Abominable way to improve you abdominals

Get up and have a shower. Good. That’s two actions: 1. getting up and 2. having a shower. So that’s good twice.

Then have a long, much overdue shave. So that’s good, three times (not thrice, for goodness sake). I’m on quite a roll.

Looking in the mirror whilst shaving I notice my abdominals. Mmm. They’re quite developed. Not bad at all. Have I been going to the gym recently? No. Having I been walking extra briskly to the cake shop? No. So, what have I been doing?

Why, vomiting of course. A good old fashioned English past time. It’s difficult not to be a part of this, what with the English tradition of heavy drinking and the problems with food hygiene. Eating out in England has been a risk for a long time.

I once took an IT team at an investment bank to an Indian restaurant in the City. It was a remarkably clean restaurant. Even the toilets were very clean. We had great curries and every one was happy. The next day, however, no-one was happy. We all got into work without problems but then the deluge began. People had to go home; others had to take turns going to the toilet – quite a tag event. If we had network points in the toilet traps I would have taken a laptop and worked from there. And funnily enough it wasn’t even my team. I just thought they need a night out.

Anyway, this occasion was different. It wasn’t due to restaurant cooking and it wasn’t really due to home cooking. I had bought an oven ready meal from a well-known supermarket. A pre-packed meal I had had many times before. And as usual I made sure the timings et cetera were correct. Still, bad luck prevailed. Three hours later I was dramatically and impressively ill – diarrhoea and vomiting. Almost simultaneously.

From all this I’ve learnt a handy tip: don’t projectile vomit very close to a toilet bowl. Ironically it’ll look like you’ve made no effort at all to get near the toilet.

The next couple of days I’m a wreck. I have an annoying hangover. It’s annoying because I haven’t been drinking. But the loss of nutrients and electrolytes are still severe. I wean myself onto first fluids then solids.

But with the sudden loss of calories, and my intense abdominal exertions, I look quite good in the tummy area – well I like to think so anyway. And I’ve learnt a handy tip. So in retrospect it’s been quite a few successful couple of days.

This is the second time I’ve returned from Finland only to be ill a few days later. The first time nearly killed me so I guess this event was an improvement. Nevertheless although I like going to Finland (I even want to work there) I’m a bit wary of returning back to England only to be ill. I know there’s no connection, but something is trying to tell me something. May be I should just go to Finland and not return; I’ve never been ill there.

Yet there was a time when I thought I would need my friends to provide me with health certificates before I visited them.

Some years ago I visited a friend who was living in the Andalusia part of Spain. Although he lived in a smallish town he was close to bigger cities like Jaen and Grenada. Being a self-confessed culture vulture he was looking forward to showing me the sites of Grenada, especially Al Hambra. Being a frustrated (I have to work) man of leisure I was looking forward to chilling out, eating Spanish food, and drinking.

Being also a self-confessed hypochondriac my friend complained about a pain in the chest almost as soon as I arrived. The next day he was still complaining so, being a man of compassion and care, I called his bluff. “If you feel so ill, you should go to the hospital”. He did. And as I hadn’t seen a Spanish hospital before I went along. There they took an X-ray and for some reason also showed me the resulting pictures. He wasn’t suffering from a heart condition at all. Thought so. But they showed me a white patch where one of his lungs should have been. He had pneumonia. Pneumonia! This was outrageous: “But he’s only 30, he’s in Spain and it’s November (and I’m on holiday)”. I had been walking around his town baking hot in shorts and T-shirt although admittedly the inhabitants were wearing coats and looked quite cold.

Whilst we were waiting for the doctors to finish what they were doing we sat in the waiting room. It was full of sick people and every one was on drip feeds except me. Then a passing nurse looked in and saw the situation. She said she’d go get a drip for me right away. Although I don’t know much Spanish what I had deserted me in the panic. Fortunately my friend had enough energy to explain to the nurse that what I needed was a beer, not an IV feed. But it was close.

After the doctors had finished my friend was given a prescription for some hard-core anti-biotic. And being the kind, compassionate sort, I got them from the pharmacist and also bought some food. Then I went off on my own to Grenada. It was good. I ate and drank well. And, damn it, I even went to see Al Hambra. Not bad for an old building.

When I returned back to the town my friend’s condition had improved. The anti-biotic had kicked in and he could even eat out. In the end it turned out to be a nice, relaxing holiday for me with a bare minimum of that pesky culture thing. Unfortunately for my friend, when I returned to England his condition worsened. He got quite ill and had to have even more anti-biotics – the sort of anti-biotics which other anti-biotics call “sir”. My friend is fine now, although he’s still a hypochondriac and I’m still cautious before visiting him.

My return flight was to Gatwick airport. As I left the plane, before I barely started on the tube walk from it, there were policemen and police dogs. The dog earning its living approached me sniffing. Being wary (i.e. scared) of dogs I don’t know, I tried to move backwards. I couldn’t retreat very far at all and the dog moved its nose around my jeans, particularly the top bit. “Get that damn dog away from me” I shouted at the policeman who was its handler. Now, I do know that being rude to a UK policeman is a very bad idea indeed. It just came out under the tension. But the policeman was quite polite “I’m sorry sir, it’s the law”. That’s just so typical: I leave the country for two weeks and whilst I’m not looking they make it mandatory for police dogs to sniff your genitals.