London Diary

An Indian summer

India is very much the flavour of the season in England. The BBC is airing a new season of programmes on India which celebrate its diversity. The range of programmes being aired include an exploration of the past and future through the story of Kolkata by Sue Perkins, a behind-the-scenes show of The World's Busiest Railway 2015 in Mumbai with Dan Snow, Anita Rani and Robert Llewellyn, a celebration of the glory of India's wild world with scientist Liz Bonnin, actor Freida Pinto and mountaineer Jon Gupta in The Wonders Of India and William Dalrymple's White Moghuls.

There is also a special new episode of the popular show Goodness Gracious Me among several other shows including Mumbai High – A Musical filmed in Dharavi. The India season is proving to be quite a hit, given the undying interest in India in the UK.

Pleasure and pain

Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve. These days, it's about what you wear on your feet that speaks the loudest, from feathered Manolo Bhahniks to the red soles of Christian Louboutins or crystal-studded Jimmy Choos. There must be some amount of pleasure in sporting expensive shoes that every woman would want, but what about the pain? London's V & A Museum has the answer.

It is currently staging an exhibition, Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. The pain part refers to the exquisite 19th-century Chinese silk shoes made for bound feet which, at just 7.6cm long, shows what was then considered the must-have feminine accessory, but must have been torture to wear. One of the highlights of the exhibition was a pair of 18th-century mules, probably owned by the Nizam of Hyderabad, embroidered in gold and studded with emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds. The show is a mix of the sensual with the archival.

'Seduction' was an interesting part of the show where Marilyn Monroe's scuffed court shoes kept company with western fetishwear from the Victorian era and the 'geta' clogs worn by Japanese courtesans. As the title suggests, our relationship with footwear through the centuries involved some mixed emotions.

The ‘Hot' Tamale

While the ongoing Great British Bake Off TV competition has been in the news for various reasons, it has also produced a legion of fans, all swooning over one of the contestants, Indian origin Tamal Ray. The smitten ones have sent a deluge of innuendo-filled tweets clearly appointing him the eye candy of the show. Devoted fans tweet about him during each episode of the BBC show but the 29-year-old trainee anaesthetist from Manchester says all this attention leaves him blushing.

It's not all about looks and sweetness. On the show, he has impressed the judges in the competition with his technique and inventiveness, and is a leading contender for the Star Baker title. The show has led to him being branded "Hot Tamale' by female as well as male fans.

Ray was forced to acknowledge the attention he was getting, by tweeting: 'Some of the lustier tweets have had me crying with laughter' and added, 'Also glad my folks aren't on twitter! #GBBO #blushingbaker'.

Modesty aside, he's certainly a dish. The medic often shares selfies on his Twitter page which is popular among fans but the big question is his male following since Ray's relationship status in not known.

Counting sheep

Dr Guy Meadows is keeping everyone awake with his research that shows that this is the first time in history that we work longer than we sleep and when we are sleep deprived we go into immuno-suppression, making us less able to fight off illnesses.

Meadows is a sleep psychologist who is also the founder of London's Sleep School and clinical director of Sleep To Perform, a course aimed at helping people excel in stressful jobs by improving their shut-eye.

In fact, a recent study revealed that people getting less than six hours each night were more susceptible to coughs and colds. It also affects our waistlines by disrupting appetite-regulating hormones. Such is his popularity that a number of corporate giants including Unilever and Price Waterhouse Cooper regularly send their tired employees to his workshops. He believes that in today's times of stress, getting a good night's sleep does not come easy to many.

Twenty five percent Britons are known to suffer from insomnia. And 7.8 million Britons have used alcohol to get themselves to sleep. The key to overcoming insomnia is to remove external stressors.

According to Dr Meadows, we have "round 50,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day, 70 per cent of which are negative." He suggests kicking off with a basic exercise called Thought Defusion. One idea he suggests is to give each worry a nickname. "By giving them names, you speed up the process of defusion, so when the unpleasant thoughts crop up, you can just acknowledge them and then go back to what you are doing." At a more basic level he suggests avoiding alcohol close to bedtime as alcohol is both a sedative and a stimulant. It takes an hour to process one unit of alcohol, so if you have a glass of wine at 7pm, you'll be fine by 10pm. And of course smartphones and tablet devices are a no-no when preparing for bed, because of the LCD screens which emit the same sort of light as sunlight, thus playing havoc with our sleep hormones.

So just avoid checking your facebook updates or emails if you need a peaceful night. With a name like Meadows, one can't avoid bringing up the traditional sleep inducer----counting sheep.

Post Script

Britain and conversations about the weather are inseparable but this year, it's worse than usual. This has been the wettest August in a century and this summer is set to be declared the wettest since records began in 1912. The April to June period was also the wettest recorded in the UK.