My House

MY FRIEND PASCAL wanted to score today so I came with him to a house where we waited for nearly an hour as the inhabitants piped their breakfast. "It wasn't a proper crackhouse," Pascal knowledgeably declared at one point afterwards. Well it wasn't that pleasant a house. In reply to Vincent: what IS my own house like ... I am tempted (daydreamer that I am) to give a description of my ideal home. Just saw on television a documentary about this guy (an architect) who is attempting to renovate a 14th century castle to live in again as a fully-fledged 7-bedroom home. I had to switch off in the end as just couldn't handle the stress of watching that. Anyhow my house is a council hostel so you enter a dark hall that smells of old dog-blankets. Up flights of grubby stairs to the bathroom etc. Depending upon my fellow occupants the atmosphere of this place has changed dramatically at different times. I don't really know what to say, it's not the most salubrious of homes. We have no plugs in any communal sink or the bath at present. And we never did have a shower. The radiators were on most of last summer until I eventually turned them off using a piece of boltcutter like equipment borrowed from a friend. Now they will barely come on again and to be honest I do not want radiator heating in my room. I would far rather use my own heater as and when required which is what I do.

Funny... I am severely running short of inspiration to talk about the place any more.

Basically it's just a place I want to get out of as soon as I possibly can. So I'm going to write a bestselling novel. That is my only hope of escape..!

My Dreamtime Wednesday

DREAMING, RECOVERING , WAKING, REDREAMING, REAWAKENING ... what is when when this is now?

After a seemingly incredibly long night during which my loud thinking repeatedly awakened me I sit here at close to 6pm wondering what to make of it all. Famous faces, vacuous spaces all spinning through my mind. What can I give voice to in the darkness? It is sunset now. The sun is vanishing and all of us here must survive throughout the long night.

Thank God for electric lighting!!

Laundretta did a little more tantrum-giving. One time when I opened the front door to her when she had lost Matran's key for the zillionth time she (& why on earth did she do this?!?) "offered me out" for a fight!! Something to do with her drunken gurglings ... she thought I somehow took issue with her ... or cared about her sozzled brain's shortcircuited connexions. I stepped over her and told her not to mistake me for someone who gave a sh--.

Mother Hubbard was going ape this morning because she couldn't score. Pascal saved the day, offering to purchase a weighed amount with her money. So I came with him to a vulgar house. Crackhouse might be the word the newspapers would use for it. Three black early twentysomethings sitting round a breakfast table having their breakfast. Only food did not come into it. Breakfast for them came in white smokey form: crack cocaine. And one of them, perhaps the biggest one in there, with particularly rampant afro hair outgrowings and the pastiest pallid face turned out upon our leaving actually to be a woman!!

I'm glad I brought a newspaper with me to that place. Not only did it kill the boredom of sitting in someone else's "crack"house nonrentpaid virtual squat (and I'm sure that's what it was, somewhere the landlord was being strung out for as long as he possibly could be for no rent at all...) but avoided my making eyecontact with any of these people who thought they were so ... well, not cool but so whatever they thought they were ... and basically gave me a mental teleport outta that situation. I'm getting old now. Too old for situations like that.

At long last, nearly an hour later, Pascal's friend's friend eventually showed up with this heroin and we made good our escape. I couldn't help but wonder, as we walked out, who those young people were, how they made their money, what they thought they were doing and where they were all going in life. Sometimes it's so much easier to focus those questions on somebody else.

Am I making any sense in an otherwise nonsensical day? O what am I saying? The day has gone past. Evening is come. Tomorrow shall arise as predicted.

I have nothing to latch on to. Nothing IS as predicted. Does that make any sense to you. Does that make any sense?

I want to lie down. And then unconsciousness takes away the time. And dreams knit together what remains of reality into fables. Simple as. Simple.

If only life was that straightforward!

Tuesday TV Views Day

WEARILY I CLETTERED ALONG last night, half-sleeping and half-not. Waking to television shows to teach schoolchildren to pass science examinations. Waking to Friends but too tired to stay awake anyway through it. Waking to Frasier eventually. I love Frasier. After Friends it probably is my favourite American sitcom. (Might I just interject here: American sitcoms were viewed over here for decades as rubbish. The Cosby Show being a really good example. Riproariously popular on your side of the pond. And yet lacking any wit or bite or point of view except that of the slightly right wing Reader's Digest-reading Montel Williams viewing homeowning parent:... know what I mean by that?? It wasn't until Friends came along that any American sitcom became popular over here. And suddenly an invasion of American TV happened. Not so much on our screens (because we've always had American imports (though we make more of our own shows than any other country in the English-speaking world)) but in our hearts. Before the 1990s most of those imports were regarded as candifloss TV. Barely there. Rarely missed. (A few exceptions, of course.) But in the 1990s American telly really seemed to grow up. And now I can say and mean it that ER is better than Casualty (British ER). And Friends and Frasier are better than ... well ... anything else. What a long posting about nothing. Do you see now why I lived for so long without TV? Am I making sense? It was all to do with loving it too much. Not hating it. I just marvel that I did about a year and a half without it!!!

Laundretta hasn't woken since her last bender. Matran has been dead quiet. The house is in drab misery:-== What's new there? But I'm not sleeping as long as before. I'm off to finish the last of my Sainsbury's marge-fried veggie fingers in wholemeal pitta breads & a dash of tomato ketchup. Sorry I know those ingredients were ever so slightly offputting but I love 'em when they're crispy!!! All the Best now. Gleds.

PS If y'all would like to view some fabulous fotografs, (horsey, doggie, flowers and wildlife) have a click on this.

The Seductive Process of Addiction

LIVING A DREAM HALF AWAKE: my favourite sort of day. When I can sit alone and, not having slept so well at night, and having drugged up I drowse and wake and drift between wakefulness and dreaming. It's in these states that I wonder whether dreams or wakefulness are really the more real... Not that I even needed drugs ever to drift out, disengage, dissociate. I do that so easily anyway... I question why heroin ever needed to come into the picture.

But drug-taking doesn't necessarily have the deep, dark roots that people so frequently ascribe to it. ("You must have been dreadfully hurt to be taking such hard, hard drugs")... isn't necessarily true at all. As the one perceptive psychiatrist I have ever met once told me: people take drugs because they make them feel good>> simple as. And I'm inclined to agree-- but only on one level. On another: many addicts do have all manner of pain and darkness and horrific things in their pasts. Some do. But there are as many reasons for using as there are people who use. In fact there are many many MORE reasons. Nobody does anything for just one reason, not in normality. Everything in life is multifaceted. Drug addiction, dull, depressing and overridingly BORING as it is in actuality, is no different.

How I got hooked on heroin is a long, long tale of caution intermittently thrown to the winds, of sadness, U-turns, resolutions broken and bad friendships. I willfully went out looking for heroin. I was very depressed and knowing the stuff might kill me the first time I took it only heightened its glamour. For two or three years I managed to keep my using to a one weekend a month type of basis (my tolerance was so small that in the beginning and when the drugs were good, I could get high four times by smoking £10 worth). Even so, there were times, looking back, having used the stuff every day for over a week that I was putting on layers of clothes, taking them off, never able quite to get the temperature right... I now know, with bitter hindsight that I was suffering very light withdrawal and not even knowing it. I'm glad I didn't know either, for that would have pushed me towards using. Another thing that put me off was the unpleasantness of scoring. Right from the beginning I was getting introductions directly to the dealers themselves, not going through a "middleman" junkie friend the way I subsequently found out (years too late!) that most casual users did. No, I had to do it different. And how I hated dealing with these people. The bad vibes I felt emanating from them like radiant shadows. (Contradiction, but I once saw that in an hallucination. A shadow-man walked towards me when I was alone, at night, in a huge industrial squat. Nobody to hear me scream. A shadow man effulging a light that literally engulfed me crept up to the cupboard where I was sleeping, opened the door, flooded me with light and bzzzz-PING! He vanished again. Leaving me in pitch darkness... In my early heroin days I knew somebody who would sell me small bits of methadone. Now for all the complaints junkies will make about methadone (mostly because it takes so very long to take effect, often two hours or more, when you really need it to). If you are nontolerant, methadone can make you pretty high. Only it takes, as I say, at least two hours to do this. Which I do not advise. For it is even MORE dangerous in overdose (being longer-acting) than heroin. So do not mess with the meth. OK? Anyhow, I gradually got into the habit of recreationally drinking this stuff until I was knocking back a small bottle every other day... Went away to stay with a friend out of town only to be hit by a mystery virus that made me hot and cold and sweaty and restless, gave me diarrhoea and had me waking absolutely drenched in sweat in the middle of the night ... I knew some naughty friends. They told me I was "sick" (ie in withdrawal). I didn't believe them but was more than willing to go along with an excuse to use heroin. Strangely, every dose of heroin I took mysteriously relieved this strange condition. It was only nearly two years later with much contemplation and hindsight that I looked back and realized: yes the seeds of my addiction were sown all the way back then. That was the first time in my life that someone gave me a "chill pill" (chloral betaine -- a kind of tranquillizer or sleeping pill) that I felt the "mellow" effects of, but it singularly failed to hit the right spot. That spot being the opiate spot. Only methadone and heroin hit that.

The sloping down of my addiction was a long and gradual and drawn-out process, so gradual in fact that to this day I cannot isolate a specific time or line I crossed from not being an addict to suddenly becoming one. So many little events occurred. From me willfully going out and scoring, experimenting in secret (I never had a bunch of heroin friends in the beginning. I knew the local junkies, but I used alone. And I kept the heroin part of my life very strictly separate from the rest of it.) I got more and more used to the drug. I tore myself repeatedly away. One afternoon having been in great internal conflict, meandering down the street I picked up what I had at first assumed to be a bag of sweets. This was no sweets. It was several grams of bagged up heroin. Enough to keep me high every afternoon for five weeks. That got me round my dislike of scoring and broke down a hugely important barrier: that of using every day. Of course I got a little habit. Came off it with strictly reducing methadone. That summer, the official version was that I was clean. I was not clean. I was using about once a week. What really did it for me was striking up a relationship with someone who had a ten year habit. She wanted to use at every opportunity that arose. How I loved that ride! ...

