Saturday 25 May 2013

Oxford Botanical Garden or Parc Fenestre in La Bourboule?



I am rather busy these days and don’t get out much.  But today after a few hours work I decided to pay a quick visit to the Botanical Garden.  It is just off the High Street and I pass it on my way to work and back, but I don’t often go – before work it is closed and after work it is closed, so I have to make a special effort if I want to go and I rarely do.

But today I did!  The weather was not too bad, sunny but in that washed out sort of way, so I am afraid the photos aren’t as richly colourful as they might be.  Still, you get an idea of what it is like.  It is one of the oldest – if not the oldest – botanical gardens in the world and part of the University.  There are also glasshouses with rare plants, and a huge tank full of water which houses a water lily which has leaves big enough for a child to sit on.  Unfortunately I didn’t go in there, the weather has been so miserable recently that I preferred to soak up the sun rather than go inside.  I did bump into a few friends on the way out - how likely is that?

The 23rd was, as always, a very special day in my calendar, made more special still because I was able to bag one of the few cheap Eurostar tickets for my return from la Bourboule in September this year.  I stayed up until midnight, and one minute after midnight the tickets for my chosen date went on sale.  Three weeks ago I booked the ticket to go there, and got up at 4 am but was still too late to get a super cheap ticket – an almost cheap ticket was all that was still available.  You have to be fast to get one of those elusive super deals! 
 
One of my friends in Paris recently sent her children to go to kiddie camp in la Bourboule, and they loved it!  I am not surprised, la Bourboule is any child’s dream, especially Parc Fenestre!




 





Sunday 19 May 2013

Green is such a lovely colour ….

My garden is quite shady so ferns are one of the few plants that really thrive in it
 
Ramsons (wild garlic) also do well.  When they are done flowering I pick the leaves and freeze them - they are delicious!

Green is definitely one of my favourite colours!  And Spring is a good time for seeing green.  The garden is awakening, and there are so many different shades of green, it beggars description.  I am always reluctant to post photos of my garden; it is such a small, common, unexceptional garden, with few flowers or features of interest.  But to me it holds many charms, and every flower is special.


Appletree blossoms
 
Ditto

Lily of the Valley

Bluebells

Herb Robert - somehow I like the smell!
 
The birch is doing well
 
Herb Robert is taking over the pondside
 
 
My garden bench, great for morning coffee

Tadpoles in my observation bowl


I only turn on the fountain when the taddies have left

 
More Herb Robert

My first Christmas tree in the Little House.  He lived in a pot for four years and now sort-of-prospers in the garden

The little trees I scavenged in La Bourboule and planted in pots are doing well!

The Elder is thriving (well, just try and stop them!)
 
The current Christmas tree, doing alright in its pot.  I repotted him after last Christmas, hopefully he will be alright in the pot for another year or two!  If pines have bright green tips on their branches in Spring they are alright, if not they need attention

Musings on Cholesterol




Some time ago I had a regular blood test done, to make sure everything is OK.  The blood needed for the test was drawn a little inexpertly – as you can see from the photos.  I only put the photos here because I don't have any of my cholesterol and it is nice to have photos in a blog  ...

When I got the results back my doctor said that everything was fine, except that I had hideously high levels of cholesterol.  They have always been on the high side, but this time they were very very high – 8.6, and only 2 of that is the supposedly good HDL, whereas the evil LDL makes up the rest.  Statins! exclaimed the doctor.  No way! said I.  We agreed on a moratorium of six months, where I would clean up my diet, exercise even harder, etc etc.

Instead of heading straight for the gymn I started to Google around, for weeks on end.  I am not going to write a long post about medical details, because other people have already done it and can do it better than me.  I have pasted several links below if you are interested.  I recommend the first one especially – it gives the results from the Norwegian Hunt 2 Study.

As a general rule, I like to do my own research, so first I researched cholesterol, and what caused high levels.  I already sort of knew that the body manufactures its own cholesterol, and if we reduce our dietary intake our body simply produces more, so eating less cholesterol rich food is pretty pointless.  So what else could I do?  Exercise helped, apparently, also all sorts of supplements and special foods. 

One evening I came across two interesting bits of information, in two different websites:  (a) Two thirds of all American adults over 50 have high cholesterol, (b) half of all people over 50 who have heart attacks have high cholesterol levels – ergo, fewer people with high cholesterol have heart attacks than those with low cholesterol!  Suddenly I became very suspicious indeed!  And then, on a whim, I googled, ‘Cholesterol is good for you!’

I found the Norwegian Hunt 2 Study, inter alia.  It was financed by the Norwegian government – not the pharmaceutical industry - went on for ten years, covered 65,000 people (half men, half women) and found that men with average to moderately high levels of cholesterol lived longest, whereas women lived the longer the higher their cholesterol levels were – even if that level was above 7!  Have a look at the study, all the information is there, graphs included.

