Frictional Friday: Or - Why I'm Not Throwing My Record Collection Out

THE FRICTION IS ALL in my head. I have to make things plain for Monday when Evilstein the landlord has vowed to send in henchmen to rip out my window and replace with double glazing. Which is fine. But why wait till the cusp of December to do it?

Mother Hubbard gave me some records - maybe 80 or 100 discs - from her housemate to sell a couple of months ago. She said I could keep the money. Which was very generous of her, I thought. They are mostly ex-library copies of classical music so they're all plasticked up and covered in stickers, barcodes, stamps and lengths of tape. So I doubt I would get much more than 50p each for them if I did try and sell them...

They're stuff like "Emmanuel Chabrier: Piano Music (complete). Rena Kyriakou, Piano," - Camden Libraries. And "Ghena Dimitrova - Puccini Arias" - including O Mio Babbio Caro - Holborn Library.

I do not want to sell them as I've always wanted a classical music collection. And vinyl (especially from an old analogue master) can actually sound warmer, better than CD. I don't see why I should chuck these just because I've no turntable at present and Evilstein will think they're "clutter".

Even my Tubular Bells (it's all vinyl), I was told might only make £3 on Ebay. Though the person telling had a vested interest in keeping my expectations low as he deals in music...

No I want to keep this collection. One thing I always wanted to do on getting clean (if I ever manage it) would be to learn aout classical music. Like most people I know loads of tunes from television adverts and films but hardly know what any are actually called. Or who they're by!

I think Katherine Jenkins, who's only in her early 20s, has a fantastically rich, mature voice. Partly this is bc she's a mezzo and so has a mellower, deeper range anyhow. It's a shame for her that most of the best repertoire was written for the more prized (yet so very often simply shriller) soprano voice. Miss Jenkins says she actually smashed glass once by hitting a top A, a story she repeats on the Ready Steady Cook Ave Maria clip that's still in my sidebar.

Maybe some modern composer will be inspired by Miss Jenkins's unique talent and write some new arias specially for her. Surely the era of modern "serious" music having to consist of discordant orchestras' tortured wailings - like hearing tuning up on a bad LSD trip - has now passed. And finally we can have great tunes back again. Like in the eras of Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms... So what if we live in an age of nuclear threats, terrorism and climactic destruction? Doesn't mean the music has to be ugly too!

Well no big news of anything today. I'm getting ready to see my Mum tomorrow.

No more roboscandal. I thought Itchy had escaped again last night. But it was just me nightmaring...

I'm off now to do some of my memoirs. I have to wrok out where this book is going (not that I don't obviously know my own lifestory. I have to plan it out a little now. All I was doing thus far was simply scribbling off the top of my head!)

Have a cheery weekend everyone!

PS Isn't that Sushibar Clip classic~?!?

Today's Vid:
Katherine Jenkins: I Vow to Thee My Country

My New Japanese Blog; Windy Experiences; Diarrhoea Stopped; Itchy Exhausted

BABY ITCHY is so exhausted after "partying" with those wild mice behind the cupboard for 24 hours. No wonder such a lot of squaking occurred. Quite probably it was poor Itchy being terrorized by those squealy worm-tailed long-lost cousins...

At least now when I say "Come out you pink noses! Come out you tubby gremlins" three twitching sets of whiskers appear. It was mighty depressing with just two.

Baby was so exhausted last night that when I lent over and said hello hello she stuck her head out of the teabox only to fall right back to sleep. She looked so amusing dozing away like that.

I have a new Japanese blog!
グレドヲードの日本のブログ
"Guredowodo-no Nihon-no burogu"
Yes my name in Japanese is "Guredowodo"!
They have a certain way of pronouncing syllables quite unlike western speach. There are no consonant clusters. So that a Japanese person saying "string" would say something more like "suturingu". Four syllables to them, but to our ears so rapidly elided together it's not rendered as clumpily as first sight might suggest. Did you notice that "blog" turns into "burogu"~?!?
It's at http://gledwoodnihon.blogspot.com ... "Nihon" means "Nippon" by the way. An expression I'm sure more westerners are familiar with (though over here, for some reason it's a make of highly effective ant- and cocroach-killing powder! With the Japanese colours all over the bottle!!)

Really I put this new blog there to improve my own Japanese but it's open to all. It's Youtube screens, like all my other blogs, but will by no means consist of only language lessons. Anything Japanese (like documentaries) go there too.

If you watch Let's Learn Japanese: Basic 1 Part A (Mishaps at the Airport) as posted up tonight I wonder if you'll marvel like me how, during the series of mishaps at Tokyo International Airport the other man didn't pick a fight when trolleys clashed. And that the young woman picking up the camcorder said "is this yours?" rather than making off with it quick-style in modern British fashion!

The Japanese are so polite. All that bowing? Do you think they get bad backs? Did you know several people are killed each year on the Tokyo metro from bowing on the edge of platforms as trains come rushing in ...

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was on horseback in Windsor Great Park with the then King of Arabia when her horse thunderously "passed gas" as they say in America. "Oh I do beg your pardon!" exclaimed the Queen. "That is quite all right your majesty," replied the King, not realizing quite who had in fact let rip. "It happens to us all on some occasion!"

Did you hear about the story from the reign of Elizabeth I when one of her nobles, (the 17th Earl of Oxford), obsequiously bowing lost control of his bowels and quacked out a resounding emission of wind right before the royal throne? So mortified was he that he fled for some years to France only to return when he was sure the embarrassing consequences of his gaseous outburst had died down. And dear Queen Elizabeth, ever the wit; the first thing she said was, "It's all right. We've all forgotten the fart"!

Well my own injurious bad health is in recovery enough that I'm risking my own cooking yet again. If I'm dead by the morrow someone else will have to post for me....

... and then I'll never finish those lumpen memoirs. Or learn Japanese!


Videos of the Day:
Sushibar Conveyorbelt Scenes
Tokyo Airport Mishaps

Baby Itchy Reprimanded!

痒いハムスターの赤ちゃんを捕まえてきた！

I'VE CAUGHT THE LITTLE SWINE!

Baby Itchy Roborovski is in protective custody and has been severely told off.

She rambles about noncholantly as if nothing happened...

... all the possible eventualities I had to eventually sit down and consider right through. Thankfully the old pipes hole under the sink has been stopped up by my landlord's workmen in an antimouse move. So I relaxed a bit about her having left the room. The door is a flush-fitting full-on firedoor so no way could she have squeezed under there. The only remaining possibility (considering I had only caught site of her once, about an hour after she first went missing last night) was that she had got down somewhere she could not get back up. Somewhere in my room. There are books piled up besides the cupboard that's crawling alive with wild mice and that's where she was. Cavorting with wild mice if you please! Soon as I pulled the books out I spotted something and saw Itchy was alive! I was seriously starting do doubt this as (well, as I said) utterly no sign of her.

It was over an hour from first sighting tonight and several near-misses to eventual recapture. You must understand you cannot grab at a tiny animal like that - she's no longer than my little finger. (And, incidentally, being the skinniest robo, the one who could least affort to be away from home and food.) I baited a long cardboard tube with birdseed and broccoli, which necessitated sitting right by it else I'd have to move and/or lunge which would panick her out of there. I put another normal-size toilet tube round the side of the books. And totally blocked off the cupboard so she could not get behind or underneath it.... let her ramble towards it. Inside she went. Two seconds later - CAPTURED!

NAUGHTY NAUGHTY LITTLE SWINE!!

***

And my trots seems to have gone away, too!

***

My own haiku of the day:
Baby Itchy -
naughty swine.
Nibbles seeds oblivious.

赤ちゃん痒い-
いたずらな豚です。
かじる種子気づかれます。

(translation courtesy Google translate - and I know the syllables don't go 5-7-5...)

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PS Couldn't resist passing the Japanese back through Babelfish and got this even more poetic rendition:

The baby it is itchy,
- it is the mischievous pig.
The seed which you gnaw you become aware.

*!!*

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Extra video of the day I found this last night but wasn't sure how to embedd it.
It's Japanese Sushibar Conveyorbelt Scenes ...

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STOP PRESS:
I'm opening a new Japanese blog. Full of Japanese things. With language lessons for me and anyone else who wants to learn some Japanese...

http://gledwoodnihon.blogspot.com

Still No Baby Itchy

重度の下痢！そして私のハムスターを再表示されていない！

Still no sign of the missing Itchy. I've no idea where she might have gone... if she's been kidnapped and sold into slavery by the wild mice behind my wardrobe or what... I am most concerned. But I refuse to give up hope.

I was really ill this morning. Severe diarrhoea so bad it left almost no mark in the loo because it was so exceedingly watery. And gut cramps. And vomiting. I sicked up my methadone as well. Then, as I nearly always do when I'm ill like that, I fell asleep all afternoon only getting up just in time to go to the drugs clinic where I gave a zero reading on the breathalyser. Ha-ha! So there!!

