is no courtroom that can rule against the usage of words or the order they can be put in. Well, there is libel I suppose. But that's not about the words themselves. It's the context and the timing and the audience that matter for those sort of judgements. 

Words are there to be played with like a box of lego whose pieces can be made to fit together in any way the imagination can conjure up. They are potential pieces of art. In fact they started off as actual art, the first art, as far as I understand. Pictures, used as symbols, that eventually got turned into letters. And by then the possibilities were endless.

They say that a picture can paint a thousand words. But if you put a thousand words together, you could have a hundred or more little paintings: 

She smelled like the ocean. 

The alarm clock rang it's hyena laughter, shaking awake the sleeping, dreamless vultures. 

February is a short month, packed full with romance and pancake making . 

The letters can be put together in any order too. But they are lifeless without words to contain them, and shape them, and send them on their way to heaven. 

I'm not always particularly careful, or artistic, or poetic, or imaginative with words. Which is a crime really. 

Words might well be our only limitless resource. I really don't want to fritter them away. 

The line "Give me sweet cacophony" is from the Fee Comes Fourth song Have Your Cake And Eat It - September 4th 2012

"Have Your Cake And Eat It"

Or not. I've been taking an interest in diet and nutrition for a while. I think it's what's supposed to happen to you, unless you're particularly happy go lucky, when you get past 40 or 50. You're brain starts to tell you: hey mate, you're MORTAL!

So I've read a lot about foody stuff. One of the things I've decided is probably correct is that it is not a good idea to put fats (proteins like meat, fish, and oils)  and sugars (including sugar, and carbohydrates like wheat based items ) together. So...Cake? No. Doughnuts? No. Processed foods of most descriptions? No. You knew that of course.

But also. Potatoes/ rice/bread and meat. No! You can eat those things separately, but it seems that when you put them together it turns on some addictive triggers in our heads which stop us knowing when to stop. In fact a lot of the big companies (clue: money making businesses) sussed this years ago and pay evil science types  millions to discover the exact addictive proportions of fats and sugars needed to make you simply HAVE to have one more bag of Wotsits. Or another Big Mac.

Now, you might think this is hokum pokum, and likely to cause unhappiness and stress related ulcers. And perhaps you're  right. But I have realised that when I think of giving up cheese on toast, I get  exactly the same nervous, twitchy unease that I used to get when I contemplated giving up cigarettes.

I know. One is Food. The other is a dangerously unhealthy carcinogenic drug. But the science seems to suggest that I might be doing myself damage with my tasty snacks too. And that I am in fact addicted to certain combinations of food. Which leads me to eating things that make me more likely to get...well, you know, the usual suspects. Deathly things.

So I'm experimenting. I'm basically going to eat  most of the usual stuff, but not mix my carbohydrates and proteins, the sugars and fats. In short I'm going cold turkey on pizza.

I discovered when I stopped smoking ten years ago that most of the cravings that told me I MUST HAVE a cigarette were psychological. And just by stopping, and carrying on stopping, the cravings have gone. And I realise that I don't have to smoke. More than that, I really, really, don't want to.  I learned to enjoy other things instead. Remarkably I'm happy without cigarettes. Happier, to be honest.

 Because of that experience, I've no doubt I can learn to like foods in certain combinations, and stop craving food in other combinations. And I don't care if you think I'm being silly. I know I won't live forever. But I want to give myself a good shot at staying as healthy as a dying person can be.

Incidentally, I am not giving out any dietary advice here. Hence, I've not put links to any of my highly classified sources. I'm telling you what's happening simply because people are ringing me, messaging me, emailing all the time to find out what I'm doing at any given hour of the day. It's exhausting keeping up. Hope this helps.

Disclaimer: if you die because of anything you read in this blog it's not my fault. Fact!  



The line "Have your cake and eat it" is from my song "Have Your Cake And Eat It"  at Fee Comes Fourth. September 4th 2012.