And so it went on.

And here I am now. Just remember this: how slowly or how gradually something happens means nothing in the end. Because -- whether you get there slowly or quick -- the destination is exactly the same.

Do not use heroin!

I'm knackered now, it is a quarter to two a.m. and I'm going to have to sign out. Will tell more tomorrow ...

Laundretta's Spin

WELL THAT WAS A BIT OF A curt and to the point post about Laundretta. That's what comes of typing straight into the computer, not reading it back and pressing PUBLISH without any consideration. But my rule of nondeletion means it has to stay. I keep things in despite the humiliation they cause to myself. Despite the bad light they throw on me. I'm not keeping this blog to look cool or together (what a lie that would be!) I'm striving to tell the truths about addiction that go so frequently untold. There are many, many of them.

As for Laundretta's situation (she cancelled out on an operation that should have been scheduled for today) she has my full sympathy. I think her anaesthetist told her to drink as little alcohol as she possibly could and to use as little opiates on top of her methadone script as she possibly could. So what did she do but go on an alcohol bender all weekend. I know precisely how she must have felt. Ever-increasingly wound up inside. Conflict building, building up. And she relieves the conflict the way an addict always does by taking the drug, maybe messing up the situation but simplifying it at the same time. What can be more straightforward than using, using, using. As per normal? I remember the day I went to a private clinic to be switched to Subutex (buprenorphine). To do this you need to be taking as little heroin (and in particular methadone) as possible. I was told to turn up as withdrawal-sick as I could bear. Of course I could not bear it. So I used and actually used more than I would have done if I'd just used as per normal. Using to try and desperately steady my nerves. What a hopeless task. And then, having been told by the doctor to take the first dose of Subutex when I really was craving a hit, I took it half way home. Because I was craving. I'd have had a hit (ordinarily, assuming I had "gear" on me, the minute I got in through the door). So as far as I was concerned I was indeed craving. He didn't mean psychologically craving. He meant physically craving. That is what did it for me. The too-early dose of the buprenorphine precipetated some pretty horrible withdrawal symptoms. NutNut wanted to call an ambulance. No way! I protested. No way was I going to feel like that, writhing on an Accident and Emergency trolley!... know what I mean??!? So I just toughed it out, as I had no option but to ... eventually awakening the next morning feeling bright and early and very very vivid. The Subutex had reset my system. A miracle drug: I didn't feel like a junkie anymore.

Laundretta has my sympathy because in her shoes I don't see that I'd have done anything different at all. Only perhaps despite the drinking I'd still have dragged myself in the hospital, looking forward to being knocked out cold very much indeed..!

Yummy Queries Answered, Youtube Videos, Tropical Marine Fishes ...

IN RESPONSE TO YOUR QUESTIONS, the dinner of yumminess devoured on Saturday night was four (fried) Bird's Eye Vegetable Fingers (fried in Sainsbury's own brand marge (next thing up from Value range), in wholemeal pitta breads from the Turkish corner shop with a dash of Sainsbury's own tomato ketchup. Mmmm!! Really yummie!!

My correspondent Slaghammer posted up a wonderful Youtube video: Male Restroom Etiquette. As well as Male Restroom Etiquette: A Response, there's a Female Restroom Etiquette for your entertainment as well as lovely old Spiders on Drugs. So have an entertaining time regarding these links. And all credit to Slaghammer. Who has one of the most entertaining commentary images I've ever seen. I hope y'all have immense fun regarding these viddiclips..!!..

I could not get to a computer yesterday, hence nothing said. Yesterday was a pretty "straight" day; ie no drugs. Having lost a bottle of methadone I thought I was going to be feeling rather unwell. Don't get me wrong, I HAD taken some, but really felt I could do with quite a lot more. So when eventually I did find the mislaid hundred milligrams bottle -- man I was disco-dancing into the evening!!

There's little sensible to say now. I'm still reading my Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, the English translation). Saw some wonderful David Attenborough nature films on Mother Hubbard's television yesterday. Life on Earth: what a blast from the past that one was. I remember watching when that first came out and thinking how amazing it all was, the shots they'd got. And I was only something like ten back then ..! Later on last night they showed Meercat Manor (they love Meercats at the BBC: I do find their contrived names: Bluebell, Shakespeare, Parsley rather idiotic but that's naturalists for you, there you go.) Later still it was coastal waters of the Indian meets Atlantic Oceans on the blunt tip of South Africa. If you're going on a beach holiday be sure to pick the Right Hand Side (ie the East side) of the Cape/whatever it's called because on that side the water's warm as a bath. On the other side, I'm reliably informed, you can barely stick your toe into it. But it's lovely for great white sharks! The Indian Ocean warm current mixed vividly with the Atlantic cold on thermal sattelite image: creating a wonderful glow. And myriads of tropical reef fish swirled and gleddered about the teeming waters. It looked lovely. Hammerhead sharks came out to eat them. And sardines appeared too. They were probably looking for a tin. Don't they like use discarded tins and matchboxes as their fishy bedroom..?

Well I'm rabbitting now and shall have to go.

O I forgot to tell the news of my madhouse: Laundretta was all set to have an operation today but pulled out at the last moment. Having had a special meeting with the anaesthetist and told him about her methadone dose, alcohol drinking and heroin smoking, she was told to cut down on all of these as much as possible. And of course in trying to do so stressed herself so incredibly much, poor girl, that she ended up on a drunken bender all weekend. Now she's too paranoid to come in incase the anaesthesia won't work properly because of her enormous tolerance to opiates (and alcohol shows a crosstolerance to benzodiazepines and barbiturates, I think. All of which drug families are employed in the general anaesthesia cocktails modern hospitals use.) So I don't blame her reluctance to go under not knowing if she truly will go under. I mean, what could be worse than waking up under the scalpel as many people have done, especially with the modern methods of light anaesthesia... She tells me she's going to arrange a proper and full alcohol detox before next time. I hope this is true and not just a fob-off. She doesn't need to fob off me. But I don't want her to fob off herself. Her life is one hell of a mess. She seems always to have surrounded herself with bad men ... I do feel sorry for her sometimes.

All the best now and take care, y'all!!

Gledsxx

Yumm-Yumm: My Industrial Cookery Secrets

MUNCHED A YUMMY TEA tonight: Vegetables (42%) (Sweetcorn, Carrots, Peas), Water, Breadcrumbs (Contains Turmeric Extract, Paprika Extract), Potato Flake, Sunflower Oil, Wheat Flour, Salt, Eggwhite Powder, Yeast Extract, Maize Starch, Onion Powder, Mustard fried in Water, Vegetable Oils, Salt (1.4%), Emulsifier: Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid, Flavouring, Colour: Carotines: Vitamins A and D for ten minutes and served with a dash of Tomatoes, Spirit Vinegar, Sugar, Modified Maize Starch, Salt, Spice Extract (contains Celery Extract) and Soya Bean Oil. 140g Tomatoes in 100g Product (so it's magic as well!!) in Unbleached Untreated Wheatflour (Wholemeal), Water, Salt, Yeast, Preservative (Potassium Sorbate). Mmm:- Just what I'd have put in if I'd prepared it from scratch ...

And what did you eat today?...

PS: For beautiful Turkish cookery recipe's in English go to http://turkishkitchenmelbourne.blogspot.com. Thanks Ceviz!

Where Did The Old Me Get To?

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT this morning. Matran wasn't hurting Laundretta yesterday btw. I wouldn't have laughed about it if that was so. She is up and about this morning. Quite sober and together: especially for her. He is being very quiet. He's a quiet guy. I woke up not thinking of drugs this morning. I'm pondering over and over more and more what am I going to do with my life these days. As I've stated before, the days are long gone when I ever wake up thinking, "What am I going to do with this day?" What will I put right? Attain? Achieve? Those days, which were a big part of my old life, have well and truly flown the nest. The way grown-up children inevitably do. But I want them back. The grown-up version of Creative me. Creative people by necessity do create. Their actions preceed them. I am not creative. O yes I am potentially so. I have the potential to be an extremely creative guy. But I'm not. I create nothing. I do nothing: except lumber lugubriously from day to dismal day. And I want out of that morass. This isn't even (merely) down to drugs. It's due to laziness and melancholy and the inexorable result of years lived never for tomorrow, always just to solve the problem of today. The drugs problem. The problem of getting enough drugs to fix up not to be sick. That has been my life. My only wonder has been that it has not lead me into far more trouble than it actually did do.

The old me decided to go to Thailand and took up learning not only to speak but to read and write Thai. Long story but I ended up in India: don't ask. Story of my life. The old me saw a job going for a clubbing correspondent in a music magazine. I was clubbing every week at the time and knew the "marketplace". What do I need for noisy nightclubs where a dictaphone will pick up more background noise than speech? I definitely need shorthand. And so I'd learnt the basics in a week and given up smoking at the same time. (I used the shorthand pad to make endless doodles every time my hands wanted to reach for cigrettes.) The twin goal-setting worked really well. Although I never got the job I did stay off cigarettes -- completely -- long enough to go all summer and through New Year's Eve not touching the dreaded tobacco. Now I'm smoking so heavily the inside of my front teeth are black. What my lungs look like I hate to consider. Though I've never been the type to jump up and down proclaiming "what I'm going to do", I did used to seize opportunities, set goals and actually (after a fashion) attain them. I don't set any goals now. I don't think about them. A couple of years into this drug addiction I stopped myself one afternoon realizing: I don't daydream anymore. I used to spend my entire life planning on what to do next. As an addict I knew what to do next. Make money. Spend it on heroin. Take heroin. Make more money. And so on. So simple I never needed to consider anything more than where the money was to be made and who I'd ring once I had it ...