After that I continued to search, and found any number of other studies:

·        Studies of old people in nursing homes in Austria and France and the US showed that the higher their cholesterol the longer the people lived;

·        Autopsy reports showed that people with high levels of cholesterol in their blood had no more plaques in their veins than people with low cholesterol;

·        Studies which showed that cholesterol protects the body from infections and diseases, which explains why people with high cholesterol levels live longer;

·        Studies which show how cholesterol repairs damaged tissues, which explains why cholesterol levels rise with increasing age – the older we get the more our bodies need to be repaired;

·        Studies which emphasise the need for good dental hygiene – the same bacteria that damage teeth and gums also attack the cardiovascular system – indeed, gum disease is a marker for future heart attacks;

·        Studies which show quite how many side effects statins have, including cancer – most statin trials only last a few months or years, and cancer takes many years to develop, too long to show up in the trials;

·        Studies which show that women experience a lot more side effects from statins than men, and gain no benefit from taking them;

·        Reports which show how studies which show statins to be beneficial are publicised widely, whereas studies which show the opposite get buried;

·        Studies which show that people who are on statins do not extend their life expectancy by a single day;

·        Studies/analyses which show that many of the benefits claimed by statins are actually attributable to cholesterol – people who are prescribed statins have had high cholesterol levels for much of their life, and continue to benefit from its protective effects for a number of years even after they start to take statins.

I could go on, but you get the message.  My conclusion is that I am grateful to my body for taking such good care of me by manufacturing so much of this wonderful substance cholesterol, and I am not going to interfere with its beneficial activities.

Several closing comments.  After all my research I am personally convinced that smoking, sugar, and refined carbohydrates damage the body and should be avoided as much as possible.  Exercise, sleep, good dental hygiene, a balanced diet, and a cheerful disposition are essential to a healthy and long life.  Not news to anyone, I dare say.  

Lastly, don’t believe what I tell you.  Go out there and do your research.  When you read of some study which says, X reduces Y by Z amount, ask the question, How does it effect life expectancy?  Because that’s what matters in the end.  If some drug or dietary regime lowers my chance of dieing from a heart attack but increases my risk of dieing from cancer or a respiratory disease just as much or more then what is the point?  Look at overall life expectancy, always.

An interesting case in point is what I read in the news yesterday, that breast cancer rates vary greatly from country to country.  When digging deeper it shows that countries with higher incidence of breast cancer also have a longer life expectancy - women live long enough to get breast cancer in these countries.  This is true of many cancers.

When considering statistics, always look at absolute figures.  An increase/decrease in risk of 50% sounds impressive, but if this is relative to a very small number it becomes irrelevant.  Like doubling your chances of winning the lottery.  Of course,  these relative numbers are the ones that tend to be reported .... 

And never confuse an association with causation!  Firemen don’t set fire to buildings, but they are present at almost every serious fire incident.  Doctors don’t kill patients, but they are present at almost every deathbed scene.  Just as Cholesterol is present at every heart attack - because it is busy repairing damaged tissues, not because it damaged them and caused the heart attack.

 I didn't manage to link these, just copy and paste and you will find them!

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2753.2011.01767.x/pdf

http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/6/397.full

http://www.asbmb.org/asbmbtoday/asbmbtoday_article.aspx?id=18949

http://cindy-on-health.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/cholesterol-and-statins-whos-hero-whos.html

http://drnevillewilson.com/2011/06/01/high-cholesterol-reduces-risks-in-elderly/



http://drmalcolmkendrick.org/


Friday 17 May 2013

Two Ladies Come to Stay - Tante Ju and Anke Sütterlin

Anke wearing a scarf gifted to me by my dear friend A - lovely colours!

I have been extremely busy lately.  The office is transferring to a new database and there is all sorts of preparation required, including training, data cleaning, and data mapping, on top of the usual work, of course!  So I come home every evening decidedly knackered.

Tante Ju making friends with Anke




However, today was a brilliant day!  First of all Tante Ju arrived!!!!  Ever since I first gave refuge to the Tiny Visitors my fame has spread among the tinier of scale model gliders, and I have received numerous requests to take some of them in (faithful readers of these musings will recall the arrival of Fatty Messerschmitt and Willibald Waco).  I try to limit my airspace to gliders, but occasionally I make an exception.  Heini Heinkel, the He111, for example, is one of the original Tiny Visitors who helped the glider models escape all those years ago and stuck with them ever since.  The He111s were used to tow gliders, so it is fitting and proper for Heini to live in the Nostalgia Studio together with the littler gliders.