Nobody can tell what caused me to get sick like that (I was far too ill to leave the house in the morning plus exhausted from vomiting...) It cannot have been my stew as that's constantly boiling with the lid on and hence just about as sterile as cooked food can get. The only other thing I'd eaten in the previous several days was some pasta and broccoli with grated cheddar and parmesan. But that was cooked in the same pan I'd used the day before to sterilize all my old cutlery. Boiling and boiling and topping up and boiling again for over an hour. So how that could have given me food poisoning I've no idea. It's a mystery...

Did anyone in this country see the Queen documentary on Monday? It's one of a five-parter. I don't think it's been shown anywhere abroad yet though I'd have thought most civilized countries love watching that sort of thing. In Germany, for example, she's known simply as "die Queen" or even "the Queen" - and everyone knows which Queen they're talking about!

The cameras followed last year's State Visit to the United States of America. Mrs Bush was well enamoured with the British style of State Banquets and remarked how small and plain and pokey the White House is compared to Buckingham Palace. And quite right, too. Nothing but the best for Ma'am!

I don't want one of those bicycle-riding monarchs like they have in Northern Europe. It's only due to the shillyshallying farts in power at the time that Ma'am didn't get a replacement for the decommissioned Royal Yacht Britannia. The people would object to our spending one hundred million pounds on a royal boat, I can hear them blustering. And yet they pour billions into the Iraq war and other utter white elephants. I for one do not want a rowing boat Queen. When I'm Prime Minister I'm getting her a proper boat. Plus ten-storey high turrets on all four corners and a huge extension to the back of Buckingham Palace to mark my time in office! (Why should everything marking "Great" Britain always be from the past? Why no additions from today?? If the Houses of Parliament had been built in "Modern Britain" they'd resemble a multistorey carpark! Do click for the image!)

Here's today's message to Japan!
My today's message to Japan:
ここに私が日本のファンにメッセージを私します。最初に、お聞きしたい、自分のブログをどうやって見つけますか？今ではそれが本当に汚れを入浴後にする必要があります。その場合、私はもっときれいにしようとする！ぜひご自分のすべての日本の俳句を楽しんだ。かれらは、オンラインで私が見つかりましたのでよく分かりませんブログを書いている。最良の健康をお祈りします。私のブログを読んで続行してください！愛を込めてから Gledwood

Now I'm going to go home and pine for poor Baby Itchy. Hopefully she has not disappeared down a hole to get lost under the floorboards. O I don't know what to say...

My videos of the Day:
1. Hayley Westenra/Katherine Jenkins: Ave Maria Ready Steady Cook duet. I think Katherine Jenkins in particular has an amazing voice&
2. Hayley Westenra: O Mio Babbino Caro
3. Katherine Jenkins: My Heart Will Go On

And last but not least, today's haiku:

かんこ鳥鳴や蟇どのの弔いに

kankodori naku ya hiki dono no tomurai ni

the mountain cuckoo sings
at Mr. Toad’s
funeral

***

9:52pm NO SIGN YET OF POOR MISSING ITCHY (boo-hoo)

***

I've revised my opinions of my ideal home from Buckingham Palace (rather pokey by international standards) to the Winter Palace at St Petersburg - what a house! Imagine how much room Baby Itchy would have to ping about in there...!!

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See this Amazing Country Cottage Slideshow of Snowy Conifers from Canada...

They have baby Xmas trees for £5 each in pots at our local supermarket. Made me long so much for a garden in which to plant one...

***

PS I hope the Japanese isn't too annoying to most people. It's meant to attract over more visitors from Japan. So if you're Japanese come ON!!

Itchy AWOL!

私のハムスターは、エスケープ！

BABY ITCHY ROBOROVSKI has escaped! She is officially AWOL. I waited so long for her to reappear from wherever she's in hiding I fell asleep earlier and, waking to no radio (so any suspicious scrabblings I hear) had no idea of the time and felt it was about 4am. Imagine my surprise when my mobile phone proclaimed midnight no less!

I hope she does turn up. I don't know what I would do without scrambled wet fur sticking up everywhere appearance pinging in the morning...

In my absence I've turned out all lights but my dedicated Rodent Light TM (fireglow bulb: pitch darkness to hamsters) and have taped a succession of tubes to the top of their tank, like a builders' rubbish chute where Itchy can clamber in and like the smell of home to much she flings herself in over the top. Well that's the idea...

... and if I don't check it the minute I get back it's just my luck I'll spend all night cooing "come out you pink nose. Come out you gremlin, you swine!" into every corner so Laundretta thinks I'm now schizophrenic only to find she's been earwashing back home in her nest all night!

Actually you can't really coo to bring them back. Once escaped they go into "wild" mode and ping about everywhere pretending to be scared of you.

Righty-ho so that's the news. I have to go and get some tempting broccoli from the corner shop.

Ta-taa folks! I will hopefully log on with news of her safe return tomorrow a.m.

Video of the Day1:
Run-off-feet Robomother
Struggling to keep her litter in one place...

Video of the Day2:
King Cobra
Why is it always an Aussie tormenting these poor magnificent creatures?

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Re yesterday's haiku; I found them online. I wish I did have that command of Japanese to write them myself!

I figured out the mouse licking the river.

.春風や鼠のなめる角田川
haru kaze ya nezumi no nameru sumida-gawa

spring breeze–
a mouse licking up
Sumida River

It means the ripples are so feathery they're as if those of a tiny mouse tenderly lapping the water...

Unwittingly Middle Eastern Hotpot Haiku

EVILSTEIN CAME KNOCKING like the Grim Reaper - Military tent inspection time. "Nothing on the side! Nothing here. No bits -" (He means no clutter.) "Or you are out. LAST CHANCE!!" He grundled in that voice that has all the mellifluousness of a decomissioned diesel locomotive spluttering to life on a rusty East London siding on a mizzling winter's dawn ...

Well he can ****off. There's no law against clutter.

Mother Hubbard says I should tell him where to go.

I say "forwarned is forarmed" and I should say nothing. If and when he does try something on I will take action. But why tell him or even hint at it first? He will only get indignant and likely come up with some even evilsteinier plot thickener against me...

My Middle-Eastern hotpot (for that's pretty much what I've found out it is) is perfected better than ever this time.

In an ordinary-sized slo-cooker 4 chunks neck of lamb (£2.65 worth at £1.49 per lb...) so that's about 1.7lbs or about 800g I expect.... Plus 3 medium potatoes sliced small. One large red onion. 3 fairly large carrots, sliced thin & cut in half at the fat end. About 8 large button mushrooms (ie unopened field mushrooms) each cut in 6. One tin crabeye beans.

And the seasoning: 2 desert spoons paprika. 1 desert spoon Mr Brown's Jamaican curry powder (click to see the packet!). 1 flat teaspoon ginger. 1 nonheaped teaspoon (dry) thyme (use far less if adding fresh herbs they're that much stronger..! 35 drops Maggi liquid seasoning. 4 desert spoons dark soy sauce. 1 desert spoon beef gravy granules (eg Bisto). About 2-3 pinches or a fifth of a flat teaspoon chili powder.

This time I have neared perfection.

(Last time's cucumber, by the way, was only to use up leftovers. I don't advocate cucumber stew, I was just pointing out you can use it if it's going to waste...)

Today's result is spicy but - despite the curry - not Indian or Jamaican. Certainly not Mexican in style. Closest to Middle Eastern - like a hotpot I had in Morocco once. Lovely business!

Mother Hubbard was aghast at the concept of "learning" to cook stew. "How can you 'learn' to make stew?" she exclaimed. "That's the easiest thing in the world to make you just chop up..." and launched into her own method.... Till I pointed out that my "learning" was my gradual perfection of the "dish"... (isn't it a bowlful~??) Regular readers will know my "slightly" obsessive cooking/drugtaking/hamsterizing streak...

Mother Hubbs insisted that casserole/stew must but must be made with "stock". Most usually industrial-style Knorr or similar cubes. And that my paprika-on-dark-soy-sauce "base" doesn't count. Her method results in a relatively blandish British style leek-and-potato Irish stew. Mine is far spicier. (You could dip a pen in mine & write the recipe in browny-red scrawls it's that spicy...) So I realized I've unwittingly perfected soemthing a little more exotic than your average English style hotpot. Mine is far superior if I can say so myself!

My poor robbies! Becaus I knew old diesel-tanker Evilstein would be barging in chuddering in belching his fumes out like an extra from Thomas the Tank Engine (click to view a realistic depiction of Evilstein's face) I knew I had to stash them well and truly. And so slotted between wall and a chest of drawers, they lay piled over with vinyl records and unwashed clothes plus the suitcases that were under my window (the doubleglazing man needs access there so all that had to move...)

They were rambling like mad all three at a time on their buttery wheel last time I checked. Always the same formation: pingy Baby Itchy leading the way up front. Bashful as "back marker" as racing commentators tend to call horses I've bet money on. And gargantuan Big Tubby Momma Spherical weighing things down in the middle!

