Searching for Excessive Sugar Man

Sometimes it feels as if the universe is speaking to me. Or my wife Patricia and Ricky Gervais at least.

Having dinner in the kitchen a week ago, a simple check-in question resulted in a revelation. “I think we are getting through a lot of sweet things.” This is true and subtle, all at the same time. Patricia is a bit of a healthy demon, swimming sixty-five lengths at a go, rigorous tennis sessions twice a week, salads and hummus and yogurts and soya milk and lord only knows what. So, if there’s a lot a sweet things being consumed in this little Armstrong household of two, most of it is only going one way.

Then I am idly flicking channels late the same night and there’s Ricky Gervais doing one of his stand-up shows. I never stay around long. Ricky is a funny, talented writer but his somewhat mean stage persona makes me a bit uneasy. This time I stayed long enough for the universe to reinforce its message to me. Ricky was in the middle of explaining how simple it all was. That you take in more calories than you manage to burn. That’s all there is to it.

Add to this that I recently was gifted a well-loved Nordic Walker machine, which I was making gentle inroads into getting to know when it broke. The feeling of regret at losing this new friend was disproportionate to what it should have been. It became clear that I was subconsciously looking for something.

For a time there, I’d been feeling a tad below par. Nothing earth-shattering, just a notch or two down on the norm. Weary, foggy, digestively compromised. That kind of vibe. Was it a post Covid thing? Was it being over Sixty? I trundled on. But then the universe showed me a basic possibility. Could the loading on of copious amounts of biccies and choccies be some kind of contributing factor to this minor funk of mine?

A quick Google gave the prompt reply, why yes, yes, it could. Silly bugger. Why didn’t you figure this out before?

So here we go. Cold turkey.

No sweets, no biccies, no Diet Coke. None of that stuff. I can’t cut out sugar altogether. Sugar is everywhere. But I can cut out the excess stuff that shouldn’t be there in the first place and certainly not at the levels which they recently were.

One week in and the change in the way I feel is astonishing. Don’t get me wrong, I feel exactly like I did one week ago. The actual change is in the reason I now believe I am feeling this way. The little annoyances are no longer part of some general malaise. Now they are a symptom of a recovering, detoxifying body. Every negative has turned around and become a positive. Where previously I might have felt that ‘I feel like shit,’ I now feel that ‘I feel like shit because I’m doing better.’ This is all stupid, I am well aware, but the shift to a more positive mindset is palpable and that, in itself, is a solid improvement.

I’ve substituted the walking machine with actual walking and, although it isn’t the same level of arm swinging and general sweatiness, it is still something more than was there before. Tiny steps. Well, medium-sized steps, around the town.

It probably won’t last. These enthusiasms come and go, as we all know. But certain truths may be starting to become embedded. I see lots of men my age out in their oversized t-shirts, doing the needful. But a high percentage of them are doing it because they’ve had a heart attack or some other kind of bang and now, they simply have to. I’d like to get ahead of that curve and learn that I ‘have to’ now, just as much as I’ll ‘have to’ after.

Going without sweet things is not easy for me. It’s always been my crutch and my reward. The muscle memory that drives me inexorably to the top cupboard is scarily forceful. The dull ache of a lonesome cup of tea is a lesson hard learned.

But I’ll try my best. I’m not looking to become Schwarzenegger or Twiggy. I just don’t want to throw away any more than I already have.

So here you are, on this fine morning, having been conned into reading nothing more than a personal statement of intent.

Enjoy your day.

Cat Dancing

Our relationship with Puddy, the stray cat, is pretty well established at this point. You would hope it would be, it’s been over three years since she had her kittens in the shed etc. etc. etc. Pretty well established, yes, but there are still elements that make Puddy and us a sort of a moveable feast. Our routine, though present, is always subject to reassessment and revision. Always, I might add on the part of the cat.

That’s why this entry is called what it is. Life with a cat, or at least our cat, is a constant dance of demand and requirement, veering from total contentment to gross displeasure. Ninety percent entirely predictable but ten percent completely not.

Just now, for instance, Sunday morning, I’ve been hanging clothes on the line when Puddy saunters around the side of the house, fresh from a night on the neighbourhood tiles.

“Good morning, Puddy, how are you today?”

