The Diet: Week 6

A couple of weeks ago, I was supposed to go to a conference in the centre of universe that is Birmingham International. A large chunk of The Bank was going, and a couple of cancelled trains meant that mine was packed, my reserved seat occupied, and I would need to expense another ticket to get up there. I decided I didn't need to be going.

I needed to be getting an opinion about the lump on my skull. It had been aching over the previous two days and couldn't be an infection because infections on my head run out of control really fast. At my age, random lumps carry only one fear. It was that fear I needed to address. Which I did at the Soho Walk-In Centre first thing that morning. The nurses there, who impress me more than the nurses at other walk-ins I've been, decided it was a skin condition for which a medicated shampoo would do the trick. It was an emotional day.

The previous day, after a lunchtime run, my weight had dipped below 90 kgs for the first time. That day, it went straight up to 90.6 kgs and held around the 90 - 90.5 kilo range for the rest of the week. Last Tuesday I shared this stuff at my meeting, and that helped clear the emotions. After the usual Spin / Boxing / Pilates sessions, Saturday morning I weighed 88.3 kgs, with a body fat of 20.9%.

The bureaucrats portray a weight loss programme as a "eat-less, exercise-more" calorie-accounting exercise, with steady rewards for marginal changes in net calorie consumption. As if. The human body doesn't work like that. What you're feeling affects what happens as well. Duh. Emotions = hormones rushing round the bloodstream along with all the other chemicals that affect nutrition and digestion.  Get the emotions clean and simple and everything else follows.

Like that's easy. Il Maestro Robert Townsend says: "A sure sign of frustration is putting on weight. Watch for it on the people who work for you. Remove the cause and the weight will come back off." Right now, I'm not feeling frustrated in the way that has me comfort- and consolation-eating. 

The Philosophical Irrelevance of... Happiness

I was flicking through a book called "The Pursuit of Unhappiness" in Blackwell's recently and a thought happened. If philosophers have been discussing a subject for two thousand and more years and still haven't reached a conclusion, then they are discussing the wrong subject. Indeed, the very subject may be a distraction and a scam to stop us looking at the really important stuff.

Happiness is one such thing. Philosophers, psychologists and even politicians have been talking about it for upwards of three thousand years and getting nowhere. Everyone thinks it is important, and no-one can describe it. In surveys, most people in most countries say they are happy. If happiness is the state of a majority of people living in England, then either life in London is very different from life in any other town, or happiness really doesn't mean much. It may have started out as a respectable idea, but ever since it took up with the utilitarians, it's been staying out late and coming home drunk, smelling of politics.

Let's be a little careful here. My Chambers tells me "happy" means: "lucky; fortunate; expressing...content; well-being; pleasure, or good; apt; felicitous; carefree; confident; mildly drunk (slang)." This is not what therapists and counsellors mean, and it is not what your manager means when she asks you if you're happy in your job.

What they mean is that you are not feeling discontent, upset and wanting to be somewhere else. Therapists and counsellors deal with people who are miserable, discontent, depressed, obsessed, angry and a hundred other negative feelings. All of them wish not to suffer the pain of those feelings, and all of them will say that either they don't want to be depressed (or whatever) all the time, or that they "want to be happy". Used in this context, "happiness" is nothing more than the absence of whatever toxic and dysfunctional feelings we want to be rid of. Your manager wants you to say you're happy because then they don't have to worry about you. You don't need a pay rise, bonus, perks, training and development, or promotion, nor are you likely to up and go leaving them with an empty position the hiring freeze won't let them fill. Your partner in a relationship that has long been more habit than passion wants you to say you're happy because then you are not going to leave or have an affair and they don't have to bother with you any more than they aren't already. Politicians want the electorate to be happy so they will be voted in again and don't have to re-build the schools, make sure the hospitals are clean and staffed, let alone mend the roads and stop companies shipping jobs overseas.

I used to think that Gilbert Ryle's definition was about right: to be happy is to be doing what you want to be doing and not wanting to be doing anything else. I've always thought that sounded slightly like the state of mind of an Englishman tending to his garden, but you have to appreciate the subtlety of that "not wanting to be doing anything else". Now I think Ryle was really talking about a particular state of mind that used to be called "being absorbed" and is more trendily called "flow". To call this loss-of-self "happiness" is concept-stretching way past breaking point.

