bit stressy

 yesterday tings started to get a bit stressy.

Went for a walk with the dog - it rained sideways.

Signed on to receive the "new" jobseekers allowance - whatever that means?

Got a greedy burn on my gob from a vegan cheese and onion toastie that was consumed too eagerly.

Had a heart attack...

you know the sort of thing.... 

I lie about the heart attack bit, obviously.... but in all seriousness, i had a bit of a scare.

Upon returning from the dog walk, i towel-dried the mutt, hang all my gear up to dry, got changed into some fresh threads, made a bit of lunch.

Sat down to eat my lunch and my watch started beeping.... i looked at the thing and it was telling me..... heart alarm!!  Never seen this before, so grabbed my phone and looked at the numbers..... sitting there at rest, 130-140 beats.... hmmmm .... feeling a bit hot..... hmmmm.

I munched a couple of carrots and the heart rate didn't seem to be changing.

Eventually after over an hour it settled but still quite high.

Now, i;ve had a few aches and pains down me left hand side, pass the dutchie pon etc.  Aching arm, pins and needles, a bit of a throb in me gullet......  so i phoned 111.

Long story short.....  ended up in A&E and had some blood tests and and an ECG... all routine stuff..... blood tests come back and i am ushered into a room...... basically the numbers were suggesting i might have had a heart attack but then again i might not..... it's all about the numbers and the timing and stuff.  Anyway, turns out i probably didn't have a heart attack and the other symptoms don't point exactly in that direction either.  So they let me go..... it seemed like a fifty fifty until the final minute as to whether i was gonna have to stay in.....

I left with the words in my ear.... "we're much happier if you come in early and it's this result than coming in too late with another ending"..... so i felt ok.  I think we all tend to feel like we're wasting everyone's time when we have niggles, right?

So.... i looked around me at all the stress.... and it's a difficult time just now to be sure.

They tell me that mindfulness is good to cope with stress, so today, i took it easy, did one of them mindful colouring books and drew a mandala.... perfect relaxation.

Life without meat

A long time ago, in a curry house not so far away.... I sat and ate a fine lamb curry.

The curry house - Sapnas on Venn Street in Huddersfield.

The time.... probably 3AM (eternally) and perhaps the year 1990 or thereabouts.

It was the last piece of meat that I ordered.

The next day I was vegan.... stopped buying wool, silk (not that I ever bought silk anything anyway), leather, milk, cheese, meat, eggs..... the list goes on.  The Friday big-shop went from being a pleasant 1 hour saunter through the local Tesco's to being a frantic four hour marathon of ingredient listings, E number translations and painful scrutinisation of lots of small print.

Retrospectively I tried to justify my decision to become vegan by applying the principles of karma and the concept of yin yang.... really it was just about me trying to balance the forces of good and bad in my life.... I was a pretty bad guy doing lots of bad things and I needed some sort of good thing to balance the scales.

For eight years I managed to avoid animal produce..... it was a harsh time and it was difficult to go on holiday anywhere or to eat out anywhere.  It was a DIY culture where everything had to be cooked from scratch at home and one which mainstream society had no clue about - times have changed since then and people are much more aware now.  It is not uncommon to walk into a pub and see items on their menus that are even labelled as "vegan" - this would never have happened in 1990.

The Vegan magazine was a helpful publication at the time, and you could, if you shopped around find a guesthouse with vegan catering, and I do remember vegan breaks in The Lakes, at Blackpool, and we even found a vegan restaurant on the island of Zakynthos (tucked away behind Greece's answer to Blackpool).

During a weekend break in Whitby, it was decided that I would start to eat fish again... probably 1998 or thereabouts, and what better place to do so than the famous Magpie restaurant on the harbour front.  I tucked into a fish supper of immense proportion for the first time in many years - and no doubt it was fried in beef dripping as well as is the Yorkshire wont.

And that's it.... I eat fish and seafood and I'm none too fussy if something contain gelatine.  Once I accidently picked up a slice of pizza that had meat on it and rather than waste it I ate it....  the Chinese takeaway once served me sweet and sour chicken instead of king prawn and I still ate it.....  I'm not fussy.

My choice is.....  I don't eat meat... that's it.... you can call me a half-arsed vegetarian.... a pescetarian.... a tree hugger.... call me what you want....

I'm NOT fussy!