Basketball of Birdseed

I WENT TO THE SNOTTY WOMAN'S FISH SHOP where she sells hamster food, cat biscuits, some exotic aquatics plus the famous "wild bird"... thanks to stingifying their sales procedures they refused to sell me any pack of wild birdseed smaller than a basketball literal carrierbag full. This was highly inconvenient. I've been carting it about with me everywhere.

Went to my weekly drugs clinic. Phoned my creditors yet again. They keep trying to squeeze arrangements out of me. I will not be rushed or intimidated into paying instalments I won't be able to keep going. I've enough experience of defaulting on debts for two lifetimes....

Eventually my worker saw me with this enormous weighed-down bag of stuff and said "what on earth is that?!"

I said, "O I've got some dwarf gremlin things" (the name 'roborovski' escaped me that moment) "that eat birdseed and this is what I had to buy them."

"What? All that?!" said my worker. "Anyone would think you were keepin' pet dairy cows in your room!"

And all the scuzzy junkies in the waiting room looked like they were trying not to laugh.

Just cos they don't have entertaining gremlins in their homes... jealous. As my Mum would have said. When I was at primary school...

Would you like to see an electronic Christmas card? It's really funny. The name of the tune, by the way, is Pachabel's Canon.

Righto, I know that wasn't much of a post but I've got fried chicken getting cold and I gotta go I'm starving!!

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Videos of the Day
Siberian Tiger
Totem Animals (I'm not into new-agey hippie **** anymore, but this is quite a nice film...)

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Wow the gremlins loved their wild bird! Got out of bed, all 3 of them and went nuts for it!!

Fresh seeds, you see.... they really don't appreciate stale old air-stale stuff...

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Here's a train journey I'd really like to go on. New York to Chicago, then Chicago to Los Angeles on deluxe $1600 train (at "only £800" per person that's ... what am I saying? That's still really expensive!!) I'd love to go New York to LA by train. And it has to be in "pioneer direction", the climate steadily getting more and more exotic as you trundle from Chicago cross cowboy and Indian land to LA..!

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Did I tell you I once travelled West Wales to Marakesh* by train (and 2 boats, obviously!) By Interrail (Eurail) pass. That took over three days nonstop travel. I remember being in Paris Austerlitz (pretty sure it was that one) asking the platform attendant "where does the train to Spain leave from tonight" and him rolling his eyes: "oo! la-la! The train to Spain!"

*Moroccan rail isn't included on the Interrail scheme any more. Travel is so cheap there I'm sure you can go Tangier-Marakesh for $20*. What Interrail/Eurail have done, however is scrap the former age-limit (it used to be under 26s only) and you can now get all the way to Turkey... wow! Imagine taking the train to Iran! (Bet the frontier is closed. I tried to get into Algeria but it was impossible. The tracks had been torn up for nearly 10 miles from Oujda to the border. Plus Algeria was in upheaval (which only attracted me more, to be frank - now young and naive I was then!)

(Interrail is for Europeans; Eurail is for Americans: it's exactly the same thing but you need to buy the ticket in your home country. Don't just come to Europe and expect to get a pass, you'll run into redtape!)

*Correction: it's 190 dirham* second class... o! I'm making myself too nostalgic now. I got the whiff of Arabic cigarettes up my nose and the wailing of the 6am call to prayer resounding in my ears just thinking about it...

*One Moroccan dirham = US 12 cents.

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Kern Family Blog http://kernfamily3.blogspot.com
Some really funny pixx of kids in bear suits.

Bangers and a Mashed Up Day

SOMETHING IS UP.

I can feel it in my cyder... I don't know what, but I'm sure it is.

Laundretta asked me if I'd seen Evilstein the landlord's Manager.

"No," I said. "Should I have?"

She stared blankly for a while then said, "O, no... doesn't matter..."

Shortly afterwards after my two minute bath (trust me if you'd seen our bath you wouldn't want to spend more than two minutes in there either(!) No plug even. You have to stuff it up with toilet paper (Laundretta's method that gets pink, porridgey bits everywhere) or dirty old socks (my method: kills two birds with one stone; sock comes out cleaner too (well after a bit of brownwater squishing etc.etc.)

As I said yesterday I cleaned my robbies. As I didn't say: I somehow got half a bagful of their dirty sawdust all over my floor. Honestly it's getting so scruffy in there it's almost like living in a barn.

With which point in mind I troubled to clear everything out with 20 new heavy duty refuse sacks at about midday.

At some point there was a giant commotion. I heard Evilstein taking my name repeatedly in vain. I dared not venture downstairs to find out what it was all about.

Turned out later one of my dealers had decided to call "on spec" and run into the evilness of the fierce Cypriot! (Yes, Evilstein stomps around shouting in Greek... I once had to ask Valium Marilyn "why does he keep yelling 'taxi'?" "O! Darlin' that's not taxi that's endaksi - it means OK in Greek!"

I had gorgeous bangers and mash for "tea" last night.

Just in case you can't cook here's the recipe:

BANGERS AND MASH.

Ingredients:
Beef sausages (pork if you really can countenance chewing dead swines' flesh - ugkh!)
New potatoes
Red onion
Butter
Gravy granules.

Peel and chop potatoes. Not everyone seems to do the second stage; but chopping significantly speeds up cooking time plus reduces your snotty middle-class "carbon footprint" (well only the snotty bourgeoisie seem to prattle on about such "issues" on the radio so I assume only middleclass people have such snotty "footprints" ... well whatever back to the cooking.

Potatoes take about 20 minutes to boil. Test with a fork: if it goes in easily, they're ready to mash.

When the potatoes are about 5 minutes to go, smear butter in a frying pan and fry up sausages for about 8 minutes on a fairly high heat, turning frequently.

When they're nearly done, add about half a medium size chopped red onion per person (red looks better but otherwise it really makes no difference). Traditionally you would fry till really tender (not crisp) and add to the gravy. I prefer to add it to my mash, I think it goes better; but it's up to you... Adding paprika to the oil will make your onion mix yummily red and piquant. Adding a tiny pinch of extra-hot chili spices it up yet more. Woo!

Then drain the potatoes. Mash. Add a bit of butter and black pepper. Adding more butter plus a little splash of milk will make them creamier, but frankly I prefer them "au naturel". They are, after all gonna get doused in gravy. Mash in the fried onions plus some of their oil (if desired) with fork.

(STOP PRESS: I advised to fry onions in with the sausages. Actually, unless you positively enjoy the slightly cloying taste of beef fat in your onions (or worse, snotty runny gyuckinous lard from pork sausages) don't do it that way round. Fry the onions first in a bit of butter (and spices if desired). Turf them out into a plate. Keep warm, but don't worry if they cool too much: the hot saussies + gravy will heat 'em up again. Then fry sausages in the pan.)

Boil up a small amount of the potato water if you still have it (think of global resources!) or just fresh water. Read gravy instructions. Make it with about half as much granules more than instructions say: then you'll get a really thick mixture as shown on the "serving suggestion". There's nothing worse than over-watery gravy! If you want to be pretentious you can add a small pinch of mixed herbs to your gravy, but frankly I don't bother. It jarrs against the cheap industrial-ness of the sausages and mash.

Now slap mashed potatoes in boat shape on plate. Pyoing sausages on top. Scoop out a kind of hollow with fork. Fill this into a lake of gravy.... yum yum yummee!

I'm going to start making my mega stews again. I did post the recipe some months ago. Merle, Liz and Ruth in particular will remember my home-made dumplings escapades....

Righty ho I have to go I'm hungry now..!

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Tune of the Day:
Suzanne Vega Medley: Cracking - Ironbound - Fancy Poultry etc...

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Blogs of the Day
Creative Thinking Class http://creativethinkingclass.blogspot.com
Actually, the text is in Chinese, but it's the pictures I've nominated it for. Amazing surreal moonshots... plus did you know 意見 is "comment" in Chinese?

Proctor Family Blog http://proctorfamily4.blogspot.com
Amazingly clear family photos from golden American shores...

Furniture and Luxury Design
http://sumpit-home-design.blogspot.com
Includes free design ebooks!

Joel Pilcher Art and Design
http://joelpilcher.blogspot.com
Amazing atmospheric stag "sketch" (though "sketch" is hardly the word...)

Some folks have taken the humble craft of pumpkin-carving into the realms of high art....
Have a look at this!
The Koenigs' Home Blog: http://cindykoenig.blogspot.com

Have you ever wanted to learn to draw? Yet just wished someone who really knew how had the patience to explain the procedure step-by-step?
Try this blog then:
MCSM Studio of Art http://mcsmstudioart.blogspot.com

Genaro
http://genaro484.blogspot.com
The "ickle boy" pixx are really entertaining and cute...

