Restoring the Old Girl

Order and restraint
After a weekend of too much food and wine, Monday has been all about order and restraint. While I have been doing the c & t-ing (a.k.a. cleaning and tidying) this morning, I have been listening to Margaret Thosby's interview with Daniel Akst, an American journalist and novelist whose latest book is about self control.
You can listen to it too by going to http://www.abc.net.au/classic/throsby/#listen
Margaret can take the most seemingly mundane person and extract such fascinating information from them, and she does this on ABC Classic Radio every weekday at 10am.
Daniel Akst was talking about a subject I find so interesting, and he was no disappointment. For years I have been putting a book together in my head about why we have suddenly grown so fat, generally speaking. It's a complex subject really, and not one that has a simple solution, not with economics and health having become so intertwined.
If you get the time, have a listen. He talks about freedom and affluence in the west being wonderful, but also our downfall, if there is no self moderation.
Restraint can be such a difficult thing in an age of excess. Our children are constantly asking us about our own childhoods; what did we have for dinner (cremated steak and three veg most nights, with the bottle of tomato sauce on the table to jazz it up), what did we play with (each other), what did we wear (whatever was clean). 
It is incredible, the change from one generation to the next. It's the same with my mother and me. She was very poor growing up. There were no shoes, no toys, and usually not even a birthday cake on their birthdays.
Too much food, booze, drugs and tobacco is killing us. Daniel Akst was saying that each year more people die in America from smoking, than were killed in World War II. 
Anyway, that's enough. It's interesting to me, possibly as boring as doing your tax return to someone else though.
Saturday night was fun. Sunday morning I woke up, put myself together again using only blu-tak and sticky tape and took Peaches off to her friend's birthday party at an indoor play centre. As a catholic, this was like my penance.
P.S. The tiramisu freddo was just dandy (I'd include a photo, but blogger won't unload them at the moment), unfortunately, some people didn't like the taste of coffee! Nevermind. I've had bigger disasters than that, as you know. One night, when the same group of friends were here, I dropped the cheesecake dessert on the floor. We scooped it up and ate it anyway.  Now that is a sign of true friendship!