On the Waggon (or Better in Time...)

I DID ALL DAY YESTERDAY WITH NO DRINK AND NO HEROIN. (Did of course take my prescribed methadone, else I'd have been "clucking" like nobody's business...) but the lack of drink left a smaller void within me than I'd expected.

It's the drink, I think, that's been getting to me of late. Drink is why ~ so I was told by one who would know ~ that my antidepressants have shown no sign whatsoever of kicking in...

... drink that makes me incoherent, distillery-smelling, always thirsty (for more drink, of course!) and so on and so on. I don't like what it has done to me.

Plus I was terrified of getting a genuine physical "habit" on it...

... easy does it. I HAVE had one today... let's see how it goes...

VIDEO:

DUFFY ~ WARWICK AVENUE

Here's another that's been going round and round in my head...

Pie Result/Home-Made Cheesecake/Radio Tubberovski!

YES! MY SHEPHERD'S PIE CAME OUT so lovely I had to be (self-)restrained from gobbling the lot of filling before it ever got mash-covered.

The method I used was this (bear in mind I was SUPPOSED to be making it chunky, with cubed meat rather than ground)...

About a pound and a third or 650g cubed mutton
About a pound or half a kilo potatoes
Three large non-Spanish onions
About half a pound or 250g mushrooms
Sprigs fresh sage and rosemary

Butter
Frying oil

Spices:
Paprika
Mr Brown's Jamaican curry powder
Chinese curry powder
Garam masala
"All purpose seasoning" (glorified celery salt: use celery salt if this non-available)
Lea & Perrins worcester sauce
Soy sauce
Dried thyme
Hot chili powder

Buy mutton in bite-sized cubes or cut by self at home (my cubes were about x3 too big so I had to spend 10 mins hacking to bits with a knife prior to cooking.

Oil the frying pan, fry the mutton bit by bit on high heat till thoroughly browned and "sealed-in"... then chuck into saucepan with a little (no more than 200mls) water on medium heat and allow to boil. Continue frying mutton and chucking into saucepan. Now chop and fry two of the three large onions. When glassy and done, chuck these atop your mutton. Add four large dashes Lee & Perrins (ie about 4 generous teaspoons to desertspoons-full), 3 generous teaspoons paprika, one teaspoon mild Jamaican curry powder, half teaspoon Chinese curry powder, quarter teaspoon garam masala (these do NOT make it taste AT ALL Indian or of curry, trust me: the resulting flavour is spicy but "North African" ie still homely to the European/Western palate. When I'd done this I panicked that I'd gone OTT but paprika aside (2 teaspoons would probably have done) this really was NOT an overdose of spices. And once the headiness of the worcester sauce had cooked off it didn't seem so bad. Wash and roughly chop the rosemary and sage. Add a flat teaspoon dried thyme. Add a flat or more generous (according to taste) teaspoon "season all"/celery salt. Add dark soy sauce to darken: 2 to 8 teaspoons as desired. Quarter the mushrooms and add directly to the pot. Cover, reduce heat to number 2 and simmer for a good hour and a half.

If you need to go out or leave this unattended I would suggest adding more water to ensure it cannot boil dry (too much good food to risk wasting!)... you can easily boil this off later simply by removing the lid...

After this time the lamb was delightfully tender, kind of melted almost in the mouth, despite being supposedly the cheapest, roughest cut (v lean no fat on cubes though)...

Peel and chop potatoes into small cubes. Boil for 30 mins until mashable.

Fry the last of your onions in a little all-purpose seasoninged oil with a little chili powder and paprika (to make delightfully tasty-looking and red)... fry until glassy and well done as these are going in the mash and won't get much more opportunity to properly cook...

Mash potatoes in a little butter and black pepper; add the fried onions and red oil. Melange together. Add some Red Leicester or cheddar cheese if desired, half to potato/onion mix; half to top.

Ensure no surplus gravy in lamb pie filling by upping heat and removing lid (if necessary).

Tip lamb-onion-mushroom pie base into a medium baking tin; smooth mash atop.

Cook in a pre-heated oven c 190C 350F gas mark 6 for 20 mins to half an hour.

And ta-DAAA! You're done! It turned out so lovely I ate the entire thing within an hour!!

***

I MADE HOME-MADE CHEESECAKE this afternoon!

Ingredients:
One x small low fat cream cheese tub
Sugar
1 x lemon; 1 x lime
Digestive biscuits

Ultra-simple recipe: take a 350g (ie small) tub Philadelphia-style (but buy own-brand: just as nice and far cheaper) low fat cream cheese. Low-fat is far more like proper cheesecake mix than high: trust me.

Don't do the entire tub at once until confident in the recipe. Take about a third: dollop out on a plate. Heap out about half as much in sugar beside this.