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How's this for an amazing caterpillar picture?
Originates from Khairilfa http://khairilfa.blogspot.com

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Hey! Just bought intellectual mint hot chocolate from Iceland - highly extravagant: £1.50 for eight 1oz sachets; that's about twice as expensive as vulgar non-minty but it's getting dark by 5pm now so hey...

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Another British thing with sausages is Toad in the Hole (click for Delia Smith's uber-recipe). Basically the sausages are embedded in this yummy spongey stuff that is always called "batter" though it's not how I'd think of batter. Surely batter is ordinarily fried? This is raised up in the oven... and unlike the over-stodgy fish and chips, say, it's quite a nice recipe, if you wanted to make something British but a bit unusual...

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Sad news: Guardian newspaper columnist Dina Rabinovitch has lost her fight against breast cancer.
You can click for her obituary
Click for her blog.

My Mum had stage 2 breast cancer last year. (Stage 4 is the worst.) Thank God she was OK...

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And lastly: hear this for some of the entertainingest radio comedy I've heard in a long time. It's a spoof phone-in Down the Line. Click the "listen again" option and the entire show shall be piped luxuriously through your personal computer...

PS If you want a way of piping BBC Radio through your computer yet their website not getting in the way of anything else you might want to look at (and it really doesn't this way, it vanishes all together; only the sound remains faithful). This is how you do it.

Bring up a page you want to read - like this one.

Scroll down the right sidebar for my personal Google search box. You need to bring up the radio after whatever else you want to look at; otherwise it doesn't work... Into that search box type in "down line radio 4" - you'll get straight to the link. Click on "listen again"; adjust volume. Then go to the top righthandside of that window and click "minimize" - the window shall vanish; the sound does not.

You can get the full range of Radio 4 or World Service spoken-word programming by Googling "radio 4 listen again" or "world service listen again" and pick and chose as you please.

Another thing you can do is Google "radio 4" or "bbc world service" (or bbc anything else you might want) - then you can select "listen live" and do as above... and have the positive luxury of quality BBC sounds direct to your PC wherever you may be....

Once you've got the BBC up and running and minimized you can just browse as normal wherever you please: blogs, websites, wherever and it just runs on regardless. Wahey!!

Mercifully Short (Trainride)

THIS WILL BE A SHORT POST.

I'm too exhausted!

Couldn't sleep in the night; was writing memoirs instead. What's slightly depressing is that I know they're going to require quite a lot of hacking around afterwards. And that's not so easy to do when your own life is the story; know what I mean?

I've found two bizarre "nature's gladiators" videos today:
House Cat vs Scorpion
and, don't watch this second one if you're creeped out by crawlies:
Centipede vs Tarantula and Bat (!!)

Mother Hubbs and I were talking earlier about travel and how nice it is to get around and I was bewailing how smallminded and crap the people are who run Britain and British things. Look we have a Channel (rail) Tunnel so why no night trains direct to Venice? Madrid and Malaga? Vienna? Moscow even? Imagine the glamour of going to bed at 11pm just outside St Pancreas station, London and waking at 11am (you gotta get 12 hours' sleep just like me!) whizzing through the mysterious judderman-filled birchforests on your approach to Moscow! (They could call it The Mafia Train..!) If you do want to travel London to Europe you must change mostly at Brussels. Here's the link.

Peter Day did a Global Business radio programme for the BBC about European highspeed rail links and every other country's seemed to be better than ours. France, Italy, every other comparible country has highspeed links... and yet our only truly highspeed line is the one going to Belgium and France!! (Yeah: some say that's because us Brits are in such a hurry to get out of this ****hole!) Also he said in Germany they have a no-reservations system. You just jump on. Reservations are the bane of post-privatization rail in this country. O yes, you can still jump on a train - if you want to pay $200 from London to Manchester one-way! The operators know fully well their customers would prefer not to reserve. But make the system complicated to justify squeezing extra cash out of people who merely want the basic privilege of hopping on and off at will... surely that is the whole advantage of trains over aeroplanes...Knowing you have to be at the station for one specifically reserved "service" and must decide precisely when you want to travel back even though you may not have laid plans for two weeks later... surely defeats half the object...~??

OK, rant over. I don't know why I should be so het up about a form of transport I barely ever get to use these days... it just riles me when things are crap. Especially moneygrabbing + crap: the worst combination... Ever since I was a tiny tot I've loved taking the train. The lulling motion. The smooth ride. The speed. (Well.. not really in this country..!) The way you get to see the back of things... yeah man Railways Rule.

Now! I have to go and clean out the gremlins. Their domain is covered in seed husks and dry chicken bones and I've about 110 clean new tubes for them...

Alors!
A bientot!
(as we say on Eurostar...)

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Blog of the Day:
Beijing to Paris by Motorbike! http://beijing2paris.blogspot.com

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Right now I really am off.
I just went round Sainsbury's for beef sausages and gravy and the local shop for potatoes and onions. I'm off to make bangers and mash! (Yeah!)

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Right: 10 minutes to 10 at night.
I made the loveliest bangers and mash (that's sausages + mash potato in gravy to all ye outlanders there)... yum-yumm-yummie!

My tubby furries are all white-shavingsed and clean. They were pinging about like mad earlier as they don't recognize their home by the scent-markings any more. However I kept all their old "furniture" like the Maltesers tube and the (newly-buttered) wheel and the "granary" box which is a little square cardboard box, holes cut in bottom and top corners, stuffed with hamster bedding, that they themselves have filled up with wild birdseed; and they sleep in it on cold nights, too...

(I've always found hamster etiquette so entertaining. Last night Spherical came out of one of the tubes and fell asleep again blocking the way to the wheel. So Baby, who was having an ultra-hyper episode kept rambling right over Spherical's head, onto the wheel, got bored, got off, pinged through the tube, clambered right over Spherical all over again, repeated said exercise. And all the while Spherical barely stirred, thinking "oh that silly little girl's been dancing on my head again, no wonder I feel a bit funny..." (!)

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Halloween Blog of the Day
Kay's Thinking Cap: Halloween Gone Wild! http://kaysthinkingcap.blogspot.com/2007/09/its-great.html

PS: talking of bloggers, surely I'm not the only one out there who thinks Hootin' Anni looks like Neighbours' Mrs Mangle...(??!)

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Here's a link for luxury train journeys 'cross America. It was a highspeed version of something like this I believe we ought to have pinging 'tween London and Istanbul, Moscow, Madrid, Rome etc etc

Something So Strong Sunday

BABY ITCHY'S FULLY RECOVERED FROM HER "towerblock tumble" ordeal... how did she get to fall 150 "feet" onto her side? By itchily jumping off my arm as she rambled around... I don't know what I would have done if she'd done herself any real injury...

My video of the day is one of my favourite all time songs: Labbi Siffre's Something Inside So Strong. The video you see is a politicalized Palestine-Israeli home-made version, but that's quite good too. (The soundtrack is the original chart single...)

Well I'm off to Mother Hubbs's for Sunday dinner... it's a rainy autumnal afternoon... last night, so I hear, the clocks went back, which was odd, because even though I presently own nothing with a clock in it I still felt the difference...

For some reason I have real itchy feet... no! Not literally in the athelete's foot sense; I mean "desirous of travelling" itchiness of the feet. Even when I compared Baby Itchy's elongated bum to a Eurostar train and briefly linked that word to the official Eurostar site I discovered it is now possible to take the special direct December Ski Train from London St Pancreas International (St Pancreas= patron saint of diabetics (!)~and if you believe that you'll believe anything!) you can travel direct from London to high in the French alps by 200mph train... a journey of some seven-&-a-bit hours, but how much more glamorous than flying!!

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Don't forget the Sunday papers! Get your free copy of News of the World by clicking here!


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And here are some amazing gurgling baby shots!
http://leanne-brischetto.blogspot.com

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7:15pm I'M BACK!¬
Had a charming afternoon smoking lots of cigarettes and watching glowing colour television in the warm. I showed Mother Hubbs my Chinese Boy Rides Giant Beluga Whale video; she said it made her day.
She made gorgeous dinner, with perfect mash potatoes. Dry style. That is not creamy, with just a bit of milk-&-butter. Yum yum YUMMM!
I watched back-to-back nature docus until Mr Dodge came back roaring drunk (but friendly) and I thought I had better give them some space.
The best prog on was called Reef Gypsies, about the world-class Diver Tanya Streeter (she is very pretty!) who travels the world swimming like a mermaid amongst the exotic reef-fishies of the world... amazing stuff...

...2nd Video of the day
Top Wild Dives With Tanya Streeter

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NEWSFLASH:
Ladies! Crap early 80s hair's coming back in fashion.
Yes! Footballer Wayne Rooney's squeeze Colleen McLoughlin was pictured with a dreadful super-bouffant this weekend. (Scroll down past Posh Spice for the hilarious picture...)

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Remember the other day in my Sun news roundup I mentioned a "rude" recruitment poster for Hampshire Police on the back of a bus? Well I've now found it. No wonder the lady constable is smiling, I said. Just have a look at the "unintentionally" strategic positioning of that exhaust-pipe!