This morning I was just rearranging their lavvy tubes when I felt hammy-fangs sinking right into the tip of my right index finger! This happened in slow motion and I yowled in shock before naughty Bashful (for it is always her who bites me like that - the swine!) turned on her bum and bumbled off. Then to emerge bashfully from a lavatory tube a brief interval later, batting her eyelashes at me. A picture of pure innocence... When I put on a roborovski production of Othello I'm having Bashful play Iago...

Now here are my Japanese haiku of the day:
(Haiku being short Japanese poems by Authors like Basho... the English translations here aren't the best but these were all I could find in original plus translation...)

.春風や鼠のなめる角田川
haru kaze ya nezumi no nameru sumida-gawa

spring breeze–
a mouse licking up
Sumida River

.御盛りや草の庵ももりはじめ
osaga[ri] ya kusa no iori mo mori hajime

the year’s first rain–
my grass roof’s
first leak

.春雨や喰れ残りの鴨が鳴
harusame ya kuware-nokori no kamo ga naku

spring rain–
the uneaten ducks
are quacking

.俳諧を囀るやうなかんこ鳥
haikai wo saezuru yôna kankodori

like warbling pure haiku
mountain
cuckoo

Good luck to all in Australia with your new government. Faster broadband is on the way. (Incidentally we're promised 50 mega-somethings per sec country-wide (but only in towns big enough to be cable TV'd up) by Virgin Cable next year... Plus your new Premier speaks Chinese. I heard that speech where he totally upstaged Mr Howard!... All good for regional relations from now on ..!

Cheerio everyone and Happy Stewing! I'm off to get flour & vegetarian "suet" for intellectual dumplings...

*

Videos of the Day
Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson: Say Say Say
Barbra Streisand: The Way We Were

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Calling all UK-dwelling Brits: Her Majesty the Queen is on (that famous Annie Liebowitz portrait strop docu) 8:30 tonite on BBC1... not to be missed for the world!

***

Spectacular Equadorian countryside shots:
http://sedacasinecuador.blogspot.com

Anna Braga Hennebry. Blog from a Brazilian lady in South Dakota travelling the USA
http://anabragahenebrysjournal.blogspot.com

Amicituoi - striking pictures from Italy. But he seems to be calling Camilla Parker Bowles a tart!
http://amicituoi.blogspot.com

Did everyone see under the waters of a mysterious French lake?
http://waterproof68.blogspot.com

Furry Boiled Egg ...

POOR OLD BABY ITCHY has been "furry boiled egging" galore. Rambling through her ultra narrow magic wand tube. You blow through the front. She panicks inside and scoots out quick in reverse, thereby pushing up all her fur, in "boiled egg with eyes" fashion. Poor Baby Itchy.

My stew came out all the more wonderful for its lack of nonEuropean ingredients. Okra, I've really discovered, just denigrates into a seed-filled slop at the bottom. Nasty business. Why they sell it as "suitable for stews and casseroles" in Sainsbury's I'll never know...

I did add (not in place of courgettes/zucchini but because it was languishing in my fridge and would only have gone off) a cucumber. It actually went very well in the soup. Like the onions, it just turns into background "thickener" and only little bits of peel were left over. It was still rather pleasant though.

I followed Ruth's advice and preboiled my potatoes first (they're always sliced small so the size wasn't stopping them from cooking).... Also I had no option but to do dumplings made iwth marge and not Atora. But they still came out pretty good.

And here's my message to my Japanese fans:

良い一日をすべての日本のファンのブログにします。なぜこんなに多くの人が東京から他の地域とここで私を介してきたさまよえるまるで見当がつかないが、楽しんで読んでくれるといいけど私のハムスターやヘロイン"印" ！

Now Debs has tagged me for "7 bizarre things of myself". I'm sure this is a turnaround of the 5- and 6 weird things tags that have been doing the rounds all this year. As I myself did the five weird things about six months ago!

Well anyway here we go:

1. I've been on heroin for 7 years now.

2. The 1st drug I ever took was caffeine in a cup of tea. Cannabis aside: I am living proof that supping tea (especially with sugar!) can and does lead to heroin addiction so all you tea-drinkers BE WARNED!!

3. Part of the long, long process of my addiction involved finding a mysteriously lost or flung out stash of 10g of heroin on the street! (That was about 7 and a half years ago.)

4. When I was 8 years old I once sneaked downstairs in the dead of night in rising panick as an evil burglar vehemently chiselled away at our front door!

It wasn't a burglar at all. Just my bored first hamster (imaginatively named "Hammy") vigorously gnawing at the bars because he was bored out of his head and we didn't realize hamsters need exercise wheels to stop them going stir-crazy!

5. I think the pop singer with the best voice is Barbra Streisand. But some of the material she's chosen to sing is execrable!

6. I have longed to speak (and read and write) Japanese since I was 16 or younger. And yet nearly 20 years later I have still not learned the language that far beyond "konichi-wa"! (My stately Japanese messages have to come courtesy of Google Translate, I'm afraid.)

7. I have never really wanted to be anything in this life but a writer. Hence those painful memoirs!

And I had a horrible nightmare last night about being trapped on a haunted damp-&-derelict runaway train full of baggage thieves. Nasty business!

And I tag:

Merle
Evil Spock
Jim D
Ivy
Bimbimbie
Molson
Vi Vi Voom
Nicole
Puss-in-Boots
Jeanette
Welshcakes Limoncello
Liz
Audrey
Akelamalu
M-filer
Wat
Marty ...
(ooer ~ this is turning into such a comprehensive list I'm starting to quiver and quake lest I leave someone out. I'm expert at doing things like that. So basically I tag everyone ~ har har har!!

Video of the Day:
Ebony Funky Dancer

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Wonderful pike etc photos from bottom of a French lake...
http://waterproof68.blogspot.com

Amazing Canadian Sketches
http://sixforfive.blogspot.com

What's New? Freezing Cold. More Stew.

DULL DULL DULL... DING-DONG THE DULLARD'S GONE! So depressed yesterday I was lying on the floor dreading the day. Lying there for hours sleeping and sleeping again. Nasty business. Till finally I got up and resumed the world and nothing was as bad as I'd feared it was going to be ... (what a surprise).

I've had loads of hits from Japan! In fact 19% of yesterday's traffic was from there. Can any Japanese person explain why? What did I do? Except get Google Translate to do a highly cogent comment for me for a Japanese blog I found on Blogger Play!

Sorry I didn't write anything yesterday due to dullarly depression and also running out of time and being too stingy with topup money till today...

I've not been doing very much at all of any interest to anyone. Except I'm making yet another stew. I've left out the posh ingredients this time (the tin of chopped tomatoes base, the courgette/zucchini and the okra) and am stewing up what's left. Along with a tin of intellectual red kidney beans. So let's see how that goes.

(Loads of yummy neck of stewing lamb's in there too. Of course!)

So Labour won the Australian elections. After 17 years of Mr Howard's (was that his name) "democratic" party monopoly. Reactions please from Down Under. You know how I love loathesome politicians!!

Baby Itchy Robo went for a ping in the early hours of this morning. When I wasn't too freezing cold to move from under my tent of a blanketry. Yes! Nighttime temperatures in London have been little over zero. Most inconvenient.

Now I have to go for now and sort my furry boiled eggs out. Etc.

One last thought. When I make Baby Itchy a star of the hip-hop and rap world, what name should I give her? Was thinking: "Furry Fur".. ... .... ;->... ..??

***

PS I'm not seeing those mysterious Treasures of Tutankhamun till next week, but shall report back from there...

***

Intellectual sketching instructions:
http://swankscum.blogspot.com

Blogging Xmas comes earlier every year. Here it is already at:
http://psychostampart.blogspot.com

Excellent Malaysia Pictures:
http://stevenhavingfun.blogspot.com

Ultra-floaty desertification Dead Sea photos:
http://heimatoderexil.blogspot.com

Really entertaining doggie pixx:
http://cosmicblast.blogspot.com

Fishing in Singapore:
http://nafishnafish.blogspot.com

More drawing instructions:
http://blogagago.blogspot.com

Great surf-n-sea shots:
http://moniksurf.blogspot.com

Mothball Dumplings "Casserole" Butterywheeled Robo

I WROTE SO MUCH RUBBISH EARLIER on notepaper I think it will have to wait to be posted as I'll run out of "air" time before I ever get it down...

I'm making another stew and it's just started going through the mental phase when it's really bubbling up. I don't know why but the potatoes always take about two hours to do in that slow cooker. They can be quite hard while the lamb is edible (if not "well" done... Maybe it's because I "seal in" the lamb by frying pretty well first...

Evilstein my landlord blustered in this morning threatening eviction (yet again) because they need to install double glazing and he thinks I have too much clutter. Since when has clutter-collecting been illegal? If he dares try anything I shall get the law on him good and proper.

