Two hot topics

Now I have been told many times over the years that I have a ‘butterfly brain’, and I have never denied it, so please bare this in mind while reading my two offerings for today; night sweats during the menopause and the stock market crash. Yep two completely different subjects, which should, in reality, be put in two different postings, but I’m too lazy to do that...

So number one, the menopausal night sweats.
I read an excerpt from a biography yesterday by a well off, famous person (I mean, who else has the gall to write a biography about themselves?), where she described how her night sweats caused her problems where she would wake up with the sheets soaked and she had to move to another bed!
Now maybe I’m getting a little intolerant, what with old age AND the menopause, but…’move to another bed’? In my house the chance would be a fine thing! I’m just grateful I don’t sleep with the hubby any more (another story completely) so I don’t have to wake him up to change the sheets before I can get back to sleep!
And my heart goes out to all those poor women who do actually have to wake their husbands, haul them out of bed, and endure brainless comments like “Can’t you just put a towel under you?” change the sheets while hubby dozes in the armchair, then rouse him again to put him back to bed, then have to repeat the process a couple of hours later. It would literally drive me insane in a very short space of time in my present condition!

Then I got to thinking about what all that sweating must be doing to the rest of my body, I mean there is real fluid loss here, I even manage to soak the mattress on occasion, but seldom do I have enough brain cells awake to think I need to drink something, and when I wake up in the morning with a humdinger of a headache, I put it down to lack of sleep. But is it really? Could it really be dehydration? And could that also be the cause of the constipation I keep getting? I know that dehydration causes constipation, as do doctors, but has anyone ever seen advice for menopausal ladies telling them to keep a drink beside the bed to top up when they wake up all hot and sweaty?


And on to number two; the stock market crash.
I have an active imagination as well as a butterfly brain, and as I was reading about how the banks are dropping like flies after a good spraying, a thought popped in to my head and I just can’t shake it.
I don’t like banks, I consider them a necessary evil, but one that shouldn’t be necessary, I mean that’s why we have cash isn’t it? But over the years banks have carefully undermined our reliance on the solid feel of the coin in our pocket and replaced it with a dependence on the feel of plastic.
Now days, if you have a job, you can’t get paid unless you have a bank account, if you are unemployed, you can’t access your benefits unless you have a bank account, and this puts banks firmly in charge of everyone’s lives.
I have resented this for years. I have also resented the extortionate charges they impose for accessing my own money. I mean, here I am, kindly lending them my money to invest where they see fit until such time as I need it back, and what do they do? Refuse me access for 30 days, heap charges on my head for asking for it back, and to top it off, give me grief in the branch as if THEY are doing ME the favour! And don’t get me started on the idiotic attitude of their mortgage lenders and credit cards, they had to know that by giving people more money than they could reasonably pay back was asking for trouble, and woe betide the person who manages to pay off their loan or mortgage ahead of time, they are slapped with yet more charges for paying it back early! All this makes them no better than shylocks in my mind.
Okay, I know it is a bit of a simplistic view, but then I'm a simple woman.
Earlier this year, banks were legally told they charged far too much, and had to pay compensation to millions of people. They kicked and yelled a little bit, but over all they paid up like lambs, which instantly made me suspicious.
Now suddenly we have a reasonably well known bank go belly-up, which is then partly bought out by a Spanish bank (which already owns another well known Brit bank) and partly rescued by the British Government. I’ll bet my back teeth the British public got the chaff and the Spanish bank got the wheat, but I diverge.
What I am really thinking is, the Government slapped the wrists of all banks for going a step too far with their charges, and now, with the help of a sacrificial lamb or two, the banks are now firmly slapping the wrists of the Government, and sending out a warning to every Government around the world, "Don't mess with us or we will cripple you!".
Is this all an over active imagination on my part, or am I reading between the lines a little too well for an old lady?