Puddy rolls around under the clothesline, exposing her soft milky white belly. A portrait of undying love and total submission. Easy to assess, easy to deal with. But suppose I was to stoop down and attempt a little head stroke. Not a tummy stroke, obviously, that would be death from most cats. No, just a harmless head stroke. Puddy would immediately turn into Gladiator, bucking and hissing, wielding her multiple swords with unmatchable speed and agility.

I would be toast.

So Puddy and I express our enthusiasm for each other at a reasonably safe distance. When she’s hungry and keen for the food I’m bringing, she will twine in and out between my feet and do clawless paw-battle with my shoes. She will meow very softly, which is her only tone of meow, and be a model of feline warmth. Just don’t touch, mate. Don’t even think about it.

Puddy spends the night indoors most of the time now. At least during the Winter. Last Summer, she largely went AWOL each night and came back in the morning, ready for the breakfast dance. This year will probably be the same, the signs are already there. But for the entire Autumn and Winter she has overnighted in the front hall, with her food and water and litter box (which she hardly ever uses). No cat dancing required here; it would seem. A straightforward B&B transaction. You would think so, wouldn’t you? But, no, there are nightly hurdles to be surmounted, gymnastic floor exercises to complete.

Puddy likes being indoors, particularly out of inclement weather, but she is an outdoors semi-feral cat through and through. Too long behind glass and she gets restless and tense. There are cats out there that have to be kept in check, other houses to visit and charm. We can’t just sit here all day and night. So, some nights, she simply doesn’t want to come in. At least she thinks she doesn’t… or maybe she thinks she does. Therein lies the problem.

Many evenings, round midnight, you may find me at my front door, tired and ready for bed. You may see me wearily addressing an indistinct furry bundle out in the garden gloom.

“Well? What’s it going to be? This is the final call, it’s now or never.”

The cat may come in. She may make biscuits for a while in her furry, familiar basket. But when she’s in this humour, she will probably bugger off again, out into the night, and no amount of persuasion will bring her inside.

Other evenings, she’ll be waiting at the door for me to come home for work. She will hop into her basket and not budge again until the next morning. A hard day, I guess, up and down our little street.

So, the nighttime cat dance, as described, can be intricate and a little bit wearisome but it is made considerably more complex by the introduction of what we shall call ‘the living room factor.’ What was a simple three-step Waltz now becomes an intricate Argentine Tango of feline desire.

It’s simple, really.

We both like having Puddy in the living room of an evening. She apparently likes it too because she comes and sits on the window cill and presses her pink nose on the place where the window opens, perhaps believing that this act alone will gain her access. She mimes a Meow that I know would be silent even if the pane of glass was not between us. And we, being the soft touches that we undoubtedly are, let her in. I open the window and she slinks in, eying me distrustfully as she passes me. She bounds onto the carpet from the window with a surprising lack of grace and makes straight for her chair. She has her own armchair, with a purple blanket on it to try to minimize the shedding fur element. There she will stay for the evening. If I were being cute (I think I did it in an earlier post) I would say that she watches television with us, but she doesn’t really. She doesn’t give a toss about anything on the screen, dogs, cats, lions, tigers, Puddy doesn’t care. She preens and rotates and rolls and sleeps and sleeps and sometimes just sits imperiously and watches us as if wondering why we are still here, in her room.

Around eleven o’clock, the dance begins.

For our sins, we are not comfortable with Puddy overnighting alone in the living room. She is a scratchy, fur-shedding machine, and we are not natural cat people. We fear our nicest room might suffer for her overnight presence. Silly, perhaps, to you seasoned cat people but there it is. Puddy has her domain in the hall, and she is most welcome there. It is comfy and warm, and all the necessaries are in there. So, at around eleven o’clock, it’s a simple transfer from the living room to hall for Puddy. Nothing to it.

You know that’s simply not true.

At eleven, we open the window and open the front door. In pursuit of a few unignorable treats, Puddy goes out and around to the front door. She inspects her hallway domain. She makes biscuits and samples a few crunchy food items from her bowl. But damned if she will stay. Having seen, first hand, the wonders of the living room, has she decided that the hall is simply not up to scratch, or has she rested sufficiently during her hours in the armchair and now it’s time for late night street adventures? I don’t know. Nobody knows.

