Chapter 24. It was with difficulty that she reached the little French town, and it was with infinitely more difficulty that she overcame military obstacles and penetrated into the poor little whitewashed school that did duty as a hospital. It was a great bare room with a double row of armed bedsteads, a gangway between them. Here and there an ominous screen shot off a bed.  An odor of disinfectant caught her by the throat.  She shrank on the threshold a gasp of this abode of mangled men. The young, aid-major escorting her pointed up the ward. You will find him there, ma'am Moselle, in number 17. How is she? she asked. The day before yesterday he nearly went. He snapped his finger and thumb. A hemorrhage which we stopped, but the old French stock is solid as oak, ma'am Moselle. Whole or two doesn't matter. He's going along pretty well. Thank God! said Carina. A nurse with red cross badge met them. Ah! it is the lady of a sergeant-pig-garde. He has been expecting you ever since your letter. His eyes were all of him that she recognized at first.  She remembered having heard of Les Poulous, the hairy ones, as the territorial troops were affectionately termed in France.  The nurse set a stool for Carina by the bedside. On her left there another black-bearded man who looked at her wistfully. He had been Bigordar's Amanuensis. The angel of tyranny forbids me to move my arms, whispered Bigordar apologetically. The little whimsical phrase struck the note of the man's unconquerable spirit. Carina smiled through tears. The nurse said, Talk to him, and don't let him talk to you. You can only have ten minutes. She retired. C'est la vous fait beau qu'on souffrit, mon pauvre ami? said Carina. He shook his head. Not now that you are here. It is wonderful of you to come. You have a heart of gold, and it is that little talisman, se pitié de deux, that is going to make me well. You cannot imagine it. It is like a fairy tale to see you here. Instinctively Carina put out her hand and touched his lips. She had never done so feminine and tender a thing to a man. She let her fingers remain while he kissed them. She flushed and smiled. You mustn't talk. It is for me who has sound lungs. I have become because I have been a little imbecile, and only the eleventh eye I have repented of my folly. If I had been sensible a year ago, this would not have happened. He turned happy eyes on her. But he said with his Frenchman's clear logic. All my love and all the happiness that might have been would not have ordered the destinies of Europe.  Carina admitted the truth of his statement. But, said she, I might have been of some comfort to you. His eyebrows expressed the shrug of which his maimed frame was incapable. It is all for the best. If I had left you a brass tour, my heart would have been torn in two. I might have been cautious to the detriment of France. As it was, I didn't care much what happened to me. And now they have awarded me the Medaille Militaire.  What more can a man desire? Now all this bravery was spoken in a voice so weak, that the woman in Carina was stirred to its depths. She bent over him and whispered, for she knew that the man with the wistful gaze on the next bed was listening. C'est vrai que tu m'aimes toujours? She saw her question answered by the quick illumination of his eyes. And she went on quickly, and I, I love you too, and I will give you all my poor life for what it is worth. Oh! she cried. I can't imagine what you can see in me. Beside you I feel so small of so little account. I can do nothing, nothing but love you. That's everything in the world, said Bigoda. They were silent for a moment. Then he said, I should like to meet the boss who fired that rifle. So should I, she cried fiercely. I should like to tear him limb from limb. I shouldn't, said Bigoda. I should like to decorate him with a pair of wings and a little bow and arrow. The nurse came up. She must go now, ma'am Waselle, and the patient is becoming too excited. It is not your fault. Nothing but a bolster across their mouths will prevent these better go down from talking. A tiny bedroom in a house over a grocer's shop was all the accommodation that she had been able to secure, as the town was full of troops billeted on the inhabitants. As it was, that bedroom had been given up to her by a young officer who took pity on her distress. She felt her presence impertinent to this stern atmosphere of war. After seeing Bigoda, she wandered for a while among the rainy streets, and then retired to her chilly and comfortless room where she ate her meal of sardines and sausage. The next day she presented herself at the hospital and saw the aide-majeure. Can you give me some work to do? She asked. I don't pretend to be able to nurse, but I could fetch and carry and do odd jobs. But it was a French hospital, and the Reglemore made no provision for affording pre-possessing young English women romantic employment. Of course, said the aide-majeure, if mademoiselle was bent upon it she could write an application which would be forwarded to the proper quarter, but it would have to pass through the bureau, and she, who knew France so well, was aware of what the passing through the bureau meant. Unless she had the ear of high-person judges it would take weeks and perhaps months. And in the meantime, said my grand amie, number seventeen down there will have got well and departed from the hospital. Mamoiselle, said he, you have already saved the life of one gallant Frenchman. Do you think that that should give you a sentiment of duty accomplished? She blushed. He was kind, for he was young and she was pretty.  