Most philosophers have understood that if happiness is to be the desired state of human life, there's a lot at stake when you define it. Especially if you include the aspect of contentment. That's why Aristotle was canny enough to separate happiness from mere pleasure and thus be able to equate happiness with virtuous action and living. Because if happiness is the goal of human life, then it can't just be a feeling, or else it could be satisfied by taking Soma, Aldous Huxley's happy drug in Brave New World, and tolerating the most awful injustices and atrocities. Isn't it good to be happy? Not if you can happily cheat your customers. Not if you're wilfully ignorant of facts that would upset you or deluded about your chances in the world. Is it good to be miserable? As long as you make the changes in your life you need to stop the misery. Don't I want people to be happy? Not if it means that in their colossal complacency they get dumber, fatter and uglier, and make the world a less pleasant place for the rest of us. There's nothing wrong with being happy, but there's more to life than feeling content. (Remember, when the Founding Fathers talked about the Pursuit of Happiness, they meant the practice of those occupations and pastimes that you want to do, they didn't mean getting high.)

If you're still not convinced that "happiness" has turned into a scam, recall the "research" by the New Economics Foundation allegedly showing that happiness increases with salary up to about the national median wage, and doesn't improve much after that. What an astonishingly convenient piece of research that is for employers - the largest of whom is the State.

Most people would, if asked, say they were happy: it's almost rude not to. It takes a John Stuart Mill to affirm that "it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied". When I think about it, I have been neither happy nor content in my entire life. Ecstatic, transported, absorbed, lost-in-wonder, giggling-in-mischief, relieved, entranced, amazed, laughing-my-socks-off, pleased, calm, rested, joyous... a hundred positive emotions, but never "happy". Maybe people who say they are "happy" just don't have the vocabulary to name accurately what they are feeling.

And maybe philosophers talk about happiness out of habit. It is, after all, just another state of mind. It's not even clear that it is a valuable state of mind. The question that philosophers should be asking is: what value do the various states of mind have? Even self-pity has its time. You can think of your current state of mind as a some kind of reaction to your circumstances. You can let yourself be conned by New Age pseudo-psychologists into thinking that you can make your state of mind what you want it to be - so that it's your fault you're miserable. Or you can view your state of mind as a tool to help you get done what you need to do. I can't think of one thing that happiness helps me get done, but I do like that light, cheerful feeling when the air is fresh, the sky is blue, the sun is shining and I'm in the South of France with a day job to come back to at the end of the holiday.

What I Want From My Holidays

You will remember I had a bad case of the blahs last year and didn't see the point of spending lots of money to be fed up in a foreign country when I could do it for free at home. If i'm not careful, I'll do it again this year, and I'd rather not. So what do I want from my holidays? Fantasies first, reality later.

No old people. This is getting to be a real problem. Go on sunny-places holidays in the off-season and there are eighty-year-olds in the hotels. Pushing retirement is one thing, cheating the grave is another. I know I'm no spring chicken, but, no, eighty-year olds are depressing. My work colleagues are attractive people in their twenties - I have high standards.

No bald people with tattoos from Essex at the pool bar. That cuts out every beach hotel in the world except possibly a Four Seasons.

No poor places. You may be comfortable with the thought that you are paid more in a week than the families in the mud huts round the hotel make in a decade, but I'm not. 

No days on the coach, or on the train - unless it's a sleeper or a TGV and Julie Delpy is sitting across the table from me. I spend five days a week commuting. This is a holiday. I want everything within walking distance, or a short-ish cab ride.

No long flights in cramped seats with wailing babies. Yep. That pretty much cuts out air travel.

I'd like to sleep for ten hours a day. I get about six hours a night, seven if I'm lucky, and eight leaves me feeling actually rested.

Blue skies. Sunshine. Temperatures no higher than 80F at noon and no lower than about 55F at night. Good restaurants. Things To Look At. Places To Hang Out In: cafes, beaches, gardens with swimming pools. In fantasy land, I'd like to meet someone and carry on a flirtation. Actual sex would be amazing - if I can remember what to do and why at the same time. Failing that, broadband access.

