Ever wonder why some days you're able to jump through mental hoops with breathtaking acuity and on others even a psychotic circus master with a cattle prod (your boss) couldn't force you to raise an intellectual eyebrow towards one?
Discounting last night's red wine intake, it could be that you haven't been going to the gym. I do not refer to those dens of iniquity in which strange and sweaty physical activities take place, but to a good cerebral stretch. But this is more than just a 'fit body/fit mind' rant, a nod towards reading more good books or even a suggestion that you substitute the 13-times table backwards for your usual nocturnal sheep counting.
This is all so much easier.
While doing a bit of Internet research into Hong Kong gyms, I found out Jean-Claude van Damme was such a sickly 10-year-old he was advised to take up karate, kick-boxing and 'even ballet' before he morphed into Mr Belgium and then tortured the cinema-going public. I also discovered the Brain Gym.
I discovered that to sharpen my wits at work all I had to do was drink more water (it sparks up those slothful synapses), press my chest and rub my tummy, twist my arms and legs into pretzels and then do a sort of a slow motion left arm to right leg hokey-kokey in order to get the two halves of my brain back on speaking terms. Not all at the same time, of course (a community centre knit-off champion would struggle to undo that bit of human macrame).
This is an absurd simplification of a complex philosophy which evolved in the 1960s (when else?) in California (where else?) when teacher Paul Dennison studied the relationship between movement and learning. He was so successful in the study of his own dyslexia that despite his dreadful eyesight he managed to throw away his spectacles.
One of the 13 Brain Gym instructors in Hong Kong - known by the fancy name of kinesiology - explained how we unplug our brains from our bodies from the first time we are shoved behind a school desk.