It is a favour. It is against the règlement. If the majeure hers of it there will be trouble. By the grace of God he has a bilious attack which confines him to his quarters. But, bien entendu, it is for this time only she thanked him, and again found herself by Bigoda's bedside. The moment of her first sight of him was the happiest in her life. She had wrought a miracle. He was a different man, inspired with the supreme will to live. The young doctor had spoken truly. A spasm of joy shook her. At last she had been of some use in the world. She sought to the Bigoda whom she had known. His great black beard had vanished, one of the Camarad with two disposable arms, had hunted through the kits of the patients for a razor, and had shaved him. They told me I am getting on magnificently, said he. This morning there is no longer any danger. In a few months I shall be as solid as ever I was. It is happiness that has cured me." They talked. She had told him of her conversation with the aid majeure. He reflected for a moment. Then he said, �Do you wish to please me? What am I here for?� asked Corinna. �You are here to spoil me. Anyhow, if you wish to please me, go to Brontome and await me.  After two days extraordinary travel, advancing from point to point by any train that happened to run, shunted on sightlings for interminable periods in order to allow the unimpeded progress of military trains, waiting weary hours at night in cold, desolate stations, hungry and broken, but a heart at low with a new and wonderful happiness. She reached Brontome. She threw her arms round the neck of an astonished, but ever urbane elderly gentleman in the vestibule of the Houtildigrott, and kissed him. �He's getting well� she cried a little hysterically. �He sent me here to wait for him. I'm so happy, and I'm just about dead.� �But yet there's that spark of life in you, my dear Corinna� said Fort Imbrass, which, according to the name, distinctly justifies hope. �Feliz and I will see to it that you live�. It was winter before Big O'Donnell was well enough to return. By that time Corinna had settled down to her new life, wherein she found the making of foie gras an enticing mystery. Also in a time where every woman had her man, husband, brother, son or lover, either in an hourly peril of death or dead or wounded, there was infinite scope for help and consolation. And when a woman said, �Éla, mon pauvre homme, il est blessé là-bas�, she could reply with a new thrilling sympathy and a pointed throb of her heart. �And my man, too.� For like all the other women there she had son homme, her man. Corinna tasted the fierce joy of being elemental. There was much distress in the little town. The municipality did its best. In many cases the wise valiantly carried on the husband�s business. But in the row of cave dwellings where the Coroman lived, no muscular arms hewed the weak�s wages from the rocks. Bucabelle, Martin�s Baccalelian friend, had purged all of his offences in heroic battle and was lying in an unknown grave. Corinna, learning how Martin had carried the child home on his shoulders, brought her to the hotel and care for her, and obtained work for the mother in the fabrique. Never before had Corinna had days so full, never before had she awakened in the morning with love in her heart. Felice, grown gentler and happier since the colonization of her father, gave her unstinted affection. And then the gauder arrived, nominally on sick leave, but with private intimation that his active services would be required no longer. This gave a touch of sadness to his otherwise joyous homecoming. �I have not killed half enough, Bosch!