Still too early for tulips in the garden! But the shops stock them in all colours and shapes.
My dwarf narcissus is in bloom in the front garden though, it's always the first, I adore it.
This is taking stock.
Remember I told you 8 weeks ago I would like to lose some weight? Preferably 10 kilos or so? Well, so far - nothing doing. It is really frustrating, as I do not eat great quantities (compared to some of my female colleagues I eat little), do not drink soft drinks, hardly ever indulge in sweeties or cakes and have cut down on my alcohol intake.
The trouble is, I do not believe in diets. All around me I see women my age (but also twenty years younger) struggling to lose their flab, and I have seen them going on every diet imaginable, with no LASTING result. Sure, they lose kilos initially, some of them staggering amounts (40 kilos?! Wow, respect! Except that it was back with a vengeance within 6 months after stopping the diet).
I come from an age where being slim was normal. When I look at the old faded photos from my youth (sixties, seventies, eighties) everyone was so slim compared to everyone today! But when I think back, we drank gallons of tea and the occasional beer, and that was it. Snacks consisted of 1 soup bowl of potatoes chips or a handful of peel it yourself peanuts on a Saturday evening, and that was it.
Fast food was chips from the chippy with mayonaise (it's a Dutch thing) and a kroket, and that was it. Going to an Italian, Chinese or Greek restaurant was the height of sophistication in my region, and that was it.
But then, slowly, starting in the mid-eighties, food changed and with it the food fads. All of a sudden everyone started buying soft drinks, and eating a pre-dinner snack called toostjes (small bite-sized toast with French cheese, sausages et such), and it became fashionable to buy lunch out instead of bringing your own cheese sandwiches. Having more money meant eating more and more meat and less veg.
People started gaining weight. So the food industry came with 'light' products in the nineties, and la-di-dah, everyone gained even more weight.
Then all kinds of food myths started doing the rounds. Eat only fruit in the morning, eat porridge, eat raw food, eat power food, avoid bananas, do-not-eat carbons, eat this, eat that.
Result? None what so ever; clever diet gurus made a fortune and people kept on gaining weight steadily. I see it in my daughter. She weighs 12 kilos more than I did at her age, and she can be considered a 'normal' eater.
The latest food instruction from our national health watch organization is to not eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day (we were supposed to do this), but up it to 10.
So first we have been turned into a society of gluttons, and now they are urging us to turn into goats.
I actually like vegetables, so I suppose I am lucky. But I know plenty of people (mostly bearded men) already struggling with the number 5. Who consider a huge steak with 5 green peas the perfect meal.
My solution? I don't have one. Sorry. Except...yesterday I saw someone on TV with proof that using a smaller plate actually makes a person eat less.
I'll try to eat my 10 plant forms a day, rainbow coloured, from a tea saucer. Will keep the pastas/rice to a minimum. And I'll keep indulging in the occasional beer or whisky (hey! comes from grains, yay!). Life is for living!
But I have booked my bicycle into the shop for a facelift and tune-up, ready to start cycling to work again. And I try to take a brisk walk every day. The gardening season starts soon; more bodily activity. I do the occasional dance around the room or in the local hard-rock cave.
And I look wistfully at the Spring Collection I do not fit into.
So have a nice Sunday, won't you? Have a nice cucumber on me!
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