From Whiners to Winers and Diners...

Health guidance. Who needs it?

Well, seemingly we cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions about our health and safety.
As intelligent, and for the most part, rational human beings, we manage to steer our way through the obstacle race of life without staggering drunk down an unmarked pothole, yet, the papers almost daily proffer research with conflicting advice about alcohol.
The latest is that red wine and champagne substantially lower the risk of Alzheimer's - not together, you understand, but a glass and a half of either every day. (Doesn't that extra half glass just give you a rosé glow? A glass definitely half-full situation, n'est-ce pas?)
A cause for celebration, I feel. No moaning about this one.

Also, apparently, learning a foreign language can  delay the onset of Alzheimer's as the discipline builds up a 'buffer of cognitive reserve'.
Surely we all need a little extra in the cognitive reserve department?
If they're dishing it out, put me down for a big extra. (Hmm. I used to be one of those. But that's for another time.)

Seemingly, healthy retired people on the Isle of Sky took an intensive course in Gaelic for a week (no walk in the park that one.. although maybe by living in the locality they had a head start?) and when they did cognitive tests (Doesn't that send a shiver down your spine? can you imagine Non-verbal reasoning tests? All those boxes, dots and sequences? My brain is shorting at the very prospect) they did significantly better than their peers.
Can you imagine, those poor buggers who'd not been near a test since their 11+, or 'O' Levels being subjected to brain-straining puzzles without any of the benefits of the brain-training of their neighbours?

Dearest and I have just returned from a weekend of celebrating my unbooting.
I would like to say it was a celebration of my returning mobility but unfortunately angry pinkness returned to the site.  I found walking beyond room to restaurant impossible. No, really.
So it has been a bit of an Eatathon weekend.
Not a Drinkathon, I hasten to add, because after one large glass we were almost asleep.
So as the cram in the calories competition rolled to a close, Dearest and I decided that upon our return we would start to eat sensibly and drink wisely (I thought we did that already, so wiselier) until I read this cheering piece about alcohol in the news today.
Dearest has just said, "Fancy a little glass of red?"
Strangely, he hasn't even read the news today.
Slainte mhath, say I (Gaelic for "Your very good health")

I already feel a small vibration in my glass of El Cognitas Reserva ..