Epidemiological Study
I think I need a holiday.
Now most people need a break from work and to go somewhere where they can relax and to use that horrible modern idiom – to "chill out".
I seem to have the opposite problem.
I have noticed of late that I am becoming very mellow in my old age. Things that used to get me all fired up, now pass right over my head and fail even to get so much as a tug of the forelock. Politicians don't annoy me any more, but that's maybe because they are all mercifully on their extended summer break. The anti-smokers are keeping remarkably quiet so there is nothing to piss me off there either.
In fact, very little is pissing me off, and I'm not quite sure whether that's down to nothing being there to get my goat or whether I'm just ignoring them all.
It's kind of worrying.
I tend to take a holiday every year, and the last one where I didn't was the year Sandy was dying and I wanted to devote all my attention to her. Before that can't remember. So this is the first year where we said fuckit – let's stay at home, and I'm wondering if that is the problem?
I did an epidemiological study on the matter.
I compared years where I had a holiday with levels of grumpiness and found a definite correlation. Or is it causation? This is always the problem with epidemiological studies – the two get confused.
I'm inclined to follow the causation line.
So I need a holiday to get the curmudgeonliness back!
Is common sense creeping in? Take the holiday and enjoy getting serious rust. That should help. That and abominal food, poor beer, even worse whisky, cantankerous landladies/cottage owners/hoteliers, and nowhere sensible to take the dog. Should do you a power of good.
But don’t forget to take the laptop and give us a running commentary on how terrible time off really can be. Enjoy!
Unfortunately for various reasons a holiday is shelved for this year. However I suppose I could take an imaginary holiday and give a running commentary on that? An imaginary expedition to climb Everest? A weeks stay in Fawlty Towers? A trip to the moon?
OK. Take an imaginary holiday, could be more fun than reality. Very sorry funds will not allow an actual time out, but welcome to the real world. My solution was to move to an holiday destination. Short walk to anywhere, and no pressure to go home afterwards. May I suggest a trip to Fawlty Towers? Could be just up your street.
If you have a relative risk of 3.0 or more then it's causation. However, if the R:R is one or below then a lack of holiday is actually beneficial, (apparently), but you must take into account the 'funding bias' also.
It's the funding bias that is the problem. I don't have any!
You could try to visit all the fish and chip shops in Leinster and then write a book about them. This odyssey might take from six months to a year. Curried chips have all the allure of the exotic Orient, so you could imagine that you are in India – or Leicester.
There aren't any. Or none that I know of. A fish & Chip shop has to serve steaming hot chips soaked in salt and vinegar and wrapped in a paper to qualify and I don't know of any around here anyway. They all use little cartons and give out little packs of salt and vinegar. Useless.
Ah the sweet scent of vinegar soaked paper in one hand a battered cod in the other……..!
You'd miss all the aggro and stress of checking the car, packing suitcases, traffic jams, delays, other people's screaming kids and 101 other grief-filled things associated with holiday mania. Holidays were created to make us appreciate more fully how sweet home is!