Cut the ends off the lemon and lime (or if already gone into cut a thick slice, about three times thicker than one for a drinks glass) ... drizzle atop the sugar; fold the entire lot in together, adding more cream cheese if necessary.

Don't bother bashing up the biscuit base: simply spread atop digestives and eat with English breakfast tea accompaniment... it's well yummy..!

***

MY TROTTEROVSKIES went on the radio last night! And made an impression all over London as about three hours later a neurotic-sounding woman phoned up mentioning my "gerbils"... and the host said "yeah I can't remember what they were called {Roborovskis} but he said they were the size of his thumb {which indeed they are: no more than 5cm/2in in length}... they sounded really cute"..!!

So all of London knows about my trotters now. Or the five thousand people or thereabouts who actually listen to graveyardshift radio...

***

I'VE BEEN DRAGGING MYSELF ABOUT half dead all the extended weekend long. It was public holiday on Monday and dismally wet, overcast and damp. How I longed for some mud-splishy herby bluebell woodland to ramble in. Instead I had only the textures of my past life to reminisce over. And to feel dead and wooden. Like a board full of wet-rot. And not even to have energy to drag myself out when I was gasping for a cigarette. Some idiot boy I don't like but ended up engaging in conversation the other day when I snapped at him "I'm ignoring you because last time I saw you you were trying to steal my mobile phone" (which he was) retorted "if I wanted your phone I'd just stab you for it" (yeah as if)... I felt like tracking him down and saying "you still want to stab me? stab me now. I'll pay you to kill me." It was that dismal a day.

Anyway I made that lemon and lime digestive cheesecake today so everything's okay now.

Antidepressants STILL not working even though I've cut down alcohol to bare minimum...

The Drugs Don't Work

THEY DON'T WORK don't work don't work... don't work anymore. Don't feel anything good. (Not good enough.) Not good enough to justify the price. Heroin is boring. Have to mix in crack. Still not good enough. Does not work. Except in the very short term of five-ten minutes. Not worth it. NOT WORTH IT ANY MORE.

SO I'M FOCUSING ON MY PIE instead... have a bag of ingredients here... mutton cubes (about 1.4lbs ie about 650g):~ so it IS a true shepherd's pie; albeit cubular..., paprika powder, powdered ginger, potaotes (for the top), onions (for the pie + the top):~ herbs from Mother Hubbard's garden (fresh rosemary and sage); I have thyme (dried) at home... have field mushrooms too... off to buy Lee & Perrins + cheese for in/on potato topping...

... cookery is my best antidepressant...

Sweaty Day: Fur Stuck; Bleach Purchase

IT'S A HOT AND SWEATY DAY here in London. Meaning basically it's not far over 20C. But NOTHING is designed for heat, cold, damp or dry in this country where the railways once announced closure due to "the wrong kind of snow" (not to mention "leaves on the line" ~ yes autumn leaves, the kind that fall each and every year...

ONE OF MY BABIES GOT STUCK to the bottle-tape! I'm glad I found her. Had to stick it with huge swathes of gaffer-type tape and Bashful or one of them I discovered yesterday STUCK BY THE SHOULDER to it. She quickly pinged away when I released her.

I'M STILL COLLECTING INSPIRATION for my pie. (Thanks Nicole.) I did know cottage pie was beef and shepherd's lamb... Tesco's supermarket aparently don't. They sell industrial "Finest Beef Shepherd's Pie" straight for the oven. How very vulgar of them...

OK this has to be quick. I'm on a detour. Have to get back. No news... good news. The local council's computers HAD to go down right on the day I FINALLY dragged myself in there to settle their botched accounts of me... (typical!)...

PS O YEAH and I now have a massive bleach collection for my toilet...

VIDEO:
LEONA LEWIS: BETTER IN TIME GMTV PERFORMANCE
This song has been going round and round my head... I couldn't post it up because some idiot(s) who have posted the proper video to Youtube had "embedding disabled by request"~ duh!?! Why do people do that?? Anybody know..??

Chunky Cottage Pie

HAVING REALIZED that my baking tray may be used as a tub for home-cooked food, as well as something to hold up industrial lasagne etc in reheating, I have been fantasizing all week about making my own beef shepherd's pie (cottage pie). The difference from the illustration will be that mine will be a beef pie covered in cheese and potato not pastry and so will have chunks of beef, not ground up piggles.

I've never done shepherd's pie in my life (can't remember whether we ever did it at school, though it's a typical school recipe) but my recipe was going to go something like this.

