Where Have All the Cock-Knees Gone?

So it’s the World Cup again! I hate football! IMHO it’s boring. I know there’s a fairly large amount of the world’s population that would disagree, very strongly, with me, but there it is, I’ve said it – I hate football!

I’m not against ball games per say – in fact I’m a huge Rugby fan (my Father was Welsh – it’s sort of compulsory!) but even then I don’t want to watch all the games, just the one’s that matter but in the spirit of live and let live and all that I don’t mind putting up with wall to wall football on the TV schedules for the next four weeks (please tell me it’s only four weeks!). However, I do object when it’s at the cost of something I want to watch every week, 52 weeks of the year. Put it on later, put it on BBC 2, put it on BBC 3 but just give me my Eastenders fix!!

It’s got as far as Wednesday and not even a sniff of Albert Square antics. It may not be the most intellectually stimulating programme around but it’s a ritual that my life is incomplete without. I have a theory that I have, to date, never been proved wrong about – if the phone rings when Eastenders is on it’s always either a double glazing/energy supply/whatever rep, or a man. Women just don’t phone you when ‘Enders is on, unless it’s to discuss an integral part of the plot line, even then it has to be really important to be worthy of interruption.

Eastenders is Valium for the working woman. It’s that half hour between coming home from work and going out again/working again/doing chores etc that you can just leave your brain on the coffee table and unwind without any need to tax your mind – and right now I’m going cold turkey all because of football!

So – BBC, if by any chance you happen to read this, spare a thought for the licence payers out there that don’t give a *@^k who wins the world cup and give us back our soaps – trust me the world will be a happier place for it.

Wise Words #1

Most people are about as happy as they make their mind up to be.

Abraham Lincoln

Hangovers!

I’ve been doing a bit of ‘hands on’ research into hangovers recently so I thought I’d investigate the subject further. Why does alcohol make (some of) us feel so rough the following day? Even the Bible makes reference to the problems of the morning after! "Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink" (Isaiah 5:11)

A Hangover is also called a veisalgia - from the Norwegian word for ‘uneasiness following debauchery’ (kveis) and the Greek word for ‘pain’ (algia) and the term is used to describe the unpleasant side effects of too much alcohol or heavy consumption of drugs. The most common symptoms are dehydration, tiredness, nausea and a headache. Other symptoms of an alcohol-induced hangover are difficulty in concentrating, irritability, sensitivity to light and noise, and trouble sleeping.

Not that it’s news to any of us but alcohol causes more than one problem when it comes to hangovers. Ethanol (alcohol) has a dehydrating effect on the body, which causes the dry mouth, lethargy and headache. However one of the most disturbing factors in my opinion is why I get a headache. Apparently dehydration causes the brain to shrink away from the skull slightly – yuck! This is because the other organs in our bodies are trying to save themselves by drawing water from the brain. This triggers the pain sensors on the outside surface of your brain. A suggestion to help to avoid this is to drink plenty of water in between and directly after drinking alcohol (or maybe to just drink a little less alcohol). Just to add to the appeal alcohol is also a metabolic poison which impacts on your stomach lining and causes the nausea. Then just to round off the damage nicely your liver, assuming it still functions, turns alcohol into acetaldehyde and this metabolite is probably even more toxic to your body than the alcohol itself. So it’s really no surprise that you feel ill the morning after a heavy session is it?

One thing that I did find quite interesting, and a little worrying is that some of the nervous effects of a hangover are exaggerated by products of the alcohol fermentation process, such as methanol and fusel oils, which are also called congeners. However when it comes to distilled alcohol, in particular Vodka (a favourite of mine) this doesn’t happen - which is why I don’t feel so bad after a heavy night on the Vodka as I do after a red wine binge. Which prompts the obvious solution, drink more Vodka!

Other factors which are believed to worsen the effects of a hangover are sugar (Found in sweet cocktails alchopops etc), Nicotine poisoning (There is a tendency to smoke more when you’re drunk) and good old fashioned genetics – some people just don’t get hangovers. However if you’re one of those people, before you get smug about it, remember just because you don’t feel rough the morning after it doesn’t mean you’re doing yourself any less any harm when you drink to excess. Lastly there’s also a certain level of psychosomatics with a hangover – if you expect to get one, you will!

So… Suggested Cures/Prevention.

