I'm giving tonight's English Desk Christmas couscous dinner a miss. I enjoyed last year's but was knackered by the end of my stint on the desk, and there's been just enough sign of the Condition to remind me that it still seethes in my guts, though no longer like the Alien squirming inside John Hurt, fit to burst.
I'm also not yet ready again for evenings full of people.
Suspiciously, neither of the people who chose the restaurant are going, since prime mover and fellow Africa hand Karin is off to Nicosia tomorrow with young Luka (four) to fill in on AFP's desk there over Christmas -- mais oui! -- while new colleague Luke 'phoned in with a most realistic imitation of somebody this year's foul 'flu bug had caught.
Tomorrow, I shall learn whether Karin's last-minute thought that the resto is not in the 'phone book because it's a front for a north African drugs operation appears to be well founded. One hotel up my own street, which ran another often deserted but good couscous eatery, proved to be a semi-clandestine brothel for visiting generals and other "dignitaries" in the Algerian regime.
I keep pinching myself these days: Nick, you're not on holiday next week over Christmas; like Karin, you're among the workers and have fingers crossed in the hope that nobody tries one of those coups d'état so popular at the festive season when the dictators are in the south of France or somewhere similar.
Should the Wildcat decide to come to town, the last thing I want in the "news world" is yet another of those.
Christmas at AFP has never been the same since the Romanians hauled Nicolae Ceaucescu (Wikipedia) out in front of the firing squad in 1989, a day which should be in the record books as the one when the largest number of relaxed and sozzled journalists ever had to stick their heads under cold water taps and sober up fast to handle the incoming bulletins and urgents...
Nervous though we are that somebody somewhere will insist on making party-ruining headlines, I dropped in tonight to chat up the delightful sisters who work in the latest shop to arrive on Losserand Street. Their bakery proudly announced on opening that it had already won the award for the second best baguette in Paris. What they do comes warm and imaginative: to each day its speciality, with my favourites including the bread with olives, the bread with apricots and pistachio nuts ... and I will order their petits fours for the Desk on the Day.
I hope I'm wrong in fearing that the crisp, sunny weather we've enjoyed for a few days will disappear with the approach of next week's new moon and that chance of seeing the Wildcat, which would be the best Xmas present I could ask for.
This is the moment to announce that whatever some of those scientists might have said, it works! Which means a big "thank you" to Jean-Paul at the weekend for alerting me to its powers.
Should my 'Alpha-KetoGluterate' (jelly) reports have stirred interest at this tiring time of year, take heed of two things. There are government health warnings against some imported Chinese stocks of it, while the parapharmacies (Jeanne Feldman knows 'France is Different') and numerous websites offering you capsules, dehydrated and freeze-dried products are rip-offs in that several essential active ingredients are dead in their versions.
After taking two tiny spoonfuls every morning for a month, genuine changes I've noticed which appear to be among its alleged benefits (and unrelated to other tweaks in the multiple treatments for the Condition) include:
- much improved concentration (and ability to "shut out" distractions)
- slightly sharpened perception (more observant visually, aurally)
- greater "staying power" (my afternoon slumps are still there, but less pronounced)
- a better appetite (and fewer diarrhoea attacks, but still the odd gut pains: the only worthwhile treatment for that right now is Poly-Karaya, which means Karin was right back in April - log entry 'Night flights')
- a more ordered, decisive (and perhaps calmer?) mind, but with no accompanying improvement in patience.
I never, however, got the "high" Jean-Paul said I might expect, nor have I noticed that I sleep better. A few days into taking it, my dreams became more vivid than ever, which remains true and is not a reported side-effect of the mild drugs I am taking to keep my serotonin levels balanced.
Royal jelly is supposed to boost resistance to physical and mental fatigue -- and, almost inevitably, according to one or two sites, one's sex life! Don't they say that about dozens of things?
Fatigue: I'm not sure. I still get very tired quite fast, but also pack far more into a day than I could have done two months ago.
As for the sex life, I can't wait to find out.
9:19:07 PM link
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