If I Make You Smile ....

... then I take that as a huge compliment. I do like talking to people , sometimes reassuring them that they can deal with their situation like my dad with his upcoming cataract operation. Smiling boosts our health and immune system so just smiling is a quick win. If you smile at someone and they smile back then that's two people who's lives have improved. . Here's a few more reasons to smile.

It may be difficult to smile in bad times but I always try and find positives in every situation no matter how unpositive they may be. A smile always helps.

"A smile is formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, joy or amusement."

"Smiling Boosts Your Immune System 

 Smiling can also boost your overall health. The act of smiling actually helps the human immune system to function more effectively. It is thought that when you smile, immune function improves because you are more relaxed (thanks to the release of certain neurotransmitters)."

That's a couple of thoughts on why you should smile, and do it now. Your mood will improve, your day will improve and if you share it with others their day improve as well and making lots of people feel better is a total win/ win.

Although I've used this recently, it's one of my mums favourite songs and probably helped me appreciate the Carpenters.

By the way this is post 365 , so I have done one post a day for 2019

Art Decade

I've just realised that this is the last Sunday and the last week of this decade, it just suddenly came upon me, this time next week it will be 2020. I think I am finally getting recovered from the #flu' and speaking to my dad he told me, touch wood, that he had never had it. I do quite feel tongue in cheek when people have it continually. This is not the worst I have had it as I have been able to move, but now I will be expected to be there for people and to do things that are expected of an average human being.

In the last decade I've learned things , forgotten things ,done different jobs, bought things that have turned out fairly useless,, set targets, still not written any songs or a book and we are now on the cusp of another decade.

No doubt there will be some numerical significance gleaned from from the onset of 2020 but you often find such significance is just in the nature of the numbers themselves. Numbers only reach significance when they actually represent something significant. Humans always look for significance and patterns , and lets face it if we could work out how these things work we could improve our lives significantly but random is impossible to predict, that's it's nature.

So anyway I am going with Bowie's song from the instrumental side of "Low" (i particularly like the colour changing underground video accompaniment for this) on the grey drab Sunday morning, it's ironic that I finish this decade by failing to hit my step target for the month, but I am likely to hit a post a  day for the year for  the blog which I didn't expect to hit, so sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don't quite hit it..

The thing is once you have done certain things you do not need to repeat them.

This Here 'flu' and Cold

.. has certainly allowed me to write about my situation and the sheer annoyance of being stopped from living normally and being unable to do even the very basics. This is the first month I won't hit 340K steps for several years although the three month rolling million steps will be fairly safe, as I am currently 57K short for the month and have three days left, and normally I over hit by at least 40K so that will be all good.

The worst feeling is feeling you should be doing something but being unable to do anything because your mind or body is just stopping you from actually doing anything. Your mind's ability to think shuts down and you get this real restlessness to just do something, which in itself is good.

I am annoyed that I can no longer apply labels to the blog, but if I can't I can't. I can still search it.

So I am overheating again, so need to strip off (don't worry no pictures) so what should I go with. There are lot's of medical related songs that I can share, but I'll go with the original Delia Derbyshire / Ron Grainer "Doctor Who Theme".

Rest

Today I have to rest, no ifs, no buts , rest. I am improving but the end of each day I have regressed, and also needed to majorly cool down. It is always to tempting to just do a little thing, and this morning I heard a bin lorry in the distance so thought it would be prudent to take out my bin and my neighbour's to be picked up if and when the bin lorry comes.

Yesterday I taught myself the basic notes to "Troika" by Prokofiev , the perfect Christmas musical piece and just wondering whether to record it or not, it is relatively simple and I am not going to do the whole piece but I've always loved it sine Pete Sinfield and Greg Lake lifted it for the memorable instrumental section in "I Believe In Father Christmas" which is another perfect Christmas song,

As I blog I keep seeing spelling mistakes and grammatical errors and am not sure if it's my own incompetence of the built in spelling and grammar checker. I also cannot add labels either as it locks up the blogging software, which is more than annoying. I did try Wordpress but found it unusable, I know I'm in the minority, but it just never worked for me.

So we will go with "Troika" by Prokofiev which is lovely, seasonal and relaxing.It is from the "Lieutenant Kije" suite with Sting also raided for "Russians"

Overheating

I had a relapse yesterday, part of this is due to my mind wanting to do anything and my body not being up to it, this is then followed by me getting into bed, my body overheating , and heating up the contents of my insides and making me feel queasy to sick and unable to eat, which then weakens me further.

Sleeping on top of the bed with the window ope definitely improved the situation. At the moment my physical ability is really just about making a cup of tea and that's it. My problem is that I always go further than I should resulting in a potential relapse.

I know it's still Christmas and I am not one of these loons who are out at the sales in the cold often spending money they don't have on bargains that maybe aren't all they seem. Remember it's only a bargain if you were going to get one anyway. That's me just being a humbug.

I think I am gonna have a cup of hot chocolate for breakfast, wil nip out for eggs to have scrambled eggs and then really rest. I know I've put this blog post together and think I'll go with Graham Parker's "Heat Treatment" , great record, Enjoy.

Gaudete

Last night I think I shook off the 'flu' , I've lost 9lb but think that this may be muscle wastage rather than losing fat. That may be not too good but means that I am still weak but it has put me in a good position weight wise.

This morning on Classic FM a version of the Christmas Carol came on that sounded like the choir was on speed, and though that "Ah, that's another UK hit single that wasn't in English. The ones I can think of are as follows:

"Gaudete - Steeleye Span"

"La Bamba - Richie Valens / Los Lobos"

"Ça plane pour moi - Plastic Bertrand"

"Autobahn - Kraftwerk"

"Je T'aime,...Moi Non Plus - Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg"

I am sure there are at least two more , which I will add if I remember them, there are others with snippets of non English in them but I am just thinking of the ones with no English lyrics at all.

I will leave you with the Steeleye Span take as I am feeling a little queasy, but at least I have done a Christmas Day post.

Enjoy your Christmas my friends.

Disturbing

Today in bed I felt there was someone there with me, I don't know who, but I know someone was looking out for me.

Later I saw a dark sheet hanging over me with hands and a head full of teeth, looking fairly frightening, but I have confidence in my own abilities to fight off flimsy night demons and that is doubled because I know so many people want me back to 100% for both personal and professional reasons, all of them good. The demon stayed where it was and finally melted away but was fairly impressive.

During this influenza some of the side effects have been night blindness, dizziness almost to the point of collapse and a lot of this possibly caused by anaemia, which is not being helped by me not wanting to eat. Today I decided on a fried egg sandwich for breakfast but that just didn't happen, and a trip to the chemist for a folic acid prescription didn't really do me any good either, apart from getting more tablets that I need, thanks to my wonderful doctor at Thornfield Medical Group. I love our NHS.

My mind is tired but by body is awake, I had the heated up remains of a Mirch Aloo Begun from the amazing Rajnagar and managed to eat that without too much of a problem. I am now drinking Hot Chocolate as I write this in the hope I can kick start my body to properly repair itself. I am a bit like my dad in assuming my own indestructibility although I think I look after myself a bit more carefully.

After the dream I think an appropriate sequence would be "Night on Bare Mountain" by Mussorgsky from Disney's "Fantasia" one of my mum's favourite films and a wonderful introduction to classical music for young people, if only they had shown that in music lessons at school I'm sure a lot more of us would have taken notice. The piece also found it's way on to the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack as "Night on Disco Mountain".