This and that - oh and Fat Fighters

It's a strange kind of atmosphere at work at the moment.  All the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over and work has not really started gearing up yet - kind of the lull before the storm I guess, although frankly I prefer it when I am busy.

A funny thing happened on the bus on the way home yesterday.  As I have written before I drive to the Franco/Swiss border every day and then catch a bus for the 40-odd minute ride across Geneva. Since I am an avid reader I use this time to get quite a bit of reading in during the day.  You know, wedge yourself in at the back where you couldn't give up your seat for little old ladies even if you wanted to and Bob's your uncle.  Anyway, last night an older Chinese man got on at the station and ended up sitting next to me.  He absolutely reeked of garlic .... but I digress.  He looked over at my book and when he saw that I was reading in English he said "I see you on here most days reading. In China we have a saying that you are chasing time".  Now what the heck are you supposed to reply to that?  I took it to mean that I was "chasing time in my busy life to find time to read".  Not sure exactly.  So I just said "well I am a prisoner of this time so I may as well use it wisely".  (Can you feel a little "Confucius says" coming in to this conversation?)  He wasn't at all offensive (except for the garlic) and when he got off the bus my friend leaned over and said "I think you're in there".  But to be honest, I'm not sure if I understood what he was talking about or he understood what I was talking about - I guess we may find out in chapter two next time I bump into him.

Another thing that made me laugh today was a story carried by that bastion of truth in journalism, the Daily Mail.  They had run a similar item previously but their "journalism" never ceases to amaze me. It was a story on reports of how fearless Kim Jong Whatsisname had supposedly climbed up a mountain almost 3,000 metres high recently. While I have no doubt that he did indeed succeed, I must admit whenever I go up into the mountains round here I have a rather different style of clothes. It could just be that I'm a scaredy cat but what do you think?  Am I being overcautious?  Time to break out the brand new fearless me do you think?

And moving seamlessly on to other news, when I went to see my doctor six months ago it turns out that all of a sudden I had developed high cholesterol.  They did another test just before Christmas and it was still the same so she asked me if I had been under stress recently.  Hallooooo, doesn't everyone's ex just bugger off and leave his ex-wife and kids to sort out 26 years' worth of accumulated crap, empty a three-bedroomed farmhouse and get rid of the dog?  No? So it must just be me then. She also mentioned that I seemed to have put on quite a bit of weight lately and that that could also be the cause of my relatively sudden high cholesterol reading.  No kidding.  I think what probably gave the game away is that I am now at the exact weight I was when I gave birth to my second son - so the equivalent of 9-months' pregnant then.  Great.  Oh boy, time to do something about it I suspect, although in truth I had been feeling pretty uncomfortable for some time, especially this summer with the unseasonally hot weather.  So (drum roll please) I decided "oh to hell with it" and have signed up for Weight Watchers (affectionately known as Fat Fighters).  Actually I would have liked to go to Slimming World, but they don't have that here in France so Fat Fighters it is.  I have enrolled and will go to my first meeting tomorrow evening.  I suspect/hope it will be easier this time round (famous last words) since my kids have left home and I don't have to cook for anybody except myself.  So wish me luck and watch this space.  And now I'm off to shave my legs before the weigh-in.