Letter from Spain #39

Fasting like Rishi Sunak (or trying to), an eye op ... plus TBC notes & research

Wish me luck. In just a few hours from now, I’m starting my very first Rishi Sunak fasting experiment.

As first reported by The Sunday Times last week and since picked up by every other media (at least in the UK), Rishi stops eating from 5pm on a Sunday afternoon until 5am on a Tuesday morning.

Now, I’m not doing it precisely like that. To stop eating from 5pm on a Sunday shows that Rishi has never lived in Spain. It also shows, in my opinion, that his Sundays in the UK must be pretty sad, too.

I’m old enough to remember when shops were shut on a Sunday in the UK, and when pubs had reduced opening hours, and when there were only depressing programmes on TV, like a black-and-white World at War documentary or Songs of Praise. But I was luckily brought up in a family where a late, long, slow, and often boozy Sunday lunch was the highlight of the day, if not the week - the reason Sunday even existed - and it’s a tradition I’ve tried to continue throughout adulthood. As I’m the chef on Sundays (and some other days), I don’t even start working on our Sunday ‘lunch’ in Spain until after sunset …. so you can forget the 5pm curfew over here, Rishi.

You can also forget eating from 5am on a Tuesday morning. That’s a very early start, too early - very ‘10 Downing Street’ - and you’re welcome to it.

According to the reports, Rishi’s fasting lasts 36 hours. My fasting experiment will last 32 hours - of which I’m hoping to be asleep for around 16 of them.

I will stop eating anything from midnight tonight - try to sleep until 8am as there will be no breakfast to get up for, anyway - miss lunch, miss supper - and then start eating again from 8am on Tuesday morning.

Why? - you might ask.

For two reasons.

Firstly, I’m trying to lose weight. Actually, I’ve been trying to lose weight for years, on and off, but this time around I’ve been taking it very seriously. I’ve lost 3.5kg since the day after Boxing Day. I’m tall enough, and so I always like to think (or kid myself) that the weight doesn’t show too much, but I’m now 95kg and should be 83kg - so there’s another 12kg to lose yet. I’ve been aiming to lose 0.5kg a week, which is the ‘healthy’ rate to do it, but it’s stubbornly not dropping below 95kg. Which is where Rishi comes in …

I never thought Rishi would come to my rescue again. The first time he did was with a ‘Bounce Back loan’ at the height of Covid, when he was Boris Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer.

During his 36 hours of fasting, Rishi drinks black tea and coffee, as well as water. He actually admitted that he also has an apple and some nuts - which as one Times columnist wrote, is “two cheeses short of a ploughman’s”. I aim to drink water, black tea and coffee, too - as I always do - and also ‘zero azúcar’ (sugar free) Aquarius - but I will go without the apple and nuts.

By not eating for one day out of seven in a week, it should automatically mean I’m eating 14.28% less a week, providing I don’t stuff myself silly for the other six days.

To be honest, I’ve never warmed to any Tory Prime Minister, but the Rishi fasting news came at an opportune moment for me - and which is the second reason I’m doing it: self-discipline.

Last week, you see, I ‘lost my track’ a bit. You might have noticed (or you might not), that I didn’t even get round to writing a blog post last week.

The reasons are various, but it was mainly due to the fact that I had a great deal of ‘admin’ stuff going on, plus a pending eye operation that finally took place on Wednesday (I’m fine, thanks). I didn’t realise beforehand, but the surgeon told me that the eye op means I’m not allowed to do any sport, play tennis, go to the gym, or do any ‘strenuous exercise’ for a month … until March. And if I can’t exercise, it will be even harder to lose the kilos.

I’ve found that in order to lose weight, I need to apply the same methods I do that motivate me to sit down and write - and I mean, write a book. And another book. And another book. It’s self-discipline.

To put it simply - and all revisions and editing aside - if you write one page a day, you have written a 365-page book by the end of the year.

