To be or not to be.

To be or not to be obese, that seems to be the question. Now I would have thought it was pretty obvious. Surely no-one really wants to be obese, and it does put a person at risk of all sorts of diseases, like heart disease for example. But maybe it's not a choice? I remember that Daughter suddenly 'blew up' when she was about 11 and became huge practically overnight. There didn't seem to be any reason, except possibly hormones, but our Doctor was quite unable to either put a finger on the cause, or do anything about it. In practise, it meant that poor Daughter had to put up with this unwanted burden, which no-one could explain, and which nothing seemed to shift. And she was (understandably) so sensitive about her weight that it couldn't be mentioned by anyone. She wouldn't be weighed and she wouldn't talk about the problem. We lived with this for a couple of years, and only when she went to another school (the same Independent School that Son was at), did the weight practically melt away. It was probably helped by the fact that they had to do sport three afternoons a week, with no excuses or exclusions, but I was never sure that it was only that. Heaven knows it was wonderful when she regained her old self, shape, size and temperament, but having gone through that with her, I would never wish obesity on anyone.

I heard this morning that the Government is about to tackle the problem of Chicken Pox with a new vaccination programme. There was mention of it possibly being included with the MMR vaccine, but surely that's not a good idea? My two (along with many others) didn't have the MMR, principally because we have allergies in the family, and Son had asthma. Those were contra-indications and I didn't think it was worth the risk. They had the vaccines separately, but Daughter managed to get Measles a week before she was due to be vaccinated, and then some time later, they got one mump each - at the same time of course. Thankfully, they were fine generally and haven't suffered longterm. Otherwise, it would have been all my fault.

Went to a Senior Screen this morning for the first time ever. It is held in our local Odeon cinema on a Thursday morning, and this morning they were showing the latest Harry Potter. I didn't know what to expect in the way of audience, but it was really mixed. Anyone is welcome, so they were not all oldies, and we had tea and biscuits and a little chat before the film. My Gay Friend usually goes to this, but he didn't today because he's not keen on Harry Potter. I just loved it though. It was very 'dark' and quite scary, and the special effects were, if anything, more stunning than in the earlier films. I do enjoy seeing the stars growing up, too. Ron, Hermione, Neville and Harry were perfectly adolescent - you could see the spots and almost smell the sweat (not on Hermione of course, she's squeaky-clean). It was terribly loud though (perhaps because a large percentage of the audience are deaf?) so I had a headache by the end of it, but was still pleased that I went. One disappointment for me was that they had changed the location of Hogwarts - nothing in this one was familiar. The surroundings had all changed and I felt rather disoriented. Perhaps it was a directorial decision, but it missed out for me.

There has been a lot of talk about the English language, grammar and usage among the bloggers recently, and it reminded me of something that Oscar Wilde once said in a letter to a friend. (This is not word for word perfect, but you'll get the gist.) "I must apologise for the length of this letter. I did not have the time to write a short one."