There’s still snow on the ground but the ice on the millponds is clearly thinner than it was yesterday (I haven’t ventured into the back garden to check the state of the water barrel which had a really thick layer of ice last time I looked) and the temperature has gone up… slightly! It’s now just seasonally cold rather than biting cold. The blue sky and sunshine have also gone. We’re back to grey sky and a little drizzle.
Despite the grey sky and drizzle our across-the-road neighbour is out there in this thick coat and wooly hat, hanging Christmas baubles on his garden fence. There are already lights on the archway that roses grow up in the summertime. He decorates his garden this way every Christmas. One Christmas, probably about five years ago, Granddaughter Number Three, the one from the southern branch of the family, then aged about 4, going on 5, looked out of the window of the front bedroom, where she sleeps when they visit, and solemnly told me, “I expect he decorates his garden because he knows a little girl is coming to stay”. Wonderful!
If anything, this year he is a little late getting his lights and baubles organised. In the year of the pandemic I seem to recall he put them all up in the middle of November, probably feeling that we needed a bit of joy to accompany our banging pans to thank the NHS. Maybe this year he is just being slow to get going. I know that I am. Other people are gloating that they have already wrapped all the presents and here I am still wondering what gifts to give everyone! So it goes.
No doubt we’ll all overindulge as usual over the Christmas period. In the college where I last worked at this time of year huge tins of chocolates would appear in the staffroom every morning and were usually empty by the end of the day. Maybe the management wanted us all to get diabetes or maybe it was just Christmas spirit.
I read an article by an American who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. His doctor prescribed him a range of medication and when asked by his patient if illness could be controlled by diet h as rather noncommittal recommended that when he went to birthday parties perhaps he should eat half a slice of cake instead of a whole slice. His patient did some research of his own and cut put a lot of stuff from his diet, mostly bread and pasta, and, lo and behold!, reduced his blood sugar levels and was taken off medication. Here’s a comment he made:
“To his credit, when my doctor saw my blood sugar numbers, he took me off all medication. “You don’t need me anymore,” he said. But he also evinced a shocking lack of curiosity about what I did to lower my A1C so dramatically. I now realize my doctor was making an honest attempt to follow the guidelines issued by the American Diabetes Association. I didn’t ask him if he was aware that the top five funders of the ADA are the pharmaceutical companies Abbott, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Co, Novo Nordisk and Regeneron.”
It seems that big pharma has the same level of interest in stopping obesity and diabetes as arms companies have in stopping war and conflict.
Here’s my friend Heidy’s post from this morning:
“So this is the brutal agenda:
"Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said that the Israeli military must “return and crush Gaza with all our might”.
In a post on X this morning, he said: “For the sake of the children who have not yet returned, for the murdered who will no longer return, so that the horrors of 7/10 will never return, we must return and crush Gaza with all our might, destroy Hamas and return to the Strip, without compromises, without deals. at maximum power.”
(Guardian update)
And nobody in the Western media calls this self-confessed mass murderer a terrorist - they call him "national security minister", part of the "Israeli government"...”
And Ziad’s Gaza Diary’s most recent entry asks Santa not to bring toys but blankets and food to the children of Gaza this year.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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