Just because you need an image on these things, here's Hev and I last night at the Bristol Light Festival, full of fun stuff, only visible after dark. We were then stuck in a 45 minute hold up on the M32 on the way home because of a multi-car pile-up ahead of us.
My Dry February
I went to the Doctors recently, and it turns out I'm fine. But. We had blood tests and an X ray, and nothing seems to be wrong with my insides. But. I've got high cholesterol.
I remember I had a blood test, at an exhibition I was doing for Oval way back in 2005, and learned then that I had high cholesterol. And, of course, this was what Dad was told about when he had his first heart attack, aged 72.
I'm only 61, so still a time to wait before I'm Dad's heart attack age. But, forewarned being forearmed and all that, this time we're looking at the cholesterol and seeing if there's something we can do about it.
My overall level is 10.2, which is high. A normal range is 7.5 or less.
Of that 10.2, 8.1 is Non-HDL cholesterol, or what they used to call Bad Cholesterol.
It's likely that a component of that is Familial Hypo-Cholesterolemia (I have guessed at the spelling of that having taken notes on the phone). This is what Dad was told about by his heart surgeon. He'd asked "do you come from the East Coast of Scotland?" Apparently we, and people in the North East of England, who are descended from Vikings, are prone to this inherited high cholesterol.
Another component is my Tri-Glycerides. Their level is 4.9, which is high (I don't know what the low number would be). And these are affected by alcohol.
Which is what brings us to Dry February. Because I do drink. Pretty well every other day, unless I've got a school in the morning in which case I don't drink the night before. In busy weeks this can mean me going five, six, or even seven days without drinking. But at quieter times, or in a month like the one we've just had, where I'm at my desk pretty much every day, I drink a little bit every other night. (I've been leaving a day's gap between drinking, minimum, for about ten years now. Following on from Hev totally giving up drinking, which was way back in 2009).
So my Doctor has booked me in for a second blood test, on March 10th, and this time it will be to see how my cholesterol looks after a month without drinking. So that's what I'm going to do.
The three cans of lager I had on Tuesday night will be the last alcohol I consume until at least March 10th, and we'll see the difference it makes to the results. This period includes me spending a week in Scotland, both teaching classes and performing with The Socks, as well as Socks shows in Leicester, and a busy schedule of schools in Bexley, Coventry, Northampton, Leeds and London, so maybe I'd have been cutting down a lot through this time anyway.
But totally dry for a month? I'm pretty sure I haven't managed that since before I started my foundation year at Loughborough in September 1979.
What radical transformation will it have on me? Stay tuned for updates.
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