Maybe this is what growing up in Britain does to you, but I remember a few years ago telling a friend that if you wanted to be successful (and why would you want that, he probably asked himself) the key was to set goals. He looked at me wide-eyed and queried: "REALLY?" This was a new concept to him. I couldn't have survived without having set goals day to day. Another thing I learnt was that life is fulfilled day by day by day. Not by lunging into things quickly and getting them over with though of course there's always a time and a place for that approach. But a little of the same thing every day mounts up. Books are written. Languages learned. Money saved. Et cetera.

I want the old me back!!

PS I suppose I have indeed created something lately: I've created this blog.

Further to my Earlier Post

YES FURTHER TO MY EARLIER POST, Nicole commented that she didn't know how she could put up with Laundretta & Matran's daily (or more to the point, nightly) played-out soap opera woes, (see below) no matter how addicted she was to anything. Dan said why don't I move out... which I am on a waiting list to do so at some indeterminate future time. When it all started with Matran and Laundretta I was in such a mental state, I barely noticed there was anything unusual about their behaviour. Nowadays I do: however I simply sleep through their bang-crashing, wailing, shrieking and yodelling. None of this is "sexual", incidentally. It is all argument-oriented. Or more to the point Laundretta throwing a tantrum. Earlier on tonight I heard bang-crashes on their floor. Now she claims the man underneath Matran's room is obsessed with her (she seems to think all men are, but there you go). And has claimed he comes out of the bathroom in a shocking state of undress doing shocking things before her. I do not know what to make of this. But they both seem to delight in stomping on the poor guy's ceiling as often as they ... well, remember to ... I think he is mentally ill as much as the rest of us. So there were more bang-crashes on the floor and I hear her desperate voice (desperate she does really well, but she's told me herself she's a first-rate liar. So I watch her now like a poker player. I know her tics.) She was imploring Matran to "get off me; let me go" he must finally have lost patience with her and grabbed her. I smiled to myself and turned back to my reading book: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's actually a really good read, despite being "literature". I can kind of relate to the characters in an unusual way.

Sometimes I'm sceptical of "literature". A Midsummer Night's Dream for example: was Shakespeare paid by the schools curriculum authority to write something nonsensical to torment generations of schoolkids with its meaninglessness? And add in characters called Titania and Bottom just so at first glance it seems like it's going to be entertaining..? I love Shakespeare but I loathe that play. I like the big four tragedies and Romeo and Juliet. And I've never seen Cymbeline or The Tempest but would like to.

I saw Valium Marilyn earlier today, she's had bird flu. Well that's what she would have said if only it had come to mind. Common cold is my diagnosis. And hasn't left her couch for three days. "Well at least you've got cable TV (the full-on package as well)." That doesn't make any difference," she claimed. Well it does. Last time I was there for hours we watched Animal Planet practically the whole time. That's why I did without TV for so long by the way. The polar opposite of being sniffy and bourgeois about it, I'd let TV intrude into my every waking (and sleeping) hour. I never used to turn it off. I only had the ghetto version of digital, which in my old room used to work through a £1.99 set-top aerial (less than 30 channels) but you pay £20-£40 now for the box and there's no subscriptions for ever. My televisual fantasy is HD in every room (smallest possible screens for optimum picture quality), Sky satellite plus motorized multi-satellite for foreign plumbed into every room in my fantasy house including the bathroom. In fact in my old life television never got turned off unless there was a power-cut. That's why I threw the failing old telly out and did not replace it. And tried to live via books instead. Which is really hard for someone with no focus. The last novel I read cover to cover (a veritable achievement for me) was The Fingersmith by Sarah Walters. Set in Victorian/whatever London and Berkshire (or somewhere like that ...) well you really want to read it for yourself. Even though it was nominated for a major literary prize it's still a good read (it didn't win though, so they made a mistake nominating it in my view. Only boring books ever get nominated for those prizes.) I like the kind of books people actually read, not leave on glass coffee tables to impress guests...

Well this has tailed off the original point. What was that?? I'm musing on my next project in my mind. Then I will do it. Then I will tell you what it is. When I've finished it. And then life will go on precisely as it had before: because that's what my life always does!!

PS... Except one day it really won't. If I got money behind me the first thing I would do is put myself in private treatment. I'd arrange an anaesthetic detox (which, last time I looked into it, involved flying out to Spain, being put under for three days and waking up with a naltrexone implant that fully blockades all heroin's effects for at least six weeks. Knowing myself well enough and having smoked the stuff while blockaded on Subutex -- no way on earth would I smoke crack in these circumstances. The comedown was horrendous. So that's two drugs dealt with. The last one is alcohol and that's down to me. But then again, on Subutex even that lost most of its appeal. I did still drink, but only one or two cans a day. And I shared my last mouthful with the pavement rather than swallow the liquid Brillo Pads stuff. (Cheap cyder is 49p-59p a can. 500mls at 7.5% ABV. The very cheapest form of alcohol you can get in this country. Without opitates dulling it, the body suddenly becomes prone to hangovers again... no thanks.) So I'd do this private detox. Get the naltrexone implant and use naltrexone pills as follow-up meds in the weeks when the implant has worn off, thus completely blockading myself against heroin for as long as I want. Further to this, part two would already be instigated: I would have left London behind and all the users and dealers I know and I would live somewhere I've always wanted to go. My top three choices in descending order are Berlin, Amsterdam or Paris. People associate Amsterdam particularly with drugs. But if I can't take the drugs I used to like I would be straight. And not everyone in Amsterdam is a junkie. Nicole isn't. All cities have their druggie sides. I would not let that put me off living somewhere I've always always wanted to go. So that's what I would do... or maybe to put it another way. That is what I will do -- soon as I get the chance.

Laundretta's Howling

LAUNDRETTA HAS TAKEN to sleeping for the last couple of nights on the first floor landing (that is the second floor to you Americans) outside the bathroom. Yesterday night she lay there one breast exposed, a half-drunk bottle of white wine beside her, using her handbag as a pillow and snoring away. She has been rowing (row rhymes with cow: our word for a marital/relationship "fight") with Matran the Rat Man. Although I dislike him for many reasons he has been strikingly stoical in the face of her acting out. Many many times she slams doors (literally all hours of day and night) bellows his name, insults him, has one-sided conversations (as if anyone listening gives a s---) etc, throws tantrums and worst of all indulges in spates of forced "crying" when she either squeals like a swine trapped by the balls, or a wolf trying out for coloratura soprano operatics. It all sounds very false. I never remarked to myself that there was anything so unusual about this because everyone bar no-one who has ever lived in my house (self included) is deranged in some way. And when they did first move in I was so off the planet in my own little way that other people's 4am howlings... well they barely impinged on my consciousness.

I was most ungracious to my visitors yesterday as they called round in the middle of a personal sulk. Well I don't know what else to call it. I was hibernating today as well, until about 4pm when I finally decamped from the nest I built using duvets etc in the middle of a pile of rugs on the floor (why am I admitting to this? Why do I do it? I don't have an answer to either except I find a lot of beds far too soft.)

So I basically live in a madhouse. I'm only shocked I've managed to come out of there daily so very sane ...

Two People Disturb Me

A VOICE WAS CALLING me this afternoon. A posh (male) voice that I did not recognize. Calling me by my Christian name. (Maybe I had schizophrenia.) At some point this character got into my house and came upstairs to knock on my door. Assuming he was hiding there, I gathered keys, money, valuables together and shoved them in my pockets, opened the door: nobody there.

Venturing downstairs, nobody to be seen or heard. I did not open the front door, though. For all I knew this could be bailiffs or anything. Bailiffs will try and trick you by calling your first name in a familiar name to trick you into opening doors. They know all the cons and people don't admit it to their mates but of course they fall for them. Bailiffs wouldn't try these techniques on otherwise!

Ten minutes passed and again a soft knocking at my door. I demanded to know who it was and a wellknown shoplifter (he is about as famous, in a Dick Turpin kinda way, as any petty criminal gets to be in local circles) answered me. Very reluctantly I let him and his public school accomplice in. It was the accomplice, who is a nice lad from a posh background (and I bet his family give him absolutely f-all money or support) who had been calling me. That's why I couldn't place the voice. Unfamiliar because he's not someone I normally see except rapidly passing on (his) way back from expeditions and to or from liberating the financial value of purloined goods. They sat on my bed talking about prisons, nerve damage, hitting arteries and fights with women. It was mostly Da Man who talked while accomplice stayed quiet. Da Man I know from a decade ago when he was dealing. I gave my first or second ten pounds to a heroin dealer to him. So I remember this guy through dirt-tinted spectacles as the onset of my scuzzy habit. What else can I say??

Today all is upon me, all is stress, all too slow or else too fast, not there when it should be and intolerable when it is. It's one of those days. And these two characters were the last addition I welcomed. So I didn't make them feel welcome but they gave me a bit of free drugs and though accomplice was a little bothered, Da Man doesn't care what anyone thinks as long as his own needs are sorted, which they were in my presence. He got somewhere quiet to smoke his drugs. I hardly need mention what drugs they were but to put anyone who's wondering out of their contemplation he smoked crack and then some heroin. He has to smoke the heroin now because he's been on it for so very many years (at 55 years old) that inhaling vapours from tinfoil is the only way his body will tolerate taking heroin in. Why is everything about heroin so multiple-ly addictive? Rituals, routines, manoevres all become part of the brain-dulling day-in-day-out reality that is heroin addiction. A life minus excitement for the most part as it is minus pain. You take a drug that quashes both and life performs its own little rebound for you. The effects always speak for themselves far louder than anybody's testimony, if you get me.

I've decided to testify the details no-one else gives. Though it humiliates me often to do so, I think the unspoken aspects of the junkie life need speaking by someone.

And hence my blog ...

1. A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL who took part in the Sponsored Comments. Ruth has made 107 at the time of writing and so asked me to say she DOESN'T NEED ANY MORE. The £50 is winging its way to charity...

2. My doctor's appointment is now rescheduled for Friday so I can forget it then... (See the post below.)

3. Does anyone know how I get my photo identity on my comments? I've found a picture I like on the internet but blogger ask me for a "photo url" what on earth does that mean??