In the same way I keep a diary, or blog every Sunday, I keep track of how many steps I take every day (I use MyFitness App) - and make sure that the average is over 10,000 a day, every week, every month, over the whole year. I’ve also been going to the gym twice a week since November, and I’m obsessed with another app - C25K - spurring me on to run 5k again. But if I can’t keep track … I hate it. If I miss a diary entry, or a blog post, or not writing at least a page a day, or not walking 10,000 steps, or not doing many other things that I have on my list (several lists) … I hate it. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking; it’s probably borderline OCD - but it works for me, if I can track it.

As part of my overall plan to lose weight, among many other things I’d already cut out drinking on Monday, Tuesday (and sometimes Wednesday), and although I’d heard about ‘intermittent fasting’, it sounded too complicated for me. All this 16:8 or 5:2 stuff … what was all that about? And how to do it without messing up your social life?

Then the surgeon told me that I can’t exercise for a month. But along comes little Rishi with his Monday plan …

It’s so simple, I decided - it’s brilliant. It’s possibly the best policy that Rishi has ever come up with as PM.

Nothing happens on a Monday. Nothing ‘social’, I mean - not even in Spain. So it ‘should’ be easy to simply not eat anything, too.

I don’t think I’ll be irritable - but I’ll let you know next week. I need to eat right now and have a good number of nightcaps before midnight …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

I will return to posting some notes about Chapters 78 onwards from next week …

Previous links to my research notes are here:

• Chapter 66 in Letter from Spain #37 (Séverin and Hendrik)

• Chapters 59 and 63 in Letter from Spain #36 (Benjamin visiting the Dalí Museum in Figueres).

• Chapters 50, 52 and 57 in Letter from Spain #35 (Benjamin on the train to Figueres).

• Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #34 (G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’).

• Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #33 (Picasso Museum).

• Chapters 39 and 42 in Letter from Spain #31 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

• Chapter 36 in Letter from Spain #29 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

• Chapter 29 in Letter from Spain #28 (Nîmes to Barcelona and tollgates).

• Chapters 28 and 32 in Letter from Spain #27 (Pedralbes and Jaume, the Marquès de Guíxols).

• Chapter 26 in Letter from Spain #26 (pijos and Beltrán Gómez de Longoria).

• Chapter 25 (again) in Letter from Spain #25 (Benjamin’s thoughts on Púbol, Figueres and Port Lligat-Cadaqués).

• Chapter 25 in Letter from Spain #23 (Benjamin and Elena on the Passeig Marítim).

• Chapters 22 and 24 in Letter from Spain #22 (Plaça Sant Jaume & Nîmes).

• Chapter 21 in Letter from Spain #21 (the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - MNAC).

• Chapter 18 in Letter from Spain #20 (Nîmes).

• Chapter 16 in Letter from Spain #19 (Marta Soler visiting the offices of La Vanguardia).

• Chapter 15 in Letter from Spain #18 (Sants, Les Corts and the Plaça de la Concòrdia).

• Chapter 14 in Letter from Spain #17 (introducing Inspector Vizcaya and Marta Soler).

• Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16 (the painting - the possible study of The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí).

• Chapters 10 and 12 in Letter from Spain #15 (Isabel Bosch and Lieutenant Trias).

• Chapters 8 and 11 in Letter from Spain #14 (Benjamin at Girona Airport and finding the Marqueses’ home in La Bisbal).

• Chapter 7 in Letter from Spain#12 (Séverin and Jürgen).

• Chapter 5 in Letter from Spain#11 (Elena in Girona).

• Chapters 3-4 in Letter from Spain#9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead, plus Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted).

• Chapter 2 in Letter from Spain#8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà).

• Chapter 1 in Letter from Spain#7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station).

The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & Events

Links to reviews & articles

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Michael Eaude has been published in the October edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

Here’s the link for a review of The Barcelona Connection by Dominic Begg that came out in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

You can also click here for the latest reviews on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads and at Barnes & Noble.

The book is available on Amazon or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from. It can also be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

You can also click here for the Kindle edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid.

For professional enquiries and foreign rights for The Barcelona Connection, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.