All Things Bright & Beautiful

It’s Spring!  Although confusingly, it is also British Summertime.  It would appear that the weather is as confused as I am.  I sat on a beach this week.  This might not seem like a particularly odd thing to do, but given that it is March and I live in the North of Scotland, it is a little unusual.  The previous two winters have been the coldest on record for decades, and then this year we get a mild, dry winter with hellish gales that blew my greenhouse away!  This is not primarily a blog about the weather, however much we Brit’s love talking about it, but it should be a poke in the eye to climate change detractors.  Something is definitely amiss, and not just in the UK.  That topic is for another day. 

Today the sunshine is my reason for writing, or I suppose more accurately, Spring.  We anticipate it avidly in the depths of winter and when it arrives we hope to slough off the dark, drear and idleness and get into the great outdoors.  Well, I do at least!  The daffodils are glowing in their luminosity, nodding heads in the breeze, the grass is growing, the blossom is blooming, and the animal world is getting jiggy.  There are no lambs here yet –this is northern hill country and lambs born too early would suffer from the cold- but the ewes are head butting and bouncing, and the cows and bulls are back in the fields after their winter confinement.  It’s great to see.  It’s great to be a part of the natural world joying  up for spring.  If the sunshine and shoots and new life don’t put a smile on your face and a spring in your step, whatever your woes, I find that quite sad.  I would urge everyone, townie or country-dweller, to get outside and take some time to notice what’s going on out there: the creatures coming out of hibernation, the birds building nests, the parks and gardens bursting into life.  Spring may not change your circumstances, but it does have the capacity to bring light, life and energy into our greyed-out existences – if we let it!

This is a thorny issue, and not one I thought I would blog about, but given that in excess of 15 million people in the UK suffer from at least one long term health condition (LTC) – and they are just the recorded cases – it is clearly a pertinent subject.

A LTC is in essence any condition which requires treatment over a long period, usually years or even decades.  The term covers everything from HIV/Aids to cancer, schizophrenia to cardiovascular disease.  LTC’s are viewed very differently, dependent on which one you have! There is a definite hierarchy.  The group of non-specific and hard to pinpoint conditions such myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME-unhelpfully once termed yuppie flu), Post Viral Fatigue (PVG) and Fibromyalgia  (FM) are viewed by the general public, and sometimes the medical profession, with suspicion.  A loose collection of symptoms which often include lethargy, lack of energy, generic pain and ‘brain fug’ do not engender much sympathy.  The response is often along the lines of ‘we all get tired’ or ‘we all have pain’ and indeed we do!  What is different about these disorders, and a host of other life-sapping conditions which may be less well known, is both the degree and duration of them.  Often they do not go away, or if they do go away they can come back, sometimes with a vengeance. It may be difficult to pinpoint causes, but the effects can be seen in lost jobs and lost lives.

If you are being treated for heart disease or cancer friends and family can grasp onto something tangible, however terrible the knowledge may be.  There is treatment, support, and very often progress.  With non disease related ‘syndromes’ diagnosis can be difficult and often delayed, and treatment can range from a prescription for non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to nothing but short shrift and a flea in the ear!  Science has historically been less interested in the intangible and untreatable than it has with what you can see before your eyes or under a microscope, and what you can cure with a pill or prevent with an injection.  I generalise of course, there are many good practitioners who recognise the symptoms and treat the patient with understanding and give practical tools for management, but this is not as common as it could or should be.  With a stretched NHS and an increasingly sick and ageing population, some degree of prioritisation is probably necessary, I don’t think anyone would fundamentally disagree, but there will always be heated debate about who will get the life-jacket!

This is not a plea for sympathy or prioritisation, but it is perhaps a plea for understanding.  Whilst there is no quick fix potential drug cure for the LTC’s such as the group of syndromes I am referring to, there will be little interest, and therefore little research.  Given that these issue affect predominantly active, productive, working people, of both sexes, this is perhaps somewhat short sighted.  I know people would like to think that these syndromes target the inactive and lazy amongst us, but records just do not bear this out!  Many people are struck down by these syndromes in their youth, when they are at their prime and raring to get on with life; many people are extremely fit and active, and often over busy; they get hit by a virus and never recover their vitality but steadily get weaker and unable to do the things they once did.  Some people are struck down over night for no apparent reason: the life and soul of the party one minute and unable to get out of bed the next.  It is convenient to generalise about, and caricature, a group of people when we don’t understand what the issues are, but it is not helpful.  Many people who have LTC’s of this nature will end up marginalised because they are no longer able to work, and their friends desert them when they can no longer socialise.  Some will end up on benefits, many more will not qualify because the system is weighted against such conditions.