4. Am I supposed to post something grisly like last week, or dull like I normally do here? All I did today was miss my appointment and hibernate. I didn't want to go out anyway and was so put-out when I realized what I had done (see below). I did write a huge posting on neurotransmitters (why??) but that's on paper. I have a project up my sleeve that is fermenting (but no it is not home-made wine...)

5. OK that's me done for today. I quite like Tuesdays. EastEnders is on as I speak and I do not miss it anymore. It is quite nice not to feel attached to things either. EastEnders is the one TV prog I used to be well aware if I misssed, and I'm hardly alone in that. Try and score drugs while it is on if you don't believe me. I guarantee they will not be delivered until after the closing creds have rolled!!!

6. Righty-ho I'm off to get cod-in-parsley-sauce and grating cheese...

Every Time

EVERY TIME I DO SOMETHING I do it wrong. Whenever I juggle I drop at least one item. Whenever I'm successful at one aspect of life I'm neglecting something else. Why can I never get it right?? What have I done today? Gone and missed my appointment with the doctor. Which I know will really annoy them. And where is my phone for that matter. I have to go and sort this out now.

Why is there always something??

Charity Appeal - Leave 100 Comments

THIS IS A CHARITY APPEAL on behalf of my friend Ruth. Go to her "million stories" blog which is ruth-boofie.blogspot.com and leave a comment. If she gets 100 comments then £50 goes to a Cancer charity.

Other news of today... let me rack my brains and think of something: I'm not sure that I can. I've been most weary and dozing on the floor for most of this evening. Then the computer so severely misbehaved I seriously never thought I'd get to post - hence my braindeadness (well I'm not going to wind myself up at an essentially locked-out terminal thinking up stuff to say knowing I'll be unable to post it, am I??)

Tomorrow I see the doctor to try and sort self out a bit, so wish me luck with that.

And go to Ruth's blog and jolly her along with those hundred comments. You all know you can do it so don't be shy. Come on!! £50 goes to charity and you don't even have to fork out yourself!! What could be more convenient than that??

Okay Sunday; Roll On Monday..!

THE DAY HAS GONE THANKFULLY QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY. CANNOT LIE: DRUGS HELPED. However, having said that, I woke up with methadone finally holding me - ie not freezing cold, not checking clock for mad 9am dash to pharmacy, not sweating all morning like a tropical amphibian. Have been watching things like Friends on telly. Channel 4 must have bought the rights to endless repeats over several years because they're certainly milking their money's worth out of that series. I love Friends though. It is my favourite sitcom by far. Absolutely Fabulous and Porridge are two others. But Friends is best. Also unlike Brit series, they make 24 episodes a year. Absolutely Fab came in about 3 or 4 series of 6 each ... I mean ..! Hardly a commercial decision. And the BBC has become increasingly commercialized in recent years.

Had Sunday lunch at Mother Hubb's house. Our crazy schizophrenic friend was there. Telling me he believed the entire London tube network had been built above ground and carefully sunk, among other remarkable things. He wants to be a heavyweight boxer of Mike Tyson magnitude, but the psychiatrists won't lower his compulsory meds enough for him to say he can train ...

We watched lots of television all afternoon. David Attenborough presenting the Life of Birds. I liked the one that gathered a massive beetle wingcase collection and laid the entire lot out lined up and sparkly side up to attract a mate. I like a bird like that. Most of the other birds in the mating prog just resorted to a good oldfashioned fight to stave off their rivals!!

It is not even seven pm but feels much later. I was going to continue my opinions on drugs treatments etc, but all that will have to wait till tomorrow as I don't have much time at this computer.

Okay, take care everyone!!

Gledsxx

Sober Now

WOW I WAS self-pitying earlier on, wasn't I? Well I had my "gear" and slept all afternoon and watched some rubbish on television and now I feel a lot better. Many thanks to everyone who got in touch. I'm not trying to scare people or shock people or be childish. Whenever I feel like that I am always put in the same quandry: to be careful what I say, for so many reasons. A trivial one being that I risk sounding like I'm just speaking for effect. Another one being that I don't want to cause people genuine hurt. The reasons go on ... On the other hand I did always call my blog "candid confessions". So if I'm not being "candid" and am holding off on the "confessions" I'm hardly being true to myself (or my blog) am I? Well I'm going to continue with my "theory of addiction" tomorrow ... Till then rest easy, y'all ...

PS Isn't it a pity we don't all speak the same language. Look what I found in Portuguese. It's intriguing. But I don't know that I'd have the patience to go through translating every paragraph ...

More I do not believe in the power of the sin, neither I import with that believe it, I only opt to living in a world where the truth is more proxima of that I feel. The people have of form so impregnated these ideias of that it is certain e is made a mistake that they finish living as marionettes in accordance with the values that it are impostas.E this make with that they leave to act, of living, not simplismente they dare to risk because such thing "is missed" and thus they finish seeing the life to pass without leaving the lugar.Por much time I was thus and today I see the quão donkey I was, in such a way of suffering that could have to evitado.Mudar everything this tambem is complicado..é very facil to be rock, dificil is to be glassware.

(From Psicotidiana)

Addicts ...?

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I just wrote something and did not post it. Reason being: I'm not out to offend the people I mentioned.

Well I feel like my life is going down the toilet yet again. I am drunk & maudlin. I am waiting on someone who will "save" me from this situation. A two-stage save. 1. make money. 2. score. Actually 3-stage. Stage 3 is get a vein & make my day.

My veins have nearly ALL GONE.

I do not want to plunge a heavily acidified brown heroin mixture into the crook of my thighs. To do this you have to use a long orange needle (possibly the 1ml integral insulin 1ml "works" will do it but this is a debatable fact) but if not the massive blue horse needle--you plunge this not at a 45 degree angle as normally when injecting. You plunge it straight down right to the hilt. Right where a vein, a HUGE artery (that you do not want to inject into: you could lose your foot. EASILY) and the SCIATIC NERVE all run in close proximity. As I did mention before: doing this you can so easily & readily get DVT= deep vein thrombosis... I can't think of anyone who's done it for more than a few years and not had problems.

Cases in point.

1. When you inject into the "groin"/femoral vein as above desribed you go straight down. This feels gory & horrible. The acid itches your vein. You can often feel it tracking up towards your heart. Obviously I am used to this. But the implications do not escape me. (Not from going in the groin but in other veins.) THE ACID IS DISSOLVING THE VEIN.

2. Even if you don't get DVT eventually, from hitting the same/similar spots over&over&over a "sinus" develops. This is what they call on the street a "bullet hole" or an "eye". Ie. literally a hole big enough to put your little finger into going straight from surface flesh to vein. Eventually the vein & artery can become linked. In this case ... well read what I said about arterial injecting.

I know several people with one "bullet hole" each side. I met one in rehab who had three each side. That's what "habit" does to the body.

Incidentally if anyone reading this is/is thinking of/not initiated into but wants to inject ... YOU NEVER EVER INJECT INTO AN ARTERY. You can LOOSE FINGERS/TOES. if THIS HAPPENS take rings off asap. OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FINGERS. Ring ambulance asap. Why am I giving this advice. Will anyone listen . I think not.

3. Now I have parroted this myself... The supposed fact that addicts never grow up from the time they become an addict....

On the one hand. Yes this is true. I have seen for myself. Heroin addicts are hopelessly childish. Those that aren't childish INVARIABLY took up using later in life. Heroin is about escaping suffering. That is why addicts suffer even more than normal people. It's the law of diminishing returns. The law of natural inversion.

On the other hand... NA call ALL ADDICTS THE SAME. By that standard anyone addicted to tobacco is the same as a heroin addict. Are tobacco smokers hopelessly immature? I think not. So I don't know what to make of this point. But I felt the need to bring it up.

Okay I'm going again. I can't stand too much of this.

Friday not Sky High Day

IT'S ABOUT A QUARTER TO NINE NOW... maybe I shouldn't have been quite so negative in the previous post ... but hey, I have been in a famously sour mood for the last month.

My "conjuring trick" very nearly failed to materialize anything of worth earlier. Then I flounced my magic hankie once more... puff of smoke... hey presto!... £15 appears in my hand. I took this to a flat where I exchanged £10 for a tiny-looking heroin bag. The other £5 I spent on food. The days are gone when I donate my every last penny to the "cause". The heroin was supposedly strong (I can vouch that I tasted it last night.) If it had been cut, it would appear a lighter shade of orange in the works (coloured cut is a sophisticated process beyond the ordinary dealer's reach). I might add for clarity that our gear is always "brown" meaning from peachy-"flesh" (white skin) colour through concrete/wall plaster pine/blond brown to dark muscovado. Usually it's at the lighter end of the scale. A greyish light mud-coloured substance not unlike dried mud. But quite concrete coloured. When you cook it up (adding citric acid to liberate the drugs) the resulting solution is usually a far richer brandy-brown than the powder would appear to produce. So I'm pretty sure the drugs are indeed the same. Just my useless body isn't tolerating them... correction is tolerating them too well. My tolerance to heroin has always been sky-high. I'm like an opiate-sponge. Cocaine... initially I seem to be able to use more than most other people. But very quickly I come to a point where a metaphorical giant power-swich is flicked in my head to ON. And stays ON for a long while afterwards. So all in all I'd say I cannot tolerate cocaine or crack because I'm far more prone to the negative effects (including florid voice-hearing paranoia) than most people I know. Last time I binged big-style on that ... well I could easily have been sectioned if only a doctor had got to me. I was in one hell of a state. Nearly electrocuted myself. The devil was hissing at me in one corner of the room. From another, secret cameras were filming my every move. I got quickly fed up of wearing no clothes to "give them an eyeful" and took to dismantling plugs/etc with a small screwdriver. To prize out their evil electronic monitoring eyes. And very nearly electrocuted myself. What am I blabbering about here???

Okay well back to today, someone lent me £15 (my ONE possible source of loans). Dealer was there on time. After an unremittingly bleak day I felt more of a lift from scoring than the drugs actually gave me. All heroin does (generally) is make me feel no different whatsoever for taking it. Or possibly makes me dull and sleepy. A not worth paying lots of money for feeling. Not even as nice as a sleeping pill (and weaker). So I question why I bother using at all, I really do. Okay I'm not up for rabbiting on so I'll continue tomorrow....

