Looking for a good NormalSpeak course, preferably by correspondence

want to watch a fish seriously out of water? place an introvert in a social gathering consisting of more than, I'd say, six people and you will see someone seriously struggling to breathe. and it's so much worse when you're actually surrounded by people that you do generally like and want to communicate with. it would be different if it was something you were doing just out of duty - a work drinks party that you just go to for a short while so as not to offend whoever's birthday it is, or a boring conference that everyone moans about having to attend. but yesterday I was at the graduation ceremony for my counselling course and I was surrounded by my classmates, who are all people that I feel in some way connected to with this special bond of people who have survived something really tough together. of course you connect more closely with some than with others, but there's no one in my class who I wasn't pleased to see there, each of these people has become special to me and, in some peculiar way, I love them all.

after the ceremony there was afternoon tea - sandwiches, cakes, tea, coffee, some kind of cold drinks which I didn't explore as they looked kind of chemical so I got water from the machine instead. it was a hot and sunny afternoon and we all headed outdoors, shunning the comfy sofas and armchairs of the lounge in favour of the garden furniture or, for those young and fit enough, the grass.

I did manage to have a few really good conversations with some people, and that's what made it worth the effort. But I find it so hard to actually get a good conversation in these situations. First of all, you come outside with your drink and look around and have to somehow decide which group of people to head for, and then you have to try and somehow edge your way into the conversation, and it all stays at the shallow end for ages. Once you've worked out that this is all that's ever going to happen round this table, you use some excuse to get up - going to get another drink/more cake/whatever - and hope to collide with someone who does actually want to talk for real.

That process can continue for a long while, having a whole load of non-conversations with people until - at last - you find a soul mate and sit down happily to talk about what's really been going on in your lives.

until someone else turns up, of course...

But you may be wondering what that stuff in the title was about.

The thing is, in all these various conversations you have in these kind of situations, things come up and I absolutely know that my reaction was totally weird but I have no idea what normal people would have said.

Like, what do you say when you meet a girl you haven't seen for half a year except for facebook and the last you heard was she'd finally broken up with that guy and she is now standing in front of you with a very nice looking bloke by her side and after you and she chat for a bit she suddenly remembers about introductions and says: This is [insert name here], my new man.

These are the sorts of times when I know that if this was happening on multiply or on facebook I'd be fine because I'd have all the time in the world to think about a response.

or, later, when I bumped into someone I hadn't seen for even longer - she was in our first year but not in the second, and was there as a guest this time - and she said she's getting married next month.

I think the word I was fumbling for was "congratulations", but it definitely didn't come out at the time. I was trying to think what to ask, and I still haven't a clue what would be an appropriate question. I mean, what I want to know is: who is he? But how do you ask that, in a way that doesn't sound like you're completely surprised that there actually is someone who is marrying her?

*sigh* if you do hear of a good course in NormalSpeak do let me know, but as an introvert I would much prefer if it was a correspondence course - having to go out and meet people is... well... you see what I mean...

How accurate is your watch?

So... the clocks go back tonight, and these days I do tend to remember... unlike one year, when I managed to spend the whole day out of synch with the world around me...

First, you'll need a bit of background to follow this story.

It was sometime in the early 90s. I was living in a small town in Surrey, and attending the main Anglican church there, called St Andrew's. They had a smaller sister church called St John's, and evening service was sometimes held there. (In those days I used to get up in the morning and go to the main service - I guess I had more energy when I was younger...)

Oh, and the other detail that is crucial to the story is that the time of evening service was 6.30 for about half the year and 6pm for the other half.

Okay, now that you've got all that, sit comfortably and I'll tell you what happened...

I woke up one Sunday morning in autumn, and thought, oops, I've overslept, I can't make it to church this morning. So I stayed in, I don't remember what I did all day but it didn't involve switching on the television or the radio at any point.

Seeing as I'd missed morning service, I decided to go to St John's in the evening. So off I go to St John's, but I find the church shut and dark and there's absolutely no sign of life. Strange, I think to myself, but maybe I made a mistake and it hasn't changed to 6pm yet? Maybe we're still on 6.30? Okay, I'll go for a walk and come back.

So I go for a walk around my little town. I go through the high street and see that the Chinese takeaway is closed, which is strange because I know they open at 5.30pm on Sundays. Then I get to St Andrew's, the main church, and the church clock is saying the wrong time! I'm beginning to get a weird feeling, like something terrible must have happened locally today and I'm the only one who hasn't heard.

I go back to St John's for the 6.30 service but it's still dark and shut. Now what do I do? Okay, I'll go home then.

