the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

Where did the good news go? OK, there is the odd bit here and there, but any media bod will tell you that bad news sells, and so the headlines are always leaning to the dark side and it becomes harder to find any benign news. It grinds you down.

I have long been a devotee of the ostrich approach. I don’t look very often. This saddens me because I was, once, a big fan of current affairs as we used to call them. These days most people probably think that it is about who is shagging who, perhaps another sign of the times.

Last year I did a virtual walk from Lands End to John O’Groats (aka LEJOG). It entails recording your daily walk or run and entering the details, with evidence, onto the web site that plots your position along the route. It was not an especially fulfilling experience and I felt no inclination to do another one, but over the Christmas break I succumbed and entered myself to do a virtual walk of Route 66.

So far I am about 125 miles out from the start on the shoreline in Chicago and still have over 2000 miles to go before reaching the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, California. Along the way I will be 24 hours from Tulsa twice (once coming, once going, will know the way to Amarillo and, can be standing on a corner in Wilmslow, Arizona, and there are probably a few other songs in there somewhere as I am getting my kicks on Route 66. I am putting in about 37.5 miles a week and so it will take me over a year to finish. I have no idea why I am doing it; I do the exercise anyway, but there it is and I will include progress here along the way.

Out in the garden the plants are doing their best in all of this frost. With the weather being fairly mild through the early part of Winter a lot of the shrubs were coming along well, but I fear that I am going to lose some in the permanent-frost. A few snowdrops have poked their noses out and some of the daffodils are also coming up. I love these things as they give a portent of better weather to come. The evenings are also drawing out which is nice.

On the run into Christmas I changed by early morning eating and cut back by a third. The logic was that I was staring an hour earlier at work and did not have time to do my usual two part breakfast. I didn’t go hungry and so, after Christmas, I stuck with the reduced nosh. I’m back to eating it in two sessions, about two and a half hours apart, but I’m not especially missing the extra food.

Is it having any effect? I don’t know for sure as my scales are buried under a pile of stuff in the office, but I do think that there has been an impact on my waistline: The control pair of 42 waist trousers fit well. I don’t know how others on diets feel, but, over the years, I have fat days and thin days, at least in my mind, because the scales don’t reflect much difference from day to day. I need to get mine out again and do a weekly check if nothing else.

Over Christmas we didn’t go mad on food. Like many people we bought more than we needed and things went into the freezer for another day. We ate well, but the fish that we had bought for Christmas dinner was not as good as we had hoped. Win some, lose some. Nothing else disappointed though, and most of it was bought mail order.

Almost every main meal that we eat is cooked from scratch and we try to keep variety in what we eat. There are no set menus for certain days, but some things might be on the table once a week. For example most weeks we will cook a curry, a mixed grill (alright, a fry up) comes around every other week and we try to have fish of some sort at least twice a week. Our main meal is always in the evening and is often very simple, something like an omelette, smoked salmon and toast. We do have a pudding some nights, but probably only a couple of times a week.

Alcohol is also rationed and a bottle of wine gets shared over Friday and Saturday dinners, although we do cut loose over a Bank Holiday weekend we usually have a second bottle. Sometime we might have a gin and tonic on a Sunday, but very rarely and I do have the occasional bottle of beer.

We have still managed to avoid Covid, but over Christmas I caught the bug that is doing the rounds and am still having some minor breathing problems. Fortunately I didn’t pass it on the the Berkshire Belle.

I am looking forward to getting out into the garden. At the moment I venture out a couple of times a week just to tidy up a little, but soon there will be some snowdrops out and then the other bulbs will be pushing through, buds appearing on trees and shrubs and the promise of a new year all around. Bring it on.

Stay safe out there, wherever you are.