It's just doable! (So let's not do it.)

This is one of those blog posts I really urge myself to read, because it contains words of wisdom.

For many months I have been deaf to wise words, but I note that it is only now I am beginning to hear them.

Admittedly, I find myself listening to wise words only when they have been dropped in a vat of water, thrashed ten times against a horse skin (horse not in it) and poured in a stopper-dropper craft bottle before selling to gullible idiots like me at twenty quid a pop.

I currently have this chronicness called puffyupandfalloffyitis the remedy for which the quack doctor (after securing my house and all its contents) has supplied to me. His thoughtful remedy is this: many splendidly large quantities of coloured pills the size of doorknobs to be swallowed throughout the day, supported by some self flagellation at times of your own choosing but it must be done with a fancy daisy.

Frankly, I am so tired of puffyupandfalloffyitis the bloke from the tyre shop could have told me my cure lies in balancing a chinchilla on my head while standing in a bucket of water at midnight and I would be asking him about his hourly rentals on chinchillas. Puffyupandfalloffyitis can get us sufferers down and desperate.

But the good quack doctor also said that leading a less stressful life can be helpful in my search for a final solution.

I recall that this has been told to my brain and body before!

Of course, then it was from one of those white-coated androids. My body and brain ignore such tellings, yes they do, because body and brain are about their important business with stuff like triplets, a Citroen Berlingo with a dent in it, a pile of dinner potatoes, and a great sense of responsibility to be bashed about like a hammer against a clock with an ultimatum.

But it is now these wise words should be attended to. Do less stuff. Do less stuff slower. Do less stuff slower and with more attention to the preparation and the mopping up. Do not overegg with wrangling thinking on the stuff which you must do slower while preparing and mopping up. Simply enjoy all the stuff just as you go.

In other words, body and brain, do not take the opportunity this week to poke the diary (let's say for the 34th September), and think Aha! I can fit into this day the workshop starting at 9am if I drive to Leicester at 2pm to join the talk at 4pm so we can do the play at 6pm and return at 10pm. If I wee in a bottle about junction 16 of the M1 I save the ten-minute stop at Newport Pagnell services, which makes it all just doable!

Frankly, body and brain, this sort of lifestyle should cease. It may be a contributory factor to your puffyupandfalloffyitis.

This camping trip should mark a turning point. And it will, body and brain, if you bother to read on. This trip, to the lovely Suffolk, with all the other hairy hippies in the happy fields, should remind you that idling and loafing are commendable activities. Footling and playing are goals in themselves. Staring at fields, skies, clouds and wavy grains, following whimsical distraction, surfing ideas, enjoying semi-random connections, so that one can begin thinking about plastic computer tables and drift away to imagining being a cuckoo dancing on a washing line, these are all truly worthwhile experiences.

Yes, body and brain. If you pay heed to my wise words, you may achieve your less stressful life.

Okay, only for the coming week. But then we will see if that indeed has any further impact on your horrible puffyupandfalloffyitis.

And know, body and brain, that whatever you choose to do, I resolve one summer to come blogless and shoeless in whatever state I find myself, to idle time away in the beautiful Suffolk countryside, staring at the sky and wondering if dancing cuckoos really do wear noisy pink tutus as they so indignantly claim.