All I know is I’ll be standing at my front door, round midnight, doing that dance with Puddy the Cat yet again. Will she come in and stay? Will she go off adventuring? Your guess is as good as mine.

The overriding thought I have at these times is for my next-door neighbours. I picture them ensconced in their bed and glaring at each other in the dull glow of their bedside lamp.

“There’s that bloody eejit again, calling his bloody cat.”

Regretting the Hunger Gauge Idea

The other day, I was walking home from work for lunch. I do that. It sounds decadent but it’s a bit of a rush-job really. Twenty minutes to get there, twenty minutes lunch, with a good book, and twenty minutes back. It’s nice though. I know I’m lucky to be able to do it…

…which will probably become the theme of this post. So, watch out… just… watch out.

So, there I am, walking home up the main street and there’s this guy lying on the street up ahead. Right in the middle of a busy lunchtime town centre street. And he’s got a sleeping bag which is covering his legs and he’s got a bulging rucksack tucked in behind him and his legs are stretched out so far onto the pavement that people are getting in each other’s way trying to get around him and not having to resort to stepping over him. And he’s got a handwritten sign on his sleeping-bag-covered knees. It’s a very carefully written sign, blue biro on brown cardboard box-flap. It’s saying:

“Please help me. I am very hungry.”

And, within the dusty confines of my own head, I get a bit annoyed.

I mean, look at this guy. Looking moderately well-to-do. Taking up half the street with his begging-ensemble. He’s obviously a member of one of those rolling groups who get ferried from town to town, landed in the town centre, and there get left to beg for what they can before being bussed back home again. He is playing us all, with his rucksack, and his beard, and his sad face.

But it’s the sign. It’s that sign that’s the worst of it.

You’re really very hungry, are you? It’s there, writ large in blue Bic on your cardboard flap. Very hungry, you say. But what happens when some kindly passer-by gives you money, as many already undoubtedly have, and you nip into the adjoining shop and score yourself a nice sandwich and maybe a latte? What happens to your sign then? Answer: Nothing. You come back and ease into your sleeping bag and hold up the very same sign that says you’re very hungry even though you’ve just had the full feed. Because that’s the con, isn’t it? That’s the game. You don’t have a series of alternative signs in your rucksack, do you? ‘I was hungry but I’m not anymore.’ That one isn’t in your repertoire, is it? No, it bloody isn’t.

Ideally, you would have some LED sign, which could be revised in accordance with how much food you had eaten. “I am moderately hungry, as I’ve just had a big bap,” it might say. Or “I am fully satiated now, food wise, you don’t have to worry. Shall I pull my legs in a bit?” Perhaps there could even be a gauge on the sign, an easy-to-read graphic indicating, on a scale of 1 to 10, how very hungry you currently are.”

I strode on, eager to get to my tea and my book. But, as I got near the town green, my pace slowed, my mind turned on itself.

Who in the hell did I think I was? Who in the hell was I becoming?

How many slips, how many trips would it take for me to be the person lying on the side of the road, begging for alms? Three? Two? One, even? How self-satisfied and insular am I, that I can mentally berate the person whose feet are marginally in my way or whose sign might not accurately reflect the state of his hunger-level? Make no mistake, Bucko, that could be you. That may well be you, someday. And not in some outlandish ‘Trading Places’ fairy tale scenario either. That could be you within a year if everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

And so what if that guy is part of some larger ‘bussed in’ money begging project. Is that what he envisaged for himself when he was a kid? Is this where his mother hoped he might end up?

I see it all over the place. People so wrapped up in themselves that they care nothing for the other person in front of them. Not only the ‘not caring’ but, more than that, the active resentment of the person who has slipped further down the ladder than the rung on which they currently sit. I’ve seen that all over, but I hadn’t seen it so much in myself, until now. And mark me, I didn’t like seeing it in myself. Not one little bit.

I don’t have to give the guy money. If I think he’s being exploited by some organised immoral system, I don’t have to support it. I don’t have to be that naïve. But, by golly, I surely do have to recognise that the man on the deck with the sign and the sleeping bag is 100% as valuable a human as I am.

And I have to remember to treat him accordingly.