� said he. A few days after his return came a letter from Martin, and it was written from a hospital. �My dearest Felice, I am well and sound and imperfect health. But a bullet got me in the left arm while we were attacking a German trench, and a spent bit of shrapnel got me on the head and stunned me. When I recovered I was midway between the trenches in the zone of fire, and I had to lie still between the dead bodies of two of our brave soldiers. �I thought much, my dear, when I was lying there, expecting every minute a bullet to finish me. And some of what I thought I would tell you when I see you, for I shall see you very soon. After some thirty-six hours I was collected and brought to the field hospital, where I was patched up, and in the course of a day or so sent on to the base. I lay on straw during the journey in a row of other wounded. France has the defects of her qualities, her soil is so fertile that her stalks of straw are like young oak saplings. When I arrived I had such a temperature and was so silly with pain that I don't very well remember what happened. When I got sensible they told me that gangrene had set in and that they had chopped off my arm above the elbow. I always thought I was an incomplete human being, dear, but I've never been so idiotically incomplete as I am now. Although I'm getting along splendidly I wanted to do all sorts of things with the fingers that aren't there. I turned to pick up something and there's nothing to pick it up with. A week before I was wounded I had a fingernail torn off and it still hurts me, somewhere in space, about a foot away from what is me. He would laugh if he knew what a nuisance it is. I make no excuses for asking you to receive me at Blanchem. All that is dear to me in the world is there, and what other spot in the wide universe have I to fly to? But sacre non d'un peep, grab me gaudat, for for lease after private and tearful perusal of the letter, as reading such parts of it aloud as were essential for family information. What is the imbecile talking of? Where else, indeed, should he go? For he's continued. Martin, as yet unaware of Bigoda's return, sent him messages. When you write, would you tell him I have given to France as much of myself as I've been allowed to? Half an arm is much. May see, Déjà, qu'est-ce que tu es? Qu'est-ce que tu es? Grab me gaudat, but it is a sacred sacrifice. If I could get hold of that little bit of courageous arm, I would give it to Monsieur de Curie and bid him nail it up as an object venerable and heroic in his parish church. Ah! Le pauvre garçon, le pauvre garçon, said he. Ne voyez-vous? It is the English character that comes out in his letter. I've seen many English up there in the north. No longer can we Frenchmen talk of le flème britannique. The astounding revelation is the unconquerable English gaiety. Jamais de long visage. If a decapitated English head could speak, it would launch your whimsical marse-maire and say, what a noise me is that I can't inhale a cigarette! And here our good Martin makes a joke about the straw in the ambulance-train. Mon Dieu! I know what it is, but it has never occurred to me to jest about it. In the course of time, Martin returned to Brunthorne. The railway system of the country had been fairly adjusted in the parts of France that were distant from scenes of military operations. Bigaudard borrowed Monsieur Le Maire's big limousine which had not been commandeered, for the maire was on many committees in the department, and had to fly about from place to place, and with Corinne, and Feliz, and Forte Brass, he met Martin's train at Pelegeau. As it steamed in, a hand waved from a window below a familiar face. They rushed to the carriage-steps, and in a moment he was among them, in a woollen guppy, an incredibly torn blue-gray greatcoat, and ragged red trousers, the unfilled arm of the coat dangling down idly. But it was a bronzed, clear-eyed man who met them for all his war-battering. Bigaudard welcomed him first in his exuberant way, called him Mombara of Montpéttero, and hugged him. Forte Brass gripped his hand after the English manor. Mombara, happy and smiling through delisting eyes, he kissed without more ado. And then he was free to greet Feliz, who had remained a pace or two in the background. Her great dark eyes were fixed upon him questioningly. She put out a hand and touched the empty sleeve. She read in his face what she had never read before. His one poor arm stretched in an instinctive curve, with a little sobbing cry she threw herself blindly into his embrace. The tremendous issues of existence with which for five months he had been grappling, had wiped out from his consciousness, almost from his memory, the first enthralling kiss of another woman. Caked with mud, deafened by the roar of shells, sleeping on the earth of his trench, an intimate of blood and death day after day, he had learned that Lucilla had been but an igneous fatuous, leading him astray from the essential meaning of his life. He knew, as he lay wounded beneath the hell of machine-gun fire between the trenches, that there was only one sweet, steadfast soul in the world who called him to the accomplishment of his being. When, in the abandonment of her joy and grief, his lips met the soft, quivering mouth of Feliz, care like a garment fell from him. He whispered, You have a great heart. I have not deserved this.  