My hamsters are celebrating their stay of execution by pinging three-at-a-time on their wheel. I can just glimpse them flashing whitebellied by as they ramble their way round. All hamsters do the same thing. On dismounting the wheel they run a circuit of the cage as if to prove they "got" somewhere with all that previous running... quite odd...

My memoirs are turning into a right ashtray of a book. Missing "vignettes"... stuff in wrong order. A right literary pigsty.

I can't wait till I've finished this nasty first draft or draught (one is a chilly wind from under a door. Another is a pouring of ale. Yet another is a writer's early edition of a literary work. Does anyone know which is which?). Then I can put all my boo-booze right. I'm not into the "perfecting it as you go along" school of book composing. That is a way of writing yourself into a corner as far as I'm concerned. Far better to get the archetecture right first time and perfect your decorations later. So to speak.

Valium Marilyn's just given me some Aero Chocolate Mousse. (Oo! This is one advantage of living in the motherland of confectionary you get double the ranges plus fridge and freezer based spinoffs unavailable in LA ~ haha!)

She was pretty with it tonight. Less Valium = more Marilyn. Simple equation!!

Now my robbies have a newly buttered wheel and yet they won't run on it. Because when I opened their enclosure to butter said wheel they all vanished down their selection of seven lavatory tubes and are now washing their ears and making Baby Itchy probably look like a harvest mouse fresh from a dunking in the bath...

Well my stew ~ or "casserole", if you will ~ must surely be about ready and I have to add "genuine 30 year old dumplings" (I hope they're not talking literally else they'll be more like mothballs). I have to go now.

Me and my Mum are going round the Millennium Dome to poke round Tutankhamun's Death Collection of memorabilia... I'll tell you how it was once I've been ...

Liz I found out about digital switchover for you. It should commence in 2008/9. Wales is one of the very first places. This link shows the details. People from other parts of the UK clickonit then choose your region from the menu. Freeview equipment will be the ONLY type of terrestrial TV (ie through the aerial) that will still work. But if you get Sky Digital or cable you'll still get service through that. Spare 5-channel tellies will not work in your house without freeview boxes though....

Video of the Day
All Saints: Black Coffee

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Aussie in New York... the city-by-night photo is pure diamond!

American (new) buildings are so much funkier than British ones... look at this from Boston, MA ...

Melancholic Monkey Delight Dumplings

SO TIRED AND SLOW AND WEARILY MELANCHOLIC. Deep in the middle of the night, close to 4am. I'm too too weary and not hungry. So I've just turned my slo-stew off. I made an intellectual stew earlier. Splintered neck of lamb. Very well done. Very nice. And I'm very proud of it.

I'm very depressed too. I don't know whether my memoir-writing caused this atack of "low mood" as my drs used to call it. Telling my story, as I've said. It's not only that I feel my life history has denigrated to a form of currency almost; but I have to desensitize myself to it anyhow if I'm to stand up and say "this is the book of my life so far and how I messed it up" - it has to be waters under the bridge. And that's how it IS and HAS BEEN for most of the time. What's made the difference is the necessity not of telling what happened, but of explaining how and why, of weaving the story together and telling consequences. That is something I've never done before because I don't you don't. We think of our lives in floating episodes whereas a book demands a continuous thread of sense. I thought I had become to used to my own story it could not hurt me any more.

The particular section I've been writing is not a section I've particularly pondered, mused, obsessed over. But I'm having to ponder it now. And maybe that's what's new.

All throughout my life from middle childhood I've fought low moods. They are nothing new to me. What I can't believe is that I'm actually letting this hold me back. And stop me from writing. As I said many times before - here's a simple fact about writing. If you want to write a book you simply must have or develop the strength to plough onwards no matter how uninspired or dispirited you may feel. Otherwise it will not get written.

I know all that and yet still I'm half capsized in a rut.

On a lighter note, reading about her Majesty the Queen last night and seeing her tribe of Corgis I realized they are the roborovskis of the dogs world. All looking exactly the same and yet so distinctive in personality. Greedy swines. And mischievous.

I did a nice stew last night. When I first fried up the lamb, real whiffs of pigs' diarrhoea came up. Then I stared at this "lamb" and realized how suspiciously anaemically light pink it was. I nearly puked. "The *******'s sold me pork!" I thought. Then I cooked it on and realized this was not the case. But it had a very narrow escape from being chucked out the window let me tell you. I loathe swineflesh. Ukkgh!!

In the end it came out rather nicely. The recipe is in the "sediment" post below. Don't forget that half a zuccini/courgette. I made dumplings but squeezed them together too much during the mixing process and so they were more like sheeps' eyeballs than proper fluffy Pigsy Delight from Monkey dumplings. The kind that frequently appeared steaming in the wilderness on a golden bowl from nowhere in the cult 70s Japanese TV series...

Right I have to go and put more dumplings on now. The old slo-cooker's been on about 2 hours now so it's probably frazzling the life out of poor yesterdays half-eaten stew!

All the best everyone!!

Vid of the Day:
Hamster Madness Montage... I thought I'd seen all this before in other clips... not the last bit though... hamsters peering at the sky then backflipping? Never seen anything like THAT before!!

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Is it true America does not have digital television yet?
I was just reading something about Berlin's switchover, first digital switchover in the world, in 2003 which multiplied the number of digital channels available in that city by digital terrestrial (ie by a rooftop aerial) to 27. This by shutting off all the analogue channels. And yet in this country even Mother Hubbard gets about 30 digital channels thru a freeview set top box plus we have five analogue channels. And yet all our analogue channels are getting shut down in Wales next year and here in London in 3 years' time. So what will happen after switchover? Does this mean we will all have 100 channels free through our aerials? Does anybody know about this? Please tell me.

If you want to read the "German TV is brilliant; American is crap" article, click here...

ps i think it is absolute scandal that the tatty british govt allowed scummy home shopping and 24-7 quiz channels and even pay-per-view to be broadcast over our democratic terrestrial airwaves. That is the true meaning of pirate broadcasting! The government hijacking our signals that ought to be broadcasting high definition David Attenborough documentaries 24 hours! Not kids broadcasting FM radio channels of dance music their local audience WANTS to hear and cannot get on Magic FM

And what a scandal awarding digital franchises to"i_iot ~ name the missing letter by spending £1 a minute on 0898-whatever" moneyprinting channels.

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In my dreams!

Hey look I'm leaving comments in Japanese now!!

私の日本の良い一日をお友達に言えば！私が見つかりましたブログを、インターネット上で非常にランダムにします。私の日本の良いことではありませんので私はと言えばカンニングを介してgoogleの翻訳！それはどのように私はこれらの言葉を書くことを、日本を今すぐ！ただ言いたかったことをブログには本当に面白いと少しして、友達のように見えるマイケルジャクソン1980年代後半にします。 （しかし、このように優れた方法！ ）とにかく来て私のブログにする必要があります。私の秘密日記を読むことができますが、オンラインで徹底的に楽しませました。 http://gledwood2.blogspot.comは、その場所に！すぐに私の希望で会いましょう！すべてのベストになります。よりgledwood "Vol 2 " ;->...

(It is still one of my biggest dreams to learn to speak read and write Japanese. When I am rich I will get a Mac notebook loaded with Rosetta Stone software. I find the Japanese people and their culture fascinating... (everything except Japanese food in fact!))

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Wonderful Rouen Pictures

Shall I use this as my new avatar for a while?

Goldfishycarppondstuff.

Enchanting Indonesia Pixx

Amazing Tibet Pictures

Postcards from the World - Ireland

Disney Blog

http://madridquebec.blogspot.com - does anyone know what the huge building, 2nd photo from bottom is (this one)? And where precisely it is? Wow. It's amazing. I'd love to have a house like that, wouldn't you??

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I love banal pictures of everyday scenes from foreign lands. This one depicts an American supermarket checkout.

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You couldn't make it up! Read this letter from an American local council to a local landowner of two "debris"-blockaded streams...

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See the cocaine up Amy Winehouse's nose!

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AARGH! Gotta get a lid for that slow cooker! I came back after three hours of "letting it mull" as I thought it was doing. No! It was not mulling at all.

ALL water had evaporated through the gap where the illfitting frying pan failed to cover as lid. Said stew was dried out, ashy and smelling of burning plastic.

I still threw cold water on it, picked off the black bits and ate it with fresh dumplings though.

Waste not want not - hey!!

Stirring up the Sediment.+ Stew

STIRRING UP THE SEDIMENT! That's certainly what I've been doing lately. It is barely a quarter past four and pitch dark already. Now I have a phone I have a clock again. And alarm clock...

My phone really dosn't look like a telephone at all. To be honest, to me, it looks more like a drinks coaster crossed with a spectacle case for gnomes... clickonthis to view it, but bear in mind it's litup in that picture whereas normally it's shiny, sleek and goldrimmed black...

Many thanks for all the messages I got last night and today.

