spacemonkeygaz.com

A brief recap:

In my last blog post I was told I had high blood pressure and advised I should go and see my GP. Firstly, thank you all for your texts, letters, e-mails etc asking about my well-being.

I am of course being sarcastic, you uncaring set of bastards.

But I digress. I went to see my GP — an elongated version of a Middle Eastern Rick Moranis — the following week. He took my blood pressure, shrugged, and said “No problem” with all the concern and compassion of an elongated Middle Eastern Rick Moranis just about to finish a ten hour shift that’s largely consisted of the old, infirm or obese complaining about their minor gripes and petty concerns.

He didn’t even tell me I could do with losing any weight. I liked him.

I was, however, a little disappointed. Like anyone, I’d had a look on-line and self-diagnosed myself, deciding I had an under-active thyroid. This was brilliant. My overweightness could, I convinced myself, be directly attributable to a lazy thyroid and not fifteen years of indolence, gluttony and binge drinking.

I could get some pills and slip back to those halcyon teenage days of eating what the hell I wanted and not having to worry about putting weight on and ignoring all those bitter claims that it would all inevitably and painfully catch up with me.

So EMERM’s lack of concern was bad news in one sense, but my “quite normal” blood pressure reading was good news in another, far more realistic, sense.

The thing that shocked me most, however, was a harmless conversation with friends. Blatantly ignoring the first and only rule — Do not mention my blog in front of my girlfriend — the friend, who I won’t name, said:

“I read your blog about your high blood pressure. It’s not surprising, really, is it?”

I was, initially, horrified. Yes, I know I’m a little bit overweight (by the odd five stone or so) but there was no need to draw attention to the point so unequivocally. The friend did, in fairness, redeem themselves somewhat:

“…because you get pretty wound up about things, don’t you? You can tell from reading your blog that you’re a very angry person.”

Now this is and isn’t true. I’m an enigma of sorts, in that I have (or at least think Ihave), in the words of the narrator in Fight Club, “the ability to let that which does not matter truly side.” I consider myself, a lot of the time, quite a chilled-out person. But the more I go through life the more I start to realise that my chilled out-ness should perhaps be more accurately described as “not really giving a shit about anything that doesn’t directly affect or annoy me.”

On the other hand I can feel the rage build inside me over petty things like personalised car registration plates, general highway etiquette (aka ‘shit drivers’), and trolley manners. A soothing voice inside me says “It doesn’t matter… no good comes from getting angry,” but another, louder voice inside screams and swears in self-righteous indignation. Most mornings as I drive to work I do genuinely think that pretty much everyone else in the world is either an idiot or a twat. Or both.

Football also brings the worst out in me. Not long ago I chatted in great depth about my condemnation of all things football, particularly the small-minded people that invariably go to watch, shout abuse and talk bollocks. Then I found myself at a football match and realised I’m just the same, if not worse. Maybe I’m less of an enigma and more of an out-and-out hypocrite.

I’m not quite at the anger management sessions stage yet, but I do worry sometimes that I can get wound up over nothing, and I’m not sure what the solution is. Buy a punchbag? Do more exercise? Drink less coffee?

Actually, I’m not sure I give a shit. I might just let it slide.