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Space-age architecture; rude shop windows
http://pulsardaqui.blogspot.com for great pixx of Toronto...

Art and Science
http://art-science-definition.blogspot.com
What is the difference between art and science?

Travel Blog of the Day:
Travel Blog of an Indian Backpacker http://backpakker.blogspot.com
Amazing Vatican Basilica shots...

Most Striking Visuals of the Day
Lone Stidsen http://stidsen.blogspot.com
Top design from Denmark...

Do you celebrate the devil's own festival, Halloween?!?
If so you'll want a handy recipe for what to do with the insides of all those pumpkins you'll be hollowing out.
Chef Jules at Gourmet a Go Go http://gourmetago-go.blogspot.com
has a brilliant one. Second down from the top...

Fantastic home interiors!
http://medinasinbolivia.blogspot.com
This is how I want my interiors done after my multi-million-pound memoirs advance!
(You need to be a multimillionaire just to buy a house in London these days...)

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Have a look at my most recent blog visitors!
See them scattered in a bright band across the world...
(The shadow depicts where it is currently night.)

Best Chunky Necklace-Making Blog of the Day
Bead-guiling Designs http://beadguilingdesigns.blogspot.com
Wonderfully baroque stuff!

Ordinary yet slightly bizarre link of the day:
Gilles Paulve http://gpaulve.blogspot.com
Rather banal pictures of French people eating outside... led to me making "diaree blanc" comments... dunno why
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I'm reading a fantastic book Return to the Marshes by Gavin Young (sadly that clicklink is his obituary from 1991). A comprehensive history of the Iraqi Marsh Arabs from ancient times to the present... sheer poetry - in all the best ways...

More info on the Marsh Arabs' longterm struggle...

Poor Baby Itchy

POOR BABY ITCHY!

She took at 150ft tumble (in robo-feet) last night. And lay on her side utterly immobile. Seriously I thought she was dead. Thankfully she was merely "winded". And quickly sprang back to life - with a pronounced limp. I honestly thought she had broken a "twig" else ruptured something internally. Thankfully all was well and the limp's gone now. The only thing injured was her robbie-pinginess - for about half an hour. She hid in a toilet tube and washed her ears and sulked.

I have to say despite her peanut-eating she's still my thinnest robby. She DID expand in size - but, like a Eurostar train with extra carriages, she just added the length to her bum.

Bashful is my prettiest robbie. She is perfectly proportioned with a "charming" face. She bats her eyelashes at me - then bites me out of "curiosity" and because she's so cute I forgive her every time...

Spherical, as the name implies, looks heavily pregnant and being quite possibly a good year older than the other two is age-wearied and cynical (she gazes at me balefully sometimes as if to say "if you think I'm gonna go nuts for half a peanut and a wilting broccoli sprig you gotta nother thing comin' sweetheart.") But she is entertaining. One minute she ignores my interfering hands (refilling water bottle, dumping wild birdseed down etc); the next she spots me out the corner of an eye and plays scaredy hammy; spluttering about like a furball of fire and panicking the other two, who go pinging up and down equally pointlessly as if a funnel web spider were in their midst... the fat swine! Because she's so heavy and seems to run the exercise wheel the most enthusiastically (she's got a real exercise fixation) if either of the other two dare venture on, the chances are they'll end up clinging for dear life to the wire spokes, endlessly looping the loop as Spherical thunders tubbily onwards, desperate to work off her extra wooly robo-weight...

Thank God little Itchy is fine!

;->...

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Picture Baby Blog of the Day:
"Like Father Like Son"

Political Blog of the Day
Expat Bear
Not heavy politics but some interesting insights into America's attitude to George Bush, Gulf War II type stuff with more promised to come ....

Travel Blog of the Day
Righeblu
Amazing Italian beaches...

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Crafty Blog of the Day
Stampin' and Scrappin' with Stasia
Lovely arty stuff... you can actually buy the stuff off this lady...

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Childhood Blog of the Day
These Are The Days
Wonderful photos...

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Photo Blog of the Day
Julia Kozlov Photography
Have a look at these American "fall" photos... the scarlet maple leaves... THAT is why I say American autumn is so much more intensely colourful than its British counterpart....

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Before I forget:
Don't YOU forget to click for your FREE copy of this Sunday's News of the World!

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These are some amazing gurgling baby shots!
http://leanne-brischetto.blogspot.com

Who Was Your Favourite Bear?

WE ALL HAD OUR FAVOURITE BEAR WHEN WE WERE LITTLE. The bears I'm thinking of were of a specifically literary kind. My fave was Rupert Bear when I was younger; the illustrations were magical and you got a choice - the story was told both in verse and prose. Rupert Bear was a white bear who always wore tartan trousers (though his fur was, slightly confusingly, always brown on the cover). The books I'm talking of were actually "annuals" published for Christmastime, for Rupert appeared (and to the best of my knowledge still does appear) daily in the Daily Express newspaper. But the daily Rupert fix you get there is so paltry only genuine addicts need apply. Best wait for the annual and read the stories in one go! Rupert has a habit of finding magic carpets, shoes, stones, gizmo devices invented by the Einsteinian local professor or belonging to the father of the local Chinese girl ... man! I've forgotten her name... what was it Tiger Lilly maybe... anyway he ends up in each story flying, transported to 1950s style spice islands (darling, when we still had an Empire!) or else kidnapped by elves, in Santa's grotto or jailed by icicles in Jack Frost's lair... oh! The magic of childhood!

Original Rupert Books from the 1950s and so on, are so sought-after they are genuine collectors' items, fetching literally hundreds of pounds if in good condition...

When I got older I "adapted" to Paddington Bear... him of the marmelade sandwiches fame, who wore dufflecoat and a battered top hat. An immigrant from "Darkest Peru" he was discovered by the Brown Family lost forlorn in Paddington Station (hence his name) with a sign round his neck "please look after this bear". The best characters were no-nonsensical Mrs Bird the "housekeeper" (terribly 1950s, yet again!) and Mr Curry the hateful neighbour who always called Paddington "Bear!" The best story is probably Paddington's home decorating escapade when he wallpapers himself so thoroughly into his room there is no door.... One time I was reading this book, aged about 8, when my mother suddenly appeared at the door with a bucket. I had been laughing so hard she thought I was being sick..!

I never really got on with Winnie the Poo (come on - how did A A Milne get away with such a rude name?!?)... or any other Bear of Note...(the names escape me!)...

Now roll up, come on, this is my daily "meme": Who was YOUR Personal Bear..?

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Video of the Day:
Big Bang and Creationism ... purloined from "Rob 3:25am" blog ... and yes! I'm a Creationist, too!

Chicken Curry Egg Fly Lice... Beef and Green Pepper Black Bean Sauce...

YES I HAVE A DISTINCT CRAVING FOR CHINESE TAKEAWAY. My local does a "one container" cheap meal deal for £4.20... hang on I tell a lie: inflation! £4.70 now. Yes yous diasporian English-speakers from Down Under, Across the Pond etc can laugh at those prices but that is cheap for this country, believe me. Australian takeaways, so I have heard many times, are aparently the best in the entire world¬!

Well one of my gremlins got ever so excited today as I peered down at her. I think it was Bashful. She peered back up all expectantly as if I was about to shower her with free gifts of cigarettes and cream cakes and things. Instead I gave her a sprig of saggy old broccoli from the side of the fridge. She sniffed it and glared back up at me "just you wait, matey - I was expecting a Marlboro Light at the bare minimum... I'll make you suffer for this!!" Bashful is a right gremlin as she keeps biting me! Yes! Every time I leave a hand in unawares I feel hamster-gremlin teeth closing around it. Fortunately she does not bite right in and draw blood. I suppose this is my fault for leaving them chicken bones: it's left them with a taste for fresh meat.

There is scant other news... I had all manner of ideas of what to post but have brought none out with me so this will have to do for Friday... apart from the following amazing Sun features!

The first news I heard (on BBC radio actually) was that Princess Diana was not only alive after the dreadful car crash that killed her but conscious and calling out: "Oh my God! Oh my God!" which fairly sickened me as I was one of those people affected by her death. Never thought I would be. If they'd done a survey before she died: "Would you cry if Princess Diana suddenly died in a car crash?" I'd have vehemently claimed: No! Which is one big reason why I don't trust questionnaires and surveys. People's self-reports on their behaviour or would-do behaviour are unreliable. We can only observe what actually happens to get a true impression of the human psyche's intricacies...

Anyway THIS is what I was seeking: Heavy Petting; Thank goodness it's not raining cats and dogs when they're as big as this..!

Hampshire police are now advertising on the rear of buses. Alas, their planning didn't consider the position of the exhaust pipe on the male "member". (No wonder that lady police constable has a smile on her face..!)

