English Literature and Cold Turkey…Report One.
My normal routine: get up, kettle on, R4 on, either a tea-bag or looseleaf tea in small pot and, cereal, R4 off, wander into lounge and Ahhhh! That first sip of a cuppa to remove the night and start the day.
About 11 am, coffee beans ground to dust, cafetiere in operation, and…Relax…with coffee and maybe a slab of Cadbury’s plain. Perfect.
A normal day consisted of one coffee and maybe 5 cups of tea.
Until Saturday.
The centre-of-gravity of this story is my attempt to pass A-Level English Literature. In a few weeks’ time I shall be sat amongst impossibly talented 18-year-olds trying to control my thoughts, telling my pen-writing muscles not to cease up, and (for a 65-year-old, the greatest fear) not having to ask to be excused more than twice in the 3 hours of exam hall torture.
So…preparations – apart from intense revision – include:
1. Fasting the day before the exam (let the reader surmise the reason why)
2. A break from tea and coffee…i.e. caffeine, tannin, and all other diuretics
Sensible?
So, I Googled the likely side effects, the ‘cold-turkey’ side-effects of giving up tea and coffee:
The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine? | Coffee | The Guardian
The scientists have spelled out, and I had duly noted, the predictable symptoms of caffeine withdrawal: headache, fatigue, lethargy, difficulty concentrating, decreased motivation, irritability, intense distress, loss of confidence and dysphoria. But beneath that deceptively mild rubric of “difficulty concentrating” hides nothing short of an existential threat to the work of the writer [Edit and exam reviser]. How can you possibly expect to write anything when you can’t concentrate?
Three days in and I can report, darn it, ALL of the above symptoms. I don’t know what dysphoria is but I’m not sure I care…the incessant headache, leg aches, lethargic waves that roll over one, and stranger periods of distress…darn it, it’s all true!
Three days in and I can report, darn it, ALL of the above symptoms
But I’m told this will ease after nine days…so…a week to go of hoping the benefits will outweigh the longing for that first taste of something better in the morning than the dried inside of one’s mouth and sour lips after a night’s sleep, snoring - and sneezing in the hay-fever season.
Meanwhile, it’s back to Othello, Jane Eyre, Post 1900 Poetry, Spies, Skirrid Hill, and Streetcar Named Desire and wading through critics of Patriarchal societies, literature as a Marxist class struggle, and attempting to view the above books through modern, post-modern, and meta-modern lenses.
The moral of this tale? Not enough energy to enter a debate about morals…until it’s over. The abstinence, that is.
Expect Report Two…when I feel human