Feliz was content. She knew that the war had swept his soul clean of false gods. Out of that funnace nothing but truth could come. And so Martin returned for ever to the land of his adoption, which, on the morrow, was to take him after its generous and expansive way as a hero to his bosom. The Englishman, who had given a limb for Pelligore, was to be held in high honour for the rest of his days. He was a man now who had passed through most human experiences, a man of fine honour, of courage tested in a thousand ways, of stiffened will, of high ideals. The life that lay before him was far dearer than any other he could have chosen, for it matters not so much the life one leads as the knowledge of the perfect way to live it. And that knowledge, based on wisdom, had Martin achieved. He knew that if the dittering prizes of the earth were locked away behind golden bars, opening butts to golden keys, there were others, far more precious, lying to the hand of him who would seek them in the folds of the familiar hills. The five sat down to dinner that evening at the empty Salamange, for not a guest even the most decrepit commercial traveller was staying at the hotel. Yet never had they met at a happier meal. Pelligore cut up Martin's food as though it had been blessed with bread. In the middle of it Fortebras poured out half a glass of wine. "'My children,' said he, "'I am going to break through the habit of years. This old wine of burgundy is too generous to betray me on an occasion so beautiful and so solemn.  "'It is to you, from the first to last, to you, Marshal de Bonheur.' "'My God, yes,' said Martin, extending his one arm to Fortebras. The ex-dealer in happiness regarded them both benevolently. "'For the first time in my life,' said he, "'I think I have reason to be proud of my late profession. Like the artist who has toiled and struggled, I can, without immodesty, recognize my masterpiece. It was my original conception that Martin and Carina, crude but honest souls, should find an incentive to the working out of their destiny by falling in love. Therefore I sent them out together, that they should have an honourable asylum I sent them to my own kin. When I found they wouldn't fall in love at all, I imagined the present felicitous combination. I have been aided by the little accident of a European war. But what matter? The gods willed it. The gods were on my side. Out of evil, there inscrutably and divinely cometh good. My children, my heart is very full of the consolation that at the end of many years at the Locust Totheten I have perhaps justified my existence. Oh, pair! cried Felice, all my life long your existence has had the justification of heroic sacrifice. My dear, said he, if I hadn't met a versity with a brave face, I should not have been a man, still less a philosopher. And now that my duty here is over, if I don't go back to Paris and find some means of helping in the great conflict, I shall be unworthy of the name of Englishman. So as soon as I see you safely and exquisitely married, I shall leave you. I shall, however, come and visit you from time to time. But when I die—he paused, and fishing out a stump of pencil, scribbled on the back of the menu-card—when I die, better me in Paris, on the south side of the Seine, and put this inscription on my tombstone. One little vanity is accorded by the gods to every human being. He threw the card on the table. On it was written, C. J. Forte-Bras, Marchand de Bonheur. When the meal was over they went up to the prim and plushly furnished salon, where a wood fire was burning gaily. Biguardin brought up a cobbled-bed bottle of the old brandy of the brigadier, and uncorked it reverently. We are going to drink to France, said he. He produced from the cupboard whose doors were veiled with green-pleated silk, half a dozen of the great glass goblets, and into each he poured a little of the golden liquid, which, as he had once said, contained the soul of the grande d'armée. Stop a bit, said Martin. You are making a mistake. There are only five of us. I am making no mistake at all, said Biguardin. The sixth glass is for the shade of the brave old brigadier. If he is not here now among us to honour the toast, I am no Christian man. End of Chapter 24. End of The Wonderful Year by William John Locke


We're back with the breakfast and plus TV Africa. The time for us to look at our second conversation. After several weeks of hardship occasioned by the narrow scarcity, some semblance of sanity had returned as the banking halls and ATM points with customers were able to assess cash. With less stress, some people say, well, all the customers who thronged to various banks and ATM points could not get cash as much as they had desired, but some people say it's more of an improvement to what we have experienced over time, you know, since December up until from December January up until this moment. However, the central bank of Nigerian and apparent move to vet the planned strike by the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC over the Naira scarcity had authored the banks to open on Saturday, even on Sunday to enable Nigerians access cash. The apex bank has also thrown up its vault open for banks to have cash to circulate. But we'll just be