And have a look at Dear Deidre's Photo Casebook (bet they don't print anything like this in American dailies!!)

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Well to be frank the bits in pink obviously will take you to a match but The Sun's own e-edition is crap at matching printed stories to their online counterparts... so if you want to see the policeman with a rude exhaustpipe on the back of a bus, look at page 41 in today's edition, Friday 26 October 2007!

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Video of the day:
4-year-old Chinese Little Boy Rides Enormous Beluga Whale!

Peachy Tea; Peachy B

... ACTUALLY IT WAS PEACHY CAKE I was craving after, but it doesn't rhyme...

The cake in question was light orange (well, peachy colour), covered in peach-thick icing, peach slices atop in clock-shaped petalry, light peachy sponge and a literal inch thick of peachy icing through the middle that had me fantasizing about it for hours and hours and hours...

... until I get to the shop this morning and all SOLD OUT!

Leaving me with no option but to take my regular (by now) tomato bread and to wonder whether tirimasu would make a replacement on the sloppy-stuff scale of edible pleasure (probably not).

I accidentally rang a dealer who I hate earlier. I wish the person who gave the number had warned me which "Andy" it was. Ukk. Only consolation was the yummy (peach coloured) B he supplied mmmm it would have gone really well with peach cake, but hey...

If I was a rapper I was going to call myself Yummy B. But I would probably get banned by the BBC on that account...

Sorry I know I ought not to be rabbitting about these things. What can I do except tell the truth, no matter how ugly, shameful or etc it really is?

Also, another confession: I realized last night that I had not contributed a single word to my growing (cancer-style) memoirs for five days. Having had to scrap a chapter about my trip to Spain and Morocco (it's just a retelling of an old holiday "and then and then and then..."; contributes practically nothing to the book) I realized I may have to scrap my time at university as well.... Then I thought Hang on! This is my story. I'm not going off on too merry a tangent about courses, lectures, essays (though I do mention them). So what if other writers skate over their uni time. Mine is relevant because it's when I first DISCOVERED drugs of any type. And drugs are the whole crux of my story.

Then something came on the news today: that criminals who profit from their crimes by writing memoirs about them are to be sued by the government who will take all their money. SURELY they don't mean drug addicts like me? Whose only crime has been to use? Actually if they did try to silence memoirs like mine a claim could be made that they're silencing free speech. Not to mention preventing ordinary people like me from making my own contribution to the "Drugs Debate" the government so eagerly declared we should nationally engage in some time ago... Well the writing's getting easier now, as I did 2 pages this morning, which is about all I could manage in a DAY when I first began. Still, I don't think I can get this 1st draught finished by Xmas, which I really wanted to do earlier...

The Sun newspaper published an hilarious piece called "Britain's Rudest Place Names" on p43 today.... Titup Hall Drive... Hardon Road... etc. I'll leave the best ones there for you to clickonit&readhere!

Did you see my robos videos yesterday. I see why mothers of all species get so exhausted now... not just the running round changing nappies, wiping faces, pulling clothes on straight etc etc etc stuff... if you watch that first Robos Milking Film; they actually look like they're sucking the mother dry! The second video was even more hilarious, when she decides to get up and, unable to detach four or six babies from her teets, just clambers off letting them come unstuck and roll haplessly about in the sawdust...

My video of today comes courtesy Bimbimbie: It's Snowy the Famous Dancing Cockatoo!!

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Another thing from The Sun: "Planet of the Japes" - Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition winners. (Click again for a fantastic slideshow...) The great big fatty vole-in-a-pipe is my favourite...

***

Inge Mobile Blog - Scandinavian graphic designer.

A bit like Nicole Mobile Blog - Nicole (another graphic designer) is currently moving from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Adelaide, Australia with boyf Vincent. Farewell Nicole and Vincent and good luck... I'm sure she will continue blogging from Down Under...

***

American "fall" is so much more colourful than our British autumn... clickonthis&havealook... am I right?

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"Out the Corner of my Eye" ~ http://chunkyd200.blogspot.com ~ wonderful Queensland and sundry photos...

***

Click here for quite a realistic picture of Baby Itchy Robo when her fur's fluffed up...

And another one...

... of Baby Itchy hanging off a bush!

Actually it's a harvest mouse. I'd love pet harvest mice! (Of the micromys minutus Euro-kind)...

***

RIGHT; I have just trawled round Iceland, which is a supermarket for lowerclass and poor people (hence my favourite one!!); where I purchased warming Galaxy drinking chocolate (£1.50) (in preference to unheard-of brand that listed whey powder as chief ingredient) and nibbly strawberry cheesecakes (2 for £1) plus my normal crap. Now I just want to go home and hibernate. Except I can't as I'm supposed to be pinging up the road to such-&-such person's house I don't wanna go I'm too "SAD" as they always say when carbo-bingeing in winter months and excess sleeping (that's me!!) Ho-humm....

Intellectual Hungarian Tomato Bread

AS I SAID YESTERDAY I'm thoroughly bored of Turkish snacks and have been munching my way through the Hungarian baker's menu! My favourite Turkish thing was probably jajeek which is spelled "cacik" and is the mint yogurt garlic cucumber dip; better known as tzatziki... The takeaways do something called lahmacun which is like a pizza wrapped up with salad, only £1 each. The Hungarian baker's do plaited chocolate bread... which sounds ... interesting! I don't know why I'm writing about food, I'm not hungry. I've just nibbled half a (small) loaf of that Mediterranean sundried tomato bread. It's not one of those flatbreads that looks like glorified pizza: this has tomatoes all the way through it, which is really yummy with Lurpak butter, believe me!...

There's very little news today except I'm going more and more off the alcohol. Not quite sure why. Laundretta got drunk and there are cigarette butts sticking out of charred holes in the hall carpet. (She has no respect for this house...) I even thought she had battered the door down last night, but seemingly not; someone must have let her in at the last moment. That woman is always drunkenly losing her keys. And when she has had too much she looks drenched from head to foot, as if she's taken a fully-clothed shower... I wonder what she'll be like in 20 years' time... if she's still around.

My robos have been hiding in an extensive tubery. Because "Baby" Itchy's gone so capybara-giant these days I have repeatedly confused her with Bashful and even big momma fatty Spherical which caused hilarity when I tipped her out of a tube onto my hand. Rather than a calmly rambling baby vole-like creature I got an exploding furry firework hopping and fizzing into a far corner. I told Spherical I was very sorry I thought you were your friend; but she just peered out suspiciously from the tea-box into which she had darted as if to grumble, "that's what they all say, mate".

My video of the day is:
Exhausted Robomother Feeding Young
plus - all new! This one's really entertaining:
Hilarious Itchy Robomother Doing Baby Stuff
plus you get
The Daily Mirror's (highly amateurish) "Showbuzz" Roundup... have fun!!

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Here's a yummy-looking chocolate dessert...

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How come all South East Asian schoolgirls have blogs looking like this one~?!?
http://enchanted--melancholy.blogspot.com

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Here's a really artistic blog:
http://afancifultwist.typepad.com

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Blog feature of the day Ottawa in Canda... wow the parks and buildings are AMAZING...
http://lukigoescanada.blogspot.com

***

A special blogoftheday: Inge Mobile Blog http://ingemobiel.blogspot.com

Polish Mushroom Soup

TWO "COMMUNITY SUPPORT OFFICERS" (do clickonit for a hilariously unrepresentative image) are harrassing the local cashpoint beggar. I pinged in here to avoid them...

For 35p just now I purchased "Knorr Goracy Kubek Zupa Pieczarkova z grzankami... Bez konserwantow..." As manufactured by "Unilever Polska S.A. ul. Domaniewska 41, 02-672 Warszawa" It looks pretty tasty compared to the CUCUMBER flavour (again Polish) cup-a-soup it was next to...

I will let you know how I get on with it.

There were even Polish people swearing chattering away "tak tak tak! Proszę!" on the bus and swearing "kórwa! kórwa!" when it refused to stop at the stop that says in English "bus stop closed" all over it. We now have a million Poles in this country. They are our newest immigrant invasion, and in my opinion the most inoffensive. (Ooo! Am I racist for implying immigrants can be offensive?!? Well a goodly lot of them DO take the flagrant pee-pee out of our system and somehow end up with free houses etc that the English people can't get hold of. So...)

Anyway if it weren't for Central European immigrants (as they like to be called) we wouldn't have a decent bakers for miles around. The Hungarian bakery on the high road sells NORMAL SHAPED sliceable bread covered in seeds of various types... before they came along the ONLY bread you could get round here (except for at the hypermarket) were flatbreads ("pides") of various Turkish types...

Well I'm off to get sundried tomato bread now I've remembered ... something to go with Goracy Kubek Pieczarkowa!

***

And of course my mind strays... to "Polish Heroin", the so-called "Kompot" (kompot is a dessert made of stewed apple or other fruit puree - like pie-filling), but the Polish "heroin kompot" was a product extracted from poppy straw and "uniquely dangerous to inject" in the Soviet days when addicts in the Eastern Bloc must have lived in utter outer darkness...