Ask me what the best holiday I had was, and I'll say it was two days in Paris, an overnight sleeper to Nice and an overnight sleeper back, followed by a TGV to Amsterdam for a weekend staying with friends. I'm not sure I really like the idea of seven days in one place, but two here and two there sounds about right. Nice-Sardinia-Paris. Milan-Basle. I don't need to get to know a place: it's not like I'm going to live there. I need it to be not-England.

What I'll tell you if I'm feeling cynical is that I'd like a week not being me. That's not quite true. I'd like a week when I don't have to amuse and busy myself all the time - gotta see the sights, visit the galleries, pretending I'm having a holiday, pretending this is a rest.

Maybe I should just go on a retreat. Four days in a monastery.

Things You Forget In The Household Budget

I have a budget for my income and expenditure. Of course I do, I once ran the finance function of a decent-sized estate of pubs for a property company and produced five-year P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow forecasts for quite a few companies. Knocking out a forecast for Seven Dials LLC is a doddle.

Except there's one line that always trips me up. Other than holidays. Holidays always cost more than I plan, but isn't that the point of a holiday? I have lines for Gas Bills, Water Rates, the MoT, Road Tax and all my insurances. I have how much I spend at Caffe Nero on tea and coffee every week.  The gym subscription is in there as is an estimate for lunch at work and food at home. Even the bi-annual visit to the dentist. Holidays count as capex projects, along with upgrading hi-fi and re-doing gardens.

Except for the new battery for the car the AA had to fit for me recently because the old one suddenly decided to die. That made for some standing around in freezing weather while they came and did their thing. And that visit from Dyno-Rod I talked about earlier. And replacing the broken Polti steam iron with a cheaper but just as decent Bosch (I take ironing seriously). And the service on the Dyson DC5 vacuum cleaner. And now I come to think of it, I replace my trainers every year and that isn't on the budget either.

It's all the random stuff. Fixing things that break, replacing things that tear beyond repair. I used to budget £100 a month for it, but that was back in the days when £100 could buy you things. Now I bet I have to budget about £200. Which is okay for you and me, but it can break someone who's on the edge, or on welfare.

They don't tell you this about life. It isn't the regular stuff that beats you, it's something random, that you didn't consider. That's what can leave you in tears of frustration and despair. Or at least it used to, before I got too old to have hormones that felt that way.

The Emergency Plumbing Con

The other weekend I made the mistake of looking at the drain from my kitchen. Eeeeeeuuuuugh! Of course I don't have a "rod" and of course I'm not experienced enough with blocked drains to be sure I could clear it even if I had. How does a regular householder get that kind of experience? I have learned from previous experience not to use Yellow Pages, so I called my insurance company, who told me I was insured if a tree root had come through the drain, but not if it was just blocked. Then I called the Gas Board because I had some vague idea I might be insured through them, but I wasn't, though they did put me through to Dyno-Rod. Who quoted me some numbers which were not utterly silly and came round two days later. Sure enough the young man shoved the rod firmly on the water, cleared the blockage and also vacuumed out my sink pipes - all within a half-hour. No time-wasting with bogus investigations and surveys, no head-shaking and muttering about using fancy equipment. It's not the cheapest thing I've ever done, but I've had worse experiences. My drains are now clear and there isn't a nasty whiff when the washing machine churns out water. Worth every penny, though I will buy a "rod".

What wasn't worth every penny was what I paid the last time my drains were blocked - the previous experience I just mentioned. That time the main drain was blocked as well. When the Yellow Pages plumber took the lid off there was water with all sorts of nasty things that come out of the back of people floating in it. I was then subjected to what I later learned was the usual time-wasting fee-generating twaddle. Three hours later, he had run up a large bill and cleared the drain, telling me that I could recover some of the cost from the other people who shared the same drain. We're talking £800 here. Yes, I know. It's what one of my neighbours said when I went round explaining what had happened. I stopped out of shame after that. But like the ad says: when you need a plumber, you need a plumber. The same neighbour explained how the con works: that they spend at least half-an-hour messing around pretending to investigate where the water is coming from, not going to, where the drain is and where it joins the street, all of which is useless in nearly all cases. Then they get the equipment out, push the gadget down the drain and leave it in neutral for an hour or so while the bill runs up. At some stage under the pretence of "checking" something, they will go back to the van, turn the gadget on and within minutes clear the blockage.

