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Welsh Rarebits

On the train yesterday I encountered a group of women heading to Edinburgh.  They were "girls on tour" with their sequinned red dragon T shirts and bottles of coke laced with vodka.  They had ended up in the "quiet coach" and upset people with their high spirits, good humour and loud jokes and laughter.  They were enjoying themselves, having a great time.  They had abandoned husbands, children, work and responsibilities to let their hair down, relax and get away for the weekend.

Although I have to admit that it was a lot more peaceful when they moved to the next carriage, I admire them for their attitude.  In the face of disapproval they were just being themselves, not modulating their behaviour, moulding it into what everyone else expected from a group of women probably aged from 30 to their late 40s.  It was very refreshing to see.  Yes I sympathise with the passengers who wanted a quiet journey, but hey, it was Friday afternoon, the country was at a standstill becaue of the weather - its OK to have some fun sometimes.

And how different would people's reactions have been if it had been a group of men?  When I eventually got off the train I walked down the platform to find their carriage and held up a written note to the window that read "Have a great time!  Enjoy!".  Go girls!

When did you last let your hair down, abandon all inhibitions and let go?  What would happen if you did?

New Year Revolutions

We live in the age of recycling and reusing.  At this time of year everyone is rushing around trying to keep to thier new year resulotions or trying to make some up if they got left out of the New Year hurly burly.  Trying here of course is the operative word.  And the problem with it is that as long as you tell yourself you are trying, that is all you will do.  You will keep trying and possibly never actually succeed. 

Its a very plucky thing to do, just keep trying.  Well I say that never mind new resolutions, just recycle the ones that you already have.  How's that for a revolution!  Well its easy really.  How many times last year did you say to yourself "I really must stop doing that" or maybe "I must rememebr that when I do X I need to do it that way" or maybe "I really should do X or Y this week". 

So my new year revolution is to advise you to just recycle all of those everyday resolutions that you made at any time last year.  These are only small things and they can make a big difference to your life.  Achieving suuccess in these small things, rather than just trying, will make you feel good about yourself and will spur you on to greater challenges.  And because they are small things they are not intimidating or difficult to achieve.

So get out all those tired old resolutions, dust them off and get cracking!!

Secret recipies

Hey I love going back and recreating the food that I used to have when I was small.  We had things like savoury mince, bubble and squeak, apple snow, blancmange and the most fabulous liver and onions. On a Sunday we often had braised brisket followed by proper apple pie with cloves and cinnamon. Its making my mouth water just thinking about all this.  However my absolute favourite tea-time menu was bacon sandwiches followed by steamed pudding.  Bacon was a real treat cos it was very expensive and although steamed pudding seems very ordinary it was the combination of textures that really did it for me.  Our puddings were made with mixed fruit and then I would have mine with a slice of butter and sprinkled with demerara sugar. The solid coldness of the butter combined with the crunchiness of the brown sugar and light fluffiness of the hot pudding were a winning combination.

Having access to all of this fabulous food archive in our heads enables us to go back and create any time in our past. The most powerful of all our senses for anchoring experiences are smell and taste. So by bringing back those memorable meals, drinks or snacks from our archive we have access to an enormous range of past experiences. And we don't even need to actually eat them. The brain is such a fabulous store that just by bringing these foods to mind I can taste and smell them already.

We have a wealth of sensory stored information as we get older and we only need to think about it to access it.  Why not start recreating and enjoying those past experiences all over again now?

Eat strawberries every day!

I do, well pretty much every day.  Today I had strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, plums, grapes and pear for breakfast.  Its sometimes a bit of a challenge in January but you can usually find strawberries in the shops year round. I do it because I really like them, they are really healthy to eat and I do not believe that this sort of luxury should be kept only for Wimbledon week.  So many times you might find yourself yearning for that little luxury item or activity only to dismiss it as only being for Sundays, not allowed to have it if you haven't been working hard, can't do it today cos the money was allocated to buy toilet roll.

I say stuff all of that. Allow yourself some degree of luxury regularly and you will find yourself feeling great. It will really boost your self esteem. It doesn't matter if its buying expensive soap every now and again, picking the supermarket "finest" label this week instead of the "everyday", swapping your newspaper for a magazine or eating strawberries every day.  It may cost you nothing if your luxury is a walk in the fresh air admiring a view.  Whatever it is give yourself permission to regularly pamper yourself just that little bit and you'll feel fantastic.

After all if your best friend came for breakfast you'd want to give them strawberries, so why treat yourself less well than you do your friends. Make every day special and there is so much more to live for.