Here are the links
1. Wikipedia Polish "heroin" Kompot
2. Danish Drug Users' Union info Polish Kompot Heroin...

***

Videos
And I advise you watch them in this oder:
1. Cancer Research Ad: Fields of Gold
2. Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold
3. X-factor's Penelope Somewhere Over the Rainbow + Fields of Gold audition...

***

AND LAST AND CERTAINLY NOT LEAST, Olive, the Aussie lady, who takes the prizewinning crown as World's Oldest Blogger is 108 years old!

Click for her birthday message to the world... (plus a link to her blog...)

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News feature of the day:
"Boy, 3, comes unstuck playing Harry Potter with road cone" ...

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Clickhere for beautiful cheap Belgian farmhouses priced in Euros (only E160,000 each!! that's barely $200,000 for a detached HOUSE!!)

Raw Peanuts Monday Mourning

RIGHTY-HO, I'm sat here with my new favourite snack of raw peanuts and Bashful, Itchy and Spherical are drowsing in their toilet tubes and it's plunging into deep autumn. Always my favourite time of year though I know lots of people who hate it (strangely all for the same reason: because they once lost someone at this time of year). And I'm down and depressed as well. Wasn't even up for writing yesterday, which I think is a really sappy thing to do as there's no excuse in the world for not writing. A professional writes every day no matter how "uninspired" they might tell themself they feel. Wasn't it Trollope who said, "I only write when inspired. And I make sure inspiration strikes at 9am sharp every morning!" I'm definitely with Trollope on that one though if I churned out a slew of world-slayingly dullard novels about boring clergy in catatonic middle England as a result I would surely commit suicide.... Still I am coughing and spluttering from last week. Mother Hubbard told me "it's never as bad as it seems" this morning. I don't know why she thought I was depressed. Usually I could chop my head off and play football in the street with it until any of my friends would spot anything unusual about me, but hey...

***

Video of the day:
1. music:
Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
2. other:
Cancer Research Ad: Fields of Gold

***

PS Click to see a recent picture of the fully-grown-up Baby Itchy!

OK, fair do's; that's a capybara, the world's largest rodent. But it does look like Baby Itchy now that she's officially "gynormous"...

***

Blog recommendations of the day:
Perceptions http://villagerinsrilanka.blogspot.com ~ life of a Sri Lankan farmer...

Weird Fascinating Stuff http://weirdfascinatingstuff.blogspot.com ~ psychotic squirrel terrorizes Germans!

Appalacian Mountain Trails - fall colors! http://jlivingstonjr.blogspot.com

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Baby Itchy Gallery.


Click and scroll down for some exceedingly entertaining Baby Itchy Roborovski pictures from before she was practically hippo-size.

OK admittedly they belong to someone else who says their hamster "has to be kept with the same high security as a serial killer on vacation" but it does look pretty much the same as poor Baby Itchy...

Actually, here's their original quote:

Our Roborovski hamster is quite shy and runs like the wind on a windy day. He has escaped a few times but now, he is handled with equivalent security to a serial killer on a school trip to the seaside - but with lots of love as well.

Sleep, Sunday etc.

BLAH BLAH BLEAK DAY! I SLEPT IN FOR LONG HOURS, SLEPT HALF THE AFTERNOON AND JUST WANT TO SLEEP AGAIN.

Radio 4's programme Open Book with Mariella Frostrop was disheartening. Featuring "new ways for new authors to find audiences for their work via the internet". Merely thinking about the ins and outs of publishing my own memoirs winds me up to distraction - this programme was no different.

I have to go as I'm flat out of time.

It's so dark and cold!

The cold bit I quite like. Makes a change from the scorched earth of near-eternal summer...

Itchy Hippo Peanut Nibble Fever

I DON'T KNOW WHETHER SHE'S BEEN EATING TOO MANY RAW PEANUTS OR WHAT, but Baby Itchy Roborovski's looking more and more like a furry hippopotamus by the day!

I was feeling so ill earlier that raw peanuts were all I could force myself to nosh on. The girl in the local shop stared at me all curiously when I paid for them. Humans don't usually go for nonsalted peanuts. They're more for bird tables, hamsters or feeding baby donkeys at animal parks...

Three a.m. and I woke up so feverish and sneezing and altogether feeling dreadful and there was nothing I could do except top up with a sip more methadone and turn up the cooker hob a notch higher (my landlord pays the leccy bills).

All day, in fact, until my dealer came I'd been too hot, too cold, heavy sweating, dairrhoearing, cramping and everything. There's no logical reason why I should have felt so bad. But logic doesn't go far in the exploration of drug addictions. Human feelings, human behaviour are not logical. Only logical people would assume so...

I could have posted last night but would have been so exceedingly forlorn, teetering on suicidal, that my ramblings would only have depressed you all the more.

My friend said maybe I really am ill and should stay in bed. He is probably right. Tis now the season of the common cold if ever there was one.

Righty-ho then!

Have a cheery weekend y'all...

***

PS Click the words "hippo" and "baby" above for 2 particularly entertaining images...

***

Video:
"Abba" - Take a Chance on Me

The Migraine's Gone Away

THE MIGRAINE (yesterday) eventually went away. Got barely the tiniest hint of a headache, though I felt mighty nauseated for ages and ages and couldn't see straight for a long time. (I only managed to tap in yesterday's post bc I touch-type. Otherwise it would have been impossible!) If you have "classical" migraine and try e.g. to read a book, half the text will seem to disappear as the visual field is full of blind spots and zigzags. If you're wondering what on earth I'm talking about "migraine" without severe headache - as I said yesterday my dr. said I'm just lucky. Every time it has happened in the last 12 years or more I've escaped the headache. It's called "subclinical migraine".

I did a fair bit of writing once I felt better. I am on to the time I was at university in 1991/1992. The course I chose was called "comparative literature" - this gave me the widest possible choice of "modules" so after 2 terms of "prelims" were done with I jumped straight into "The World of (Icelandic) Sagas" and "Creative Writing: The Novel". My teacher for the latter was a lovely bubbly lady called Michele Roberts. Unlike the authors of those gerzillions of "how to write a 20 million copy bestseller" - type books you'll find in the "creative writing" sections of bookshops... and yet none of their works (except the how-to) are even in print! Let alone selling 20 million copies- this lady has been Booker shortlisted, been a Booker Prize judge... and is now a Professor of Creative Writing ... yes! Back at UEA where I was a student (many many MANY moons ago). She is a really good teacher, full of pizzazz and zest (and she loves knocking back the red wine if I recall correctly (!))

My robos have been hiding in lavatory tubes for the past three days. At one point I seriously thought they'd all escaped. Then I leaned over their domain and cooed "come out you great big fat gremlins!" and three pink noses, six beady eyes appear from the tubes. Spherical is most ambivalent to this point, as she doesn't really like me, and yet if something exciting seems to be going on with the other two (who do like me) she doesn't want to be missing out. Which results in lots of scurrying around in a confused kind of way.

The weather is gorgeous. At last! The trees are going gold, the air is cold. Autumn proper is here. At such very long last. (It means the magic mushrooms will be out in profusion after the next rains, except living in a metropolis I know nowhere to pick them... ho-hum anyway dem trippy fungoids are a thing of my past. Now I can FEEL the beautiful autumn I feel cleaner today than I have in a very long time. It's such a good feeling.

Right and on that note: I'm off!

Migraine

THIS HAS TO BE A VERY SHORT POST AS I CAN HARDLY SEE.

What I do see, however is the most transcendently beautiful iridescent zigzags all over my visual field, esp. the left hand side. My eyesight is so faint I can barely read this at all.

The worst migraine I ever had was the time I stood up and - BANG! - I was 90% blind all bar a strip in the far corner of my right eye... that was the time that idiot poked his finger in my eye bc he did not believe I could not see. I took so many headache pills and could barely move my head for 3 days it hurt so bad.

Ever since then, however I've only ever got the aura without the headache. This, my old doctor told me was called a "subclinical" migraine.

Please let this be subclinical. Please. I really don't feel well...

Topsy Turvy...

I FAILED A BREATHYLYSER test just 49 minutes ago...

My score, aparently, ought to be 50 to be respectable. It was 65.

Oh but I had such fun drag-racing until the police stopped me. (And if you believe that you'll believe anything.)

My robos are hidden from Dr Evilstein my landlord beneath a stack of cardboard boxes in a far corner of my "garret". Bear in mind that as burrow-dwelling nocturnal rodents they don't exactly appreciate a "view" and are actually MORE active when stashed away than when self-consciously presented pride of place in the middle of the room!

