Constant Craving

FOR CHINESE TAKEAWAY or for...?

Beef-ginger-spring onions mixed vegetable fried rice.

Heroin.

People say Chinese food only leaves you wanting more... and strangely enough the same thing about "gear" ~ so what else can I say..!?!

KD Lang: Constant Craving

Breaking Up In The Night

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON I VERY NEARLY HAD AN ARGUMENT with one of my (surviving) best friends. It was over money for drugs. I got the drugs, went home with them and took them and slept early through most of the evening and most of the night until BBC World Service handed over to Radio 4 on the FM frequency then I was awake for the day.

I had woken in the night with my mind falling apart again. My head had illustrated the bleakness behind my eyeballs with post-apocalyptic-type manga cartoons, mostly black and white but good enough to capture. I wish I was able to capture these things.

Then the day began. My hamsters were beside me on the floor stashed beneath two giant long tubes the length of their domain. They looked exceedingly cute hiding behind them...

Last night I found some really weird Chinese food on the pavement, the apparent result of someone moving house. Not Chinese takeaway, I mean the actual oddities a Chinese person might store in their kitchen cupboards. "Woodberry and wild date tea" (or whatever it was). Sweet lemon soap-like stuff for drinking. And some oddly sacheted Chinese breakfast cereal that I eventually stopped eating dry and eventually made up with hot water as per instructions, preparing a highly palatable soya milky wheat broth (has to be tasted to be believed). Genius people those Chinese.

Before that I'd been perusing the takaway menu, longing for ginger-fried beef strips with spring onions and mixed vegetable fried rice and satay chicken with curried vegetables and mixed vegetable fried rice... I'll shut up now or I'll make myself hungry again...(!)

ANOTHER (home-made) video for Randy Crawford's "Almaz":~

I think this is a really beautiful tune...

No official promo was produced for this song, released 1986 in the UK only where it got to number 4.

The real Almaz was Randy Crawford's best friend, so the story goes, and this song written, recorded and released to mark the occasion of Almaz's wedding...

Will It Ever Stop?

BLUBBLUBLBUBLUBLUBBBbbbbbb.... Crying all the way home. Raining my own thunderstorm.

I often think people's lives are like storms. All that clash-banging and passion and fireworks bright enough to light up the night.

But it's all over, a bit of wreckage aside, the world slips calmly back into place almost as if none of it ever happened.

Which again begs the point: why?

Why is any one of us born, just to die again?

And why do we spend so much of our lives just hurting others when we could make piece and mend walls and make it BETTER??

SKIN: Nothing But

Crying in the Street

I WEPT OPENLY IN THE STREET TODAY... what's the world coming to?

I saw Lucky's "brother" (not by blood)/former lover/best friend (well as "best" a friend as many of us will ever have) she treated him just like a brother, moaning on and on about various shortcomings at various times but I'm sure she loved him.

I saw him coming from behind a pillar near the library. Ignoring the urge to dodge behind I faced up to him and told the truth I could not face going to a funeral with a vicar who never knew her and people I didn't know.

There was no vicar (one relief). What can you say? This is a woman who was sorely addicted to drugs since childhood (as she tells it). Made some dreadful mistakes in life, but never willfully hurt anybody...??

Still I could not bear the whole emotional vary-go-round of it all. And all this time up until today I had managed NOT TO CRY and then it happened. In full view in a public square. How typical.

The best friend/brother figure showed me a card of Lucky aged about 2 or 3 drest in ballet tutu looking very young and innocent. The sort of picture that makes you look at the child and think, "boy what does life do to people?"

And that is that.

KATIE MELUA ~ NINE MILLION BICYCLES IN BEIJING



MADONNA ~ YOU'LL SEE

Funeral

TODAY WAS MY FRIEND LUCKY'S FUNERAL. I did not go. Was feeling funereal enough at home with not the right clothes, not ready when I was unexpectedly offered a lift there with less than an hour's notice. And not wanting to face up to her children, who don't know me (though I met her daughter and remember her, I doubt she recalls me).

