Popcorn

Experiments in psychology are thought-provoking. The University of South California did one using popcorn. They gave cinema audiences free popcorn and monitored how much they ate. Then they gave a similar group free popcorn but with the proviso that they had to eat with their non-dominant hand.

The latter group ate less popcorn because their automatic eating habit had been disrupted. I sometimes nibble some salted popcorn with a drink but the sweet stuff sold in cinemas revolts me. The smell – ugh – however, the popcorn experiment does have an application relevant to me. Purely theoretically suppose that I sometimes, say at a drinks party, have too much to drink, drinking out of habit with my glass never empty. My behaviour could be disrupted by using my non-dominant hand. At a dinner party an alternative is to encircle a wine glass with tall water glasses so that it is necessary to deliberately extricate the wine glass. Both strategies cause a pause giving the brain time to reflect on whether those extra gulps are strictly necessary. Food, or rather drink, for thought.

The weather in Britain has been chilly of late; even in London it has been below freezing at night and in the early morning. When I was growing up at Barmeath my bedroom was on the top floor with no double glazing and no heating. (If I was unwell my mother plugged in a two bar electric heater, making sure only one bar was switched on.)  There was often ice on the inside of the window. I was so acclimatised that it seemed perfectly normal until I went to stay with a school friend in a centrally heated house in a fashionable Dublin suburb and felt quite faint from the heat. The fitted carpets freaked me out too. I dread to think what he felt like when he came to stay with me but perhaps he avoided winter visits.

Now I still have a top floor bedroom with no heating. The top two radiators are switched off unless it’s really cold. They have not been on so far this year. This is not because I am macho. It is because insulation, double glazing and heat coming up from downstairs keeps the temperature around 15 C and I have a warm duvet.

I urge you not to listen to the popcorn song, it will drive you insane – unless you’ve already arrived.