Welcome to the first blog posting
of the new year and indeed the new decade. I’m not going to look back at what,
in many ways, has been a remarkable last 10 years. I have, for those last 10
years, nearly always used the last blog of each year to do just that. No,
whilst it is sometimes good to look back to see the journey you have been on, my
eyes and thoughts this year are firmly fixed on the future. It’s an immediate future
that I’m especially looking forward to creating and enjoying. J has a thing on
her phone called Timehop, which each day throws up photos, tweets, or Facebook
posts of something she was doing or saying on that day in years gone by. It is a
clever app, and over time it will become a wonderful memory store – a bit like
the memory suitcase that Liverpool Museum developed for people living with
dementia. When we met, J and I had many memories we could share with each
other, but not many shared memories – so we have been busy each day creating
memories of us, for us.
And that’s the strange paradox.
Why create memories if you are not going to look back at them? Well of course,
I’m sure, we will sometime in the future, occasionally sit with a glass of wine
and talk about what we have done, who we have met, where we have been… Maybe,
what worked and what didn’t turn out as we expected, or what we still have left
to do. The older I get, the more I realise what the saying ‘One Life, Live It’
might actually mean - and there are so many things yet to be experienced.
That said, not looking backwards
that is, I’ve had some very strange dreams over this Christmas period. What
made these dreams strange is that they all contained people who I have met at
different times during my life. Many of whom are no longer an active part of my
life. They included people I have worked with, people I’ve had a relationship with,
and even people who have died. In real life they couldn’t all be there together.
Physically, it would be difficult, if not impossible, and there would be too
many high-expressed emotions for some of these people to be in the same place
at the same time. Sadly, but understandably in some cases, some of these people
might not even want to be in the same place as me. Yet in my dreams, they appeared
all together, and there was no rancour or anger or other negative emotion to be
seen.
Now Christmas time television usually
has Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ where Ebenezer Scrooge is confronted by his
past, present and future self in a series of dreams. This year was no exception,
with the BBC screening a new adaptation over three episodes. Whilst there is an
explanation and ultimate choice to be taken with Scrooge’s dreams, I don’t pretend
to know what my dreams meant, and I’m certainly not putting a description of
them on here for others to dissect, and suggest any possible meanings.
Suffice it to say, I think the
dreams were perhaps an overindulgence in good cheese over the Christmas break. Now
you may think that it’s just old folk wisdom that suggests that eating cheese
can give you nightmares. Whilst it’s difficult to find many research studies on
the subject, we do know that cheese can influence brain function. Many readers
will know that the brain is stimulated by a range of hormones including serotonin
(which promotes relaxation and sleepiness), adrenalin (which acts as a stimulant),
and testosterone (which regulates libido and strength). It is these hormones
that influence how we think, and how we might behave. Some of these chemicals
come from the food we eat. Cheese contains tryptophan, an amino acid that when
consumed can be processed into serotonin – the essential hormone for sleepiness.
Not exactly case proven, but there is, at least, a tenuous link between eating
cheese and having a good night’s sleep.
And famously, back in 2005, the
British Cheese Board conducted a study on cheese and dreams. I know perhaps this
may not be the most independent bit of research ever undertaken, but it had
some interesting results. Participants were asked to only eat a particular type
of cheese 30 minutes before going to bed each night for a week. These included Stilton,
Cheddar, British Brie, Lancashire, Red Leicester and so on. They would then
record their dreams the moment they woke up the next day. Surprisingly, 83% of
the participants who ate Red Leicester had pleasant dreams, with 60% of the dreams
being about fond childhood memories. Those who ate Cheddar, dreamt about celebrities,
while those who were given Cheshire cheese had no dreams. You can read about the
study here – look out for the sad vegetarian crocodile, depressed because he couldn’t
eat humans.
If truth be told, there is
actually nothing particular about cheese. If you go to bed with a full stomach,
you are more likely than not to spend most of the night in REM (rapid eye movement)
sleep, which is when your most vivid dreams occur. We habitually eat late in
this house, and over Christmas we may have been just a little guilty of
snacking up until bedtime too. If this is the case with you, and you do dream,
whether those dreams are good or bad is likely to be determined by the degree
of your underlying anxiety and whether or not you get to have your fair share
of the quilt during the night.
So as the new decade gets underway,
let’s not look backwards, but if tempted to do so, let’s do it with love and
fondness, and not with anger or regret. The future, for however long that might
be, is there for the taking, it really is ‘One Life’ so live it and let’s all
start creating and collecting memories. Finally, we are getting married in Spring
this year, As is our wont, we want to do so differently, a mixture of elegance
and edgy, traditional and contemporary. For example, my best man is actually a
best woman, and we are determined not to have the familiar sit down wedding
breakfast – in fact we are off to the cheese shed to order our wedding cake which
will be made of many different cheeses – sweet dreams are made of this – a very
Happy New Year to you all.
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