• Drinking a sports drink (not an energy drink) such as powerade or Gatorade to rehydrate your body
• Drinking a large amount of water before going to bed and during the night to rehydrate your body
• Eating mineral rich foods such as pickles or fish
• Drinking pickle juice, i.e. the juice that cucumbers eggs etc are pickled in, in the morning (apparently very popular in Poland)
• Eating something substantial before going to bed to soak up the alcohol (kebabs, pizza etc)
• Drinking coffee (although not too strong as caffeine itself can cause dehydration)
• Drinking orange juice, which is rich in vitamin C
• Eating cabbage leaves or drinking tomato juice
• Cysteine, which is available as an over the counter supplement (N-acetycysteine (NAC)) assists is processing acetaldehyde and is best taken while already drinking and/or before going to bed. Egg yolk is also rich in cysteine, which may be why many traditional remedies contain eggs.
• And finally - the most obvious of them all - don't get drunk!

So it would appear that the urge for a kebab after a heavy night is not so much that it’s the only time one tastes nice but a subconscious effort to prevent a hangover. My personal favourite is still the tried and tested remedy of drinking water before sleeping, works for me - if you can face it that is. Or alternatively just don’t get quite so drunk!

Odiham's War

Someone told me a while ago that it pays to whinge! I can't say I'm going to argue with that, as a nation it's something that most of us Brits are quite good at, and in a world where customer service should be the backbone of any successful business (in my view) if you're not happy about something you should speak up. As someone who is trying to run their own business it seems obvious - whereas we are always looking for new customers what's the point if you can't hang on to them when you find them? So we do everything we can to make our customers feel good about giving us their money and when we do mess up, because lets be honest, everyone does at some time or another, we do everything we can to fix it and make that customer come back to us again, even if sometimes that means going the extra mile or two!

Business is hard at the moment for a million and one reasons, but as a consequence I find that I'm turning into a right miserable old cow! The upshot of that is complaining about things comes so much easier, and has a certain therapeutic effect! I can't fix the things that I need to fix overnight; so making a mountain out of a molehill over things I can do something about makes me feel better.

The latest victim was the location manager of the Foyles War film crew that visited our sleepy little village recently. We were given a few days notice of their intention to spend around half a dozen days/nights over a two week period filming in our village and very close to our home. So close in fact that we had a huge klieg light hanging over our garden wall, bouncers outside our front door, a myriad of cables to navigate our way around every time we wanted to leave our house and numerous, very inconvenient, requests to turn various lights on or off in the house depending on the shot that they were after.

If I was in a happier place right now I may have got a little excited at the thought of a film crew at our front door, and our house (and business) making it onto the small screen but on another of many bad days they seemed like fair game for a complaint.

I wrote a very sternly worded letter to the location manager and enquired about compensation for the business's affected by their disruption (they closed off just about every public parking space in the village in the process of filming so we may as well of not opened our little gift shop on the days they were there for the amount of customers there were!) So he came to visit to say sorry, which I had to admire, and it was worth it for them because for the sake of letting me have a ten-minute rant and presenting me with a free Foyles War DVDand a signed photo of the star of the show my anger was sated. Which just goes to show how easily people can be pleased. I have a DVD of a TV series that I've never shown any interest in before (and I'm sorry to say but beyond the episode that features our house I probably never will again) and a signed photo of someone I had barely heard of before but I'm happy now. I guess complaining isn't so much about what you get from it as what you get out of it. Sometimes all you need to do to make someone happy is to listen to them.

So look out for an episode called 'Bleak Midwinter' due to be shown in the UK in September, featuring the sleepy little village of Odiham and the back of our house! Fame at last?

Sick Sick Sick!!!!

Yet another horrific story of animal cruelty published in a National UK newspaper this week! Sorry if the picture offends but I just cannot get my head round the fact that there are people out there, no matter what their substance abuse of choice is, who could think of doing anything like this, let alone actually carry it out!

'Horrified RSPCA chiefs were last night trying to track down the thugs who hanged this Dalmatian pup from a tree.

The six-month-old dog was found dangling from a blue nylon rope tied 15ft up a tree. It is a horrific picture that will cause distress to many readers. But the picture was printed at the request of the RSPCA to help track down the sadists responsible'.

The newspaper is also offering a £5000 reward for information (Call 020 7782 4030)

'The appalling spectacle of the lifeless puppy confronted a teenager at Cudworth Welfare Park in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, last Thursday. The rope had been tied to upper branches of a silver birch and a noose put around the dogs neck. A Dalmatian puppy costs at least £300 but this one was not wearing a collar and had not been reported missing.

RSPCA Inspector Terry Speight said "In 20 years I have seen some sights - but nothing as bad as this. Whoever did it had to shin up the tree, then place the noose around the dog before leaving it to swing to its death. There were two more nooses on the ground close to a couple of empty cider bottles and some silver foil beside a bonfire. This was a premeditated act by psychopaths who may have been on drugs. We need to find them".

What sort of people is this world creating? How long before whoever did this moves on to children, or old people, and how long before they kill a person?