About 500g-1kg (1-2lb) stewing steak diced small
About 500g-1kg potatoes
One or two large onions
One or two large carrots
About 250g (0.5lb) mushrooms
About 100g 0.25lb) cheese
Broccoli to eat separately

Method: fry steak lightly for five minutes or so to "brown" (even though it goes grey not brown) and "seal in flavour" or whatever this is supposed to do. I'm quite sure that skipping this step makes no difference but have never dared do it as would hate to waste food. When done tip into large saucepan and continue simmering in a little water on low heat. Dice mushrooms and add to this. (Doesn't water come out of the mushrooms at some point? That's what I seem to recall occurring...) Fry onions.

At end of frying add seasoning which would be something like 4 teaspoons paprika, 2 tsps mild curry powder (Jamaican, Chinese, Garam Masala or mild Indian), 1 tsp "all purpose seasoning" (glorified celery salt), half to one tsp ginger, 1 tsp mediterranean or Italian mixed herbs, 4-8 tsps Lee & Perrins to taste, about 4 tsps soy sauce (makes excellent gravy browner), possibly one Oxo cube and/or 1 or 2 tsps Bisto-style gravy granules. Add all together including most of the fried onions into main pan and simmer fairly lightly for 2 hours, covered, adding more water if required but not too much or the pie will be ridiculously sloppy. Dice and add the carrot(s).

After 2 hours peel, chop up and boil potatoes. Mash, adding the saved fried onions to the potato. Add a little butter to the mash but not too much (I much prefer dry "natural" mash to over milky/buttery "creamed" potatoes). Preheat the oven to about 190C 350F(?) Gas mark 6.

Checking the pie-mix pan, boil off any excess water by removing lid and keeping on heat.

Now turf the piemix into the baking tin, covering carefully with potato mash. Sprinkle liberally with cheese and pepper the top. Bung in middle of oven for half an hour.

Boil the side order of broccoli.

Remove and eat!

I'll let you know how horrible it turns out when I risk making it...

There's no big news as I've stashed at home all week feeling not like doing anything. Those pills are not working yet, I am sure of it. Though it is "early days"...

I have cut down on my alcohol drinking as it was starting to get ridiculous at points (more then 6 cans a day at peak, which would be about 10 pints of pub-strength beer). Now I have got down to as little as one a day. I don't want to have to feel panicky at the thought of not drinking, I have enough problems with chemical dependency as it is!!

Can antidepressants actually make you feel worse? I feel dragged right down.. down.. down.

...The Germany Bible reading is coming on in fits and starts...

And that's about it!

VIDEOS
1:
Rolling Stones ~ You Can't Always Get What You Want from Rock and Roll Circus



2:
Science Lab ~ Flesh and Blood
Tekno with Shakespearean quotations!
(Sound only)



3:
Lattemaking
from Raymi the Minx blog
~ a glimpse into someone else's boring old life for a change ~

The Clean Gene

HOUSEWORK? URKH! I'm sure I was born lacking the necessary gene. I have tried and tried and still do to clear surfaces, spray on, wipe off, rinse down. Put out rubbish. Bleach toilet. Bleach sink. Clean sink (on other occasions (but using different cleaners that do not mix with bleach,)) blah blah etc etc. but the place still looks not tidy enough. One hobby I have picked up is bleaching things. Anything and everything that can be bleached ~ I throw the stuff on. So my bathroom now smells like public swimming baths. My socks are brilliant white (more are soaking as I speak)...

YESTERDAY I went out and (finally) ~ and this was after nearly half an hour of gazing at the likely products: biological, non-biological, colour-care, liquid, ultra-concentrated liquid, liqui-tabs, gel tabs, tablets, mini-powder and maxi powder not to mention pretreatment agents ~ purchased own-brand biological tablets for the wash. I chose these basically as they were cheapest without (seemingly) being nasty. I got 48: that is 24 washloads for £1.60...

...Colourcare of the same was same price for HALF as many....

Posh washing-up-liquid-sized ultra-concentrated was a pound more...

Those liquid sachets looked ever so tempting... I remember years ago buying them just so I could watch one dissolve in a glass of hot water (ooer!) ...

... and SO my clothes ought to be ULTRA CLEAN by tomorrow as not only have I just found out I have access to a WASHING MACHINE but I've a drying binkybonk: y'know zigzag thing you stand in front of a radiator.

Now I'm dead worried about my fabric care option.

Should I have opted for biological? Will this strip all my skin off? Ought I not have been kinder on my ever so expensive clothes (yeah, right) with colour-care product? Do any housewives or other people with (or without) cleaning obsessions know the answers to these pressing queries? Are all washing powders/liquids/gels/sachets/tablets the same anyway? My whopping great elephant pills look like something from a raver's sweetest dream...

ROBO-HAMSTERS ARE ODD ANIMALS. Quite the opposite of humans, they automatically come out to play when I daily stash them under the kitchen sink (anti-landlord protection for when I venture out: I invariably return to find them pinging all over the place...) but five minutes of sheer daylight will always make them go straight back to bed!