So I head home, and on my way I bump into the two elderly sisters who hold the keys to St John's. They're just on their way to open up for the 6pm service.

And so, at what I thought was nearly 6.30pm, I discovered that I'd been an hour out for the whole day.

And what I learned from this for life was how easy it is to walk around being absolutely sure that your watch is right and the church clock is wrong... to be certain that if everyone around me is saying something different, then they're the ones who have got it wrong...

For some people, though, there's an opposite lesson - some people, because of the hard knocks they've had in life, have such low self-esteem that their immediate assumption would be that they're wrong and the other people are right. If you're one of those people, then the lesson I learned is not for you. Because the truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle: we all get some things right and some things wrong.

At that time I was at a stage in my life when I needed to learn humility. This lesson came to my mind a few years later, when God was challenging me to review my thinking on a pretty big issue, and I realised that I had been refusing to accept that others around me may have been right about it whilst I had been wrong.

This hasn't stopped me from swimming against the tide at times... as those who have been reading my blog know very well... (in fact, there's one post coming soon...) but I know I'm only human and fallible, and even though I may feel 101% sure about something, I may have missed a point somewhere... I know from experience that there have been plenty of things I have felt 101% sure about but then later changed my mind pretty drastically - so somewhere in the corner of my mind, even as I stand bravely on my soapbox, I know that my watch may be... well... at least a few seconds out...

Just eat less calories - now why didn't I think of that!

Got into a debate elsewhere on the web and the subject of prejudice against "the obese" came up - and what prejudice there is out there! It seems that in a society that won't allow anything that might seem like you're possibly a teensy bit discriminating against people who sleep with those of their own gender (for example), anyone whose bmi is above a certain line is still considered fair game. And why? Because, as a guy called Andy on that thread pleasantly explained to me, the arithmetic is simple - eat less calories and you lose weight; eat more calories and you gain weight. Simple. So there's no reason why people should be overweight, and therefore - following Andy's logic - if I'm overweight it's my choice.

I'll just pause here to clarify some terminology. If you don't know what a BMI is when it's at home - lucky you... You probably don't have a weight problem. Those of us who have struggled with weight issues are more likely to have come across this term: Body Mass Index. I don't remember off the top of my head how it's calculated, but it represents a certain ratio between your weight and your height, and is supposed to measure you against the supposedly healthy standard. If you're on one area of the graph you're considered to weigh a healthy weight; a certain level above that you're considered overweight; go over that level and you're officially obese. Which is where I've been for a while now. And oh, how I hate this word! It just sounds horrible, doesn't it? And when people talk about "the obese" it just sounds yuk, you can feel the disapproval coming at you through that word. Somehow saying I'm fat doesn't feel so bad, don't know why.

But back to that brilliant piece of logic I was presented with, that showed that obviously being way overweight is my choice...

I have made many stupid choices in my life. The thing is that when you're presented with temptation, the price tag is usually hidden. When I chose to start smoking (aged 14ish, eager to become "grown-up") yes, I knew it wasn't healthy, but I had no idea how strong the addiction would be. I had no idea how difficult it would be to stop. About twenty years later I finally managed to kick that habit, but it certainly wasn't simple. Would I have made the same choice at 14 had I known what it was going to be like? Who knows. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about smoking, it was just an example of a bad choice I made.

Was there a particular moment along the way, a decisive point at which I made a choice that would affect my weight? You know, I don't think there was one. There was a gradual sliding that started when I was about 23 and the person I started going out with at the time decided that I needed feeding up. At the time I was thin - not horribly thin, not like current-day models, just nicely slim. I weighed 50 kilos (about 8 stone) which for my height (or should I say my shortness) is a good weight. I had always been slim, and had always been able to eat whatever I liked without putting any weight on. And I had always had a sweet tooth. I remember when I started working (my first job when I was 15) I had this Friday afternoon ritual, coming home from work (in Israel we finished early on a Friday) via the Elite chocolate shop. They sold chocolate by the weight, and I would get 250 grammes of this kind, 250 of that kind, etc (don't remember them all, but my favourite was definitely the chocolate-coated orange peel) and then I'd head home with the chocolates and the similarly heavy Saturday newspaper (yes, in Israel the Saturday paper comes out on Friday, we just don't have a newspaper on the Sabbath) and after lunch I'd lie on my bed, reading the paper and munching through chocolate.

And I didn't gain one kilo as a result.

