It seems to me that there’s a lot of stuff just being made up this week!

This week I read that diet drinks can contribute to depression, but coffee can stave it off! Girls need aunts to stay on the straight and narrow, and apparently anyone who doesn't want anyone to live their whole life on the benefit system supports all conservative ideals – including the big society (even though I’m still not sure that David Cameron or Nick Clegg know what this is themselves, but continue to pat themselves on the back for what they think sounds like a very labour – sorry liberal slogan), and thinks that those who want to find a job and are on job seekers for what it was intended – a safety net, should be shot! Honestly, what a lot of nonsense!

Clearly I've had a slow first week back at work, but you really do have to ease back into things. For anyone who read my blog last week you’ll know that I was in over Christmas, but still I found that this week was still a shock to the system. What was it with everyone else being back at work, turning off their out of office and replying to emails?

Anyway aside from having to do some work, I’d like to hazard a guess that I, like the vast majority of the people who were back at their desks this week, found myself occasionally browsing the beeb or some other online media service and some of the articles and news stories were irritating to the extreme!

I appreciate that advancements in science are always on the go, and in truth this should be supported if not applauded, but I wish that the media would keep their noses out. I’m not sure causing confusion with the findings has any benefit to the general populous. Conflicting reporting on whether or not to have mammograms a couple of years ago led many women to be unsure or not to know whether to be screened, and there is always conflicting data over various different health issues depending on usually what’s on trend. This month you can read more information than not about how dry January is a waste of time than you can in support of it, although I’m proud to write that its day 12 and I’m still without an alcoholic drink!

This week the media reported the very weak finding that diet drinks could be linked to causing depression (if you drink four or more diet drinks every day). Fear not though because if you are a coffee drinker this could stave off depression. What I read delved into no greater detail however, in that there was no prognosis for you if you were both a diet drink and coffee drinker, or if you drank coffee and have depressive tendencies, or if you’re a diet drink addict and never feel blue. Also these findings seemed to only be in their preliminary stages, so it could be absolute hogwash!

Could it be that depression has absolutely nothing to do with aspartame? It could be an interesting campaign tactic though couldn't it? Clegg and Cameron handing out flyers and coffee, with Osborne crying out; “four, or four and bit more years till we fancy calling the next election” – not too catchy but our political system isn’t quite as smooth cut as the Americans, whilst Milliband and Balls hand out Diet drinks and chant; “we’ll make coffee free on the NHS, courtesy of Starbucks of course!”

So aside from the this story, and the headline story in The Sun yesterday about a man shaving his girlfriend’s Shih Tzu – really I just don’t have the words, the other commentary has been about the books that I suppose you’d best categorise as self help books on how to raise girls.

Being January this seems to be a time for stats. We’re all too fat – but fad diets don’t work, we all drink too much – but dry January is a waste of time, more of us now suffer from depression than ever before – quick hit the coffee cart, and more significantly the girls of today are more prone to eating disorders, drugs, depression, bullying, and going off the rails than ever before!

Firstly I’m not entirely sure I agree with this. I think that in an era where there are more stats readily available than ever before it’s just easy to compile data than ever before. I also believe that data is very easily manipulated so that it appears the way that you want it to, just ask a good accountant! It’s also my opinion that girls have been going off the rails in every generation; and I don’t always think this is a bad thing.

Secondly the eating disorder isn't unique to the noughties. Drugs too are not a new trend unique to girls of today, and drugs if anything seemed far more prolific in the eighties and nineties! As far as depression, and bullying, and anxiety are concerned, could it not just be a case that there is far wider understanding of these issues now. The sheath that they were once forced under has now been lifted and there is now an awareness and a desire to address and help not only girls but anyone suffering one or any of these afflictions!

I hate the notion in these raising girls books though that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, whether that means relying on an actual aunt, pseudo aunt, or no aunt at all. Each child is bound to be unique, and is whether you like it not bound to test the limitations of your patience – and I would assume at some point your love. Yet I guess that’s what you sign up for, but I also guess that’s why there isn't actually a handbook that you’re given at the hospital!

