My
taste buds are adapting.
At
least I’m telling myself that, and I am, in part believing it. All of this is a direct result of my having
to have a diet of low fat with no salt.
And believe me, pepper is no real alternative to the lack of sodium chloride,
no matter how much I add to my flavourless food. And yet, I persist in telling myself that my
taste buds have become more sensitive and are able to take what pleasure they
can in the rather more subtle flavours that saltless preparation offers.
This
evening, for example, I had salmon with broccoli and I enjoyed it. A sprinkle of salt would have improved it,
but I resisted and made the most of what my taste buds could get from the food,
that in the event was quite a lot.
I am
going to have to look into the range of spices that I can add to food that do
not have a negative influence on my condition (thrombosis, pulmonary embolism
and weakened heart) and can make the eating experience a little more
exciting. When I asked the doctor how
long my present diet would last, his answer was, “For ever!” which makes the
finding of ‘safe’ condiments something of urgent necessity!
Today,
I have got down to the graft of getting something like a working draft of some
of the poems that I have been planning out put down on paper. I have four poems now in a working draft and
I count that as something of an achievement.
It
may just be the way that I work but I find that getting to the working draft
stage of my poems is not sitting down and waiting for some mythical muse to
touch my brow with inspiration, but rather hard work. The slog of writing out notes, working them
up into phrases or ideas and then trying again and again to put all that
together into something that is satisfying.
At least to me.
I
have not put any of my new poems on my poetry blog, but you are welcome to see
past drafts of my other poems at:
The
‘problem’ of how to fill a day being confined to my seat for the bulk of my
waking hours, does not exist for me. As
someone who delights to read, being forced to be sedentary and do something is
an invitation to do the thing that I like most.
I now have the (enforced) leisure to read The Guardian thoroughly –
though I am not sure how efficacious reading so much factual description of the
idiocy of various countries’ leaders around the world, does not make for
tranquillity.
The
idiocy of Brexit and the glaring ineptitude of a hopelessly riven political
apology of a party failing to articulate a reasonable response to it are
constantly frustrating. We still don’t
know what exactly May is trying to negotiate for and the reports of her asking
Merkle to “Make me an offer!” is cringemakingly embarrassing and terminally
humiliating.
Trump,
meanwhile, in the publishing of the shameless piece of political chicanery in
the publication of the partisan Republican “Nunes Memo” shows that he is
prepared to trash anyone and anything to protect himself. This is a time when American Institutions are
being pushed to their limits to contain a person who has no regard for anything
other than himself. He is of course
aided and abetted by a Republican Party of such low moral imperatives that they
are as much a threat to Democratic Institutions as the monster in the White
House.
And
Catalonia is in a bad place at the moment.
We still have no President and the PP is using the courts to muddy the
waters. Things should clarify in the
next few weeks, but I find it difficult to see a realistic solution if the
obtuse President of Spain refuses to be a politician and try and find a
negotiated solution to the problems.
It
is ironic that at present I am reading Andrew Marr’s History of the World that covers 70,000 years of human
history. The irony is that the problems
that we see in the present are covered again and again in the sweep of the
historical view that Marr offers in his eminently readable book. Perhaps his book should be compulsory reading
for the leaders in the world and perhaps they might see themselves and, more
importantly see where actions like theirs have ended up the populations that
they are supposed to serve!
Of
course there is no way on earth that a person of the calibre of Trump could be
encouraged to concentrate for long enough to read a multi-hundred page
book. Has he ever read a book of over a
hundred pages? I know he is supposed to
have written a book, but I don’t think any reasonable person actually believes
that particular fiction, not even the grandiose fool himself.
Still,
I tell myself that worrying overmuch about world events that I cannot influence
is not good for my health. But not
knowing about them is even worse – the Catch 22 position for anyone interested
in politics!
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