Despite the choice of many and varied sleeping areas they've decided they're best off ALL sleeping in the Swan Filter Tips box, which has been nibbled open at the front to look like a dog's kennel. It is barely big enough to fit all three in being hardly bigger than an inch square at the front by two inches front to back (or that would be 3x3x6cm at biggest)... and there I caught them the other day: three dogs laid out like rugs one atop another ~ and a pile of drowsing faces.

I'm going to try and swap their hours so that they will ping around more actively under the red light at night.

I paranoidly ran out on the street to check that my house doesn't look like a brothel with this on. Thankfully, green curtains kind of cancel the redness out, so from outside my roborovskery and lair look bathed in nothing more scandalous than a distinctly orange glow...

Day 4 of antidepressants: nothing to tell...

***

Funny Photos:
The More Difficulties You Have, The More Creative You'll Be...

Cute French Family Shots...

Dog (aparently) Enjoying "Fun" Ears...

The Antidepressants

I GOT PRESCRIBED "MIRTAZAPINE 30mg nocte" which means one pill at night. Almost felt too frozen-up to bother going to the doctors at all and had to vanquish the desire to flee at several points in the waiting room. I took it last night and yes it does make me dream (this did swing the decision on whether or not to bother asking for it, I have to admit but it's not the ONLY reason). As for being exhausted the dr said this is only normal if you are depressed. Mirtazapine is also known as Zispin in the UK & Ireland and Remeron in the US and some other countries. I have been trying not to be sulky and peed-off all week but cannot keep it up. But why take even MORE chemicals when I'm addicted enough as it is (mirtazapine is supposedly non-addictive btw)? "To address the despair underlying and resulting from my drug addiction."

Hothothothothottttttttt

HOW COME whenever I wake up I feel freezing cold... yet get up into this roaring hot day? It's not THAT roaring hot in the shade. Just that every building I seem to go in feels like a suntrap oven (unless air-con, in which case Siberian chill...) I don't understand what was wrong. I slept all night AND all day. Certainly didn't "want" to do such but hey. Mist one appointment. I don't think I'm learning any German from that Bible. All the words I don't know seem to be the same and begin with "ver-"... which translates roughly as be- as in bedeck, bedazzle etc. O it's too hot my brain is going to boil over

Good Day Sunshine II

IT'S BEEN ANOTHER GOOD DAY SUNSHINE AGAIN... still it has not sunken in that I "live somewhere else"... life is butter dream (life is margerine, as the song goes...)

I tried making my robos (these are my Mongolian trotting hamsters, Jumoke) a really tiny nest out of a swan filter tips box (not the cig pack shaped one; the proper box shaped one.) to see if they'd pile in like a warehouseful of quality fur coats with quivering pink noses... But they'd be literally stacked three deep if they slept in there... so of course they didn't risk it. (Bashful does, but sleeps alone though)...

Yesterday they were ever so funny. Poor Itchy (bottom peck, as ever) is fast asleep. Spherical, for some reason, decided to clamber on top of her to use Itchy as a living robo-pillow. And on Spherical dozes. Itchy was either fast asleep or squashed to sheer unconsciousness by Spherical's gargantuan weight... she's looking more enormous than ever these days. Were she not blest with those distinctively perky ears
and beady trotter eyes you could almost think she was a normal hamster, she's so enormous... anyway those two are double-decker stacked and dozing away then Bashful decides to climb on top of Spherical... and then the entire robo-tower fell down. I so much wished I had a video camera to youtube this; it was absolute classic!

I've been reading the Bible in GERMAN to try and improve my command of said language. Because I do know certain passages it makes the comprehension element far, far easier... unfortunately my German Bible is a 1912 edition and hence printed in the heaviest pre-WWII letter Gothick. You think "blackletter" is hard to understand? Try this traditional German print. A "k" has the kucky-bit at the TOP not bottom... Uppercase A, V and U all look the same, as go S and G. An L is dangerously similar to a B. (In other words all the letters look the same.) In fact, on perusing a page I was reminded more of those mysterious South-East Asian languages like CAMBODIAN than anything you'd think of as "German"... I racked my brains as to why, then realized it's because Cambodian, Thai, most Indian languages etc are printed in imitation of ancient scribal hand using the traditional writing implements (often a brush or oblique palette knife or split reed); this Gothick script is based upon traditional monks' writing too: hence a real (if bizarre) resemblance...