I don’t have children, but I was one and the only thing I can say is that if I’d ever caught my parents making reference to a “how to raise your girl” book is well .... the only thing I can hear in my head right now is the music in Jaws right before the shark’s about to eat someone!

Teenagers will be Teenagers, and they’re going to make mistakes. Surely as parents you just want to be there for them when they do. The only thing I continue to learn is that no one is perfect, and maybe that’s what we need to teach the next generation rather than pretend to act as though we've solved the meaning to all that afflicted us as we grew up and write a book about it! I don’t know, perhaps I just need another cup of coffee minus the sweetener!

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

Maybe the simple New Year’s Resolution can help us all look at the bigger picture, but in order to do that I’m guessing we’ll probably have to keep them past January!

Okay so like most people I have massively over indulged this Christmas. Yet I feel that I have had more reason than normal this year to eat and drink in excess. My birthday falls on the 24^th December. Yes, that’s right Christmas Eve, and I’ve long since gotten over the fact that whenever I have to give my date of birth the first thing that gets said to me straight after is; “do you know your birthday’s on Christmas eve?” (If that’s what you were thinking) I also, sadly, tragically, somewhat depressingly, turned 30. This meant that in the lead up to my birthday, and then on my birthday I was drinking and celebrating (and obviously eating) a lot, then you have Christmas, then the leftover period, and before you know it you’re into the New Year festivities.

Anyway, back on point, I like most people have massively over indulged this Christmas. So I, like most people of my age group (please no one comment that I have slipped into a different tick box on forms) will be doing dry January from the moment that I am sober on New Year’s day, and I will also be starting some diet of one kind or another. Probably taking the advice from whichever of my friends reckons they know someone who knows someone who lost half their body mass in a month!

More seriously though, the dieting and non drinking aside, it is that time of year when you can reflect on the year gone by or alternatively look forward and plan and hope for the year ahead.

What will be the great resolutions of 2013? For President Obama, well surely he has the greatest resolution to make? Can he forge a path in America’s history where gun control can finally be brought under some element of I don’t know, let’s say, control? Where the right to bear arms which was arguably never intended by the founding fathers to allow anyone and everyone outside of the militia the right to buy guns, machine guns, and rifles and shoot up innocent people can be amended?

The founding fathers had a common enemy when they wrote the Second Amendment. It was an occupying force. The enemy was not small primary school children. It was not any children. It was not any innocent man, woman, or child for that matter. As an Englishwoman I have no qualms in writing this (also it’s historically accurate), it was us. We did it! We were the enemy. We were being greedy and colonial, but times have changed and the right to bear arms is surely passed. Although that said, I don’t think anyone has a problem with farmers, hunters, or the army having guns. Surely as always, gun control as with most political wrangling it’s a matter of degrees.

What I do think would be terrifying to see in 2013 would be the whole of America armed in a response to the government’s failure to deal with gun control. Yet this seems to be an approach favoured by the head of the NRA Wayne LaPierre when he was speaking in his response to the recent shootings in Newport. Instead of showing any kind of humility in the face of tragedy, his response was to become like a parody of a Hollywood blockbuster, he said what you could be forgiven for thinking was the kind of thing Al Capone might once have said (granted if you swap around where good guy and bad guy are in the sentence); "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." No Wayne LaPierre, no! All this does is arm people and raise the probability of more innocent people getting caught up in the cross fire!

Turning away from what could be the greatest resolution of 2013, I want to look at what could be great resolutions for us all to try and keep and these are based on the findings of a nurse who has spent her career in palliative care looking after the elderly. She found that the elderly and dying had very similar regrets, and here are the top five;

1.     I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2.     I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3.     I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4.     I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5.     I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I want to say that going in to 2013 I will make each of these a personal resolution. Yet sadly I know that this is a rather flippant thing to write, I also know that I’m already breaking 3 and 4 as I write. 4 in so far as I’ve just silenced a call from a friend so that I can finish writing this blog, and 3 because sadly I’m quintessentially English (and I don’t mean that in a good way). Yet I can honestly say in the couple of days between Christmas and New Year, I absolutely excelled at 2!

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk