The Joy of Chia Seeds

Last year I followed the Zoe dietary programme for two months.

I learned to love nuts and seeds – they are good for my digestion.

Of especial importance is chia seed. A bit like with lentils, I have no idea what a chia plant would look like, nor where it would grow (although I did once run into a magnificent quinoa plant at the Eden Project).

However, the tiny chia seeds themselves, about three times the size of a poppy seed are smooth and mottled grey.

When soaked in water or milk, they develop a gelatinous coating which can stick to anything.

No doubt it is this special property which makes them beneficial in the digestive tract.  However, it is also this which is their greatest drawback.

When I smile at you, don’t blink – you haven’t developed spots before your eyes – those are chia seeds stuck firmly to my teeth.

If you see my toothbrush in the bathroom, that polka dot pattern is not the work of a designer – it is a testimony to the adhesive powers of chia seeds.

I’m glad that chia seeds have proved good for my digestive tract because now, even if I wanted to give them up, it appears I can’t.  I am quite literally stuck with them. 

Norovirus!

I have a good immune system right now. 

Being spritzed each week by secondary pupils with a fresh instalment of seasonal germs has worked wonders for my resilience.  So I have listened to the news of climbing rates of flu, Covid, RSV and norovirus as if they were purely hypothetical.

Then yesterday I was felled.  Probably by norovirus.

One’s first emotion is curiosity – where did I get this from?  One begins a pointless rehearsal of one’s movements over the past three days…and reaches no conclusion.

As the condition continues on and one is still unable to rise from bed, the next feeling is anger.  What a waste of a day – I had plans, dammit.

Finally, realising that what one has is Something Nasty, the planning process starts.

I’ll have to teach on Zoom tomorrow.  What about the following day?  Surely I’ll be okay for the school trip on Thursday and the outing with my girlfriends on Friday?

To look on the bright side, it’s probably quite salutary to be properly ill once in a while (although clearly not too often).  It helps to get things like The Common Cold in proportion.  

And that’s it, really.  I can’t think of any more ways to make norovirus (or whatever I had) seem upbeat!

 Photo:  I really didn't want to include a photo of me with norovirus, so this is something interesting happening at St Albans Cathedral.

Wisps of tinsel

Each year, the happy bustle of putting up Christmas decorations with our adult children foretells a more melancholy ritual, scheduled to take place in only a couple of weeks. After guests have decamped and visitors passed through, Nigel and I pack the baubles and tinsels carefully away.  

Increasingly the Ghost of Putting Away has started to haunt the afternoon in Advent when we hang up the tinsel and fairy lights.  Before Christmas has even happened, I begin to anticipate my nostalgia at its passing.

The reason lies in what Christmas means to us.  It has a significance beyond the religious one. It is a time when we reenact an earlier stage in our family’s life cycle, living happily together as a nuclear family of five.  Truthfully family life probably never was as perfect as it is at Christmas, but that is beside the point. 

But the outcome is that when, after Christmas, the children all return to their homes, it reenacts the moment when they became adults and flew the nest - the paradoxical moment at which a parent both congratulates themselves, but also feels quite sad.

However, as we get older, time is passing even faster and weirdly there is a comfort in that. Not only does the end of Christmas seem immanent right from the middle of December.  But now the start of next Christmas seems close, even though it is only January. I can foresee myself getting the decorations out again in only a few months, so I repair some little wooden ornaments, knowing I will need them quite soon.  

It hardly seems worth Nigel carting the great cardboard Christmas boxes into the loft. Christmas will be back again before we know it.