speaking with Frank Elia, who is a technology and media news editor of the Business Day, right here in Lagos. Frank, it's good to have you join us this morning. Good morning. Once again. Good morning and it's always a pleasure to be on stage with you. Yes, please. So I'd like to ask you what lessons do you think that we can take from all of this? 2012, it wasn't really the first time we've had an introduction of this policy. You want to say reintroduction at a time we took a pause in 2015, just almost at the time we had the elections and again, we didn't really succeed with the whole cashless policy and all and what have you. But my question to you this morning now is what lessons do you think we can derive from this event and experience? I think the lessons from it will be that we need more communication with the authorities. Over time, we have seen the central bank of Nigeria pushing cashless policy, which is very laudable in something that we should encourage. But then when you do it, the processes that need to be followed, there are people that you need to carry along. Nigerians are not people that are very difficult to deal with, unless you decide you don't want to talk to them. And I also think that many people are not so receptive to change. So if you're going to bring change to them, you have to be deliberate about it, you have to show them why they need it. Cash has remained king for over many decades now. And even currently, we still have over 70% of transactions being done, cash. So it's not something you just wake up in the morning and say you want to remove cash from the system and you want everybody to go cashless without adequate communication. People need to know how does this benefit me. It's always the what's in it for me factor that was lacking in this process. The CBN failed to take the people along. And in communicating with the president first, I would have also expected the CBN to go to the governors and also carry them along. Besides the governors, you now have the consumers. Who are the people these policies are going to affect? Because as you have clearly seen, the people that were affected most were not the politicians. It was not the government officials. It was clearly people at the middle levels and also the grassroots. The next time we're trying stuff like this, it's important to be nice to carry along the people. When we had this policy introduced, although at the time we didn't have the redesign of the Naira note, which is a new development for 2022 or 2023, if you like to put, but how much more time can we have? 2012, we suspended it. We were going cashless. And now and again, you know, we haven't been able to achieve that 100. So what time do we still need? It comes with the question of what time, how much time can you take for us to bring cashless to bear. We would have done that from the beginning. First of all, was the fact that the CBN did not put in the infrastructure, the criminal infrastructure that is needed for this process to become seamless. We saw what happened during the new note capacity, that people who try to make transactions, who try to use the U.S.S.B., who try to use the U.S.A. agents had many failed transactions. Those things are not just something that just happens. There are factors that make those things happen. NEVS was a great idea, all right? And it has been working so far, but it needs more capacity. We have clearly seen that there's more capacity for NEVS, all right? NEVS, sorry. We need to expand the capacity of NEVS. We also need to put in the necessary infrastructure. Network is very important, all right? The CBN and the telcos clearly need to work together to expand the broadband infrastructure that we have in the country. There are different places in this country that still don't have connectivity or sufficient broadband working for them. So, when you try to make transactions from those places, it becomes a challenge. So, if we had addressed those things from 2012, when these cashless policies started, perhaps by now we'll be counting maybe 80% implementation. We will not be at where we are currently. But we have failed to do that, and we're just pushing our policies without thinking what about being deliberate about putting in the infrastructure that needed for payment. I think with the time that we have now, the CBN now needs to go back to the drawing board and put in the foundation because network is the foundation. Frank, I'd like to intercept at this point. When you say the infrastructure, yes, it's very important that we need to scale up infrastructure for digital banking, and that should be done. But who are we saying, whose responsibility is it to scale up this infrastructure? Should it be governments? Should it be deregulators? I mean, who exactly are we talking to at this point? So, you have highlighted that there's need for us to have the necessary infrastructure. You say infrastructure for digital banking, and I'm saying, yes, that