Yes I have itchy feet again (not athelete's foot: the desire to travel). It was all set off by my finding a distinctive green-and-silver "concert ticket" stub on the street. One of my worst habits is the constant examining of rubbish I happen to pass... what gig did they go to? I nosily wondered. Actually it was no concert ticket, but a train/tram/tube/bus ticket from FRANKFURT... and what got me was that on perusing the legalistic gobbledygook on the back I understood every word! "Thank you for choosing to travel with us. This ticket is printed on thermal paper so please keep away from direct sunlight, radiators, oils and solvents. Altered or damaged tickets are not valid for travel." This made me think: hey I really should think about going there (Berlin though. Not Frankfurt. If I'm going to Germany it has to be Berlin or if not Alpine cuckoo clock villages or the Black Forest (as long as there IS a forest still there. Maybe it's like Nottingham's Sherwood forest and nonexistent today!)... I'm thinking of picking up my subscription to my German magazine again (Stern). It's like a non-middle-aged version of Time... or the Sunday colour supplements all rolled into one. Quite a good read. I never got it delivered, just ordered it from the local papershop. At £2.80 a week I thought that was quite good value for "fluent German" (as if THAT's ever going to happen: ha!)

Take care everyone!!

Smoked Salmon Bagel

SMOKED SALMON BAGELS for breakfast today! I bought the separate components locally and assembled my own. (No dill though...) Plenty of plain but high-fat cream cheese, smoked salmon "trimmings" at approx £1.20 for 120g (that's 1p a g: cheaper than drugs!!) and this liberally lemon-juiced then dustpeppered and all enclosed in an onion bagel. T'was very nice indeed...

Pizza the Action...

CIRCA 5:45PM on Monday... I'VE made an appointment for my doctor's for 9:00am Thusday (earliest time available). They'd had the cheek to chuck me off their list, having allegedly written to me mid 2007 to "confirm I was still on the list" (why wouldn't I be~?) What doolalliness. I just realized: if I were no longer there I would surely have registered with another doctor who would have written to my present doctor (a long Tamil-type name) in order to forward my notes and paperwork. In other words they know I've moved nowhere. Had I done so, the new doctor would long ago have been in touch!

What scandal!!

At the weekend ~ I can't believe this! ~ I got ripped off by a major highstreet supermarket for 63p. Hardly a bankbreaking sum, I'm well aware, and yet highly annoying nonetheless. When I passed through the tills with my 600g intellectual pasta tomato and cheese (ie "margarita" pizza flavour) (this is the raw tortelloni I favour: 7 mins boiling time with ready-chopped broccoli in the same pan, grate on intellectual cheese and the result's incredible!)

So I buy one 600g cheese & tomato tortelloni for £1.67 ~ broccoli I have already at home (my robos' favourite); plus one Wensleydale cheese for on-grating (not my top preference ~ far too crumbly and I hate crumbly cheese. I like my cheese strong and nutty and smooth-plasticky in texture... Edam-like, ideally (for eating); Cheddar-like for cooking (don't bother with the supposed-authentic mozzarella it's nothingness...) The holey Norwegian Jarlesburg is a particular favourite of mine. So I don't really like this Wensleydale cheese. According to the packet it's made by Northern monks:... I'd always assumed it was one of those industrially-named massmarket cheeses with no heritage. Y'know the sort of cheese with an "authentic" English TV-ad filmed Lord of the Rings-style in New Zealand...

Anyway I purchased only one 200g or so Wensleydale for £1.37; a total bill of £3.04. Supposedly.

Imagine my repressed middle-class shock when the till lady trilled out "that's £3.67 please!" in terribly cheery tones. Cussing myself for allegedly lousing up the mental arithmetic I kept on my best bourgeois poker-face whilst handing over my very last £5er...

My purchases (plus my trotter broccoli) made a yummy dinner. I have to say. I love freshly boiled-up tortelloni. Broccoli went wonderfully with it. The Wensleydale, though peppered and grated right on the steaming pasta, being too crumbly and unpleasant in texture, refused to melt.

T'was only upon a relaxed reclining idle-minded glance over said till receipt that I realized my mental arithmetic wasn't off-kilter at all, but my cheese had been scanned twice. Generously with a multisave ("2 for £2!" but ungenerously leaving me with the mere one Wensleydale I took home and not the two I'd just realized I'd paid for!

Having arranged to meet a friend down a cafe a half an hour away the supermarket had to wait...

By Sunday afternoon my indignation was no cooler. So I stormed down the supermarket, receipt and empty packs in hand (I may have been overcharged but the food was yummy!)

The man at Customer Services was quite bemused. How do I prove paying for 2 items yet receiving one? I'm glad now for the Shops & Robbers documentary I viewed a couple of years ago, which highlighted how each individual till in a large supermarket is individually CCTV'd and auto-cross-referenced on-screen as every item's scanned. This prevents (or at least records) potential staff scams. The most famous being when a till person acts in cahoots with a customer, passing several expensive articles (eg magna of champagne) with fingers blocking the barcode, while a small enough bill for Value toilet paper and bread is rung up to avoid suspicion...