In reply to some of your queries: Gledeber was a mongrel. I unblocked the sink using citric acid crystals (citric acid + sodium bicarb is the best: it really foams up!)

And I'm powering ahead with my book despite the naysays from my "self".

You know if I'm going to publish my lifestory I have to get comfortable with my life. Now I know I'm a little more "candid" than the average Joe... but not perhaps THAT much ... I have to get used to all this sediment.

And if I feel that I'm exploiting my own suicidal attempts or speaking of them glibly or exposing them to ridicule; I'm only doing in miniature form what I'm going to have to do to make peace with my story having been told to the world when it has been... It's for this reason I'm not interested in smallscale selfpublishing or charity publishing or smallscale publishing. If I'm going to tell my story I want it to go to the entire world. Otherwise I shall have double-compromised. Telling the story was meant to mark a turning point. I think it's going to have to be a 2 volume book though. I don't know.

Well it's about 20 past 4 and dark and I'm tired. Everything is chaos as per usual. I wish I could sleep for ten years. But I can't.

I'm going to miserably pick over my carcasse of a lifestory manuscript now. Wish me luck, please. Take care. Bye.

Gleds
xx

***

Right: 7:50pm and I'm making intellectual stew.
These were the ingredients.
One and a third pounds or about 300g neck of lamb chopped up with butcher's murder weapon cleaver thing. Fried in a bit of curry powder.
Half a tin of chopped tomatoes (usually it's a whole tin). A quarter of a tin of water to make up for the tomatoes missing. This forms the stew base.
One enormous onion. Fried after the lamb's done. (If you can't cook let me inform you you have to "seal in" any meat by frying first in a pan with spices. You can do this without spices but it's the very inverse-apex of vulgarity.
Oh yeah. One huge potato. Chopped pretty small. Chucked in slow cooker.
Chuck everything in slow cooker by the way.
One enormous carrot all sliced and chopped up and peeled obviously due to civil liberties restricting New Labour government's pesticides. (Had to get politics into a recipe somehow...)
About 30p 60c worth of okra. Topped and tailed and sliced.
About 30p 60c worth of mushrooms. Slice half. Cut the other half of each into two quarters.
Spices: about 4 teaspoons paprika. About a quarter teaspoon neat red chili powder. About a third teaspoon of ginger (which I slightly regretted at the time but I don't think it's too much). About 2 teaspoons dark soy sauce (darkens the mix if it does nothing else). A small teaspoon thyme. I do have mixed herbs but haven't a clue where they've gone. Two teaspoons gravy granules. These thicken it up. And about a teaspoon or two "Old Dr Brown's Jamaican Curry Powder" which is chock full of MSG (the key to good taste. Sorry I'm not that bourgeois. I love MSG.) No need at all to add salt as it's in everything else.
I was going to add broccoli but it's not very stew-like.
I once asked a stupid bourgeois yoga teacher for "some advice on things to add to a curry" (she was the same person who "didn't want supermarkets in London, at least not big new ones as they're frightfully inconvenient in added traffic" oh bugger off! Anyway so typical of this person who I did love (she moved in as one of seven into my old house. A certain other person didn't want her in but I thought she was fantastic despite her foibles. Anyway she went and recommended the two most non-Indian takeaway curry-ish of things: ie mushrooms which you NEVER get in Indian takeaway (and I never came across in India either) and BROCCOLI possibly the most nonsubcontinental of all vegetables.... well I digress...
Well I think I've mentioned everything that's gone into the pot. Because I have no proper lid and cannot even find a plate to fit I've had to shove a carrier bag over a small frying pan and make that do...
Righto and that's about it...



Video of the Day 1:
This is one of the best videos I've posted up here. Very watchable. Shows us why Princess Diana was such a "star" in the minds of the media...Diary of a Princess: Diana's Last Documentary ~ Landmines in Angola ...

Video of the Day 2:
Sinead O'Connor: Rebel Song Live

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Diary blog of an author:
http://jamieprose.blogspot.com

Really entertaining greetings card shop style baby photos...
http://aramateixenfiloaquestaagulla.blogspot.com

O What a Miserable Post Below!

O WHAT A MISERABLE POST BELOW! (Not this one. I mean the last one.) Writing my life story is 1. depressingly unweildy. Because it's not THAT easy to pack everything into a succinctly told tale. And publishers much prefer succinct to longwinded. Long is OK. Longwinded is not. Of course I can just tell each event as it happens in order but I'm trying not to be too "episodic". It's my responsibility as a writer to draw comparisons, conclusions etc; to weave the threads of my life together. As I've mentioned previously I'm often accused of "thinking too much"/etc but this isn't strictly true. I've often been guilty of simply not considering vital factors in advance e.g. "what will I do with my life, where will I live, who do I want to be with after I detox" before going into rehab (as I have done and didn't do...) 2. writing my lifestory throws up a whole load of sediment. Some of that sediment you can read below. It may seem disturbingly in the present tense but the time I'm writing of is about 14 years ago when I was living in Norwich. I always think that by objectifying my own experiences e.g. on this blog. Writing about them quite blithely sometimes it thwarts the power of silence they might otherwise hold over me. The big point of writing this book of mine was that I hoped the book and the process of writing would change my life. Mark a turning point. Put a lid on the past. And mark a point of no-return. I.e. that I could move on, and might never need to go back ever again.

And yes! Baby Itchy Robo did indeed jump down and scuttle off under my bed (where the wild things are...) Took over 15 mins to get her back, in which time of course I despaired of ever seeing her again. She is so tiny and pingy. And unlike ordinary hamsters, who are quite fierce as rodents go, at least when riled, robos are very very rarely agressive. Far more wriggly than bitey when it comes to people. Though Bashful still bites me and runs off - the swine!

I've been using my new phone. It is the very cheapest one you can find in Argos. At the weekend it was £12.50. Now it's gone up to £14.99. It looks like a drinks coaster to me. Sagem My-x 220. Or something like that. (Sagem my220x and I know they're not the best make!) So miniaturized I had real troubles handling the battery, inserting the sim, putting it together to start with...

I unblocked my sink yesterday as it was clogged with pasta-starch. Well that's what I think it was.

Well I hope this is slightly less depressing than the last outsplurging

;->...

take care everyone

G
x
x

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Amazing American snow pictures... Mt Willey etc
at http://ep4000footers.blogspot.com

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Wonderful South American Spanish Festival Photos!

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What a wonderful house!

Amazing Pictures of Paraguay Taken on an Exceedingly Grey Day!

Amazing Greek Bird Pictures!

Naughty Baby Itchy + Why Was I Born

I WASN'T REALLY IN THE MOOD FOR POSTING TONIGHT but I have internet time so why not. I don't know exactly why but all weekend I have been so depressed and feeling like I'm drowning.

I once read a book by a psychologist called Kay Redfield Jamison who suffered from severe bipolar disorder. In the depths of her illness, before she settled into a routine of lithium-taking she suffered a double bout of depression (that is, a depression that lifted very briefly only to return just as devastatingly as before)... this went on for 18 months.

Even in the very depths of despair, despite wishing for death, she said she has never regretted being born. Well that's more than I've done. When I was depressed it was, I would say, because I knew I should not have been born. And have had life foisted on me. Something I never asked for. A responsibility. That was the great appeal of heroin, a drug that could kill me in my sleep. And yet death eludes me.

That was how I felt when I was most depressed. And the worst depression went on for about two years. The psychiatrists I saw were useless. The counsellor I saw I suspected at the time and am pretty convinced now looked down on me for being too similar to how SHE had been before she sorted herself out. Only a dedicated GP who made for me weekly appointments made any difference.

When I was a bit nutty a couple of years ago I honestly started to believe I was immortal. Every conceivable method of suicide I was convinced would only end up in failure. I desperately wanted to detox so I would not die a junkie and spend all eternity in withdrawals.

According to a Muslim who was preaching outside the library last year, if you do commit suicide, whatever method you use you will repeatedly go through the motions of this through all eternity in hell yet never dying. For this reason I would most like to die injecting heroin.

I know I'm never going to die though. Especially not through heroin. The ONLY hope I have of dying is by taking my own life and as I said the more depressed I feel the more hopeless I am of ever succeeding with that. I watched the trains slicing along at 100mph Londonbound convinced that if I did venture in front it would only kick me out of the way like a football. And I'd bounce harmlessly into the bushes there to shiver eternally cold and damp in the morning dew.

I have been writing some of my book but it is very depressing. Writing a book is hardly the most difficult of life's tasks. Damns have been built. Bridges constructed. Undersea tunnels dug. Hundred storey skyscrapers erected in less time than this book seems to be taking and with a whole lot less fuss.

One thing I never expected (remember I'm the one so often accused of "thinking too much" yet my biggest flaw seems to be NOT thinking things through)... never expected from writing my book was that the pattern and flow of my own life would be held up close for me to puzzle over. I have never examined my own life's story in such detail before. Nor the way one consequence leads on to another.