I am very worried about Yingyang the Chinese hamster. Living in the robo-gite as he does I can now SEE him. And can confirm he is now suffering from severe depression. Spends all day in bed, eyes open, looking forlorn (even a mouse-like hamster can look forlorn...) I don't know what to do with him. He will be handled, but doesn't particularly like it any more. If he thinks I'm going to trouble him he hides in the nibbled out old toothpaste tube in the corner...

I am very depressed about this. I hate keeping animals in misery. What am I supposed to do? Short of dissolving Prozac in his water and hoping my miscalculation of the dose doesn't kill him..?

***

On another note, I am ploughing through Teach Yourself Japanese yet again.

From a "Martian perspective" it's no harder to learn the spoken language than French or German... in fact I'd say it's probably easier as there's hardly any irregular verbs or dodgy tables of "declensions" or owt like that. What is complicated, of course is the fiendishly complexicated system of writing. Having attempted to tackle kana (the syllableries) and kanji (Chinese characters) before though I can confirm they are much more fun to write than the boring old Roman alphabet we're stuck with... the act of writing turns into something far more akin to doodling. So I'm not surprised the Japanese lead the world in sales of fancy paper, novelty pens, glowing and sparkly inks and all that... plus unlike Chinese with its 5000 basic characters you need "only" learn just under 2000 in Japanese. Unfortunately, however, the characters do not correspond to syllables, as they do in Chinese, so unless you really know them there's very little help at hand... also I'd love to see a full-on Japanese to Japanese dictionary... characters are categorized by the number of brushstrokes it takes to doodle them and are further broken down into subtypes, e.g. ones with house-shaped rooves come under one category, ones that look like an explosion of matchsticks (ie about half of them, in my opinion) come under another... Well I won't bore you with any more... Gotta go eat some fried chicken.

(The breathalizer wasn't done by the police btw; it was some jobsworth at the drugs service who insisted on testing me...)

***

Video of the day:
Baby Jessica McClure: 20 years later...

***

Here are some really funny robo-pictures...

They look far more like my robos than a lot of the other shots I've seen out there (no idea why)... the "blue" hammy is a Campbell's "condensed" dwarf...

Self-portrait (At Last!)

INSTEAD OF POSTING HOW MISERABLE AND DULLARD the day has been (bc nothing has happened at all except my missing a crucial appointment) I can, instead, show the WORLD my beautiful face! Yes! Just click on my profile! Or have a look at the top of the ensuing "comments" and you'll see my inner personality for all to behold...

This is what I look like when I've been running my wheel all night, stuffed "wild bird" in my pouches, squeaked a bit, then done a poo in the woodshavings in the corner...

PS In case anybody wonders how to do it: THIS is how I achieved my wondrous "avatar" ...


Find a photograph you like online. When you put the cursor arrow over the photo, if it turns into a hand you've found a picture you can use (it can be any picture from anywhere online at all...)

You click on the picture. The picture will have an internet address all of its own which you will obviously see in the address bar.

Highlight and save this address.

Then as you log into your blogger account, go to Dashboard. To the right of this is "edit profile" click on this.

Look carefully down your profile to where it says "photo url". Then ctrl+V on this and the photo you selected becomes your "avatar" or portrait...

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Fantastic coral reef photos... these are really unsurpassed. David Attenborough couldn't do better. Brilliant stuff...

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Song of the day...

Seeing as Ruth and Akelamalu are posting Xmas already I thought I'd join in with the spirit of things... but get things in extra-early by pointing out this is for Xmas 2009

Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby

***

Clickonthis for a list of reasons to be cheerful: natural highs.

Regrets I: Japanese

STRANGE TO SAY but until I was well embarked upon the project, I hadn't really considered that writing my memoirs would make me examine my past (yet again) and, of course, wonder where I went wrong.

Well here's one crux-point I can identify: university.

So let's rewind 17 years or so...

I had vast troubles deciding what I was going to study and where. In fact the whole matter was stressing me so very much I wimped out of applying for the next acacemic year and ended up applying late on deferred entry (giving me a gap year which I wasted - not through lack of will but lack of money and opportunity).

If one proverb applies to my life it's this one:

If you chase two rabbits you'll catch neither!

That was the problem I had with uni courses.

Basically I was interested in:
English literature
Russian literature (the great novels) - but wasn't really up for learning the Russian language

European languages
I was doing A levels already in French and German and could have started a degree in Spanish if I'd wanted, from scratch.

But my biggest daydream was
Oriental languages;
most specifically Japanese.

I have a fascination for all things Japanese. Japanese television, Japanese electronics, Japanese poetry, Japanese writing (most complexicated system of writing in the entire world: uses Chinese characters plus TWO home-grown syllablaries plus the Roman alphabet!)... everything Japanese, in fact, except the food (though I've had Japanese curry at a Soho restaurant called Zipangu and that was yummy).

Now I know myself and I'm motivated by novelty. If only I'd bitten the bullet and gone for Japanese ... I can see this now; my life might have taken a totally different turn altogether.
Rather than continuing on the tired old subjects I'd done at school the course would have entailed immersing myself totally in an alien langauge and culture... If I had done it, I'm not sure I'd have derailed like I did and ended up dropping out less than halfway through a four year course...

Guess what I chose in the end?
You guessed it: French and German.

How I wish I'd followed my heart!
I still get a little flutter inside when I think about the three courses I was interested (in descending order):
London SOAS
Cambridge
and
Oxford

As it turned out, however, my grades were one point too low for SOAS which asks for BBB. I got BBC. Good enough for the course I finally applied for... but on Results Day I cried. Because I felt I'd failed.

And THAT, dear Readers, was a turning point, a beginning of the end. For from that moment on I took to throwing opportunities away, one by one. Until, within a few years I'd taken my future, crumpled it in a ball and tossed it in the trashcan of life....

Where would I be now if I'd gone for that degree in Japanese I always wanted?

I wonder
I wonder
I wonder ...

***

Clickfor:

Funky Japanese language blog...

Tired Mouse Milk Jerry Springer Pee

OH BOO-HOO etc., I'm so tired. WHY do I keep sleeping interminable hours hours hours on end? Why am I so darkened ... eeh! My carboniferous soul!! (Just wanted an excuse to use "carboniferous" somewhere haahaa!)

To cheer self up I did massive hamster house removal. Yingyang the Chinese hammy with giant poppy eyes like a racoon is now in the robbies' old weekend "gite" (the ultra-modern hammy home with spiral staircase and turret). The robos are back in their tank. Three curious pink noses emerging from differing utility tubes... Those naughty robos took up residence inside the wheel in the turret and being lazy sluts obviously could not be bothered to ramble downstairs when they wanted a pee in the night. Because of this they've peed in the wheel then ran inside it and got pee all over themselves. Ukk!

Laundretta has thrown all the whorehouse magazines in our bins (the ones the girls read while they're smoking and waiting to be booked; not the ones the disgusting punters read) so I scooped them out for celebrity reading. (She only reads about tacky British reality TV celebrities - Now magazine etc...) After carefully wiping them off for fragments of genital warts (after all they do come from a brothel) I had a quick flick through... and got reminded of one of my very few lifetime "celebrity" encounters...

Yes! I once witnessed EastEnders' Ronnie Mitchell star Samanthaj Anus on in sports car on mobile telephone with posh voiced blondes to dreadful society heiress Tamara Beckwith. Wow! (Not.)

Celebrity Encounter II - was with my brother in Picaddily Circus when sudden camera crew arrival announced presence of very fake blond haired Jerry Springer! Yes! The general public took up a feeble cockney chant of "Gerry Gerry!" and I shook his hand. He said "how are you?" I said "Very well thankyou," of course taking the question very literally in British fashion. But already he was looking over my shoulder for somebody more interesting to "pump" for information...

PS Is it true there's a delicacy mouse's milk cheese? Or is this just the product of one of my most vivid dreams? I seriously remember the mouse's milk being collected and the cheese being "curds and weighed" ... all very expensive as you don't get a lot of milk from a mouse ...

... hey! Brainwave idea! I have 3 FEMALE roborovskis! I could put THEM to work in a dairy ~ haha! (I hope their milk doesn't smell like their peepee if so not even magpies would drink it...)

(Click to see a really entertaining hamster comparison photo (Siberian Winter White, Chinese and Tubby Syrian) complete with ruler!) The Chinese one (middle) looks like it's been stuffed, left in someone's jacket pocket and accidentally dry-cleaned!

Click here to see my blog as you've never seen it before! Complete with kitty-claws!! (Courtesy Audrey.)

Click here to see a really entertaining dancing cockatoo! Sorry I can't embedd this (don't know how to) but it came courtesy of a friend of Bimbimbie's.

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Try this 5-second right-brain/left brain test and tell me how you faired. I'm supposedly right brained. As was everyone who took the test at Phoebe Fay's blog where I found it...

***

The Dutch are to ban magic mushrooms... (at last). All that time they've been on sale legally in Amsterdam and I never even knew!!

If only!!

