Tag Archives: tranquility

Blood Pressure,Tranquility and a Simple Solution

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I’m generally at peace in three places. One of these is when I’m out in nature (though a cold day at a gravel pit doesn’t work the magic as much as a spring day in the woods. Another is in church. The third one is among antiques.

We seem to be wired to respond to nature, and I suspect church builders knew more about promoting tranquility a thousand years ago than we do now. As to the third, I’m not sure why it happens, but it does. It might just be that I’m strange.

One place I find it hard to be relaxed is in hospital. That probably starts in the Workhouse. They weren’t meant to promote relaxation, which is fine when you are building to scare the poverty-stricken and the elderly. When they were turned into hospitals, as many of them were, a change of emphasis might not have been possible. I’m not saying this is the reason, but it might be.

There is also the well known “white coat effect”. I used to be able to control this by imagining sunlight streaming into a wooded clearing. These days, I can’t hold the picture in my mind and I frequently find myself having discussions with doctors about my blood pressure.

I don’t know why it should be so. I’m overweight, so as far as I’m concerned that gives the blood more room to spread out. I should have low blood pressure, not high. Unfortunately this, according to my doctor, is not how it works.

Plan B then, should surely to go back a few hundred years and do a bit of cupping and bleeding. Looking at it logically this will reduce the pressure, just like letting air out of a tyre. Simple.

I shall have a word with my doctor when I see them on Thursday.

 

Easter, Spring, Lambs and Happiness

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The sheep had a set of twins yesterday. So far we’ve had nothing today, but it’s early yet.

I’m writing this quietly as Julia is conducting a 9.00 am meeting on the desk next to me.  I say desk, because it sounds more professional than table. It’s all about outputs and throughput and footfall over there.

On this side it’s about Safer Food, Better Business because we had a kitchen inspection on Saturday. It didn’t go well because the duty cook washed their hands in the washing up sink and put a pack of raw sausages down in the wrong place. There’s nothing major on the list, and they were generally happy. However, it did take a couple of hours out of yesterday and will take a few more hours to sort yet.

The annoying thing is that my main activity (cooking vegetarian bakery products, jams and chutneys)) wouldn’t even require registration. I’m supposed to be working on a grant application, which needs to be done in the next couple of days, but instead I’m working on cleaning schedules and staff training. Even as I write these words I’m concious that this is a very minor annoyance.

In contrast to most offices, I can’t hear traffic noise. Mostly I hear sheep bleating and cocks crowing. The most invasive sound is the calling of Great Tits, a sound often likened to a squeaky wheelbarrow or squeaky bicycle pump.

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Once we finish here (in about an hour) we are off until Tuesday, as Julia has taken the weekend off work. The clocks go back this weekend, and as we get up at 5 am on Sundays, the last thing we need is to lose an extra hour.

I’m going to stop now, as there’s a fine line between happiness and smugness when you write about it. Hopefully I’ve not stepped over the line.