HAVE you ever seen 110 women in the same place at the same time? I don't recommend it, unless you enjoy being stamped on the head by endless sets of wedge heels (well, there's no accounting for taste).
Being part of a group of 110 women, though, that's much more fun, if a little taxing on the ears. That number of women is a powerful machine, a force to be reckoned with; especially if they're queued up outside TopShop wearing wedge heels on a Saturd
ay morning.
I was shocked to discover that 110 is the number of women under the age of 65 in Britain who will have a stroke this week. And that of those, 37 will die from it.
Stroke is one of Britain's biggest killers and the greatest cause of disability in Scotland. There are currently around 13,000 strokes a year in Scotland alone – and the figure is rising.
Along with cancer and heart disease, it rates as one of those desperately serious and debilitating illnesses that touches almost every life, from those who lose a parent or an elderly relative, to those who, shockingly, lose a child to a stroke.
Women are twice as likely to die from a stroke as are men, and while 9 per cent of men will have one, the figure rises to 13 per cent for women. But perhaps the most depressing revelation is that, according to information released by a clearly exasperated Stroke Association this week, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of these strokes could easily be avoided.
There are the basics, of course, the things we all know we should be doing, even if we don't always follow them to the letter: don't smoke; don't drink too much; eat healthily; take some exercise.
But there's something far more simple we could be doing, but somehow don't, and that's keep an eye on our blood pressure. About 60 per cent of women do not remember their last blood-pressure reading, while 12 per cent of women who are prescribed medication to control their blood pressure don't bother to take it regularly.
A shocking fact when you consider that had they controlled their blood pressure, 15 of those 110 women could have avoided a stroke altogether.
Why don't we take our blood pressure seriously? Because we're embarrassed? Because we don't care? Because it's more important to have a fake tan, an eyebrow wax and a manicure than have our it checked?
Any woman who takes the time to visit the beauty salon or the hairdresser's has time to go to their GP's surgery and get their blood pressure checked every once in a while. It should be as automatic as a smear test, as routine as a trip to the dentist.
Because, apart from anything else, 110 women look a hell of a lot better outside TopShop than inside a stroke unit.
Dubya will dabble outside politicsPOOR old George W Bush. Has anyone told him yet he's got to move house? Or when the time comes, will the Secret Service simply stash him at the back of Air Force One with a bag of pretzels and a hardback edition of The Hungry Caterpillar and hope he doesn't notice the new guy coming in the front door?
Certainly I wouldn't have minded being a caterpillar, hungry or otherwise, on the wall of the White House this week when the meeting between Bush and his successor Barack Obama took place. And not only because I can't help imagining Bush striding into the room having been told he was meeting his successor and addressing Obama with the words: "Hey John!"
My interest in what Bush does next is negligible, but the chances are it will involve a lot of golf, a fair bit of gallivanting around his enormous Texas ranch and very little of getting involved in real politics.
Much like his actual presidency, then.
• IT IS depressing for women like myself who grew up idolising Madonna to watch her unravel under the pressure of divorce from Guy Ritchie.
Long admired for her I'll-get-what-I-want-and-I-don't-care-who-I-have-to-bare-my-conical-breasts-at-to-get-it attitude, when it comes to demands over the kids she has started to look more barmy than ballsy. Sending her children to stay with their father, she has ordered they not be allowed to watch DVDs, must be disinfected regularly and read only bedtime stories that she wrote. Please, Madge: stop behaving like Miss Havisham before it has a significant impact on your children.
The full article contains 779 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