So when I got a blank look I pointed out that every product scanned is filmed ~ and got my refund forthwith. How highly petty. And yet how very annoying. If I had dared walk out without paying even 63p, I'm sure security would have been all over me and quite possibly even the police. Put the boot on the other foot, however and though I'm refunded without a verbal quibble, they say ever so much more with their eyes!

What else? Our robo blood-in-wee shocker's still ongoing and I'm ever more sure the situation's "hormonal" rather than symptomatic of any illness.

I've observed Baby Itchy pee "normally". She holds still ~ you'd not even know she was doing it ~ still ~ still ~ and it's done.

The other pee is quite a different posture:~ bum up in the air and bright red drops of blood are left behind.

I think this explains her intermittently highly fractious behaviour ~ including biting me ~ if you rightly remember ~ and rides out the ever more likely seeming explanation that "she just needs a boyfriend"....

Poor little cow! So extraordinarily tiny and barely anything to her... yet so extremely highly sexed!

I cleaned out the tiny trotters yesterday morning. Bashful and Itchy went a-scrabbling in their diggery, where I dropped them. Spherical, suspicious as ever, stashed herself in an aerial loo-roll tube and pretended not to be there. They don't live among woodshaved "cage litter" any more as I don't think living waist-deep in itchy shavings can possibly be good for them as a permanent measure... I don't want my poor babies getting scratty fur. Their current (new) enclosure's as deep as it is wide (ie a mirrored square, as you view it head-on) and the floor shape's bowed outwards, necessitating special cutting or tearing of the flooring material. This I did with a specially adapted copy of London Lite. Out the old one came. Spherical glared at me balefully from her tube. In went the new "carpeting", followed by those 2 baby trotters fresh from the diggery. How they pinged around and around, bemused by the horrid new smell, devoid of days of dutiful scent-marking!

Round and round they trotted, like a furry horse-race. And I gave them a tiny new bedroom just now ~ a Swan tips filters (big-size) box.

The little trotters are a-sleeping as I speak, but they'll soon be trotting again and poking out like furry moose-heads from plaques.

Now I've got to go; I'm extremely tired and more to the point hungry. I got an intellectual chicken tikka pizza to check out my whizzy oven (225C (though the packet states 220 I always err on the side of incineration. Only one oven in my life's ever over-cooked and that belonged to a friend with relatives in Mayfair...)

Righty-ho: better go else I'll never get this posted...

... 1000 apologies everyone for not having been in touch personally (still!) for such a long while... I really haven't had the net-time, xcept to "post-&-go"! (As the cyber-shampoo ad might say...)

VIDEO:~
SAM SPARRO: BLACK AND GOLD

This is such a catchy tune; see how you like it...

Aerial Nests

MY ROBOS ARE SLEEPING UP IN THE AIR! Yes! These shaggy-furred burrowing tubby trotters have been cajoled into sleeping up high by my taping their beloved toilet tubes 10 ft high (in robo-feet) along the back of their new, far deeper mirrored enclosure. (Their old tank got left behind at my old house. Had to be. Simply couldn't muster the NRG to carry it off with me...) Their old "dump bin" (an upended, taped-on tube full to the brim, rain-vat style, with seeds) is now so very familiar that they paw up to it, clamber aboard and into their aerial trottery of tubular nests where they sleep quite entertainingly. Particularly amusing are those times when, bleary eyed and half awake they forget about the gap between said tubes and come plopping furrily to the ground where they glance about with astonishment before coolly acting "yeah man, I meant to do that," and wearily go for a trot on the wheel for a minute or two before hauling themselves back up to their maze of off-the-ground nesteries...

ITCHY REMAINS IN GREAT HEALTH, thank God. Her worryingly red wee-wee, which I only noted to start with as she lifted up her bum to do it (not the usual robo-style of peeing at all) ... this implies she was scent marking. Now I have about three proposed explications.

1. she did a wee and, being on heat, squeeeeeezed herself, expelling pheromonal blood at the same time... (that's my suspicion)

2. she had a passing kidney infection that put blood in the urine. These are meant to be not uncommon in tiny hammies

Mother Hubbard said that being so tiny and her holes so close together, maybe the pheromonal blood of being on "heat" and the ordinary wee-wee DO get mixed up in a way they'd not do in humans... I don't know. She appears to be in the most robust of health... no other signs or symptoms of kidney damage of any kind (certainly no blood spatters anywhere to be found...) No symptoms of any illness. In fact her only behaviour appears to be that of being "on heat"... today I stroked her back and ... ~ hey presto! ~ up she stuck her bum in the air yet again! A sure sign of being on heat!... and yes!! It was four days later, and roborovskis, like other hammies, are said, once they meet maturity, to come "on" every FOUR DAYS... that's a LOT of opportunities for robo-kids!