Laundretta/Nutnut

THE PHONE RANG AT 9.04 this morning. Do I "want anything"? When do I not "want" "it"? Only problem: no money in house. (Or bank.) So I said I would call later. (When he won't be answering bc he is so lazy. So someone else will get the business.) Later being after I have conjured readies out of the air by dint of magic trick. ...That sounds like babelfish talking.

I posted nothing yesterday because I was seriously not in the mood. Could have got myself into a dangerous situation. Lost my temper with someone. O wot can I say nothing.

Sitting here dripping with sweat. BADLY. Have taken medication. It is not holding me. If you held my hand you'd feel like you were touching a tropical frog. Sweat is running down my back like a mini river. That is how Nutnut knew when I was "using" again (years back)... when I came in on a winter's morning sweating profusely, ran a bath (I was so clean in that house ... the bath being my only excuse to lock the bathroom door. And keep it locked for long enough to draw up water. Prepare a spoon. Get filter. Citric acid. Cigarette lighter. (If I forgot this I came out pretending I was desperate for a bathtime cig.) Do not be heard flickflickflicking on lighter. Her banging on door. Are you in that bath. Me sitting with one leg in water stirring it. Can't you hear that I am? Then when injection prepared got into hot water. (Brings veins up lovely.) Then try to restrain swearing etc when they didn't behave readily enough. Eventually sink back in water not caring if drowned (maybe that was half the attraction, well I have to be honest. You never lived with that woman.) And then carefully hide every little twist of torn syringe wrapper, cigarette filter, spilt citric, black from bottom of spoon, blood drips ... Just in case she declared a sudden interest in using loo whilst I was in there. How did I get on to this. O yes. When I went on Subutex/buprenorphine for about a month till relapsing in grand style. Took what I thought then was a "small hit" ie a third of £20/$40 worth - woke up with her slapping my head & screaming at me. The noise of my choked & shallow breathing had woken her at 7am. "That was a death rattle!" I said furiously. Why didn't you just let me die?" I genuinely hated her for "saving" me like that. (Though I'm sure I would have come round anyway.)

There is chaos in my present house too. Laundretta has been drunk and bawling since about 4am. Matran the Rat Man took her last £20 and spent it all on something (likely crack). She was still blowing her top at noon. That's what I call persistent. Nutnut was more persistent we used to have blazing public rows lasting literally nine a.m. to five p.m. (fortunately neither of us had proper jobs). Followed by minor eruptions for upto three days afterwards. Laundretta has destroyed the vacuum cleaner kicking remains of my needle lids/empty wraps etc all down the stairs. They try and be "respectible" junkies and not let it show as much as I do. She was a prostitute before she was an addict (which is very unusual) - used to make good money (still can make £300 in a night). Claims to have been in Dubai etc. Certainly explained how a hostess bar works in convincing detail. Now she is really just a drunken lush. Who sweats so heavily after a drink she looks like she has showered fully clothed.

Well I'm off now to read a book. Bye.

You Gotta See This

YESTERDAY, MOTHER HUBBARD knocked her (sometimes rather odd) housemate's door, ushered me into his catpiss stinking room and two Nubian slaves bonged massive gongs. A red curtain opened, a puff of smoke arose -- and the following appeared on the computer screen. SPIDERS ON DRUGS. Now I have seen this before. I even put the link on my blog. So I watched again and went "haw-haw-haw" and decided not to knock the stuffing out of someone else's "hey--look what I found!! Moment." So I kept my mouth shut. But if you want to see the vid, click the above link in green. Surely the entire universe except you has seen this by now.

Can you believe this. I was advised not to give up on something for which I have enthusiasm. So here goes. The thru-&-out-the-other-end-again Chinese, Traditional via blah translationism:

You obtained yesterday to look at this, looked after HUBBARD to knock her (sometimes quite to be strange) the housemate gate, is greeted I to enter his catpiss to send the odor room and two Nubian the slave bonged giant gong. A red curtain has opened, the smoke blew appeared -- and below appears in the computer screen. Spider in medicine. Now I before saw this. I even invested the link in mine blog. So I again watched and go to "haw haw haw" and the decision do not knock stuff outside others' "hey -- looked any I discovered! ! Moment. "so I maintain my mouth to close. But if you want to look at vid, clicks on the above link by the green. Definitely the

Translations, Curry, Cheese and Desperate Housewives

OKAY I PROMISE TO TONE DOWN the translations after this one. This is a genuine comment I wrote to Johnny Padilla in Chile, only to translate it back to English:

Hi I am using babelfish to put this to you in Spanish. Thanks much for its commentary. Master obtaining in tact internationally. When I at random press that following button of blog and something comes for above in Spanish, Chinese Portuguese or (those are to a great extent the more popular foreign languages of blogosphere) and I are in right humor, I say hello. But for above until this moment I have had always ashamedly to do it in English. Now it barks "I speak" those languages same! I know that the translations are wonky because I put Shakespeare inside and outside Chinese and I fixed the results for above to blog of today! Easy Tómelo, Gleds

His profile came out rather well from the translator:

My name is Rodrigo. Student of Journalism. I consider myself "special", perhaps different from the rest, or at least nonencounter much people similar to me. This is a reflection of my distorted existence.

You can have fun yourself the Babelfish way! My friend Ruth told me about it. I had dimly heard about some internet translating service but had assumed you'd have to pay for it. Their url is http://babelfish.altavista.com/.

I went to the clinic today as I got ejected yesterday for being too late. Not being in the mood to wear my usual short-sighted goggles (& I don't count myself as a glasses-wearer, as have been on contact lenses for years. Just wanted to give my eyes a break for the past 3 months and have not been round to getting more.) My one and only pair of glasses is broken. So I wander the streets of London resembling a walking percentage sign. I took these glasses off during the appointment. The Worker looked at me with enormous concern and said, "You look really tired." (I look like I've got two black eyes.) I said "yes I am," and have now scored a doctor's appointment for being run-down.

Later on I saw my pal Valium Marilyn, who gave me three beautiful pieces of curried chicken. I did wonder why she was giving this away. Bought boil-in-bag rice from Sainsbury's. Dished up reheated curry with this... She did say, "do you like hot curry". Readers, if you put silver coins on top of this chicken, the spices alone would have melted them to solder. I wiped them off in the gummy overcooked (despite religiously following the instructions) rice. And ate them exceedingly enthusiastically.

Desperate Housewives was on when I logged in tonight. I used to think I liked it. Maybe it's the strain of trying to follow it all on a 2.3 inch TV but something has gone ...

Other news: I ate about 25p worth of Double Gloucester cheese and felt guilty as I only ever by cheese for grating purposes. Usually if I want to eat some I force self to cook a meal and grate it over it, thus precluding eating any more cheese than absolutely necessary. I am very strict with myself on these matters.

Yes in other words practically nothing happened today. But hey it could be worse. I could be yabbering on about how tired I feel ... or dissecting the literary heritage of Danielle Steel!

Chinese Fun for Everyone ..!

ALTAVISTA'S BABELFISH PROGRAM is a classic. How can I possibly put into words the entertainment it has given me today. (English words, at least ...)

Here as testimony to the undying poetry inherent in computer translations between Chinese (traditional) and American English are some renditions from the World Canon of Great Literature:--

ALL UNHAPPY FAMILIES resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was upset in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered an intrigue between her husband and their former French governess, and declared that she would not continue to live under the same roof as him.

所有怏怏不樂的家庭互相類似, 但各個怏怏不樂的家庭是怏怏不樂的用它自己的方式。一切被弄翻了在Oblonskys 的房子裡。妻子發現了陰謀在她的丈夫和他們的前法國家庭女教師之間, 和宣稱, 她不會繼續居住在屋頂下和他一樣。

All unhappy families mutually similar, but each unhappy family is unhappy uses it way. All were overturned in the Oblonskys house. The wife had discovered the plot in between hers husband and their former French family female teacher, with declared, she cannot continue to live and he is same under the roof.

From Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy, Maude translation).

My favourite modern poet is Sylvia Plath. Here's what Babelfish makes of Winter Trees. I give the original first.

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing —
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

濕黎明墨水做□他們的藍色溶化。在霧他們的吸墨紙樹似乎一張植物圖畫- 記憶生長, 圓環在圓環, 一系列的婚禮。

The wet daybreak ink makes □their blue color dissolve. A their blotting paper tree plant drawing - memory grows as if in the fog, ring in ring, a series of wedding ceremonies.

That's pretty good, actually ...

Last but by no means least, here's an all-time cracker:--
Translation 1st this time, for full-on entertainment ...

Yes, or is not: That is the question:
Whether ' tis nobly does suffer
the crude fortune suspension cable
and the arrow in the brains,
or adopts the arm opposition trouble sea,
with finishes them by the opposition?

I honestly did not tinker or adapt the above in any way, that is what Babelfish made of Shakespeare. Only the new line layout is mine.

Oh what the hell. Here's the entire Shakespeare passage: been put thru Babelfish & doubleback again...

Yes, or is not: That is the question:
Whether ' tis nobly does suffer the crude fortune
suspension cable and the arrow in the brains,
or adopts the arm opposition trouble sea,
with finishes them by the opposition?
Death: Sleeps; Does not have;
And by the sleep said we end the heartache
and 1,000 natural vibrations, the flesh and blood
are the heir to, '
tis completes reverently is wish'd.
The death, sleeps; Sleeps:
Accidentally to vainly hoped for that,
Ay, has the friction;
Perhaps for is dying that sleep any dream
to come when we towed this to curl at the point of death,
had to give us to pause:
Has makes the disaster that longevity the respect;
Can bear the whip for who and despise the time,
oppressor's mistake, arrogant person's railing,
the love which despises, the legal detention,
the office arrogant severe pain and abandons
is unworthy achievement that patient merit,
when he perhaps his quietus does with bare bodkin?
Who meets the fardels burden,
dies loo the sound and sweats in the weary life,
but under that something dreading after death,
the undiscover'd country
does not have the traveller from bourn to come back,
the puzzled wish and causes us rather to bear
these is ill we to have the ratio to fly
to other person of us knew is not?
Thus the conscience is the coward we completely;
And resolution local color thus
is sicklied o'er and the idea pale cast,
and the great marrow enterprise and the moment
result in the deviation by theirs
tidal current rotation this respect, with loss motion name. -
Is soft now you! Fair 奧菲 Li Asia!
If the insect, possesses my sin remember'd in thy orisons.

