Echinacea for all my ills

What is echinacea? Echinacea is a herb from the American Purple Coneflower. 

Healthline says ‘it is regarded to have many physical and mental health benefits, relieving pain, inflammation, migraines, improved immunity and lower blood sugar levels. It contains compounds that may reduce feelings of anxiety. These include alkamides, rosmarinic acid and caffeic acid.’ 

No, me neither. I’ve had a stash of these echinacea pills for over a year now, with the intention of seeing if they have any effect in social scenarios, to see if feelings of anxiety might ebb off. But the lockdown has meant that there haven’t been any social situations for the last year, so in my drawer they have stayed. So, here’s the plan: take one of these every night, start looking for social events to try out, and see what effect echinacea has. I’ll review this in 5 weeks’ time. 

During that time, a few things will be going on: I’ll cut out alcohol and junk food. I’ll keep at the gym and see what personal bests I can attain. Blogtober begins in 12 days time, where I’ll be blogging every day about- wait for it- beermats. Not exclusively, as there’ll be a few other things to cover too. But mostly beermats.

Moet Partnership Party in Rendition

New Deansgate bar Rendition celebrated their new partnership with champagne brand Moet Chandon. Strip lights, a deep-red illuminated serving area, table lamps and retro wallpaper helped nod to a prohibition-era themed venue, contrasting with mellow house music. 

 

 

Friendly staff and customers made a warm, welcoming atmos. The event was ran early doors tonight; I’m looking forward to seeing the bar a little later on in the evening.

Sliders and cocktail menu in Manchester's new Rendition Deansgate. Moet Partnership party tonight. pic.twitter.com/1xSFlsf7ux

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) September 17, 2021

New Phone: Nokia X20

After around a decade of using Xperias, I’ve had to say goodbye to Sony phones. Their range has unfortunately dropped off in recent years, and their prices for what handsets remain available have risen dramatically. It was time to make a change.

If you live with a memory condition, like an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) like I do, the doctors will tell you to keep a lot of things in your life the same. They’ll say, don’t chop and change too many areas of your routine, or make changes too often. Save your brain power for what’s most important. Hence, I’ve suck with Sony mobiles for around 11 years, and they’ve served me well. They’ve been great for storing information that my hippocampus cannot. But it’s become necessary to move away from this brand of phone.

I’ve kept my usual budget of £300 for the handset. I wanted to stay on Android. After a search, a few models sprung up, but one that stood out was the Nokia X20. Now, I had a Nokia 3310 between 2001 and 2007, so I’m more than aware of the quality and durability of their products. Is it possible that Nokia is making a long-overdue return as a major player on the mobile phone market?

I bought the X20 a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been using it routinely since, adding on a solid screen protector and downloading all the apps I’d usually use. Photos, Calendar, Omninotes, my local gym’s app, and the main social media apps are all working fine… to a degree.

I’ve had a few minor issues so far. There’s one more screen tap than before to unlock the phone. No biggie. There’s no emoticon for weights, which usually saves me a few taps when writing lists in Omninotes. I’m noticing a bit of interference with videos, particularly playing footage on Twitter, and Instagram Reels. I’m seeing a few white flashing lines. I’ve noticed that, on quite a few apps, If I write a sentence and end with a full stop, I still need to press the space bar to start the next sentence. I’m sure the Xperias used to do that for me. Minor thing, but when you do a lot of writing on your phone, it’s noticeable.

The Tech Chap has uncovered a few more pros and cons.

I really need to get back to event blogging and citizen journalism to tell how the phone is going to hold up. Aside from the above issues, it’s holding up well.

I just spent 6 hours running at the gym and somewhat regret it

The Saddleworth Santa Dash- a 5km run through leafy Oldham’s outreaches featuring 500 people in Santa suits- should be back this December. As much as I’ve spent my life hammering the gym, I find running to be the one thing I struggle with the most, so I figured, from this point on I’ll add a short, fast-paced run into my regular gym session.

Fast and short means your heart rate will spike and lower, meaning you’re putting your cardio system under more pressure than you would in one longer run. This in turn means, in theory, more of an attack into your fat reserves.

As a small experiment, I figured I’d stock myself up on porridge this morning and spend the day at the gym, repeating the same 14km/ph run for as long as I can (usually a couple of minutes) with a short break for sit-ups in between. The plan was to get my weight down from 88kg (2kg down from the other day, at least) to, ideally, 79.9.

Why 14km/ph? Back in my early 30s I spent a year or so fitting in 10-min runs in every gym session. I started at 7kmph and increased the speed by .1km/ph each session. I managed to get up to 14.1km/ph before going to Ibiza in 2013, I think, and- unsurprisingly- my cardio has never been the same since.

Today I started at 10:30 am with a 10-minute cross trainer warm-up, then a short abs workout. Then I jumped onto the treadmill and started running. The first few runs, when I still had the strength, I managed 3 mins. Very quickly, though, my stamina drained and the runs were getting shorter and shorter, until I couldn’t last 60 seconds. I ended at 4:30pm. I couldn’t see any difference on the manual scales in the gym. They have normally got electronic, but I couldn’t find them on this day. (That said, I’m realising that at 39 my eyesight is shot to shit.)

So. This was a dumb idea and I don’t recommend it. However, I’ll still be mixing in a 14km/ph run to each session I do between now and the possible return of the Santa Dash in around 3 months’ time.

Olympic Workouts 2020: Results

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The Tokyo 2020 Paralympics are over. What an amazing Olympics and Paralympics it’s been. Team GB finished fourth in the Olympics medal table with 58 medals, and second in the Paralympics medal table with 124 medals. I’m hoping that the great work our paralympians have done will encourage people to pay a little more attention to parasports rather than obsessing over their one sport of choice.