It has been freezing cold this weekend here in London. Night temperatures have dropped to near freezing while yesterday was aparently only 4 degrees celcius.

I have been sleeping with the cooker hob on all night.

Baby Itchy roborovski escaped yesterday and was awol for a quarter of an hour until eventually she rambled blithely right into my waiting flytrap-style hands. She panicked bigstyle when I captured her and had a guilty look on her face. She has been banished to the teabox in disgrace.

Sorry for such a depressing post. I am not suicidal but I have to think about these things as I did at least twice attemptedly kill myself and must reason these events out. The first time I was so blitzed afterwards that I could not and did not even consider events. I just felt poisoned to the core of my being, because I had done a bottle of vodka and a bottle of tricyclic antidepressants. Most of the pills, as I've said, I sicked up so soon after swallowing they still had the coatings on them... The second time I woke up freezing cold in a bathful of clothes, planks of wood, housebricks etc etc having attempted to drown myself while unconscious. I woke into a hazy white space and at first, for one elated moment thought I really had managed it. Then the bleak chilly wetness impinged and I realized the white ethereal space in which I "floated" was merely my unfocused view of the bath's white side...

Well I had better go now.

On a more positive note I got a new mobile phone today for £15.

Take care everyone...

G
xx

Videos of the Day

Sugababes: Shape
Her Majesty the Queen's Tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales...
Robby the Entertaining Parrot's Bedtime Story...

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Tagged on a "meme" thang!

Annie Bimbimbie from Queensland (Australia), whose name means "place of many birds" in a mysterious Aboriginal tongue ~ or to translate into my own kind of language "birdery" tagged me with this meme thing which is to explain my blogging name.

Well it is quite simple really.

Gledeber was the name of a dog we once had who looked like a seal.
Edward the Confessor was the last but one Saxon king in South England before William the Conkeror came over and defeated King Harrold.
My blog is quite confessional and I miss Gledeber to this day and hence the name "Gledwood"
The Vol 2 comes because originally my old blog was on another blog "hoster" thing. And not as good. Hence that was vol 1; this is vol 2...

And I tag:
Lime

Too Drunk

NOT TODAY, YOU UNDERSTAND; BUT ON THURSDAY. I was so bored bored bored I had been forgotten by the dealer so I drank drank drank between wending my way back and forth to the phonebox to complain about the time this was taking. Passed out on the hall stairs ~ Laundretta-style ~ for two hours slumped over the Sun newspaper. It was all a mixup between the bossman who answers the phone and the gofer who actually delivers and my brains were done in. Well they were after all that cyder I pickled them in. This all happened between one and four-thirty in the afternoon but I was still unsteady on my feet at nine pm... and to think I'm supposedly stopping drinking!

I'm going back to Cup-a-Soup and tea again, definitely. In fact I was so repentant that at 5am instead of getting alcohol from the cornershop I got Yazoo chocolate shake... I so often stare at that and the Coca Cola longingly as I trot to the tills with my boring beers. I don't actually like the taste of cyder that much you see... well whatever. Being breathalysed (by the drugs clinic) really does not help. Because they're treating me like a child (I know most children don't drink... but you see what I mean...)

When I briefly did psychology some years ago I came across a thing called intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is something like my teadrinking technique. Ie I'm cutting out booze because I really want to and have motivated myself. Extrinsic motivation is something like the clinic putting threats on me. And that sort of motivation really doesn't work on me.

The only funny thing I did after all that drinking was to take my hamsters for a ramble in the (dry) bath and they were especially pingy. Zipping all over the place in true furry Scalectrix fashion! Though I know I mentioned this yesterday...

Righto: it's dark and it's here already so have a cheery weekend folks!

Gxx

Tune of the Day
Madonna: Live to Tell

Tubby Hedgehog Pinknosed Robo Crack Compulsion

"COME OUT YOU GREAT BIG FAT PINK NOSES! Come out you tubby gremliny swines!" I cooed into the teabox this afternoon...

I TOOK MY ROBOS FOR A PING in the bath today as I was drunk and waiting hours for my useless dealer to come. They were so entertaining zipping up and down like furry Scalextrix. I tried to get Bashful and Spherical to walk on my hands but they jumped off every time and ran to the taps side... Itchy was of course the only one who trusted me, because she is tame, and hopped on my hand and was all furry and cute....

... I did manage to scare her the other day, though, by saying "are you a furry morsel?!?" and then threatening to bite her. (I've had chicken nuggets that were bigger than her)... unforuntately she thought I really was eating her and jumped so vigorously she backflipped right across my two arms to a waiting pillow (because after her 150 ft tumble I know her tricks well now...)

MY EVIL DRUG DEALER GAVE ME FREE CRACK A COUPLE OF AFTERNOONS AGO, saying "pay me when you can" (is never OK?) and swanned off. Of course I accepted the bag and smoked it and mixed it in my "gear" and injected it. Heroin without coke is like tea without sugar. You can do it, you can accept it. But when you're as deadbeat an addict as I am the heroin basically does nearly nothing at all and that cocaine sweetness is practically all you feel from the hit. So I felt that by giving up crack I was making a real sacrifice. And now this bastard wants to jeapordize all that...

... I don't know what to say.

MY BOOK. I AM STILL SLOWLY WRITING. It alternately flows and stalls. Take it from one who knows: writing fiction is so much easier!! But I must not deviate from the truth. Although I have pretty mercilessly cut out old friends and events and compressed things into readable entertainment. It's not meant to be a story about the other people I've known: it's a story about me. So everyone else is thrown into fitting hazy gloom as well they're meant to be. All is true but it's MY truth and I have to abbreviate. Otherwise ~ trust me ~ this will turn into a 20157-volume bore-scapade... know what I mean?

So nobody found out what yesterday's marine bed bug was called in English, did they? And yes I think it did practically bite that man's gnarled pensioner toe off!

I'm so tired. I'm exhausted in fact. It is a quarter to six and of course pitch dark lit by streaking taillights of cars and mopshops and kebabberies and southern fried chicken ... and don't get me started about the Chinese and their intellectual curries!

Here are the first two blogs I ever came across in my fledgling career as "blogger".
1st: Mousie's blog (guess why... hmmmm???) http://plumpiemousie.blogspot.com
2nd: Ruth's Gardening blog... she was Mousie's friend and posts beautiful shubberies and flowers on a near-daily basis...

Nicole has moved from Amsterdam to Adelaide in Southern Australia. (I know I said this before)... but the pictures are good. She captures the things I would want to ... you know, the details of daily life that make your day in the new country. So come on everyone have a click at http://nicolemobile.blogspot.com !¬

In the News: Football-Sized Tubby Hedgehog weighs more than most babies ....

Goodnight everyone! (As they used to say at closing time, Welwyn Stores, before it was taken over by John Lewis's...) Goodnight!

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Video of the Day:
Absolutely Fabulous: Season 1 Episode 1 "Fashion"

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Night volcano pictures...

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Do you want to read a really interesting unique book?
Libby Purves, presenter on BBC Radio 4's son was about 18/19 and on a gap year when he became psychotically depressed and killed himself.
Fortunately Libby at least knew about this and had spoken to his psychiatrists etc...
He left behind 35,000 words of diaries, poems etc...
She read one of the poems on BBC World Service's Outlook programme ... seriously it was really good.
Because the so-called "misery memoir" is so popular, she knew, having contacted established publishers that to publish her son's words she would be expected to interject a story of her own grief as well. The family didn't want this and so published his entire works themselves. If you want to find out more about his story, click here....
(The book is available on Amazon...)
Title: The Silence at the Song's End...

Here's an alternative Libby Purves link though it tells nothing about the book...

Here's the link to one of my favourite newsreaders, Corrie Corfield.. she even makes 10,000 people blown up in Rwanda somehow sound like good news with her professional "inflexions"...

My other favourite radio 4 newsreader is, of course, Charlotte Green... the gal retired seargeant majors still have wet dreams over... have a look at her site...

... I have to say I wish I hadn't clickedonthat now as she looks NOTHING like her radio voice would suggest!!!!

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Building a house from scratch in South California!

(My only reprimand would be of using far too much flamable timber and not enough bricks!)

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Hey! I have found out the name of yesterday's giant seabug!
It is called something like an isopod...

Misery Memoirs Pens Chinese Takeaway Recipes Aggressive Mice Breathalyser

I FAILED ANOTHER BREATHALYSER TEST THIS AFTERNOON. 0.65 when it ought to have been 0.5 or lower... I really don't get what's the point at 4pm being breathtested if I'm only going to fail it... of course I retook the test at 5pm and passed at only 0.35 though I had to go an entire hour bored and without cyder...

RODENT NEWS: Robos hiding in a corner (under cardboard lid)... Mice turfed out. These evil housemice now appear to be staging mousey jousting contests or duels at dawn UNDER MY BED. Complete with dying-squeaks sound effects. Very annoying creatures that they are. Also they peed all over my other jacket and it stank of mouse-piss so Mother Hubbs chucked it in her wash for me. How gross. It is like living in a barn in my house, honestly...