Having heard this, I contacted a firm of solicitors to see if I could get some or all of my money back. Sadly, no. The contract was what it was, and of course I could not prove they were putting on an act.There's no way round it, except: 1) by your own "rod" for simple drain clearing; 2) talk to Dyno-Rod first, as they didn't have call-out charges and didn't mess around; 3) when the emergency plumber asks you for the credit card imprint before he starts, write very clearly on the card form "Valid only up to (say) £100." The lawyer said that sticks. Call the credit card company and tell them that. Of course the plumber will bitch and moan and want to leave. At this point, I suspect the following might work: you show the guy £100 in used £20's and tell him that's for him if he sorts the problem. He can tell his boss about how you played the raw prawn and he had to go. If you've got the nerve to do that, it has a chance of working.

So it's not just you. It's me as well. And someone else at the place I was working at the time. If this hasn't happened to you, don't be smug. Wait till you get a house and have to deal with all this stuff you leave to the landlord.

The Three Songs That Changed Pop Music

Given the utter nonsense that made it to Number One in the latter half of the 1960's, to say these songs changed pop music is maybe just plain wrong. What I really mean is that these songs changed what people who took pop music seriously expected from themselves if they were songwriters and from songwriters if they were fans. In fact, you could argue that these three songs created pop music as art. There are excellent articles on Wikipedia, which I am not going to precis. I'm old enough to remember when these songs first came out.

Like a Rolling Stone was like nothing I had heard before, but I got it instantly. I didn't even notice it was 6:03 long. What I noticed was the lyrics, the sound, the fierce condemnation in Dylan's voice. It was so far ahead of anything anyone else was doing, I don't think we compared it to anything else. It was just there.



And then there was Eleanor Rigby. I have a quiz question that goes "What Number One hit was sung to the accompaniment of a string quartet and was about the last days of a lonely churchwarden?" Put like that, you get the impact it had. Huh? String quartet? "All the lonely people / where do they all come from"? What kind of Number One is that? It would not get out of the studio today. When I heard it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Still does. It's a punk-rock 2:09, with pace, sadness, tension and humanity. Suddenly "pop" music seemed capable of genius.



And then came Good Vibrations. 3:39 of multi-tracked, fast-changing, danceable love song about a girl he doesn't know who make him feel wonderful. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is a bloated piece of self-indulgence by comparison - and modelled directly on Good Vibrations. Everyone loved this song: kids, parents, hipsters, teachers and squares. The production values were way over anything anyone had done, the quality of the writing was clearly of a different order to everyone except Lennon and McCartney, the singing just flawed enough to be beautiful.



Yet it was the self-consciously weird Whiter Shade of Pale that convinced The Parents that pop music could be serious. The Bach samples, the references to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and ancient Greece, the mystery of the lyrics and the lugubrious tone and pace.



The parents just didn't get it. Not really.

The Diet: Week 4

Remember that 1,500 calorie diet? Breakfast is Alpen and milk, with two eggs and one slice of toast or a small tin of beans and a slice of toast. Lunch is a sandwich from Pret or Fernandez and Wells on St Anne's Court, with a yoghurt in the afternoon. Supper is a toasted ham sandwich and a tomato. At home I nibble on sliced fresh pineapple or slices of orange - but I'm not at home and awake for very long. At work I cannot nibble at all. It's all about keeping the insulin levels down so the body can burn fat.

It is taking its toll. First, ask yourself how much room there is for roughage (aka fiber) in that, especially when you are eating lunch at the office and get home late(r) in the evening. Now draw the obvious conclusion and don't utter it while we're eating thank you.

Second, I drink lots of water because there are a couple of hours in the day - eleven to twelve and three-thirty to four-thirty - when I am really vulnerable to the temptation to have something sticky and sweet. Anything in fact. I can barely stand the sight of food in those hours. It calls to me like a Siren and I have to drown myself in cold water from the water cooler. Like that helps. On Wednesday I had supper with my sister at Bob Bob Ricard on Golden Square, and very tasty it was too. Pickled herring with apple and beetroot salad, meat pelmini as a main course and the chocolate glory (mark 2). I'd been looking forward to that all week. My weight did not sky-rocket. In fact, on Friday evening, I weighed 90.5 kilos.

You couldn't live like this all the time. The most I can hope is that I can wean my body off it's liking for chocolate. Yeah. As if.