Throughout the 2 periods, I’ve been eating clean and focussing on specificmovements at the gym- the movements in which I could watch the games from the gym stations, either on screens on the gym’s walls or screens attached to the machines themselves.

Back in 2013 I was doing a series of 10-minute runs, starting at 7km/ph and increasing in speed by .1 of a km/ph each session. I managed to get up to 14km/ph. Since then, I’ve not been able to get anywhere close. I’m also nearly 20kg heavier than I was back then. So, I ran at the 14km/ph for as long as I could. In July, I managed 2:00. I recently managed to get to 4:00. I’ve not got that far since January last year. I’m going to keep tapping away at this one and see if I can get to the 10:00 mark before December, when the Santa Dash will return. the Santa Dash is a 5km run, which should take me somewhere between 30-45 mins.

There are 2 types of bike at Oldham Sports Centre- those with a backrest to the seat, and those without. On the bikes without, my 10-min PB was 3.55km, from 2016, probably from around the last Olympics. I managed to bash this right up to 4.23km. Incredible. My dips record was at 95 from December last year. I managed to hit 100 in early August. I started using the triceps machine, a seated station in which the user keeps their upper arms straight and pushes down on two handles. (This is positioned in my gym directly in front of a TV screen.) I started this at 35kg and, throughout the 2 events, worked it up to 70kg, the top weight on the machine. I also started working dumbbell press, a movement similar to bench press. The dumbbells are held parallel to each other and raised and lowered like a bench press, without the advantage of the supporting bar. This requires the individual muscle fibres to work in conjunction with each other to balance the weights throughout the movement.

I got up to 30kg. I didn’t work it often as there are no screens on the ceiling.

After a minor break from clean eating, I’ll be back to good food, and I’ll certainly stick with the running, but I’m looking forward to doing more weights.

Complications with Disability Travel Passes

I have been using a concessionary travel pass since, if I recall, late 2008. I had got my current job perhaps a year earlier through a scheme for people with disabilities. We’ll call them The Scheme. A worker from The Scheme helped me to apply for said travel pass. Now, this was maybe a year before I got a solid diagnosis for short-term memory difficulties. I did have a psych assessment at the time, but it was totally inaccurate, claiming I had dyslexia. (That’s for another blog post.) As mentioned in a post a few months ago, employment mentor JM had noticed that this was totally inaccurate, and that my condition was memory-related, and likely from an Acquired Brain Injury. I needed to be reassessed.

While I was badgering my (weirdly reluctant) GP to send me to a psychologist, JM helped me to apply for a concessionary bus pass from Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM). Despite not having a solid diagnosis, I was awarded a bus pass with minimal complications.

I used said bus pass throughout all the tribulations of moving offices numerous times, having to learn everything again repeatedly, eventually getting a diagnosis and assistance from Neuropsychology, battling through Social Care (the worker didn’t want anything to do with me as my problems were memory-related, not a generalised learning difficulty or autism), applying for Disability Living Allowance, first through Social Care, which was a waste of time, then through The Scheme, which was by then being administered by another organisation.

Confused? Me too.

You’re probably aware that a few years ago DLA was replaced with Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a benefit that- for most disabled people like myself- required an assessment from ATOS, a private company. I’m not going to bang on about this right now, as this blog post is about something different to that, but essentially, throughout all the hoops the government forced me to jump through to prove that neither myself nor the neuropsychologist who assessed me were lying and that I had the disability I said I had, one thing stayed constant: my bus pass.

I never had a problem renewing this every few years… until this year.

My bus pass expired at the end of last month. Normally, TfGM sent me a reminder of sorts, and maybe I gave them a new picture. I can’t remember. But there was minimal complication with it. I think maybe I had to get my parents’ neighbour- a Regional Manager in his trade and who had lived next to me since I was maybe 7 years old- to confirm I was who I said I was. (Like you do with a passport photo.)

But this year, there was no reminder. The pass expired, so I emailed TfGM to ask what I needed to do. No response. I emailed again. Same. I phoned. I was on hold 10 minutes or so.

I eventually got through to a worker. They told me that I need to be applying under the Learning Disability Team at my local authority. They had checked, and I’m not known to that team, so the pass wasn’t renewed. This appears to be new criteria.

Now. I’m reluctant to talk about work, but at the moment I work, as it happens, a few desks down from the LD team that deal with concessionary bus passes.

That team were somewhat surprised to find out that I have any condition at all. I’m 39 now, and have spent my life trying to fit in, and not let my condition get in the way of life- but it still does in many ways. That said, I’ve become so adept at hiding the condition- writing desk maps so I can remember people’s names, having massive quantities of guide notes on how to do everything I need to, having my diary open on my desk so I know which days I’m in- that many people are unaware that I live with a disability.

A member of that team, who deals with the bus passes, explained to me that the process had been ‘shortened,’ that some changes had been made. I’ll skim over the bureaucracy. She gave me a copy of the application form. I’ve filled it, but the only passport photo (required as an attachment) that I can find is seemingly from 2008, and appears to be the same one I’ve been using on my bus pass since then.

I updated my driving licence this year with a considerably newer picture, but even that one is a few years old. I can’t find any originals of that picture right now. (A head-trauma / memory condition symptom is not being able to find specific things in specific places. This is far more noticeable than with the average person.) So, paperclipped into my diary is the application form and the suspiciously old photo of me, with no stubble or, dare I say it, wrinkles. I’ll sort it out on Monday. Next Saturday, I’ll tell you where I’m at.