So there!!

是, 或不是: 那是問題: 是否' tis 高尚在頭腦裡遭受粗暴的時運吊索和箭頭, 或採取胳膊反對麻煩海, 和由反對結束他們?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

What more can I say?

Quick Hi

Hi! It is about 25 minutes to 2 a.m. and I've learnt how to use that babelfish application by altavista to translate into Chinese, Portuguese etc. So here's my greeting in "Chinese, traditional":

喂! 我最後下床在25 分鐘到2 早晨。我感覺一直壓下和有很少值得說。但我愛你全部。Gledwood 。

Had to get out of bed to go to appointment this afternoon. Was late. Have another appointment tomorrow. Nothing doing at all. I have about ten minutes left to use this computer so can't say much now anyhow. Did find an interesting looking book to try reading. Something about an alcoholic living in North London. It was Booker-shortlisted in 2004 so I hope it's not too boring.

Sorry I am being really dull lately. There is so little life left in me. I am all run down. Tomorrow I will try & be lively! & bright! & entertaining!! Yes!!!!

Okay then!! See you tomorrow!!!

Gleds

Various Nothings

IS IT ANY SURPRISE I GET ILL AND DEPRESSED with books like the ones described to you earlier hanging around. Always unread, half-read, half-finished. Another lot of books I didn't mention is my bargain classics. I had a phase of going through the range ordering great literature of the past from the list ... yet not being able to finish it all.

HOW CAN I NOT HAVE MENTIONED the 2.3 inches of entertainment that kept talking all night? Yes it's a mini portable TV. But as I said before -- what's to watch on it??

SO HAVING PASSED THE NIGHT in coma-like sleep, I sleep some more not wanting to break off sleep ... why am I getting like that. By the time I was even half awake Loose Woman was on ITV. This is an interview show with five interviewers to one guest. Which might sound a lacklustre formula but nothing's further from the truth. One of the Loose Women looks like Mother H's friend Rebs, which always makes us laugh. Because Rebsie does not see this. And loathes and despises her own onscreen lookie-lykie..!

No, life's still drearily slow. What am I saying? I AM DREARILY SLOW-- so no change there then. No I can't move I'm wading through toffee. Treading water in treacle. (Or just treading treacle.) Drowning in honey. I feel so incredibly boring and dull. But hey I still managed to make a posting out of absolutely nothing at all. So that's good I suppose. And when it comes to books there's still Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment going unfinished, which I've read about two thirds of and think is brilliant. If heavy going. Then Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. (Extremely involved.) I made a dutiful stab at Hardy's Tess of the D'urvervilles but after the first hundred pages the tale gets woefully dull, as if the life has gone from the story and yet the teller is still contractually bound to furnish yet another 250 pages on top..!! So maybe I'll traipse up the bookshop later and put Sherlock Holmes on order. I didn't realize it was just £2 so that's a cheap addiction to my collection. Right I'm shutting up now.

Wish I Could Find a Good Book to Read...

Someone's dumped a K2-sized mound of romantic fiction at the drugs clinic. Books with titles like A Woman of Substance by BTB and Granny Dan by Danielle Steel. Granny Dan!! I mean ... who would call a book that?? Come on, Danielle!

Because all were free I took some away --well that is my excuse-- and have been in tormented attempts to stick with reading any of them ever since. Barbara Taylor Bradford is, I think the best writer of this bunch. Her paragraphs are quite nicely woven together. Danielle Steel ... well how the woman ever got into print, let alone managed to sell so many gerzillions of copies defeats me and is, I believe, a sad indictment upon the "literature"-reading public. Honestly. Too Much Too Soon by Jacqueline Briskin is about three sisters embroiled in a passionate tale of love, hatred and revenge. The severely 1980s cover is what attracted me here. I don't think any of these novels are going to get finished. At least not by me. The only book I discovered which I am sticking with is called The Lives of Danielle Steel; can't remember who it's by but it's a fascinating tale that makes me feel more confounded about who Danielle Steel actually is and what makes her tick than ever before. She seems the most peculiar mixture of character and experience. One aspect about her for which I have no sympathy: this woman has never been short of a dollar in her entire life. Has never scrimped and saved out of necessity. Has no idea whatsoever how it feels to be so broke you have to be pulled away from pizza slices hanging out of rubbish bins...

Having said that, she does understand personal tragedy. Had a "bipolar" son who died of drugs. Married four times. One wedding took place in prison. Another husband was a junkie. Can't remember anything about hubby number one (well I only dip through books like this, I never read them in order. I'm an enormously selective reader. Besides, I have all the attentionspan of a fruit fly.

Why am I hammering on about Danielle Steel. Of all people. My Mum likes her books. I can't stand them. The best writer of trash in my opinion is Jacqueline Susann. Valley of the Dolls. Now that is a schlockbusting masterpiece!!! The last novel I stuck with to the end was The Da Vinci Code. In mitigation may I submit to the jury that I was unaware upon purchasing this that it had just recently outsold Michael Jackson's Thriller. I did not realize it was a "phenomenon". I was just taken in by probably the same aspects everyone else was... the absurd mixture of high culture, gnostic thought and lowbrow action thriller. I love a good thriller. Usually I go for stuff by people like Harlan Coben, Stephen King, (actually James Herbert is better for horror, he doesn't rabbit on nearly as much). & so on. What was I gibbering on about? Oh yes The Da Vinci Code ... the last book I read. Well I am a heroin addict, so how else to you expect me to furnish my intellect??

In closing... what am I supposed to say? I watched some television this evening and got so rapidly bored. Such tripe, you wouldn't believe. The only good thing on was an enactment of a rape trial, with fly-on-wall filming of the (celebrity) jury. They used celebs not to be tacky, but so that, knowing a little of their private lives, we might have a headstart on their individual prejudices and points of view. Jeffrey Archer is there ... who has done prison time for perjuring a libel trial in which he won a half a million pounds back in the 1980s. Years later it turned out he had seriously perverted the course of justice ... Now Lord Archer always used to be a bombastic self-trumpeting bore. A member of parliament. A high-ranking Conservative politician. A businessman. And of course a "bestselling novelist". To his credit, he's produced some superbly crafted short stories, though his novels (excepting Kane and Abel) aren't really up to much ... He's quietened down considerably and actually struck me as quite a wise (or perhaps the word is "observant") man. Who clashed instantly with the intolerable bore of the group, womanbeating exfootballer Stan Collymore. Who wins my personal prize for "person I would least like to be seated next to at a dinner party" ...

Quite fascinating to see how the real life bias and prejudices of a group affect the dynamic of a jury ...

Well I'm fading fast here from fatigue because it is approaching 1am and beddybyes is calling me (yet again!!) so I'll love yer and leave y'all and see yers tomorrow. By the way:--Does any of this posting actually make sense??

Run-a-Day Monday

YES I SPENT ALL WEEKEND SULKING and in bed and not seeing the internet and not feeling well and sleeping the minute my back was turned to any activity. I did have ritual Sunday Lunch at Mother Hubbard's, but fell asleep on the corner of her bed after that ... then I fell awake for a great deal of Sunday night going into Monday morning ...

... why am I posting this boredom in such details? ...

Ah yes! I just saw my ten messages from wellwishing friends. I thank you all! Seriously. That was so nice of people troubling to get in touch ...

Now I'm here, hot alone. It's not a fever, but I wasn't well. This morning, felt like I had a stomach full of metal staples scrunching in on me around all that yellow bile. Aaaarrrrgggghkk!! I hate bodies. Hate bodily functions. Hate nonfuctional bodies. Hate functions full-stop. Just ... functioning ... is pain. Nicer to 4get about it. Do angels sit on the toilet? Serious question. How superior not to have the burden of a body ... a ray of sunlight ... a drop of golden sun ... a golden dream ... a dream forever onwards. "Thou shalt not surely die," said the Serpent to Eve I once read (reasonably) is the ultimate lie. That humankind has no immortal soul. That the divine in human is the image of God, in whose image we're all created. That no-one need worry about eternity, unless we qualify.

This is the Christian theory that I have heard: that goes against every other "inner divine" - religions are paths that converge at the mountaintop - we've all lived before and shall live again ... most typical theory. Speaking as one who's dabbled in Hinduism, Buddhism and Techno-Shamanic Paganism or "the New Age" as well as Christianity, have quite a variety of religious experiences under my belt ...

I don't know that I could otherwise deal with eternity. Let alone fully comprehend it ... I would have to qualify ...

Eternity. We all know it. It's all that infinity before we were born. Do you know such infinity very well? Because I don't ...

On that note I leave you ...

PS Anna Nicole Smith: polydrug addict not heroin addict. Ie she was an addict who took a little of everything and a lot of somethings. But essentially a mixture ... My apologies. Correction.

What a Nonday Saturday

YES. A DRAB & EMPTY DAY. Every time my fone rang with people tormenting me I sank deeper under the covers. Had to go out, absolutely had to, this afternoon. So got it over and done with and got immediately back to bed & back to my coma.

I am depressed & empty & lacking of everything. I don't feel well. The world is horrible & cold & dull. The only thing to make me "laugh" in the last 24 hours was my awakening at circa 4:50am with a mouse attempting a stealthy escape job from sleeve via the neck of my hoodie. Ha! Your claws are too sharp, Mousey. You're busted!!! --& the Mouse was very angry indeed. When I threw him back in the tank his nest kept flying repeatedly up in the air. I don't know what game he might have been playing except "burrow under the toilet tubes, through the glass to a Sesame Street of freedom" ... well, I don't know.