Half of me would like to attain a stud robo for her. I would love to breed little babbies, not merely for the novelty, but to be able to hand-train that robo-panicking my present pets are (fair enough less likely to do nowadays as I've succeeded in calming them) still apt to indulge in. It would be lovely to have ultra-tame robbies and with this species the only way of achieving such is to patiently handtame from just-weaned age...

ANYWAY... what other news has there been?

YESTERDAY I FAILED A BREATHALYZER in spectacular fashion and so wasn't allowed my methadone script until this morning. "You are three times over the drink-drive limit," my worker stonily informed me. All I'd done was sit down the local pub with Mother Hubbard, her friend Rebsie, her partner Dodger and a rainbow of alcopops: one bright orange (Reef passion-orange: well yummie!); one ice blue (WKD mixed fruit: pretty pleasant) plus two or three cans of White Ace 7.5% cyder (my ordinary poison). I turned up at the drugs agency feeling (so I believed) sober as an Old Baily judge. Just remind me not to go into the legal profession!

My reading was only "0.75" by the way... I've no idea what this means, but a little internet research confirmed that the American drink-drive limit is 0.08... which would put me nearly TEN TIMES over! Surely not! I might smell like a skunk, but most certainly was not drunk as one yesterday afternoon!!

One slight shimmy forward: I'm proposing to "address" my depression, as part of the process of "addressing" my drug problem. My worker agrees I should go back to my doctor to request another prescription of the antidepressant Mirtazapine ("Zispin")... it gives a pleasantly mild (but strong enough to gently float you under) sedating effect when taken at night and has the charming side-effect of inducing the most spectacularly bizarre and compelling dreams. Man, it is worth taking merely for that!!

I'm lucky with antidepressants as, far from just "taking the edge off things", in me when they DO work (and by all means not all do) they have the effect of totally reversing the situation to the extent that I have at times felt not merely "antidepressed" within a couple of weeks of pillpopping (at the prescribed dose, I hasten to add)... but sometimes have been on top of the world! This poo-poos the theory that my depression is ALL just because I'm a dead-end junkie and gives some credence to the idea that depression is partly, at least, chemically caused.

My own theory on depression is that it's a mixture of one's own psychology, plus the brain's biology; plus, in my case, the sequalae of years of drug-taking.

Every time I've ended up in rehab, detox or treatment the MINUTE my opioid-level's been shifted significantly down I feel a psychological rug pulled out from under me. Both times I was in specialized opiate addiction inpatient treatment I spent inordinate lengths of time in counselling rooms weeping and wailing... and much of the rest being bombarded with impulses to suicide and self-harm... smash this glass; press into the pulse... there's a window; jump through it... stair-rails; tie dressing-gown cord round neck and jump off... plug-holes ~ electricity! ~ kcccchhhht!/frazzle/aargh!!

One former drugs worker told me this "suicide thinking" could just be the junkie mind's childish way (my wording) of petulantly declaring "I can't have my drugs? Then I want to die!" I think there may be some truth in that.

Suicidal "ideation" is just that: ideation, thoughts. So don't worry about me for having admitted to them. I'm still here, aren't I!

Have a lovely weekend everybody. I've got to go before this computer times me out. Take care!!

Good Day Sunshine

THIS HAS TO BE another pitifully short post as I'm lacking in computer time (using my old netcaff)... and no real news.

It's gone really hot (for London in May): 25C ~ ie about 75F which in London always feels a good 10 degrees hotter as the town's not designed for heat, cold, rain, snow or meteological extremes of any kind...

Many thanks for the Baby Itchy blood peeing advice. She's shown no signs of ill health so I take it it's a passing "urinary infection" or something to do with coming on heat every 4 days. She did stick her bum up in the air when doing the pee, which implies it must've been full of pheromones or something...

As for anything else I've nothing to say as my brain is dessicated as an old coconut. Hope you're all having a good one wherever you may be. Take care. Cheerio!!

PS I'M AWFULLY SORRY but I don't think I'll be able to do much replying to blogs before next week. By which time I shall hopefully have found somewhere to go where I get 1. good internet time and 2. proper access with out being slowed down or constantly timed out/etc

VIDEO:
Here's a classic clip: PET HORNET.
Yes this is for real! A "bicolor" hornet... whose sting is "no more painful than passing a kidney stone" ~ oh! let's get stung twice then!!

Baby Itchy Roborovski: Bloody Urine!

OH NO! WHAT HAS GONE WRONG with my poor roborovskis? Following 2 days of food torment, during which Spherical took to frustratedly nibbling on the avocado stone that I put in as entertainment (it looks like a curled-up roborovski, only a curled-up robo is actually smaller than said stone...)... (but they did eat. They had plenty of stray seeds: just didn't know there the big stash was stored!...) eventually I relented and lifted their seeds dump-bin tube allowing a scattering of hammy food across the floor...