No boring cannabis cafe would ever tempt me over ... but magic mushies... wow! They are something else!

(I haven't actually taken 'em for years... over seven years in fact, so ...)

***

Blog of the evening:
Reagan Young - very funny pictures of baby + cupcakes...

Blog II of the evening
Ya Sonra - arty Turkish photos...

and another blog

Pequete's Art Journal http://pequeteartjournal.blogspot.com

Photos:

Funny signs: http://garden-of-secrets.blogspot.com

A wise and distant cat... located at eptpatricia

Funky Lison Cruise Ships

French Boxes

Mopeful Monday!

I'M DUTIFULLY POSTING but there's not much to report. Got up early. Did bits. Saw Mother Hubbs and admitted I really didn't like her mashed potatoes yesterday...

Now I forgot to post about this but... ook! The most disgusting mashed potatoes ever she made. What she had done is fork tiny cubed-up uncooked spring onions into the creamy mash... and the crunchy-creamy and bland-piquant contrasts I found over-grossing in the extreme!

I used to like to fry onions until sloppy in lots of paprika oil and mix THAT into mash but the onioniness had been cooked out... this... ooo... at one point I thought maybe neat GARLIC POWDER had been stirred in... oouughkh!

Anyway the rest of today I slept as was so exhausted. If anything is TO BLAME for my being depressed it is THAT SPEED FROM THE OTHER DAY.

Not to mention the BAD AUTUMNAL DARKNESS WEATHER.

Big reason for stopping speed about 15 years ago was the severe depression it was perpetuating... nasty business... no!

***

Anyway:

My Video of the Day
Shirley Bassey sings Goldfinger in Albert Hall...


***

Blog find of



the day:
Gaugin-like paintings http://peinturetapisserienathaliesouin.blogspot.com

Elizabeth http://lizzie-romero.blogspot.com - amazing photos from Spain...

Julia in London - (German) fresher's blog http://julia-in-london.blogspot.com

Sullen Sunday (Again)

I WOKE THIS MORNING FROM A DREAM INVOLVING LOTS OF COMPLICATED ARCHITECTURE (I very often dream of buildings, I don't know why) and a drugs deal that left me with all the money in my pocket that I would have spent, plus all the drugs because the dealer gave them away free (only in a dream!) Then I woke up in a forlorn mood and close to tears because Daniel Day Lewis's mother was on Desert Island Discs reminiscing about World War II and I don't know it somehow crisscrossed in with my low mood. Then I tried to do various things involving a spot of tidying up etc and gave up exhausted, then realized I really was still depressed. Eventually two and a half hours later I plucked up the energy to go to Mother Hubbard's house where I cheered up (or to put it another way my inner feelings were masked) by lots of other people plus her glowing bright television. I don't have TV any more as I decided it was the devil's work some time ago...

I did however encounter a picture of Baby Itchy Roborovski in the Sunday People which made me perk up.

Only two apartments were available in Ontario Tower from the first website I called up. A one-bed on the 3rd floor and a studio on the 19th. I would so much rather live 19 floors up! Facing the bright lights of Canada Square... wow. You can actually see the Sunday People newspaper offices from there. They are about half way up the "Canary Wharf Tower" (proper address: 1 Canada Square).

Well I had better ping. Time is low as always.

Song of the day: A-ha The Sun Always Shines on TV

Depressed (Again)

YES AND VERY uninspired. Not that inspiration is any essential to life. It is quite possible to trudge along without it.

Having slogged away pages and pages and pages on my memoirs chapter 3 I find I shall very likely have to scrap this entire chapter and rewrite. Why? Because it is an account of my trip to Spain and Morocco and, not being strictly relevant to the theme of my book has totally overrun. Plus it's all in told in the manner of "and then, and then, and then, and then". Remember I have to get this past a sloane called Fiona at Harper-Collins/Random House/Viking-Penguin etc etc without giving her any cause to send it back for rewriting or basically giving her any cause to think anything else except "how many millions advance shall we shell out for this one?!"

I have at least found my ideal home. Having always wanted to live in a tower block. But not the "waiting for demolition" sort with cracksmokers on the stairs - imagine my delight when I discovered a place called Ontario Tower in Canary Wharf (yuppie central). Apartments are semi-integrated into a five-star hotel and you get swimming pool access (yeah!) plus a gym (no!) plus when you get bored of watching zillions of channels of telly (query: will they mind my affixing a Sky dish to the side? I'm sure not! (Not likely!) you can spend all night ordering items on room service from the hotel!! What luxury!! To price in American dollars to make it sound more expensive; a "studio apartment is just under $600,000, a one-bed about $1,000,000 and a 2-bed $1,200,000! So I take it a stuio apartment is exceedingly poky!

To put that in perspective, the house I live in is worth about $1.2 million, the price of a 2-bed apartment there.

And to put that in perspective: I do not own that house. Indeed it is leaky-roofed and crawling with bugs. But a 1-bed flat round here you'll be lucky to get for under $400,000. Even Madonna complains London is too expensive!

I currently have three gremlins sat in a row washing one another. They look so funny. I wonder sometimes whether they ever truly sleep, as most of their time in bed seems to be spent washing. I can't imagine sleeping in wood shavings, how horrible. But every bedding I put down just gets tangled round their wheel or shoved under the water bottle to leech dampness into their house... I don't know. Gremlins by name...

I don't know that I shall be able to spend too much time online next week. I have to sort myself out. More. Which means not being on a computer hours on end...

Moo!

IF YOU WERE WONDERING why I call my hammies little "cows" it's because they have fat noses just the same...

If you don't believe me have a click:

Here's a roborovski.

Here's a cow.

Note the practically-the-same giant nose!


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Itchy-lookalike in Lego-house.

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FILM OF THE DAY: Soviet Tsar Bomb - Best Nuclear Device Ever Exploded!

I'm Fine. Fine Robos...

I'M FINE; THE ROBBIES ARE FINE. I've decided not to bark on about "going clean" as I briefly intimated the other day until after the fact this time as it will be less of a wind-up on all you readers.

I have to go now as I'm in a cybercaff with literally 5 mins till time-out.

Till tomorrow!!

Boozing Mothers Get Thumbs Up Shock!

SO BOOZING IN PREGNANCY IS TO BE RE-ALLOWED. Experts proclaim today: pregnant women can knock back one glass of wine a day without untoward consequences to the unborn child ... big surprise! ... it's not expected to harm the baby.

As I commented on Radio 4's PM blog just now (PM is their drivetime early evening news prog) the fears about drinking in pregnancy stem from photographs originating in America in the late 1980s depicting the horrific consequences of foetal alcohol syndrome ... ie babes so soaked in booze as they formed in the womb that they're deformed and retarded. One drink per day will not achieve this. Even - perish the very thought - getting drunk once while pregnant won't...

Another point we seem all to forget is that nearly all of OUR mothers drank when they were pregnant with US because they knew no better... what harm did this do us?

The biggest dangers to kids from alcohol are the bad example parents so often set children by drinking, fighting, falling apart in front of their offspring long after birth... and more than this the danger posed to young brains when alcohol is secretly imbibed by the grossly underage. THAT is the real problem. Not one glass of wine too many while carrying a bump!

***

I've scribbled so much of my memoirs now that I ran out of paper! Would you believe it? A mere 60 sides of A4 and my notebook's finished (why? Because I procrastinated so very much before starting the damn book that I'd doodled, scrawled, timewasted all over the first 80 sides!)... Also (and this was since formally starting my work) I've gone through TWO Mitsubishi rollerballs already! In the space of 2.5 chapters! So I had to go shopping for replacements today, much to the excitement of WH Smiths' security who simply couldn't believe that someone wearing my scarecrowlike outfit complete with wooly hat was actually going to pay for my pens not steal them... How can I shoplift the materials for my book? That would be somehow... very not right at all!!

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Don't worry y'all I've indulged in no more "speed". Yes I know how reckless I was yesterday taking that unknown substance... hmmm I don't know what else to say...

Except this:

wasn't I garrulous! Wow!! And I scribbled out ten pages of blustery memoirs yesterday afternoon and posted three times (OK I'd already done one post in the night)... but hey...

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My pink-nosed roborovskis are fine. They've a new broccoli treestump to amuse them. They chew on it like mini dairy-cows. Ever-entertaining little gremlins that they are!

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Videos of the Day:
Joan Sutherland performing from Rossini's Semiramide at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City
and
Dame Kiri singing O Mio Babbino Caro... trust me you know the tune so clickonit now...

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And last but not least:
This is what Raffi sent me.
Just put the mouse on the pictures and you'll see what months and/or years of speed abuse has done to those people...
(And you wondered why I don't use it 'cept when it's free...)

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"DON'T LET DRUG DEALERS CHANGE THE FACE OF YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD"
This is the famous Metropolitan Police ad campaign.
The photos actually originate from Florida police's arrest records, but were used on British billboards to advertise a crime prevention hotline...