It is dark and late and all snow has gone. I've no veins playing ball 2nite so the "gear" had to go in my arse. (Intramuscularly - IM.) A highly perceptive (yet debatable) BBC documentary went out a couple of days ago -- and I meant to post about it then. "Should diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) be prescribed by the British State?" To me this story is a wind up. Do it or don't do it. A painfully small number of addicts are given injectable, prescribed heroin. They say this costs the State £10,000 a year. Surely this is not just the cost of the diamorphine. I know for a fact that poppy-farmers, if they're willing to have their crops surrounded by electric fences/etc and supply the pharmaceuticals industry get approximately one third of the price the Taliban would pay them. Well, that is what they moan to journalists from the BBC ...

Click this link and you should get into BBC "listen again": the programme name is The Investigation; you can then get the entire show played in real time (not a podcast) via your computer. If you want to hear it, don't delay. I'm not sure it'll be available past next Wednesday.

Take care folks. I'm off to shove my head back under the duvet...

PS Was Anna Nicole Smith taking x or y? Postmortem inconclusive. Okay, maybe she was not on heroin. But the lady was an addict. Of that I am sure ...

An Addict Dies ... Name: Anna Nicole Smith

ANNA NICOLE SMITH: Playboy model and Naked Gun 33&1/3 actress, billionaire's wife and reality TV star is dead.
In the cruel, judgemental world of Hollywood, even the (American) Star Magazine's editor admitted that Anna Nicole, busty, beautiful, very blonde and seemingly naive was truly a lost soul to the very end of her 39 years.

Entire forests of trees have been felled to tell the story from her rise from diner waitress to Playboy magazine model and sometime Hollywood actress. She looked set for life when, in 1994, she married the decrepit and wheelchair-bound 89 year-old Texan oil billionaire J Howard Marshall II. Smart move, girl! Who died a convenient one year later, leaving Anna Nicole in the throes of an ugly lawsuit over who should really inherit the dead man's billion dollar plus estate.

I might add here that in English law a man simply cannot do other than leave reasonable provision for his wife in his will. In fact, without a will his wife would, under ordinary circumstances, inherit everything. So I can't pretend to begin to understand the technicalities of Anna Nicole's legal battle with J Howard Marshall II's son. What I do know is that legal beagles had always said they expected Anna Nicole to win... If only she had lived long enough...

I have always thought (and this is my sincere opinion) that if an old man (and, let's be realistic, he would have to be rich for this ever to happen) meets a beautiful young girl who is willing to be his wife, trophy and constant companion throughout his twilight years, freindly, uncomplaining and a true friend even if the marriage is not based on "love" or "passion" as we normally understand them... and if both parties enter such an arrangement willingly (and obviously knowing the young girl has half an eye at least on his will) ... then good luck to them! Why shouldn't a pretty girl make an old man happy? Why not?? None of us know the ins and outs of the Marshall-Smith marriage. Although the fact that he did not leave her his fortune in a watertight will suggests the "dynamics" of their relationship may be a little more complicated than we first imagine...

Anna Nicole had two children by different fathers. A son, who died a year ago of a reported methadone overdose and a daughter, whose paternity was being contested ...

Methadone... that brings us to the crux of the Anna Nicole story. The woman was an addict! Let's be frank here. A self-confessed 100-pill a day painkiller & tranquillizer popper, who had methadone lying around her house in unlabelled bottles, one of which killed her late son a year before she went ... what else can I say? Nobody dabbles with methadone, at least not for any length of time, unless that person is a heroin addict. Yes, folks. Anna Nicole Smith, blonde, beautiful, immaculately groomed (most of the time) and hardly the sharpest tool in the box ... was a heroin addict.

Surely we have all seen clips of her trolleyed out of her head, singing songs through limousine windows to a press corps who did all they could not to laugh in her face so as not to spoil such fabulous shots.

Yes, at the end of the day, Anna Nicole, for all her white-trash glamorous life-&-death is really one of an innumerable rollcall of the insulted and the injured, the battered and abused, downtrodden, misunderstood, disadvantaged. The misfits and don't fits of the world. She was like every other pill-popper, drinker, crackhead and junkie in the world. She was an addict plain and simple. Maybe her death was not inevitable, but in hindsight there seems precious little choice of other way for her to bow out. So ...

Goodbye Anna Nicole and Goodnight. May you rest in peace at last ...

Singapore & Portuguese Popularity

LEAFING THROUGH MY "TRAFFIC REPORT" containing sheaves of highly irrelevant statistics, I was struck by one singular fact. That, judging by the language by which my readers browse to my blog, the figures are as follows: English 82% of course. CHINESE 6%. PORTUGUESE 5%. Norwegian, Dutch, Italian, French, Estonian, Spanish & Catalan 1% each.... just thought I'd share that with you. GLEDWOOD IS POPULAR IN CHINA!!! & BRAZIL!!! Woo-hoo.

[No actually, I just checked more closely & the Chinese speakers seem to come from Singapore/Malaysia ...]

Well that's what the traffic report says. I don't know who any of these people are ... because they never leave comments !! grrr...

Competition Winner!!

YES WE HAVE A LUCKY WINNER!!!

TO THE "GUESS THE STARSIGN" HORRORSCOPE QUIZ.... THE FANTABULOUS MYSTERY PRIZE GOES TO .....


SANDY!!!!!

From Missouri in the Grand Old U.S. of A!!!

Who correctly guessed that the Star Sign in Question was....

P I S C E S ! ! ! !

TA-DAAAAAAA!!!

Snow!

I WOKE UP TO A WHITE & SILENT WORLD. Fabulous flakes of snow were spiralling, thick in the air, like with the feathers of a million doves. Snow was everywhere. All around the beercan on our back roof. And right across every back garden, back lawn, back fence. Giving way only to black pits and ditches and lines and scratches of the reality lurking beneath.

Now the snow is wet and slushy. The cars swoosh past on watery grit. Well we had magic for a couple of hours and it's swiftly dying. Life is like that. It always is ...

PS Can't tell you how sorely tempted I was to get overpoetic and write "I woke up into a white & silent world this morn"... I thought that would make y'all "LOL", that's all ...

PPS I'm sorting through the competition answers this evening London time so there's still time to get your amazing perceptive wisdom into the contest!!!

OK I'm sure I had a quadrillion other things to say but they escape me so I'm orf ... till L8R my friends ....

Tony Blair Opinions

I WAS GOING TO DELETE THIS POST. BUT HEY, I WAS STUCK FOR SOMETHING TO SAY 2NITE ...

I HAVE SUCH AN INCREDIBLY ITCHY SAW THROTE ... actually is anyone interested ... And I don't go to doctors because anyone who goes to a doctor with a common cold is utterly wasting the poor overstretched man or woman's time. The only reason to go to a doctor with a common (uncomplicated) complaint and I'm assuming you don't have HIV or something.. would be to attain a sicknote. I had to do that at college bc I had the diarrhoea so bad I couldn't risk getting the tube ... honestly everything has to be double-confirmed on computer, on paper, on swipecard, by email, trailed outta the side of an aeroplane these days. In Tony Blair's Britain no-one can take anything at face value.

Do you know I was so happy the day Tony Blair got into power. It's not like America here. The general election is one day. Results come out that night. By next morning we have a new Prime Minister. (Well we will next time!!) And I think it's so presumptuous of Gordon Brown not even wanting to wait to get elected. I've a horrible feeling the Tories are getting in next time - yes, back to them again.

Anyhow I was thinking back to the past 9 years of 'New' Labour rule and what have they achieved. Nothing. Even less than Margaret Thatcher did. And I hardly agreed with everything she did, but somehow by the end of her reign - innumberable f-ups aside - Britain did appear to be a more advanced, less red-tape tangled country than at the beginning. Tony Blair has achieved the exact opposite. Nothing can be done in Blair's Britain that is not logged, filmed and biologically monitored.

Dismarmingly candid as he appears to be, the man is a failure of a statesman. George Bush's lapdog. Someone ought to chuck a stick in a deep, aligator-ridden pond at Camp David next time Blair's over (because I notice he always comes to Bush, or allows Condoleeza to be sent over in Bush's place. I wouldn't tolerate such insults. Bush can come here because he owes us about 500 personal visits just to make up that little deficit. I was going to say because we are superior but hey ... ..!

... Anyway... That's my opinion on that business... Anyhow, next time Blair's over Camp David someone ought to chuck a big stick in that damn alligator-ridden pond out there.

And just like any obedient lap-dog, Tony Blair will splosh in the water after it...

Hopefully never to be seen again ...

Whose Horror-Scope??

FOUND SOME WORLDLY WISDOM ON MY DAILY TRAWLS. THIS IS FROM TODAY'S HORRORSCOPE.

A MYSTERY FREE GIFT is on offer (+ shipping and handling) to THE FIRST PERSON WHO CAN TELL ME TO WHAT STAR-SIGN THE FOLLOWING ADVICE RELATES ...

Before I give the quote, let me explain. A favourite wind-up on my female friends (they're the only ones who wanted their "stars" read out) was, on being asked for this service ... to read out a random wrong sign and look on amusedly as they clucked and cooed over such spot-on celestial advice...

The following is taken verbatim from one star sign from one source. Not a word has been added or left out. If you can accurately guess to which sign this advice relates, a wonderful free gift could be yours ...

So get guessing:-------

WHAT STAR-SIGN IS THIS FOR??

A long drawn-out argument is on offer if you want it. When it becomes obvious someone has missed a point, you can chose to explain in detail why this is so. Alternatively, you can choose to let them believe they know more about something than you and enjoy a peaceful evening otherwise. One option invites stress. The other doesn't. The choice is yours.


(Cross my Heart: this is verbatim ...)

Answers in the Commentary Box, please ...

ps in the event of two correct answers being received, a tie-breaker question shall be imposed to tell me the funniest joke... (or something like that) ...