Because their fur's gone all shaggy, like baby Porkshire terriers or Airedales (or wire fox terriers, to use Canadian nomenclature) I put them in their diggery for a good hour yesterday. This combs them all over with innumerable pine-shaved-curlings and makes them look airbrushed from top to toe. Very posh. Just the thing for exhibitors at a roborovski show....

Anyway, Baby Itchy, in said former lollypop-jar diggery, lifted her bum and did a scent marking wee-wee. And for the first time I actually saw said wee-wee coming out. IT WAS BRIGHT RED AND FULL OF BLOOD..!

Please, someone! What does this mean?

Is she merely on heat? Surely you don't pee blood when you're on heat... the urethra does not come from the womb, so even if blood was coming out like a "period" she wouldn't PEE it out, surely?

She's showing no signs of bad health whatsoever (apart from the shaggy Porkshire terrorizer-style fur)... so I don't know what to think.

I just don't want poor Baby Itchy to die!

Where's Our Dinner?

MY POOR ROBOS. I've done a practical joke on them and cruelly hidden their food inside a toilet tube taped upright to the back of the tank, dump-bin stylee. In order to access this, they must first climb atop their lightbulb box, where they usually sleep, and, climbing through two further tubes, affixed higher to the back mirror (higher than they can access without said rooftop climb) they eventually come, obstacle course-style to the top of said giant dump-bin of birdseed.

I've seen Bashful doing this already, all shaggy-furred and popping in and out of said obtstacular tubings. She looks ever so funny.

Now I've cleared the floor of ALL tasties, including chicken bones, chicken jelly (from the two-pound roast one I bought the other day)... red peppers and cheese bread bits... old French fries ... and all manner of tasty treats. Everything's balancing by sheer grace of willpower and gravity up high above their heads. And so far, all they've done is wander around looking faintly confused about the entire matter!

What set me off on all that climbing lark was my installation of a broccoli tree with elephant-protector-style toilet tubing round the base trunk. Spherical crouched into this and was next seen perching upon the treetop's canopy looking ever so tubby and round. Then she got bored and simply sprang down (a good 25ft drop in human terms). Went for a wee. Then took to thundering onwards upon her wheel.

Well as you can see there's little other news from my end. Surely this can only be a good thing...?

Oh, we're getting new locks installed early next week... isn't THAT a change from the old landlord, where it was a luxury to have any locking doors at all!

Hope you're having a pleasant weekend, everyone!

Cheerio!!

XX

Bird-Brained Birdseed (for the Hammies)...

THIS HAS TO BE AN ULTRA-QUICK POSTING as my computer's letting me down bigtime... taking half an hour just to mess about doing basically nothing. Loading entire pages bit by bit as if my London time clock's the crown jewels. I don't care if there's errors on the page. Just load the bloody thing a bit faster!

And no! Before I forget, I was not telling "buggery" to any of yous lot yesterday. Rather to Vanessa Feltz's jaded, disbelieving and psychologically slow phone-answering team at the radio station...

At last! Big news of the day!! I've bought my tubby trotters some birdseed before they start losing weight and not living up to their shaggily furry nicknames...

And that's about all I've got to say. I'd better go now before I cause the computer so much crosswired complexiosity (e.g. by sending off this post, pressing return AND looking for a picture with which to illustrate it)... it might well blow a gasket and start smoking...

Sorry I've not been in touch with ANYONE lately. Nothing personal. The flamin' computer won't let me!!

In compensation have a look at this:~

MAKES ME THINK... "LAST LECTURE"...

The following took America by storm, but isn't so well known over the rest of the world... so have a look:~

Here's American academic Randy Rausch presented by Diane Sawyer, the same lady who did my Whitney Houston/Bobby Brown interview last year... !!

This really was the guy's "last lecture" ~ diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer he had a very short time to live...



ps: in case you're interested, those roborovski-finches illustrated are Britain's prettiest garden bird, the embarrassingly-named blue tit, an upside down-flitting acrobat at the wintertime feeder who has lifted the heart of tea-drinkers acoss the nation for many a generation with his flitteryfluttery entertaining anticks...

pps: hey I just bought a whole roast (and still warm) chicken for £2! They'd sold out before so the Spanish lady at the industrial chickenery said "40 minutes!". I duly came back in 45 mins precisely to find nearly ALL the new batch gone, a queue in progress ~ and was lucky to get just one!!

ppps: roborovski rowing boat. yeah, I ate an avocado the other night and left the scooped out half-skin in with my trotters to nibble on. they took to jumping inside, nibbling it, then washing in it... (it does look just like a robo-rowing boat!!)