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.

 

One comment

  1. Things have changed little at Barmeath…………Bru is also economical with the heating, however this is more than adequately compensated for with generous hospitality and much energetic revelry!

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