Tante Ju in position above my bed

Tante Ju, who arrived this morning, is another non-glider.  She, too, used to tow gliders, especially the DFS 230 which were instrumental in the taking of Eban Emael, but she had lots of other tasks besides.  I am pleased and proud to welcome her to the fold, and who knows, perhaps one day a DFS 230 will also make its way into my abode.  I will describe her more fully in another post.  For now let it suffice that Tante Ju was called Iron Annie in English speaking countries and Junker 52 by the more prosaically inclined.




The airspace above my bed is getting a wee bit crowded!


Later that day, in my lunch break, I encountered another lovely lady.  She lacks a head and arms, it is true, but swiftly stole my heart all the same.  I was just propelling myself to a local Café when I spotted her through the window of a charity shop (where else?!?!).  She was exactly what I had been looking for and reduced in price, so I purchased her immediately.  The shop assistants who had to put her through the till argued whether she was ‘furniture’ or ‘bric-a-brac’ – I mean, honestly, of all the insults!  I am glad I came to take her away.



We went to the Café for a Latte and attracted a lot of attention.  Then I took her back to the office, where she elicited several uncomplimentary comments from colleagues (someone called her ‘creepy’!).  After work I took her to another Café, to meet my friend A for our usual Friday after work tryst – again, my lady caused quite a stir.  It is fair to say that her sort does not go unnoticed, especially when carried by someone smaller than herself (me!) down the road!


Enough said.  I shall call her Anke Sütterlin, and she will be my scarf model.  Finally I can experiment with different knots and take pictures of them!  Self portraits in mirrors are all very well, but Anke will help me to illustrate the various ways of wearing a scarf much better.  So you can look forward to lots more posts about scarves!

Sunday 5 May 2013

A Byzantian Degree Day Table-Top Sale Kind of Weekend



I have had rather a good weekend, I must say.  Friday I got up at 4 am to book my Eurostar ticket for going to La Bourboule.  The tickets went on sale that day, and I wanted to make sure to get a cheap one – I got the last one!  Either there was only one cheap one (even that wasn’t supercheap, just sort of cheapish) or everyone else had gotten up even earlier.  But Friday evening was a pip, because Averil Cameron gave a talk on Byzantine History (Constantine’s Vision and the Church) in Keble Chapel, and she is always excellent.

Saturday morning I had to get up early again, because there was a degree day and I had to help out.  There were so many people that some of us staff couldn’t get lunch, but again luck favoured me.  While patrolling the grounds to make sure that no one was still lingering outside Hall and missing their lunch, I came across a lone woman reading a book – she hadn’t managed to get a place and was waiting for her relatives to finish lunch in Hall before going to the Sheldonian Theatre for the degree ceremony.  So I swept her off to the nearest restaurant for a quick lunch, and we had a simply splendid time.  Totally fascinating lady, I hope she will come again so we can have a good chinwag.  That’s the great thing about working in Oxford, it is full of interesting people who can usually be persuaded to socialise.  And sometimes they pay for one’s lunch – as I say, luck favoured me.



This morning I also had to get up early – you’ll be tired of hearing this, but not as tired as me doing it!  I went with my good friend A to conduct a table top sale.  It is sort of like a jumble sale.  People rent tables for a small fee and try to sell all the stuff they no longer need to unsuspecting passers by.  Usually these sales are in village or church halls, and such was the case with this one.  Generally I just give whatever I no longer need to a charity shop, but since A had booked a table and invited me to come along I thought, Why Not?

I did rather well!  As a matter of fact, I am the only one who did rather well.  This was the first sale ever held in this venue, and the customers were few and far between.  The sellers were ill pleased, and packed up an hour early.  One lady told me she only sold one item, for 25 pennies, and the others did not manage to do much better.  Most got less than £5, I think. 


I wish I could report that I am ashamed to have walked away from the sale with £40, but sadly I am not ashamed at all!!!  I am proud, gloatingly so, and all the muscles in my face hurt from stopping myself grinning like the Cheshire Cat.  I did better than all the other sellers put together, and am probably well hated now.  But I don’t care, I am insanely proud and absurdly pleased.  I had no idea I had such a wealth of moral turpitude to draw upon, I will probably become an investment banker now, just as soon as I have sold everything I can bear to part with from my house.  A is already making plans for the next sale, apparently there is a car boot sale coming up …  I’ll be there!!!!!!!!!
 
This afternoon I took a little walk, just to put some perspective back into my life, and took photos of the little wild flower meadow that grows just around the corner from my house. A few years ago there was just nasty dry grass, but someone has taken the area under their wing and just look at the result – gorgeous luscious green. ‘Course, I am more into greenbacks now …. But still.