Blog, it’s been nearly two years since my last post – such has been my absolute disinterest in your precious self, although the old neurons did occasionally spark with the thought ‘you must write another post’ but then got busy doing something else and now aeons of Time have passed. Who are you, Blog?  After two years, it feels like we’re strangers. Or rather – more properly – what are you, Blog?  For I’ve no idea how blogging tech works, hence the personification, to avoid the feeling I’m communicating with nothing but a machine in a dark void which, curiously, is also how I feel every time I encounter a certain insolently bored supermarket chain employee in my locality. And who am I for that matter?  For I feel in my bones that something has changed since I last put digits to keyboard.  Let’s reconnect.

I’ll begin with the couple of retinal tears I had in my left eye, 18 months ago, and which were probably the primary reason for my deep and absolute disinterest in uploading a load of waffle to the internet.  The unemotional nature of this paragraph’s opening sentence belies the anxiety and terror with which I greeted the optometrist’s diagnosis, after she’d taken a couple of photos of my eye.  At that point my cerebrum (it seemed) not only lost interest (as it did in you dear blog) but also decided to flick the off switch and left me to deal with the eye-related shock myself.  Yes, I now believe that my brain and I are no longer (or possibly ever were) conjoined, given its propensity to take a hike when something drastic happens.  Being deprived of a working brain meant I’d sat like a rag doll in the optometrist’s chair whilst she’d shown me photographs of the tears (looking very much like miniature deathly black holes in space.)  Her demeanour had been that of someone showing you their holiday pics whilst pointing out the tourist spots of particular interest.  She was oblivious to the silent scream going on in my head.  After forcing me to confront my own eye horror pics, she then rang the emergency eye department.  I will not go into the four hours of terror in a waiting room, or the ensuing laser surgery, as my brain again took a hike, this time carrying an enormous backpack as though it was never coming back. So, I dealt with it all on autopilot, but thank the health Gods for the NHS eye dept.

Blog, I’m now 65 (how weird it is to type such a number) and you’re about 11, or 12? – quite an age gap. Some time ago, in a prime example of how to waste precious time, I typed into Google ‘is 65 old’ because that’s what we do nowadays, consult with AI rather than a human and, besides, humans are apt to say comforting things like ‘you’re not old,’ (especially if they themselves are into their 7^th and 8^th decades.) Google on High informed me that I’m now officially ELDERLY.  The NHS went further, informing me that from hereon it’s all downhill.  Now, I know I’m hugely lucky to be 65 but did old age have to sneak up on me quite so fast (probably in the guise of Stephen King’s shape shifting clown – had I bothered to look behind me) and shout BOO, GOT YOU!  Like it’s the funniest in-joke the Universe could play – ever. 

There was a time in my 40s when I thought I was old; that Youth had left the building (this seems laughable now.)  How strange are the games Father Time plays – to almost feel younger in my 60s than I did back then.  And I feel lighter too because I finally committed to a healthy eating plan, sometime after getting a text from our surgery – texts being my only contact with said surgery, now that our GP resides in his ivory tower, looking down on his ant-like patients from on high, whilst instructing whichever of his healthcare assistants to deal with the annoyance that is your average patient.  Not that I want to see a GP, or any sort of stand-in for a GP. I avoid the surgery like the plague -which I wouldn’t do if I had the actual plague obviously – but medical appointments are anathema to my health anxiety soul. Anyway, on with the aforementioned text.

I’d had some blood tests roughly 3 years ago. Four months after the tests (which surely counts as an inordinate test results delay) a message pinged on my phone to let me know I was at risk of type 2 diabetes, and would I sign up to a diabetes prevention programme?  The programme would instruct me on healthy living and provide fellow participants to bond with, who would support me on my journey from pre-diabetes to optimum health via a sort of jolly, we’re in this thing together vibe. NO THANKS!  I’d screamed at my phone, not being at all the kind of person who wants to attend meetups with anybody, let alone a bunch of other pre-diabetic unfortunates.  So, I decided to go it alone and got serious about losing weight, because excess weight was clearly the issue.

I haven’t had a completely normal BMI for years, always being either on the cusp of the slightly overweight, or definitely overweight, categories.  One memorable year I slipped a toe into the murky depths of the BMI obese waters.  A photo at the time shocked me into doing something about it but then the weight crept back on (not by itself obviously, it was helped hugely by a kitkats and weekly bag (the massive one) of Cadbury buttons addiction.)  It crept back on Blog, rather like the ocean gradually surges towards the shore until, before you know it, you’re waving frantically as you go under.

So, I worked on becoming non prediabetic.  There was no gym involved. No fitbit gadget.  Just my regular walks, healthier meals and not eating between those meals – at all.  A few months ago, I got another text offering me a FREE! (yes, in caps and with an exclamation mark, like I’d won the lottery) MOT health check, and I grudgingly decided to go.  The upshot was my QRISK score (this infamous score will be known to those of us who bother to attend health checks) was much improved. A good MOT result, of course, future good health does not make.  Like your car’s MOT, it’s a snapshot – after all, your car can pass with flying colours then conk out the very next day, surrounded by plumes of worrying smoke while a small, but scary, fire smoulders in the bonnet.  But do I feel better and more agile in myself?  Yes, I do.  Am I a convert to sustained healthy eating?  The veggie, nuts, healthy fats, non-processed kind of eating?    Well yes Blog I am.  I’m a healthy lifestyle convert with an annoying fervour usually only encountered with upon opening your door to a pair of Jehovah witnesses (only because you forgot to look through the peephole.)   I’ve not yet become an acolyte of Tim Spectre and his Zoe app and never will. Never will I stuff my face with the likes of anything that features the word fermented.

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And what else is there?   Oh, yes, I now have a fire TV stick, gifted by son No.3 at Christmas.  Oblivious to fire TV sticks was I, until said son explained that I would be able to see stuff not on my normal telly.  This was a bonus, particularly due to Sky’s repetitive nature.  I’ve now watched two seasons of The Rings of Power on Amazon (didn’t even know Amazon had a telly channel) and what a wonder ROP was (if horribly violent which was not so wonderful.)  And I watched those two seasons in about 2 weeks because, with a fire TV stick, you can watch episode after episode all in one hit (this surely has a name which might be ‘streaming’ but I can’t be bothered to look it up.) I also watched The Other Bennet Sister in a loop – wonderful stuff.

Anyway Blog, that’s my first post in simply ages.  Was it worth taking up space on your digital pages?  I think not, but I couldn’t think of anything else to witter on about.  And, besides, all the blogs out there, since the beginning of the internet, will surely have some worth to future historians (circa 3000) as they trawl their way through the endless blogosphere, searching for priceless gems of what life was like in the backward 2000’s.  Unlike the poor historians (I’m thinking of ‘The Other Bennet Sister’ here) who never got their peepers on Jane Austens’ mighty volume of letters to Cassandra, because Cassandra burned them all.  Mind you, it’s not such a loss, unless you’ve a penchant for chatter about balls, gowns, hats and weird remedies for various 18^th century revolting ailments.  It is very interesting though how popular the film/TV versions of Austen’s works are, as opposed to actually reading the books. I once gave my old copy of Pride and Prejudice to a friend, whose interest was sparked by the 1995 TV version.  She couldn’t get past page one and suddenly appeared on my doorstep the next day to return it, handling it like it was a literary bomb that she couldn’t chuck away fast enough.  Her parting words were: ‘I can’t believe how BORING it is.’  Which is as good a review of Jane Austen as any other I suppose.