Tuesday's Child Has Far To Go

THAT'S THE RIGHT EXPRESSION, ISN'T IT? I'm not functioning today. Other than posting my mouse tale of last night and completing a few chores too dull to recount I barely slept more than four hours last night (oh, the sacrifice!!:--)so sleep comes stealing back at every opportunity. The day is miserably cold. I keep forgetting I caught cold last weekend. Is this an excuse to lounge around in bed? It's hardly as if an excuse were needed. The common cold cleans out the system and gives a boost. Interferon levels peak and soar. The immune system is polished and sparkling. A few of the old cobwebs have been blasted away (by all that coughing, I'd guess ...) Well that's the supposed theory.

But I just want to sleep all the time...

Manic Mouse

MOUSEY, MY CHINESE HAMSTER misbehaved severely last night. I call him Mousey because he does resemble a mouse but with no proper tail to speak of and a black stripe down the back (it's a go-faster stripe, and it works!) and he does have cheek pouches, although he barely ever seems to use them. So technically he is a hamster. And he comes from China. And he has balls the size of brazil nuts. Mother Hubbard says no wonder the little mite spends such long hours sleeping; it's surely the fatigue of having to drag them everywhere he scuttles ...

Mousey is very tame. When I poke him out of whichever one of five nests he's dozing in at that moment he pulls a dishevelled "oh please don't torment me by making me play," face. Introduced to my cuff he crawls gratefully up my sleeve where he settles down for yet more sleep.

So Mouse is asleep. It is three a.m. Before very long, I am asleep. Then Mousey picks his moment to wake up. Then I wake up and catch elongated Mouse about to drop from sleeve. Mouse, to the best of his formidable acting powers pretends not to be gutted at being thwarted. Bides his time. Eventually does catch me truly unconscious and runs away ...

I wake up and gaah! The swine has escaped. Not to worry; this has happened a million times. Usually I just wait ten minutes and catch him darting about my Axminster-stylee hearthrug playing Furry Scalectrix. Not last night, though. The swine was nowhere to be found. After an hour I was despairing. I kept hearing faint mouse-type of noises, though I could never pin them down... And when I did eventually find him, guess where he was? Sleeping, he'd burrowed between the mountains of my multitudinous pillows and hollowed out an Arabian Nights-style mouse-nest there. The kind of nest a mouse must squeak: "Open sesame!" to get into. When I picked him out and bunged him back in his drab old cotton wool fishtank nest he was absolutely gutted. That is where he is going to have to stay from now on: I can't stand the stress of wild Chinese animals running free any more ...

What I Know About Turkey Producer Bernard Matthews

Well that was a ramble (below) wasn't it. My migraine story ..! Well it IS true ...
On my old blog there was a facility I never managed to install (due to chronic lack of html instructions) called Poll Gear. I set up my poll. Got the colour scheme right. It resembled vaguely a set of traffic lights with push-button voting and the query went like this: Lindsay Lohan -- actress or ho? If anyone knows where I can import a "poll" from I'd be most interested. I didn't have anything like the same html worries here as on the last blog. It was really simple ...
Thanks for all the paperclip advice re "insert link": I think I've just found the right button. Not the paperclip I imagined I remembered, but hey: okay, if you want to see Ruth's blog or Deb's, the correct links should be here, so get clicking away!! I can't believe it's so easy. I believe I"m on the "new" blogger. But what's oldfashioned to me is that I'm typing in practically html code; ie if I want to embolden, literal spiky brackets appear in my version of the text with the word "strong" in them. Don't know if it'll let me say that either without strengthening the type also ...
Can I alter the type face and size mid-posting? On my old one I had the choice of about 20 faces and every size from 8 point to 34++ was readily available to me .... oh the good old days of waiting 20 minutes staring at that egg timer every time I wanted to just alter a single comma. The good old days of absolutely no idea how many visitors my site got. It wasn't till I moved over to blogger that it was confirmed, I get the same number of hits as all my friends (which obviously stands to reason as we're reading one another's blogs) and I can now post something without having to budget ten minutes' egg-timer time ...
News, anyone? Upwards of 150,000 turkeys have been slaughtered at that Bernard Matthews poultry farm in Suffolk. And yes it is slightly disturbingly near Ruth's neck of the woods. I used to know someone who worked in one of Bernard Matthews' 57 farms, scattered across Norfolk and Suffolk. Now Bernard Matthews, y'all need to know, always appeared in his own advertising, assuring us in his Norfolk patois that his product was "bootiful". To me, to be honest he makes the same Christmas turkeys as anyone else but the Bernard Matthews name marks a price premium ... Anyhow, as I was saying, I knew this guy (a troubled soul, like so many of my old friends) who had worked on one of Bernard Matthews's turkey farms. The labour conditions were dreadful. These poor turkeys lived their entire lives in huge darkened sheds, air thick with feathers ... utter claustrophobia ... Several jobs were available from caring for the live birds to slaughtering, cleaning and packing them. Killing the birds earnt you a premium wage as not many people could stand slaughtering the poor little chooks day in day out with an electronic stun-gun. Anyhow, this guy's job was to grab the dead birds and hang them by the feet on hooks. Eventually, from the constant restricted movements repetitive strain type injuries developed in the hands. And scratches from the birds' claws became infected with salmonella... leading to horrifically deformed knuckles on both his hands. Also tis guy had a nasty habit of losing his temper and punching various unknown members of the public, which never helped them to heal.
They put a turkey shed on the radio before Christmas. The little birdies make noises like a crowd of people and every so often literally make the noise of a crowd bursting into laughter and applause. It was quite fantastic. Turkeys are quite gentle birds. It's a shame they are forced to live their short lives under such squalid over-crowded conditions. I've heard that sometimes (not necessarily at Bernard Matthews' farms)that they have their beaks clipped so they can't even peck at each other. Which is a normal part of their behaviour.
The bird flu must have gone through that shed like proverbial Wildfire. By midday yesterday at least 60,000 birds had been culled at this flu-ridden farm. By the end of the day, all 160,000 were dead. Gassed by this special culling-gas. I think it's awfully sad.
Avian influenza, contrary to certain comments I have overheard does not affect British garden songbirds like robins, bluetits, larks and thrushes. It only affects ducks, chickens, geese, swans and turkeys - the type of birds we coincidentally like to eat... One wild swan was found a year or so ago believed to have died from bird flu. But the current outbreak is really Britain's first major skirmish with the virus. Most worryingly it is indeed the most deadly H5N1 strain that can pass from bird to human with fatal consequences.
No strain of the flu has yet developed that can pass from human to human. When that happens - and let's hope it never does - we'll have the so-called pandemic on our hands ...

Mopeful Monday: Common Cold

IT'S NOT LONG AFTER 8PM, yet it feels incredibly late and glary. This monitor is demi-migraining me out with its flickeriness & pixxelated psychic zigzzagging ... yes I am prone to migraines in the so-called "classical" format which nonsufferers find so bizarre & difficult to comprehend. Far from being a mere headache, classical migraine kicks off with an "aura" that involves disrupted eyesight (typically, something similar to the visual sensation you experiences when someone lets off a camera flash at you in gloomy ambience and the dazzle refuses to shift for a few minutes). Mentally you tend to feel vague. You can go numb (often down one side). Some people have even got temporarily paralysed. Nausea hits. Vomiting is common. And all this from a medical condition that probably qualifies as "most used excuse to justify time off from work of all time..."

Once I was sat on a chair minding my own business at my friend's house, got up from the chair. Blood rushed out of my head. Too quickly, as it turns out. Something resembling a spangly-flish-flashing curtain had instantaneously been pulled across literally 80% if not 90% of my field of vision. I was totally blind in one eye, nearly all blind in the other. The only sight I had left was a strip down the right hand side. It was like when digital television messes up. My vision had all gone except for this one neat remaining strip. Literally I was BLIND.

Told my best mate what had happened. I wasn't panicking, so much as utterly bemused. He told me to "look" straight ahead (not that anything was there to see) keeping my eyes wide open. Next thing I felt was something in my eye. I'm irritated to recall this as this was so typical of him. He had to test me, didn't he? Had to disbelieve and doubt. And he'd poked his finger right in my eye.

What else can I say about this? Except that most people would perhaps have smacked him one in his eye. I was used to contact lenses, so his finger didn't perhaps bother me as badly it might someone who wasn't used to fingers going in their eye. And there aren't really nerves on the eyeball, so it didn't hurt either. But what an imposition! What a cheek!! Thinking back I'm still irritated with him. That action was so typical of the guy. But on the other hand I'm glad that my outrageously extreme migraine story does at least have one person who can vouch that I did go blind, it was true ... Anyhow, migraine continued:--

Then I got a headache so bad that no tablets at all would touch it. Migraine headache tends to be focused on one point in the head, like being stabbed by a knitting needle. And any movement of the head, like walking or even just turning the head perhaps is agony ... This went on for three days. Eventually the doctor gave me something mysterious in the form of anti-inflamatory injection. He may as well have injected water. But the migraine eventually faded.

So that's my three-day migraine story. And BTW I pronounce it my-graine. I've noticed that mee-graine is more often used by people imploring time off work, by selfish people and liars. E.g. Penelope Keith said "mee-graine" in To the Manor Born ...

As for today, my methadone sickness has turned out to be a common cold ... so I was sneezing for a reason last night in my multiple six-eight-ten sneezes sessions. Diarrhoea is going (aren't you all delighted for that titbit!!). And no, I do not have bird flu!!!

Before I sign off, let me trawl my mind for possible incursions into sanity ... (why did I say that? My cousciousness, fresh as a mountain stream? Or a polluted industrial effluence discourse...? O wot does this mean?

It means, Gleds, that you've nothing to say and should really have signed off two paragraphs ago! Okay. I just want to say hi to all the people I met while blog-hopping earlier on. There were loads of them. I've a notebook full of urls, and some of the best have gone in my links already. One thing the internet has shown me truly and well: that there is talent spread out among the general population that is genuinely amazing. The blogworld has its writers, photographers, designers, artists, pundits who are just as good as their paid and paper-published counterparts... if not far better.

So the days of that head-up-the-anus breed of newspaper columnist, in my view, are well and truly numbered. Us bloggers do the self-same job just as well-- and for free-!!