28th February 2005
When does being helpful become pathological interference? When does it become obsessive-compulsive? I have explained before my need to help the Tourism industry by stopping and asking anyone I see looking at a map if I can help them, but now I've started to give assistance to people without maps and who may just be pausing on a street corner to admire the view.
Helping the people with maps is essential, I believe. Sometimes they are not looking for a specific place and are just wondering where to go. I have recommended a visit to the Casino in Marino to people I met in Merrion Square - a long way you may think but well worth the visit. I have stopped several family fights outside the Mespil Hotel by making the decision for them as to where they should go. I've advised trips on the Dart or the Luas to sodden visitors sheltering under trees, one can see a lot of the city from either.
But should I get involved when the lost ones are already asking others the way? Now the woman who was trying to find Adelaide Road from Wilton Place must have been glad I interfered. She was in a car and I overheard the man she had stopped say he didn't drive but to go straight up the canal and she'd get there. Wrong, there is no exit across Lower Leeson Street, one has to go right into Fitzwilliam Place, just beside the I.M.O. headquarters, then left and straight ahead. This is the sort of action one has to take to avoid high blood pressure developing in lost drivers.
And what about the Polish students lost on Baggot Street Bridge? No one seemed to know the difference between Upper and Lower Mount Street except me. It's not just watching the B.M.I. that has me walking around the city.
Talking about the B.M.I. (Body Mass Index, weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared as you all know) I was much cheered up by a notice in Listings, the Trinity College weekly information sheet. Researchers often try to get fellow readers to become volunteers for their experiments. Someone was looking for women with a B.M.I. of over 28, I did not qualify, how delightful, how cheering.
Better was to come lower down the page. The Lipgene Research Study needed volunteers between 35 and 70 who had been diagnosed with at least three of the following: being overweight or obese, yes; Having high blood pressure, no; Having increased triglyceride in the blood, no; Having glucose intolerance, no.; Having abnormal cholesterol levels in the blood, no, as far as I am concerned seeing that I am not a Chinese woman who lives only on rice or noodles. So I was no good as an experimental animal again.
The day I read the notice I had to go to an official lunch, always a place for increasing the avoir du pois, and I saw plenty of suitable specimens there. What should I do, should I tell them about the study which promised check-ups and all sorts of things or should I keep my mouth shut, go home and send them anonymous postcards with the relevant details and phone numbers?
The woman beside me had already told me, as she ate chocolate biscuits with her coffee at the coffee break, that she was a diabetic. She told the equally well endowed woman on the other side of her at lunch this fact too, and that woman said her sister was a diabetic. I began to feel I had a moral obligation to bring research subjects and researchers together but they were a formidable pair and after the three of us had joined in a glass of Chablis I felt I should let them enjoy the pudding. Naturally I didn't have any, and had a healthy walk home.
How smug and happy I felt. How foolish and deflated a little later. I went into my local pharmacy to buy a toothbrush and saw there was a new machine installed. It would tell one's BP, pulse, BMI, and so on, all for two Euro. Why not?, I said.
Well, I do not know what was the matter with the machine but while it got my blood pressure and pulse right, it got my height and weight wrong so that I appeared to be shorter and heavier than I really am and hence my BMI was dreadful. Worse still it measured things called Fat Index and Fat Mass and both seemed to be off the Richter Scale as to what was normal. Why did I go near the machine? These sort of experiences only bring on a desire for Panetone and tea.
There is an advertisement on television encouraging recycling. The celebrity gardener, Diarmuid Gavin, is to be seen striding along a country road with a poor overweight woman puffing along beside him. If she gets too out of breath I could apply to be her substitute. She is probably paid a fortune. Germaine Greer got forty thousand sterling for appearing on "Celebrity Big Brother" which is only marginally more embarrassing.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
