Life

Lettuce talk about the price of greens and banishing negative thoughts

Anne Hailes

Anne Hailes

Anne is Northern Ireland's first lady of journalism, having worked in the media since she joined Ulster Television when she was 17. Her columns have been entertaining and informing Irish News readers for 25 years.

Lettuce pray – that stock and prices both get back to normal soon
Lettuce pray – that stock and prices both get back to normal soon Lettuce pray – that stock and prices both get back to normal soon

HAVE you been rationed to what you buy at the vegetable counters? Are you worried about lettuce? Well, we should be, all the talk is of a shortage coming from the continent, specifically Spain and Portugal.

But what about our own supply? Surely we are self-contained? Well I was surprised to discover that there is a shortage here too.

I talked to Sean Donnelly of Derrylard Nurseries, supplier of lettuce to all the big supermarkets in Northern Ireland and he told me of the growth cycle.

Lettuce is sown between September 1 and 10, then transplanted to reach maturity during January, February and March but, although grown in greenhouses, how a crop fares depends on the weather.

“As soon as the grass grows, so do the lettuces. When the grass stops growing, so does the lettuce!”

Incoming icebergs, normally £4 a box, are now fetching £18. My favourite ‘roundheads’, usually £4, are now up to £6 and it’s changing all the time. Soon we should be able to buy from a good supply in the shops – let’s hope the supermarkets drop the prices back to what we’re used to and don’t retain the price hike we’re seeing now.

In the meantime, as they wait for sunshine and warmth, Sean and his staff have a wonderful array of flowers with tulips in great demand.

DON’T FORGET THE ONIONS

EOIN Scolard reckons we are all like onions. Not a bad thing: onions are good for you and tobacco onions delicious and, as Eoin says, they have many layers.

We have to peel away to get to the heart of living and Eoin gives us great advice and guidance on how to do this. Negative thoughts are always out there and they want to dominate. If you allow them room they’ll surely take up residence and become hardwired into your everyday thinking. Eoin has a way of coping and he charts his tried and tested theories in his book The Possibility Exists… One Man’s Search For Freedom.

He confronts these thoughts by visualisation: “I sit down for a minute take a few deep breaths and sense into the lower half of my body. Then I say to myself – I am like an oak tree.”

Now he paints a picture in his mind based on the tree; in a field, maybe a forest, sun shining and it’s warm. Then he takes his particular problem and gives it a name of a cartoon character. “Let’s try Mickey Mouse.” So he writes the offending words on Mickey’s T-shirt – ‘I’m not good enough’, for instance. Basically your problem is transferred to an external source, you acknowledge the problem, you tell it – “I see you, I know you want my attention but sorry, not today.” Then you go back to concentrate on the oak tree, sense the depth of the earth, the warmth of the sun, the openness of the sky and the vastness of the universe.

As he concentrates on this he notices that Mickey Mouse is getting uncomfortable. He’s getting less and less attention, he’s getting more and more annoyed.

“Putting your focus elsewhere starves the thought of its life energy.” Poor Mickey, you see him and the problem loosing their energy. The unwanted thought gets lighter and lighter and eventually floats up and away.

There’s much more to this way of approaching life but basically it’s a case of taking your negative attitudes and experiences by the scruff of the neck and forbidding them to take root.

Eoin also talks about ‘non-specific unhappiness’ – not depression but life getting you down. When he was suffering stress he wasn’t prepared to take the doctor's antidepressants; instead he went on a quest to get an answer and ended up in Dublin with a fully qualified doctor who is also a homeopath. They talked, and talked. She was honestly interested in him and he responded.

“An hour and twenty minutes later I left this wonderful woman feeling much lighter in myself.” He shares what he learned and it’s valuable information.

The author, who lives in Co Down with his partner Jenny Grainger, also discusses life as it is today putting forward the thesis that the world we live in doesn’t want us to be free to make our own decisions.

“It doesn’t want empowered people who refuse to be victims. It actually needs you to be a slave to the consumer culture... this fear has spawned greed, anxiety, defensiveness and control. This paradigm needs to crack and crumble and be rebuilt. How? One person at a time.”

Just think back to the fear we felt over the Millennium Bug, mad cow disease, salt, now sugar, and the rest – these negatives just keep coming, like Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984, trying to manipulate and suppress the masses.

Eoin has had plenty of negatives to deal with: a bad crash resulting in a near-death experience, relationship problems, single parenthood and success and failure in the world of work. No wonder he had a stress-related breakdown. But all these only made him determined to rebuild and share his experiences, often in a comical way, always in a compulsive way.

His take on ‘fear’ being your friend is also fascinating. Turning fear into energy by making a commitment to do something psychologically or emotionally frightening once a week until your courage muscle gets strong and your self-esteem grows. Start with something small you’ve been avoiding like making a phone call you’ve been putting off and building up from there.

Be prepared to be challenged by this book; be prepared to fill in the little exams he sets and keep The Possibility Exists... as a manual to a better life.

:: The Possibility Exists... One Man’s Search For Freedom is published by O Books, available on Amazon, Kindle and in bookshops.