NOW ON TO CHINESE TAKEAWAY CURRY SAUCE. This is an English staple. Curry you must bear in mind, and I'm not being facetious here, is, after roast beef Yorkshire pudding, seasonable veg and gravy our national dish so the differences between different curries mean a lot here. Chinese curry is pretty low in chili or totally devoid. It has lots of turmeric and an oniony flavour. It adds a lot of savour to the plain chicken - onions - mushrooms (often but not always) - and peas stirfry upon which it is poured. Never in my life have I seen the sauce or a powder for it advertised or sold ... and I Googled for a recipe a couple of nights ago... without TOO much success... Nobody seemed to have a definitive version. Yes I could ask the local Chinese but they tend to be notoriously evasive when asked for cooking techniques or recipes. Surely someone has written an book giving away the secrets of British Chinese takeaway food (they have the knack of making it almost identical between diverse businesses the absolute length and bredth of this country. The menu is almost invariable as well... To be frank, I think most British Chinese takeaway food tastes of MSG+cardboard but the spicy dishes "curry" "blackbeansauce" and "satay" are the three I like... Chinese curry might be unknown in China (as Nicole subtly pointed out...) but it's surely an international takeaway phenomenon. I know this because my Teach Yourself Japanese has facsimile of a Japanese Chinese takeaway menu in Kanji and Kana and that has Chicken Curry Egg Fly Lice too!

I have had wonderful Japanese curry a couple of times at a Japanese restaurant in Soho called Zipangu.

I KNOW THE NAME FOR THE GENRE IN WHICH I'M WRITING (and spending a fortune on "wet ink roller balls/gel ink pens" etc in WH Smiths and Sainsbury's (Sainsbury's do exactly the same pen as WH Smith's own for £1.29 except Sainsbury's do THREE to a pack while stingy old WHSmiths only pack in ONE!!... yes, my writing is called a MISERY MEMOIR!! How evocative!! Well I'm trying to bust the genre by not being too selfpitying (real selfpity isn't something I'm that good at. Selfloathing - o yes! Genuine, heartfelt pity for myself, the way I might pity some crippled orphan from a Rwandan warzone - I only recall having that emotion just the once, and have never experienced it since...) Misery Memoirs are supposedly thee vogue of today which has really buoyed up my spirits.... I'm just hoping this "trendiness" will result in a seven-figure hard-soft deal with rights sold to America, Japan, Germany/everywhere else that's important... wahey!! Because I need a triplex atop Ontario Tower (or somewhere similar) ... just as long as there's room service from a linked-in five-star hotel, swimming pool in same building and sparkly views of London's glamorous diamondlike midnight skyline... Or, on the other hand if I could only get some PROPER place of my OWN where I can slam my door and NOBODY has ANY right to intrude without 48 hours' notice at least and where I can OWN A COMPUTER and have broadband and satellite TV etc etc and the things normal people have when they're doing OK. That's what I REALLY want... and to think the only way I can get any of this is by prostituting my lifestory... what is this world coming to ~??!?!?!?

Video of the Day: Owen and Mzee - Hippo and Tortoise Friends for Life...

Giant Bedbug Found Near Portuguese Beach... have a clickonthis someone please and tell me what on earth this revolting critter IS...

Visitor's Pictures of London "The Big Smoke" (as it used to be called about 2 generations ago before compulsory smokeless fuel was introduced to abolish London's "pea souper" megasmogs...

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Beautiful German Alpine mountain trekking shots...
... on http://juergenmaier.blogspot.com ...

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Emigration blogs...
... to Germany ~ http://susa-back-in-germany.blogspot.com
... from Amsterdam to Adelaide, Aus ... ~ http://nicolemobile.blogspot.com ... usw...

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Amazing Nepali countryside shots... http://nepaliakash.blogspot.com

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Entertaining trip to the zoo:

http://lmclennan.blogspot.com/2007/11/lao-zoo.html

What's So Good About London? Nicole Has Moved...

TWO BIG SHOES. NO BIG NEWS.
Just haddan attack ofthe rhymies there...
Well I've been pretty much in hibernation all day and not doing very much. I had to go up the road into "town" (meaning the local main shops, not the fabulous West End - I moved to London somehow imagining I would spend half my time there and of course, a decade down the line, I don't in fact in recent years I've gone literally a year at a time without ever venturing foot in Central London... at moments like this (that is, when I really think about it) I tell myself I really should do as it's only £1.80 return by bus and the right bus goes practically past my door. The sights of London Town are amazing. Perhaps Paris is more prettily laid out but the best bits of London give Paris a run for their money any day. I speak from direct experience here, having mooched around Paris on foot for a week, then travelled direct to London where I got the chance to do the same here for a day. Both cities were unfamiliar to me. Although I'd been to London zillions of times I was always with my parents and very little. It wasn't till I was in my late teens that I really got the chance for a proper look round... The best parts of London, for a chill-out Sunday morning walkabout would be the area from Buckingham Palace, down the Mall to the Houses of Parliament where St James's Park is very near; then you can trot up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square... the sites here, like Big Ben and everything are pure touristville and might bring patriotic tears to my eyes when I'm drunk... but seriously the premier parts of this town are good and I hardly ever get to see them!
What has put me in this frame of mind? Friend and Fellow blogger Nicole and partner Vincent have moved from Amsterdam to Adelaide in southern Australia. She posted up some really good photos so click her name for a look at them...
Righty ho I'd better be going after that blather this was only meant to be a short post. I got Chinese chicken curry egg fly lice last night and so have to buy the pasta I was blithering on about then now...
Does anyone happen to know where I can get proper Chinese style curry powder? Or curry sauce in jars? Or does anyone know a recipe? When I briefly looked into this yesterday, everything I read I had to take with a massive pinch of salt (or MSG!! haha!) One recipe for Chinese Takeaway Style Curry Sauce actually said use garam masala or shop-bought Indian currypowder which made me wanna shout and headbut the screen Chinese curry is NOTHING like that!! Why would you specify CHINESE curry if you were willing to make it with an Indian spicemix? Duh!
O I really am blathering now have to go I'm still not feeling to hot. And what's more I'm hungry. Remember Parmezan cheese.... righto....

PS I know this was a really boring post I'm sorry. I have to go and do this pasta and scribble more of my memoirs now as otherwise life shall be defeating me...

PPS What am I saying?!? I'm sorry that post is so witty and engaging... o i feel tired out i'm not my normal self ***POO!***

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How to draw swirls on Adobe thing program. Clickonthis: http://graphics-illustrations.blogspot.com

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Video of the Day
Vivienne Vyle Episode 2 (click here for all 4 sections of episode 2)

Video II
Cross-species Adoption: Mothers of the Year
Tortoise adopts baby hippo; tigress adopts baby swines etc

I'm Back!

HAVING SEEMINGLY SPENT MOST OF THE WEEKEND IN BED... sleeping a lot and sweating heavily... I got up at long last this morning stinking to high heaven and had to leave the house like this and bus to Mother Hubbard's house (I got lots of space to read the paper, which was great!) Turned up and even she, who seems to be the most forgiving person, noted I was really dirty. I felt dirty and disgusting. All I wanted to do was change clothes and jump in shower. There IS no shower at mine and even if there was it'd be broken. No plug for the bath still... except haHA! I FOUND one. Turns out the Evil Gnome who lives on the story below me had APPROPRIATED SAID PLUG FOR HIMSELF. In other words STOLEN IT FROM THE REST OF US. But last week he made a fatal wrong move and left it behind after one of his morning splasharounds. Also every morning he does an enormous turd the girth of a flower pot. I can't help querying how such an enormous "log" can pass from such a tiny person (I call him the gnome because he is so small - if he ever gets unemployed he could get a job in Disneyland wearing a red pointy hat and fishing in pools of lucky coins - he has that look down to a T). Anyway he leaves this disgusting enormous turd every morning first thing and NEVER flushes it. Also he has taken to leaving blood by the door ... in precisely the same place ... every day. Matran was right-on when he told me it's nothing to do with the gnome bleeding. It's everything to do with a silly little game he is playing with the rest of us. This Gnome is an objectionable character. If you were locked outside he would never let you in. He has never once let me in on the 2 or 3 occasions I've been locked out; though I'm sure he was in. Neither has he let in Laundretta on the scores and scores of occasions on which SHE's been locked out. But she just breaks in though... then has the cheek to blame local kids for that! I know exactly what was going on (hasn't happened lately) though I've kept this one up my sleeve. I don't want her to know that I know...

Hmmm... I really don't like my housemates as you can probably tell...

The radio has been winding me up. This lilly-livered government of ours, apologizing for being British almost... what has got into them. It was reported at the weekend that Islamic groups have complained at being targeted in anti-terrorism campaigns, implying the terrorism is all based around their religion. Yes I totally agree with them. Far more attention should be paid to the Buddhist terrorists and the Hindu terrorists who have bombed the London tube... know what I mean?