And no, I was not using up tons of energy through exercise. I wasn't even doing housework! I was sitting on a bus all the way to work, sitting at my desk at work, then sitting on the bus all the way home. A completely sedentary lifestyle, with absolutely zero physical exercise. Eating whatever I felt like, and staying thin.

Until age 23, when suddenly the magic spell was broken and the food I ate started actually making a difference to my size. I was extremely surprised to suddenly find that I had gained 5 kilos. I was totally new to the world of weight-gain, diets were a foreign subject to me, and in the years to come I was to learn a lot about this subject! I was to learn how absolutely climbing-up-the-wall depressed and/or ratty some diets can make you. I was to learn how infuriatingly-easily the weight creeps back up once you stop whatever diet you put so much effort into. I was to learn how hard it becomes to find nice clothes that actually fit you and flatter your figure once you've crossed a certain line. I was to learn how much harder physical exercise becomes once there's more of you to shift when you move. I was to learn how your body resents the extra weight you're putting on it and expresses its resentment through all sorts of creaks of the joints, all sorts of aches and pains that sometimes make you feel like you're your mum's age.

And I was to learn how infuriatingly smug some people can be who have never experienced any of this.

This is just a bit of my own story. Obviously there are people whose situation is even more difficult than mine. Obviously there are those who have medical conditions that affect their weight, or who take medication that affects it. (I was put on steroids once and blew up like a balloon!) There are those like my next-door neighbour who is in a wheelchair and simply can't do any exercise. But I reckon there are plenty of people out there with stories similar to mine, people who suddenly found at some stage that their metabolism changed and the eating habits they'd grown up with were not serving them well now, but suddenly changing your eating habits as an adult is not that easy - partly because generally changing habits isn't easy, partly because there are so many different theories coming at you from different directions that it can be very confusing.

I have tried counting calories, and yes, I did lose weight through that, but could I carry on doing that for life - weighing everything you eat, keeping a daily record of exactly how many calories you have consumed? No, I'm afraid that was only doable for a short time, for a few months of pushing myself really hard. And many other diets are just not healthy as a long-term plan.

My brother recently introduced me to the concept of the low-carb diet, which I do find much easier than others I've tried in the past. I like meat, so eating lots of meat is no hardship for me... The great difficulty is resisting my sweet tooth, and I have ups and downs on that front, which translate pretty directly into ups and downs weight-wise - so yes, it does work: focusing on eating lots of protein + fat, filling up on that so that you won't need the carbs - to my surprise I found it does work. But there is still that bit in a corner of my mind that equates sweets with a treat, which is a problem.

So here I am, I weigh 76.5 kilos, which makes my bmi 32.5, and apparently if it's over 30 you're officially obese. I never chose to become overweight. It happened, and fighting it once it's happened is actually very very difficult. If it was really as simple as people like Andy reckon, we wouldn't have such a huge diet industry. And seriously, Andy, putting aside the fact that I would love to once again just stroll into any shop and buy nice clothes, do you really think I enjoy the discomfort of having to lug so much weight around? Don't you think if it was so simple to lose weight, I'd have done it by now?

Phew! have sent those cards at last!

I can't believe it's come to this - me rushing out to the postbox on the last posting day for first class post for Christmas, with a huge pile of cards which I actually sat down and wrote out yesterday and today, in a mega-blitz which involved putting the laptop to sleep because it was taking up too much space on my desk. Somehow it only dawned on me on Monday that I was running out of time - I blame the shops.

The thing is, you go to the supermarket at the end of August and see the beginning of the stocking up of shelves with Christmas-related merchandise and you sigh to yourself and think, Goodness, they do start earlier every year, don't they... And so throughout September/October you keep doing this, going into shops and sighing and thinking how ridiculous it all is. And so in November you carry on doing that, because by now you've got used to it.

And then one day suddenly it hits you: actually there isn't loads of time left, in fact there is NO time left, in fact I'd better get my skates on!!!

Ho hum. At least it's done now, so there's some chance that I won't lose all my friends this year...

How did this happen again?

This keeps happening.

I get to the point where it's just impossible to find anything, not to mention making room for a cup of coffee on my desk. I have a major tidy-up. I survey my nice tidy desk with a huge sense of satisfaction.

And how long does it take till I'm back where I started? This time we're talking five weeks! I know because it was when I got the new laptop, and felt it deserved a clean desk to sit on. Plus I needed space for all those instruction leaflets. Which are... there somewhere I'm sure... I can see something that says "Packard Bell" on it peeping from under some papers. And somewhere underneath I can see a corner of the page representing my email address list, which I was really going to put onto my new computer.

So what happened this time? It might have something to do with the fact that I've started blogging.