![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Patrick Stewart reads his own memoir, starting with his childhood in WW2 Mirfield, his war damaged dad, his hardworking mum and the kind of innocent exploits that boys got up to. His love of theatre developed early with school and am-dram productions and though he tried jobs in journalism and shop-work he eventually secured a place at drama school in Bristol. This takes us through his early days in walk-on parts - the disappointments and highlights until he finally achieved his ambition of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company before Star Trek called. He doesn't dwell on details of his first two (eventually) failed marriages and his happy third one except to intertwine them with the progress of his acting career. You probably need to be a fan to enjoy this, but I am, so I did.Patrick Stewart reads his own memoir, starting with his childhood in WW2 Mirfield, his war damaged dad, his hardworking mum and the kind of innocent exploits that boys got up to. His love of theatre developed early with school and am-dram productions and though he tried jobs in journalism and shop-work he eventually secured a place at drama school in Bristol. This takes us through his early days in walk-on parts - the disappointments and highlights until he finally achieved his ambition of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company before Star Trek called. He doesn't dwell on details of his first two (eventually) failed marriages and his happy third one except to intertwine them with the progress of his acting career. You probably need to be a fan to enjoy this, but I am, so I did.
Excellently read by Brian Nishi.I have long been a fan of Dr Jason Fung’s attitude to losing weight. Following his ideas is the only time I’ve lose weight and – most importantly – kept it off. So a few years ago I lost 2 stone (that’s 28 pounds) and I have not put it back on. It’s time to try again. So while I was starting my new eating regime, I listened to this book on Audible and it boosted my resolve.
Some years ago, a friend alerted me to a series of Youtube videos by Dr Jason Fung, a nephrologist from Canada. He discovered that in order to not only lose weight, but to keep it off, you need to reset your body's expectation of what the right weight is for you. If you start off at 15 stone, that's what your body thinks is normal, so any diet (calorie counting/Atkins/whatever) will always be successful at first. but the more you lose, the harder it gets - until you're eating 800 calories a day and gaining weight (certainly not losing it). So, you get fed up, stop dieting and wham, the weight piles back on and you even add a few extra pounds. Next time you try a diet, you're starting from 15st 7lbs and the cycle begins again. Do that a few times and you're 17 stone. Sound familiar? It's not nice. Doctors have known for 50 years that the eat-less-move-more diet doesn't work in the long term. The real cause of weight gain is insulin, so it's a hormonal thing, not an over-eating/low willpower thing. All foods cause insulin to spike, but processed carbs/sugar are the worst offenders. The insulin causes your body to store those carbs as fat. Surprisingly even foods with artificial sweeteners cause your insulin to spike, so the same thing happens. Intermittent fasting means that your insulin production goes dormant while you are between meals. The other benefit is that fasting resets your body's weight expectations, so you don't tend to regain the weight when the fasting ends.
So this is me as an example. On day 1 I eat until 8.00 p.m. (so a main evening meal but no snack or supper afterwards). Then on Day 2, I fast with just cups of hot Bovril and maybe one cup of tea with a splash of milk. I drink plenty of water and fizzy water, I go all the way through Day 2, and on Day 3 I will start eating at lunchtime if I’m hungry. I have a normal evening meal (home cooked, no processed carbs, but not necessarily low carb). That means I've done a 36 hour fast (approx). then on Day 4 I fast as before. The first day is hard, but the second is easier and then it gets easier still. It’s not so much hunger, but the habit of eating that’s the problem. When I wake up in the morning, having fasted for the whole of the day before, I’m not particularly hungry. That sounds bonkers, but it’s true. Some people do 16/8. i.e., have an 8-hour period during the day when they eat and a 16 hour fast. (Overnight you sleep 8 hours of your fast away.) Some people do 20/4. Some people do extended fasts for days, or even weeks, but I’m not up for that. The whole point is not having anything to spike your insulin during the fast or between meals, so no snacking.
Dr Fung developed this programme of intermittent fasting when he realised that a lot of patients coming to his clinic with kidney problems were type 2 diabetics and vastly overweight. When he encouraged them to lose weight with his intermittent fasting method, their diabetes improved dramatically – to the point where some of them were no longer classed as diabetic.
PLEASE NOTE; I’m not suggesting that if you are a type 2 diabetic who takes insulin, you should start fasting without talking to your doctor, but I’m not on insulin, and it’s worked for me. I’ve not only lost weight but my sugars are down.
Tags:
With Russell T Davies coming back as the new (returning) Dr Who writer snd showrunner, replacing Chris Chibnall, I thought it might be time to take a look at the book, presented in a series of emails between Davies and Cook, about the writing of Dr Who, with a side order of Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures. The Great Correspondence begins in February 2007 and continues for close to two and a half years, covering (mostly) Dr Who's fourth season, and the specials, leading up to David Tennan's handover to Matt Smith, and Russell Davies's handover to Steven Moffatt. It also covers Torchwood's Children of Earth season, and looks back at the first three seasins of New Who. The Final Chapter is an addition to the original 'The Writer's Tale' but both books are included in the Kindle edition.It's not a how-to book, but there's much to learn here about storycraft, and about reworking something until it's as close to right as it can be.
I found it fascinating, seeing the writing process, the blind alleys and the last minute panics. It's a candid exchange of emails between journalist, Cook, and writer/showrunner Davies. It feels very personal and raw, exposing a few nerves as Russell is torn between production concerns while writing the next episode, and the next. And eventually having to write David Tennant's regeneration. The pressure to get that one right was immense, and you can follow the process from the very first idea, to the finished version. The book is worth it for that alone.
If you're a writer you'll recognise the panic as deadlines approach, and if you're a Whovian this will deliver a lot of insight into the making of this best-beloved TV phenomenon. Highly recommended.
There wasn't much in this book that I didn't know, but that's because I did extensive research for my three Rowankind books. But how I wish I'd had this book when I was buying masses of books for research and disappearing down internet rabbit holes for days on end. It has everything I needed in one succinct volume. There's loads of practical information here about how long it takes to travel from point A to point B, how much it will cost and how long you have to find a privy while your coach's horses are being changed at an inn. If you were dropped into the Regency period with this handbook, you could probably integrate pretty well (though your accent might be a bit strange to the locals). Chapters cover: landscape; London; The people; Character; Practicalities; What to Wear; Travelling; Where to Stay; What to Eat, Drink and Smoke; Cleanliness, Health and Medicine; Law and Order, and Entertainment.
The information is comprehensive, the style is readable. I had this on Kindle, but i will buy the paperback when it comes out later in 2021 as it's a great little reference book for the period. It's not strictly the Regency which only lasted for eleven years, but it covers what people think of as the wider period, from the 1789 to 1830. It compares and contrasts life through the period, noting changes. It covers this extraordinarily varied period from privileged scoundrels to the abject poverty of the urban poor; the cruelties of the law which would hang a child for stealing a handkerchief, to the beginnings of prison reform. It is, at once, comprehensive and succinct, and a great starting point for anyone interested in the period. I don't normally read non-fiction from beginning to end (I tend to dip in and out for research) but this read as easily as a novel. Though one warning to kindle readers, the illustrations are a dead loss in that format. You might do better with a Kindle Fire, or (probably) a dead tree version.