I count myself as one of the lucky ones.  I have supportive friends and family who do not judge me because I have an LTC.  I am fortunate because I can get by working 16 hours a week.  I can manage to pay the bills, and I am well enough to be able to do my job to the best of my ability.  The fact that I need to be in bed by 10pm at the latest, that I sometimes need to rest in the afternoons, that I can’t Hoover my home, or keep the house and garden the way I want it; that I don’t sleep well and am in pain constantly, that I need to budget my energy to be able to do some of the things I want to, doesn’t actually matter that much, because this is part of the self-management of an LTC, and you don’t need to know.  But people who do have LTC’s, whatever they are, do need to know.  They need to be given the tools not only to cope, but to get the best they can from life, in spite of the issues they face.  If general practitioners and the public in general, and friends and families in particular, were more encouraging, then more people would be better supported and better able to cope.  There would potentially be less spend on drugs, hospitalisation, and GP time;  more positive inputs and less isolation would mean better mental health and less spiralling into depressive illness. 

Perhaps the money saved could be used on research.  We have some idea why diabetes and heart disease are on the rise – a large proportion of cases are life-style related.  We already have a preventative strategy which would work for many people, but we don’t know why ME, FM and PVF affects so many previously healthy, active people, and cuts them off in the prime of life.  There are all sorts of theories and suggestions, maybe it’s time for some facts.

The long Term Care Alliance provides helpful information on the management of LTC’s.

I’ve blogged about bread before: the naff content of the average chemically laden commercial loaf; the virtues of making your own bread.  But this is different.  This is sourdough!

I’ve made sourdough bread before of course – a white loaf, a rye bread, a wholemeal- but I never really paid much attention to it.  I was irritated that it took so long for the starter to be ready, that you had to make a sponge before a dough, that it took so long to rise.  Patience has never been one of my virtues. 

It’s been over a year since I made my last sourdough starter, and hence my last sourdough loaf, and this time it’s been different.  This time I have marvelled at the process, the chemical changes that take place, the fact that wild yeasts, which I can’t even see, are slowly working their magic, and yes it is still SLOWLY.  The process can’t be speeded up at all.  It can’t be mechanised into some time-saving shadow of itself, and that is part of the beauty of it. 

The starter has to be fed and watered, nurtured daily into a glooping primordial soup of something very messy and initially at least, not very lovely.  Those of you who like the smell of fermenting beer will probably love the initial stages of a sourdough, given that that’s what it smells like; unfortunately it’s not a smell I enjoy!  As you continue to care for your culture it morphs into a fruity smelling liquid.  It’s quite amazing really.  These microscopic organisms harnessed from the air, the same organisms that used to make wine, and is some cases still do, transform flour and water into something you can make tasty, chewy, crusty bread with.  Time and love are the magic ingredients which change these ‘base’ items into something precious.

It isn’t a difficult process: you weigh, add, mix.  You wait.  It take no more than a few minutes a day to do.  When the starter is ready you add more flour and more liquid to it to make the ‘sponge’.  You wait.  When the sponge is ready you add the final batch of flour, the final quantity of water and then, like a normal dough, you knead it.  This will take 10 minutes or so of your time.  You wait again.  You knock it back like a deflated football and shape it into the final stage, your loaf of choice, and then you must wait.  Again.  A sourdough loaf will rise, every bit as well as a loaf made with commercially produced yeast, but it will take its time.  It is the time that produces the flavour and texture of the loaf.  It’s the time that makes the gluten more digestible to the human gut.  In total you may have spent half an hour or so making your sourdough loaf, but you will spend the half an hour over 7 – 10 days rather than one!

This time I have enjoyed the process.  I haven’t stressed or fretted. There’s something relaxing in a product you can’t hurry.  I have let nature take its course, and I am sure that both my loaf and I will be the better for it!  Is it worth the wait? You will only know if you try it!