I rearranged my roborovskery as I was bedridden and ill and required entertainment. Every time I got bored I would rock their teahouse and say "Come out you Pink Noses! Come out!" and two or three curious pink noses duly appeared at the chewed out entrance. I took all three out for a ping in the bath the other day. The bath was totally devoid of water, I might add. O! They were so funny, shooting up and down, trying to scrabble up the nontaps end, etc etc... Bashful and Spherical both made loud squeaks of protest when I tried to pick them up... Then they were back in their tank and pinging for ages. Finally when they calmed down I spotted all three sat in a row nibbling the same crust of tomato bread: they looked so entertaining. Then Bashful at the end started scratching. Then Spherical took up scratching too. Poor Baby Itchy had been so intensively groomed by the both of them her "hair" on the head was sopping wet in spikey clumps... like a teenage boy's with hair gel. She looked really funny...

Well I've got clean clothes on and I actually got out of bed today. I know it was only a common cold but it made me feel pretty slaughtered. Maybe this is the old Chronic Fatigue Syndrome traces from years ago...

I've been writing a bit of my memoirs again. Thanks for the comments on those I know I shouldn't think about people laughing at me but I do feel I'm laying myself wide open in writing those. While I've been awfully discreet about other people's lives I've pretty much told everything about mine... which makes me feel kind of weird...

Well it's late. Nearly 8pm and I have to get some pasta and parmezan... cheery-o y'all!

All the best

Gledwood
"Vol 2"...

Videos of the Day
Remembrance/Veterans' Day
Mad World Remembrance: WWI
Sorry these are a day late in a way, but they're still very good and I could not get to a computer yesterday...

Video of the Day 3
King of Spain Tells Venezuela's Chavez to SHUT UP!

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If you want to watch Vivienne Vyle, episode 2, CLICK HERE...

Did anyone like Vivienne Vyle? Nobody mentioned a word about her...

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Chinese Takeaway Curry Sauce Recipe
The secret ingredient is Star Anise, apparently.

Sweaty Cold

DOES THE COMMON COLD MAKE YOU SWEAT? I had an (admittedly 2in/2min) bath yesterday morn and scrubbed quite clean. Now narly 28 hrs later I'm sweating like a swine on heat and smelling like horse trots in an onion factory.

Two nights in a row I've had the same recurrent dream: Of being trapped in an enormous event resembling an indoor sook or fancy dress bazaar crossed witha a trance party rave's pixxie room. With all the techno-shamanic characters such a gathering used to involve (dunno about nowadays, I've not been out "properly" except a couple of times in the last seven years.)

My furries are so funny. I took their lid off to witness their teabox with a double headed robo protruding. I said "Hello! Hello!" and one peered up at me while the other scarpered (if only separating real-life Siamese twins were so easy). Now I've a triple-headed furball grooming itself in the corner. All peacefulness and light. And pretending never to have been naughty...

I caught Itchy mid-magic wand (it is a very narrow cardboard tube) just now and she reversed out all unkempt like a "furry boiled egg" - well the nearest any hamster gets to looking like an egg.

Sometimes I question my ... "sanity"? Whatever it's called... at so glibly throwing in talk of suicide yesterday.

The even t I referred to took place about 14 years ago and I have to tell it (as I said) in my memoirs. And get used to telling it. How else will I cope with having my entire life laid out for everybody to laugh at? I can't really cut it out either - else the resulting story will be so boring NOBODY will want to read it at all...

Wow those evening are drawing in. 4:30 dark already. 3:30 dark within a month.

Sorry I've not too much to say. I'm out of computer time and of cash. So I may not be online again till Monday.

Meanwhile: here's wishing a charming weekend to all.

All the best!

luurve from
Gledwood
"Vol 2"....

See yers on Monday...

Cold bicycle friendly hamster loving cat and snake weekend...

SO MY NONEXISTENT POLITICAL MANIFESTO has failed to inspire y'all... what a surprise! The only "policy" I can devise for my constituency would be bike lanes for all. Yes! Up on the pavement too, not down with the dirty rumbling traffick where white van drivers will try and run you over. Cycle paths are cheaper to install than almost anything else (less wear and tear)... so that's my no 1 policy. Also when I was thinking of making a Mayor of London bid back in 1998/whenever (it was the year Jeffrey Archer finally got found out for perjuring himself in his record-breaking court case against the Star newspaper, for which he got $1 million damages and was punished for 3 years in prison)... My main policy back then was to have different coloured bulbs installed in London's street lights so it would look ultra-pretty from the skies for American tourists flying into Heathrow... See my priorities, as per usual, are in totally the right place...

My room is running alive with wild mice! They are "nesting" somewhere in my big cupboard. The one that is stuffed with binbags full of my rotting "possessions"... I haven't the heart to destroy their mousey home, but if they dare come near my robos, trust me it won't be the robos doing the squeaking...

I can't exactly ask the landlord to put antirodent stuff down seeing as I have 4 pet rodents of my own... and I hate to admit it but my own rodents have probably attracted this lot in. Before now they were running amok in Laundretta's room only. Though I did hear Matran "the Rat-Man" was putting down cheese for a particularly cute one to feast upon.

She catches hers on ultrasticky cockroach/mouse/rat "traps" (ie bits of supersticky card) and throws them out of the window where she likes to think they instantaneously die. Of course they don't. Down they sail like a mousey hang-glider to scuttle about the pavements with the dead autumn leaves, stuck to this massive sticky mouse-windsurfer-sail for days on end until some passerby either treads on them or a cat spags at them and gores them or they simply starve to death. In other words the cruelest, most horrible way to go.

Unfortunately the "humane" traps available in this area are made by a company called "The Big Cheese" and are the stupidest traps I've ever seen. Too small for any wild mouse to venture inside, they work on a seasaw motion... and in other words trap no mice. The ones we had in Wales that DID work were transparent (so the mouse doesn't feel so enclosed) and tripped shut on a garage-door type mechanism. They were big enough to capture two or three mice at once if that number happened to simultaneously venture inside. At one point my stepbrother set up a Wild Mouse Rotastak with about ten of them inside. They were so entertaining running their little wheel like hyperactive swines. Eventually even our cat got tired of and desensatized to them. Then they got tired of about 2 square feet of living space and settled down to spend their entire lives cossetted in Johnson & Johnson cotton wool abed...

Finally I gave Dodge his card. (His 89-year-old Dad had a stroke at the weekend adn died 2 or 3 days ago...) It sounds like all traumas are stretching forth amongst family, the way they tend to when someone dies and disparate relatives are suddenly thrown together and it's not even Xmas yet... Believe it or not I seem to be the ONLY person to have given in a card... And to think I was embarrassed at having left it 3 days... what is today's society coming to?

Now I've caught a thorough pipe-cleaning cold. I've always thought an (uncomplicated nonbronchitis-stylee) cold is a good thing to have as it paradoxically cleans the system out and rejuvenates the body. Nobody else ever seems to agree with me. Perhaps because they're the Lemsip, Benylin and Nightnurse posse who overdose themselves on blurry antihistamines to make themselves feel iller. Science is aparently on my side. "Common" colds (and mine's especially vulgar) do boost the body's levels of interferon which has magical effects on more serious diseases*. Better to have slews of common colds, I say, than terminal cancer!

(*Yes! Interferon is part of a two-drug hep C treatment AND has a protective role against cancers of many kinds.)

Well I'm off to go abed and feel sorry for myself as I have to blow my nose... wow! Nearly once an hour. I'm so ill!

Gotta go seriously and scribble out more of my memoirs. We're at a bit of a slow patch now - I'm writing about my first suicide attempt and my trip home when I was aparently staring at the wall and "rocking" (no wonder! After 70 tricyclic antidepressant pills... thankfully I puked the vast majority so quickly their red coatings were all mixed in the porridgey diced carrot vomit...

So I didn't die and I have to go I'm busting for a wee... Too much cyder = "personal" Niagra falls...

See yous all tomorrow.

PS I see NOBODY but one "anonymous" remarked on my "cat and hamster" from Japan. That was 100% real! They were genuine friends. Didn't you see the cat licking the hamster and then the hammy lick the cat in return and snuggle up for a sleepy evening's TV or whatever Japanese pets do...

My today's vid is:

Japanese Rat Snake and Hamster Friend

Sorry no subtitles or dubbing for the petshop manager's prattling but I do like the bit where the hammy decides to make a nest amongst the serpent's scaly coils then thinks better of it and hops out...

I wonder how long the hamster really lasted, or whether the snake just wasn't hungry that day? Or whether he'd just got BORED of the taste of tubby Campbells dwarves... who noze...?

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Have a cheery weekend everyone!

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Just for Whitenoise, here's Sylvia Plath's Insomniac poem....

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PETS' CORNER RIP SPONGEBOB, Vi Vi Voom's lionhead goldfish. Who died of mysterious infection...