2 You are what you eat!

Flushed with the success of having completed my first assignment of the holiday - last week's missive - I was full of ideas about what was to come next. The big problem is how to present my argument in a way which will not be dismissed as - oh that's just the twitterings of some old has-been who's become all prissy in his dotage. And what qualifies me, anyway, for dispensing advice to the young, wild and free? Well I'll keep going, and see where it leaves me. Reflecting back on what was most enjoyable about my first holiday day here in Madrid, I came up with a few high spots. The most memorable bit was as I was tucking into a tomatoe and chorizo salad with gazpacho, thrown together with my own fair hands and consumed in the quiet tranquility of my tiny studio appartment. There's something about the tomatoes and chorizo that you get in Spain that bears no resemblance to the flavourless produce churned out of Sainsbury's and Waitrose. Sweet and fragrant - delicious! Then the next best bit was the feeling of achievment having written my first my first 550 words of my own personal column!! After those two high spots - and even though the rest of the day was fairly packed with checking out the streets around Chueka, doing some sight seeing in the old part of the city, dining at a local resteraunt and visiting one of Madrid's largest cruising clubs in the early hours of the morning - the remaining highs were simply meditative moments -one at the start of the day when I was getting set for how to balance what I was planning to do and also at the end of the day when I was able to take stock of how well I'd actually managed to balance things, to think about what I might have over-done, what I might have under-done and also a little oasis around about 4 pm when I took the time to stop doing everything and just lie still and BE! No thinking. No planning. No becoming. No reflecting. Just emptying my head and existing in each moment. Lovely. Now that's the nice thing about being away on your own. You can just do that sort of thing at any point and there's no-one to blame for not doing it - except yourself.So anyway, what was my 'thought for the day'? Well, I suppose as time goes by I get more and more interested in what I put in my mouth, or more to the point what I don't put in my mouth. There's something about today's fast-food-instantly microwave-able-essential-fatty-acid-free junk we shovel into our mouths which seems - and probably is - lacking in a lot. Aside from the fact that it's often made without love - that most essential ingredient in our mother's cooking - it doesn't have fibre and it doesn't have fish oils. So piece of advice number 2 is .... If you must persist with fast-food - get some fibre [like muesli and fruit] and take an essential fatty acid supplement. Funny because while I was cruising around the Strong Centre, taking in the hundreds of men it might have been possible to have a close encounter with, it struck me that this pickiness when it comes to dietary concerns has also affected my sexual tastes. I suppose the rule is if it isn't going to nourish you then don't put it in your mouth! I came to the conclusion that my sexual and fantasy life would be better served by my own hand and my own mind in the comfort of my holiday home rather than by being sullied by a frantic public hand job in a labyrinthine, vomit scented dark room! So I withdrew from the possibility of a cheap thrill from a clandestine fumble. Instead I left the club feeling dignified and wholesome!