sounds very true, and it's important that we scale up infrastructure for the banking sector, digital banking. But whose responsibility should this be? Okay. So, whose responsibility should it be? It should be the responsibility of first the regulator, all right, or putting the environment that helps investors to come and make the money to break the infrastructure. Take for instance, we have, as of 2022, the number of bank branches that we have in this country got down to less than 5,000, all right? The less than 5,000 bank branches, what you have is Lagos controls a major portion of that. Then you have a Buddha, you have the cities that control, then you get to other states which are presumed to be rural or have more rural communities. They have less bank services. Then you say, okay, if we're not going to use the grant, less QS agents. Currently, there are about 2 million QS agents that we have, all right? And of course with terminals or that number as well. Then again, make those controls a large portion of that, of that, and pure agents and also terminals. Then you have a Buddha, you have what a city, you know, so that it looks like it's next to the distribution of payment infrastructure that needs to be urgently addressed. Yes, the city has a relief guidelines for POS operations across the country and I've also mandated that more price is given to rural areas, but the companies are not eagerly going there, right? Because insecurity, okay? So we've got the problem of insecurity and we have a problem of infrastructure. The road networks are not adequate for people to go there. And where you need to know the road network infrastructure, you probably also have broadband network not functioning efficiently. For instance, when Canceler and some other state in the north of telecom infrastructure, of course, what you expect is that all that needs to be expected. Payment is expected and all that financial subsidies are also expected, you know. So it is a function of the government coming or taking a road seriously by making sure that security, by making sure that the money that you are collecting as roads, that you seem it adequately to provide the road network that we need. Then when you do under, you also address the issues of taxation. Multiplication is also causing difficulties from going to the areas that they're supposed to go to. Instead, they will process this payment because even if they are taxed multiple times, they can't make the money that you used to pay the taxes. But if you put them in other states where they are taxed multiple times and the people are not, or the demand is not sufficient enough to make up with that tax, then we don't want to go there again. So those are things that need to be addressed. We need a uniform tax system. We need our infrastructure spread out across the states. More people need to be incentivized to become purest agents, not purest agents in Lagos, but purest agents in these rural communities where the need is very high. Well, Frank, we have to go now. Thank you so much for being part of the show this morning. We do appreciate your time. And we look forward to sharing more of it as we proceed. Well, that's the size of a conversation this morning on the breakfast. And we asked that if you missed that on any part of it, we'll be great for you to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and do subscribe to our YouTube channel at Plus TV Africa, Plus TV Africa Lifestyle. My name is Messy Boppel. Have a great morning. And my name is Kofi Bartels. Good morning.


Londoners were largely welcoming the return of former British Prime Minister David Cameron to current leader Rishi Sunak's cabinet on November 13, as the conservative leader carried out a surprising reshuffle. Sunak brought back Cameron as foreign minister in a reshuffle triggered by his firing of Interior Minister Sulla Braverman after her criticism of police threatened his authority. Former Foreign Minister James cleverly replaced Braverman, speaking from London Bridge, Londoner and Finance. Worker Chris Robinson said it appeared to be a chess move to bring back Cameron ahead of elections due to be held next year. Well he can't do any worse than what's currently in position and maybe he's a mature figurehead that we need at the moment. It feels like a bit of a chess move to try and bring someone in, like Martin said, a bit of a gravitas because he's clearly making his moves to get ready for the election next year and it's probably quite a clever move to bring him in, bring someone a bit of experience because the rest of the, well we all know what Dominic Cummings thinks of the rest of the cabinet that was so he's a good operator so yeah in purely kind of corporate terms it's a good move. I think she needed to go for what she was saying recently. I think she's, I don't know, I just don't think she was really the right person and the right job really. I think she'd be too far right what she was coming out with.


