willc.me

Vanity is one of those ingrained things that all human beings must possess. One of the 7 deadly sins, it is the excessive admiration of ones own appearance or achievements. But is it something that we can avoid?

Of course there are varying levels of vanity. At it’s worse it means not being able to leave the house without looking at yourself for a good hour. I have a friend who shall remain nameless who cannot leave the house without looking at himself in the mirror for at least half an hour.

He’ll turn to me and ask “what do you think, button done up, or not done up?” My usual answer now is, “I don’t care, could we please just go.” If only it were that simple.

But it’s not always as bad or as obvious as that. Who hasn’t walked out of the house and checked themselves out in the reflection of a car at some point or the other. Out of curiosity no doubt but definitely spliced with a small degree of vanity.

Gross vanity is grossly unattractive. Anyone sitting opposite a date who has a mirror behind you to look at themselves in will appreciate that. It means there is some deep down insecurity that they need constant self reassurance.

Vanity is wholey natural and I think it would be wrong to fight or suppress it totally. As long as it doesn’t end up ruling your life and taking hours out of your day looking in the mirror then have the occasional look at yourself in the reflection of a car.

Lying in bed or more normally on the sofa in front of the TV is the grim reality every night for 1 in 8 people. It is insomnia, the inability to initiate or maintain sleep. The worst is the inability to get to bed despite the chance. Seemingly harmless but as you realise that the time to wake up and function looms nearer, it makes it slightly more complicated.

Most people have difficulties getting to sleep. Everyone as a child, the day before their birthday will remember lying awake, kept up by the imaginings of what presents are awaiting them. But insomnia is a recurrent war of attrition between mind and body. I would say a nightmare but when you have insomnia it’s difficult to get that far.

There are many causes of Insomnia. Pain, drugs and depression to physical exercise. So it’s not just the sinners that suffer, it’s the winners too. For the majority of people, they just get on with it.

The below map overlay of the world shows the amount of cases of insomnia per 100,000 people with red being many cases going to pale yellow for not that many.

As you can see, the more built up the country or developed it is, the less people can get to sleep. Is this because the pace of life is faster or merely because we know about insomnia and therefore diagnose it? It’s from the World Health Organisation and if it weren’t four in the morning I’d call up and ask. But I doubt they know either.

Although, despite all the downsides of insomnia there is comfort to be had. According to a report by the American Cancer Society (who knows why they conducted it) the optimum amount of sleep to live the longest is 7 hours. If you get below 3.5 for women and 4.5 for men then you have a 15% higher mortality rate. So that’s if you have really bad insomnia and a hectic job.

However on the opposite side, if you get over 8.5 hours sleep a night, you also have a 15% higher mortality rate. So maybe not being able to sleep long hours is a good things. Wait, who am I kidding? It still sucks. Sweet dreams.

Shaving’s an activity that’s normally associated with men. We shave our faces but girls obviously also shave. Just not their faces. Pretty much everywhere else they grow hair. It’s so ingrained in our society that we all kind of get on with it, but how you portray your hair reveals much about you. As Bill Bailey quipped, “The chin is the window to the soul”.

Shaving is a pain. I doubt there’s anyone out there who enjoys shaving. Actually, having said that, I’ve seen certain videos on the Internet that would dispute that. But, horrible images aside, we all do it and it takes quite a bit of time.

Boys have to shave their faces. Well, when i say have, they don’t have to but it helps alleviate the itching mess that grows when you don’t. Beards are horrible, they feel rough and itchy and it’s better not to have one. As well as the fact that there’s a certain joy to shaving. It goes as part of the mens getting ready ritual that is enshrined in manhood. Shit, shave, shower. It’s like the Holy Trinity, just more hygienic.

I doubt if girls go as far as the shit, shave and shower routine but they still have to shave as well. It’s funny when you hear a girl say “Don’t touch my legs” recoiling them as the slightest brush. Simply because they haven’t shaved. That isn’t too bad when you look at girls armpits. It’s socially frowned upon for girls not to shave their armpits. The British ridicule the French over the fact that the women have unshaved pits. It’s a natural alternative yet I don’t know how I’d feel getting with a hairy pitted woman.

Then there’s the social question of how a woman trims the bush. This can be done by waxing or shaving but it’s almost as big a thing as men growing beards and manicured facial hair. How do you like it?

But it seems, as we get further and further towards a hairless society it’s now fashionable for men to be hairless as well. Check out any Calvin Klein advert to see bald bodied celebrities. Beckham and Ronaldo. For that is what we seem to be trending towards. No hair, anywhere.

Waking up this morning I was under a wave of queasiness. I tried to remember what I had for dinner the last night as I dashed to the bathroom and vommed really hard. And so has started a really horrible day of weakness and bulimia. It al got me thinking about how lame food poisoning and stomach bugs are.

Being ill in general is never good fun. But there are very different degrees and the whole throwing up anything you eat or drink has to be the worse. There’s the common cold, which is hardly anything and merely has you resting. Even the flu isn’t that bad with you just sitting under a duvet in front of the TV.

As someone who loves to eat, being robbed of the most basic need, is pretty hard. Even when you can hold down water the only food the internet tells you you can have is boring things like plain toast or boiled rice. Nothing that has taste or flavour basically.

And not being able to drink is a bitch as well. All you want when you can’t hold water down is to drink a gallon of it at once. At least the stomach bugs and food poisoning don’t last too long. The great source of information, the almighty internet says that most of them are only 24 hours. I really hope so. They suck.

So we all know that we’re meant to eat in a healthy fashion. If you don’t get your 5 a day then you end up as an obese northerner. And nobody really wants that. But nobody ever talks about how difficult, inconvenient and expensive it is to be healthy.

Have you ever tried to eat 5 different 5 a days before? It means eating vege with both meals of the day and having fruit for breakfast and having a banana as a snack in the afternoon. Which sounds pretty plausible but if you have a job that means you eat at your desk and have no time which makes things really hard.

If you eat out at a restaurant then it normally means having to order side dishes as the main comes in the form of protein and carbohydrate. The smart money is to take vitamin tablet but I don’t really see that as a natural and valid alternative.

As for snacking. If you get hungry in the middle of the day in Oxford Street there are very few places that you can stop off for a healthy and fulfilling snack. Pret and Eat, as healthy as they portray themselves, are nicer Macdonalds with ingredients from the same suppliers.

It gets worse past 8 in the evening. If you’re hungry then the places you can eat within a healthy lifestyle diet is very limited indeed. Kebabs and Mcdonalds. It would be interesting to see how a late night healthy food place would fare in central London on a Friday night.

And as for supermarkets, it gets worse. The produce gets worse and worse and there are few organic alternatives. Whole Foods is one of the best but it’s looking pretty frayed in the middle of the recession.

We need a good food guide for healthy food places. If anyone knows of one, let me know. The demand to be good is there but there is a limited supply of options!