Sloane Street to Memory Lane...

RIGHT IF YOU'RE READING THIS THE FIRST TIME TODAY FROM THE TOP you won't know yet that I took some amphetamines/speed I found in a tobacco tin this afternoon, which made me really garrulous and I wrote more of my memoirs in two hours than I had done all week!! Only 8 pages of handwriting, but I've repeatedly been sleeping far too much and waking up to write a page or two then it's the next day... I'm still on chapter 3, my trip to Spain and Morocco.

I'm not sure any of this chapter is strictly relevant to my book; but if I pare it down too harshly it will be a book of drugs vignettes and nothing else and hence rather boring. I have to write about other things sometimes...! Still I'm trying to keep the main thread about stuff that relates to my subsequent addiction. I.e. things that made me depressed (almost all of life), people I met (hippie student losers a lot of them. Plus some annoying Sloanes (a Sloane, in case you are foreign, is a Sloane Ranger. A person (usually female) who ranges between Sloane Square, Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Mayfair - in other words all the posh parts of London - is highly likely to be called Hilly or Tilly or Annabel or Fiona (and hey - she might be working in publishing by now... or an art gallery: just until she finds the right man; either her British male equivalent (Miles, Giles, Spencer, Sebastian - yes I know I reeled out these names before; I'm indirectly quoting my book here) boys who work in banking/stockbroking/finance; or an American "businessman" (ie someon who's even richer than Daddy or failing that someone who'll give her a nice title like Duchess of... Countess of... etc. Art History was full of them (I wish I'd known Art History was the easiest degree - I might have gone for it myself. The other subject heavily favoured by Sloanes was French. Ooo there were so many of them crowding my seminars and crowing about how jolly a time they were having slumming it in a two up two down hovel (usually Daddy buys it and collects rent money off Jemima's friends. Rich people are always after another pretty penny. Anyway these lot were quite a contrast from the German students, who tended to be a far broader and more representative social mix. Nary a Northern accent was to be heard in French class. German classes were full of them. (Note 2: if you're a foreigner: Northerners are famously down-to-earth. Also I think their accents are much nicer than the bland swathe of southern English which runs on a continuum from Cockney (Michael Caine) through Estuary (Tony Blair when he's talking down) up to Received Pronunciation (Tony Blair when he's talking posh). Anyway these Sloanes nearly drove me up the wall. Sometimes I got mistaken for posher than I was and asked what school I'd gone to - I just replied "not one you'll have heard of!" but in general the Tillies, Hillies, Annabels kept themselves to themselves. Or kept themselves with Miles, Giles, Sebastian...

When I came to university I knew few of the social "mores" and codes... E.g. I did realize the house full of girls who lived round the corner from me were more middle class than I was as they ate nothing but pasta and had a £10 a week pesto bill (that's not much of an exaggeration either!) but I had no idea at the time that Pimms was a posh drink, for instance. Or that one person's parents visited my block by helecopter (there was a "pad" at Norwich airport next door.)

Some of the girls (it's always the girls, too) were such social climbers! This showed up most transparently when one of their brothers came to stay for a weekend. Michele as she styled herself, a la francais - complete with grave accent that I can't locate here talked all lar-de-dar posh but her brother had the voice of a Yorkshire farmer! She was dating a horrible specimen from Eaton. He wanted to be a writer as well but I googled his name the other day and - hoorah! - nothing came up. Don't tell me he might use a penname I know.

Well this has gone totally off the point. But I'm going to have to incorporate most of what I said into my book as it will explain how I managed to end up feeling so badly out of place.

In the end I got fed up on the one hand of vulgar people who told me (OK they didn't always tell me but they thought it;) "You think you're so posh." My answer: "No YOU think I'm posh!" And on the other of the haut bourgeoisie who as I said sometimes assumed I was one of them when I was not, or thought I had been one of them but was slumming it. I remember one person honestly couldn't believe I was willing to eat fish and chips straight from the paper to save washing up. "You simply must put it on a plate; really you must. They taste so much nicer that way. Do you want the balsamic vinegar to sprinkle on? What? Sarsons? Oh must you use that stuff? It's really whiffy..." And so on.

I've decided NOT to make a big deal out of my next bout of cleaning up. Wouldn't it be better if I just did it and told afterwards? Yes I think so too...

Righty-ho it's 9:56pm I'd better go.

(I got that expression from someone called Joey who came from the Wirral (Liverpool). When he was trying to get rid of his parents on the phone he'd start saying, "righty-ho then... righty-ho... righty-ho then... righty-ho... bye! Bye! Righty-ho then... bye!" Slam. Gasp of repressed exasperation. Right I am rambling like a Roborovski on a buttery wheel. Right I have to go

righty-ho then!

bye!!

***

Some good blogs

Cirkulators - intellectual photographic imagery; I've no idea where from...

Hambricks - cute baby blog from American midwest (?) - well I think it's from the midwest my American geography ain't that good...

Fi Mims Photography - Melbourne-based portrait photographer, available for weddings etc... this is fantastic stuff. FAR better than the usual run of the mill portrait photography...

Toronto Morgados - another baby blog (cute!)

Flashes Photography - more stunning (unusual) and funky wedding photos; this time from Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Monstror - very unusual, quite sinister... images by a French "graphiste"...

Slack Photography - Americans go to Mediterranean Europe

and last but not least

"anuLka" - Polish baby blog - the images are so entertaining!

Speed Virgin

I JUST "BANGED UP SPEED" FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME TODAY...

It always happens when I've "higher thoughts" on my brain...

(You know what I mean: thoughts of going clean.)

I was just waiting for the bus when a tobacco tin caught my eye. It was one of those childish ones with prominent psychedelic cannabis leaf for decoration amid swirling fractal graphics.

Expecting to find nothing within, or possibly a fagsworth of baccy I duly opened up...

Imagine my surprise... let me say there was more than a spliff'sworth of skunk inside, not to mention a package of sparkly smelly white stuff.

I was awfully cautious with this latter. It could, after all, have been anything.

I tasted it. It was really sparkly. Like coke ought to be. But wasn't coke.

I chopped it out in lines... but balked at sniffing them.

In the end, I shoved a knife-end in a spoon, mixed up, topped up with heroin, banged up... at first nothing (ho-humm)... then this ever-increasing, ever-pleasing dizzy took the top off my head and rose rose rose ever so gently... this was speed. Not too much of it (thankfully) and ever so mild.

First time in my life I've ever "banged it up" (years ago I always dabbed it just like sherbert... or snorted it at a push though I thought that was a waste of good nose tissue...)

So that's a first... and no doubt a last.

I'm not nineteen any more. I don't feel that one more novel drugs experience is extra furnishing for my life... I don't think like that anymore.

I'm speaking as one whose gone so far into addiction that the "buzz" of the drugs high - whatever drugs you're talking about it really doesn't matter. Addiction is one condition. The drugs are all different. But the bitter end is one place and the same no matter which chemical key unlocked the door.

In the absolute depths of addiction, I, who had lived from daydream to daydream (or plan to plan; I would have personally called them) stopped daydreaming at all, except for looking forward to my next pipe or fix or drink. At my very depths I woke up each morning feeling like I was lying face down on a pavement and banging my head downdown... pointless hopeless. Even though I knew I'd get the drugs I knew the next day and the next would be just the same and just as miserable.

So when I briefly and willingly went on Subutex (buprenorphine) for a month or so... and rebounded back to life with a shocking velocity... I realized, watching the TV news etc. that for the previous two, three years of my life no TV programme had ever spoken to me, no newspaper written for me, no ordinary person spoken to me. For I'd pushed myself so far to the edge of life and society I was barely any longer part of the "human race"... let alone the "rat race"...

Thankfully over the intervening time I've slowly drifted back. Partly it was that moment of clarity that shocked me back.

It's been more than telling that in my moments of fantasy before/after buying lottery tickets drugs don't feature in such multimillionaire's fantasy. Not even glamorous sparkling lines of cocaine. I know from my crack experiences that coke - in whatever form, it really doesn't matter; the mode of ingestion only alters the rapidity and economy of the drug's absorbtion into the system - only ends in darkness and madness. The lab monkeys hooked up to IV heroin and coke took heroin and lived ordinary monkey lives. The coke monkeys did nothing. Nothing at all. Didn't eat or drink or breed or sleep or do anything else except take more coke from the push-leaver that delivered it direct to their veins (equivalent to crack infusing lungs to brain in a human; it hits you within 20 seconds and it's overwhelmingly strong. And succeeds purely in making you crave more-more-more...)

So that's my little diatribe of the day...

Drugs! Who'd have 'em, eh?!?

***

Video of the day:

Whitney Houston - Queen of the Night...

It's the words that get me:

I've got the stuff that you want,
I've got the thing that you need -
I've got more than enough
To bring you down to your knees...

Go speak for yourself, Whitney!