How many steps should I walk per day to stay healthy? Oh, I gotta get in my steps. I'm sure you've either heard this before or said it to yourself. And while it's great to be active and track your movement, is 10,000 steps really the amount of steps you need to make a difference in your weight and health? So I'm sure you've heard it all before. The 10,000 steps a day is the magic number of steps that you should reach every day in order to be healthy and lose weight. Well the truth is that this number came from a Japanese pedometer company to sell pedometers. It was completely fabricated with absolutely no experimental basis. All they wanted to do was sell pedometers. So while it is good to get your steps in, you do not need to take that many steps specifically particularly once during the day. Now Google it and every blog I see out there says we need 10,000 steps a day to lose weight. That's exactly not true. I'll give you my own example.  Even though I was running a minimum of 3,000 meters per day and 30 miles per week going to the gym one hour every day and I was gaining weight. So the idea that we should be walking to lose weight is in my experience patently not true. So how many steps should you take? Well studies show that you really only need about 2,700 to 3,900 steps per day to get the benefit of walking. That's certainly nowhere near 10,000 steps per day. Now the other thing that people should realize is this does not have to be on a continuous basis. In other words, you don't have to walk 3,000 steps at a single time. That's also not only not true but may actually be better ways to get that amount of steps in place. So as you know from my book The Energy Paradox, there are multiple ways to break up getting your steps in and I call them exercise snacking. One of the things that a lot of us recommend for very good reason is an early morning walk. Getting sunlight in the early morning particularly as sun is changing into that from orange to yellow really activates this crazy receptor behind your retina called the supercliatic nucleus and that actually sets the rhythm of your circadian rhythm and really all you need is like 10 to 15 minutes of this sun exposure to set your circadian rhythm properly and what better way to get that than to take a 10 to 15 minute walk. I'll say it again, I say it all the time, one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to get a dog. The dog will be more than happy to accompany you on your morning stroll to set your circadian rhythm and it always works. The dog will demand it and my dog's demanded it this morning. So that's a great way to do it. The other thing that I think that's really useful to get in those extra steps is take a walk after dinner. One of the studies that I cited in my first book, Dr. Gunders Diet Evolution which was very impactful for me is they looked at people, human beings and they had half the group walk 10 minutes before dinner and the other group walked 10 minutes after dinner and they actually looked at their weight and lo and behold the people who walked 10 minutes before dinner didn't lose any weight. The people who walked 10 minutes after dinner actually lost weight even though they actually ate the same amount of calories. Now I conjectured that what happens is if you had been out hunting all day and you then ate dinner and sat around, your body says, oh, he's not going anywhere the rest of the night and we might as well store these calories as fat. On the other hand, if you've been hunting all day and then eat dinner and then get up and start walking again, your body says, wait a minute, we don't know whether he's walking for 10 minutes or he's walking for 30 miles. We better not store this food as fat. We should make it available and I think that's actually one of the important reasons why particularly when I'm in Europe and actually over in Japan that I see so many people walking after dinner and the other thing that's interesting is nobody's out power walking after dinner. They're strolling and they're communicating with their family, with their loved ones, with friends. So walk in the morning, walk after dinner. It's going to be amazing for you to get your steps in and quite frankly you don't need very many steps. There's more evidence of this. Studies have been done comparing people who live in cities versus living in suburbs and quite frankly city dwellers are much thinner on average than suburban dwellers and one of the reasons for that is that people who live in cities walk a great deal compared to people who live in suburbs. As many of us know, suburbs were designed to make walking very difficult to do and it was designed to make car travel extremely easy in general. Cities on the other hand, even if you, number one, most people don't have a car. Number two, if you use public transportation, you are often let off quite a ways from where you really want to be and you have to walk the rest of the way. Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I did some of my training in children's art surgery in London, England and lived in downtown London without a car for a year and shockingly I actually lost 40 pounds that year. In one year, what did I do? Well quite frankly, I walked all over the place. We walked to the grocery store. We walked to the green grocers. We walked to the theater. We walked wherever we had to go. Even if we took the tube, the subway, it would let us off quite a ways from our final destination and we walked. It was a real wake up going from suburban Ann Arbor, Michigan to downtown London, England how effective walking is for weight loss. Many people go on vacation to Europe and they eat all the phenomenal food and they gorge on carbohydrates and yet they come back and they've actually either maintained their weight or surprisingly they've actually lost weight. One of the reasons is particularly if you're in the towns of Europe, whether it's London or Paris or wherever, you're walking significantly farther distances than you ever would have before. I think that explains a lot of the miracle of eating all that food and still losing weight. Now let's suppose you live in the suburbs where most people do. It's actually pretty easy to get those steps in. One of the easiest things to do, and most of us don't think about doing it, is walk around your office every time you take a phone call rather than sitting at your desk. Most of us take our calls now on our cell phone just get up and walk and please put it on speakerphone so that you don't have your cell phone near your head. Second thing is, like I mentioned before, get a dog in the suburbs. The dog will make you go out. This sounds stupid but it works wherever you're going at the grocery store, at the mall, at the strip mall, at the post office, park your car as far away from possible from where you're going. The other benefit is usually those spaces are pretty empty for obvious reasons and you won't get the dings in your car if you're trying to park close. Lastly, consider taking public transportation to work and get off a few stops early and walk the rest of the way. If you work in an office building, this is what I've talked about in the Energy Paradox, don't beat yourself up. Don't think you have to walk up the four or five flights of stairs to the office or how many ever. Take the elevator up and then walk down the stairs and do that several times a day. Take an exercise snack break. Every hour, just set your watch for five minutes.  You'll get those steps in that you need and you'll actually get a fantastic workout. Alright, those little steps that you can do throughout the day are really good but there's other things you can do. For instance, you don't just need to walk to get exercise. One of the things that's amazing when you look at super old people who are thriving in their late 90s and early 100s, they also actually do housework. And housework back in the good old day was actually hard work. We have so many conveniences now that we forget that housework was actually really good for you. I'm old enough to remember when we actually had to get up to change the channel on a TV. Now we only had three channels but why not play with this game? Take your remote when you want to change the channel, get up, walk over to the TV, then click the remote and walk back. While you're still up, why not do some squats on the couch? Why not just lift your legs up while you're watching TV and hold your legs up for a minute while you're watching TV? It's free exercise.  You'll notice that your thighs are getting a fantastic workout without you seemingly doing anything. Every time I brush my teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night, I'm doing squats. You don't do anything else. If you've got a bathtub, grab the edge of the bathtub and do planks or pushups on the bathtub. It'll be a lot easier than doing pushups on the floor and you'll find that you can actually do pushups reaching over a bathtub instead of on the floor and you'll actually get a lot of confidence and you'll find that you're going to do more and more and they're a lot easier than torturing yourself.  You don't have to walk a single step to lose weight. Just look at bears during hibernation. Bears do not move for four to five months and bears lose a tremendous amount of weight. How do they do it? They don't eat. Always remember that when all else fails, you don't have to walk to lose weight. You just don't have to eat. Finally, remember that the famous Italian cyclist study that I talked about in unlocking the keto code. These cyclists were put on a training table. They had to eat the exact same amount of food. They had to exercise the exact same amount. One group had a 12 hour eating window where they got to eat food. The other group had only a seven hour eating window where they ate food. Only the group that had the seven hour eating window lost weight. The other cyclists didn't lose any weight. Why? Because they compressed their eating window and they uncoupled their mitochondria and burned through fuel. The point is the exercise was no different. It was how they manipulated eating their food. So all sorts of great tricks, but you do not have to walk 10,000 steps a day to accomplish your health goals. I think you're going to love this one. If you've got low energy, chronic fatigue, it's not in your head. It's in your gut. You need to find someone who will listen to you.


An Andruan Custom Service, Port Harcourt, Area 2 Command, on air says it has handed over a pistol, 100 pieces of 9mm ammunition in two suspects to the police. Area Controller, Babari Mam, disclosed these during a press briefing in Port Harcourt. He says a pistol and the ammunition were found inside a container imported from the United States of America. The Area Controller, Babari Mam, while showing some of the exhibit to newsmen, this vehicle with plate number Texas SVF-5752 was found in a container. The vehicle has in each a pistol and 100 ammunition. He said a container was declared to accommodate only the vehicle and some household materials, but after a thorough investigation, all the items were found. The total duty paid value of these nine containers stands at 1,162,424,371 Naira. We do not just take delight in empowering containers or making seizures of contraband goods, rather we do this to impose the laws for the nation and to serve as deterrent orders. The command and indeed the customs of today has zero tolerance to smuggling and has no cause not to perform. As every encouragement, logistics and incentives have been given by our admirable Controller General of Customs. At the completion of the hearing and taking over, we will continue investigation. People who have criminal tendencies ought to have been arrested and then prosecuted. We will try to serve as a deterrent to others. Controller Imam gives account of what the command has achieved in 2023. The command also wants importers of prohibited goods to deceased adding that the customs will use both human intelligence and technology to stop them. So far from January to October, we have generated about 247 billion Naira. As I speak, even though the year has not ended, we have already beaten the record for last year. Last year it was 240 something. So I assure you that through the end of the year, which is December, we are going to surpass our revenue target.