I miss Lucky. I've lost a friend and a sanctuary.

Every now and then I'd spend a long afternoon at her flat, which is way up in the sky. The clock on the wall ticked out time in slow-time, Lucky-time. It always seemed a long, long while but in a good way.

O well; as they say: all good things come to an end.

PS the funeral was delayed over a month in order to conduct an autopsy or coroner's enquiry type thing. I've no idea what they found... All this time she was in a great steel draw in a body-fridge.

That isn't the actual grave (got cremated anyway) but it's what I'd like my grave to look like. I want roses planted on me. If I get burned and anyone wants the ashes, they can have them. Otherwise I'd rather get scattered to the four winds...

AMY WINEHOUSE: BACK TO BLACK


Amy Winehouse Back to Black - Click here for this week’s top video clips

N-TRANCE: STAYIN ALIVE



RANDY CRAWFORD: SOMEDAY I'LL FLY AWAY



Tell me, do you like this, or do you think it's too sentimental
RANDY CRAWFORD: ALMAZ

Caught Piping

POP STAR GEORGE MICHAEL has been caught misbehaving yet again in a public convenience. (Surely an inconvenience for him.) According to vague BBC radio news he was captured and cautioned in possession of "a class A and a class C drug".

I bet it's crack, I thought to myself.

And cheery-mcDeary, wasn't I bang on right?


Everybody who is into drugs seems to be doing crack these days.

A decade ago cocaine was approaching a peak in popularity to which it had gently climbed over the preceeding decade. When I first encountered drugs cocaine was still a dinner party drug for those rich enough not to know what to do with their money, a drug for rock stars, and was often uttered in the same breath as heroin. Heroin and cocaine. It was a hard drug. Less disrespectable than heroin, but not something one would idly brag about snorting, certainly not in mixed company.

Within half a decade the situation had changed to the point that coke ("charlie" as the new lower-class users referred to it) had become a posh version of speed. A man with and on coke felt he was "the man" and any shame surrounding the substance, at least among the weekend clubbing fraternity had evaporated. Nearly all of these users sniffed the drug. Crack was still considered scummy. A "black drug" (at least in America). Something desperate addicts might be glimpsed smoking on shadowy inner-city back stairwells (as I did a couple of times).

Crack, of course, is only cocaine mixed with baking soda, "washed" (with water for it to float in) under some heat source (e.g. a cig lighter flame). An oil forms atop the spoon. Fished out, a molten white substance quickly hardens and the so-called rocks are produced.

These can be shoved on a pipe which requires cigarette ash or some squiggly wire gauze as illustrated to suspend the melting coke allowing nearly 100% of the dosage to reach the lungs and hence the user's brain. Unlike snorty coke which comes on over five minutes or so, this of course hits the nervous system almost all at once in a super-compressed rush so powerful it can sometimes be heard as an ear-ringing echoing altered state. A very large pipe even blinds you with a snow-blind light in an infinite space (very close to an epileptic seizure, and crack can induce seizure disorders in those previously well). And then a high so immense it feels like surfing a double tidal-wave.

No wonder it's so very addictive.

As I say, crack is only a different form of cocaine, hence many a nose-up user has graduated, from boredom, curiosity (or nose-rotting desperation: don't forget ~ years of snorting eventually dissolve the separator of the nostrils) has "graduated" on to this intensely potent form of the drug. It's more widely available than ever before (from dealers who often retail grass as well). With Amy Winehouse and others widely known to be smokers any remaining stigma is vanishing. And years after the doom and gloom "crack crimewave to hit Britain" headlines it's actually happening.

I have little else to say on the subject. Coke never really got me until I picked up a taste for the so-called speedballs or snowballs, when it's mixed with heroin and injected intravenously as one hit: and this was some years into my hard-drug-using "career"... If the relative dosage is right this feels like an incredibly sugared-up version of heroin, flushing into the brain almost double the dopamine of a crack hit alone...

Highly, highly addictive...

Read the full News of the World article, George Michael had crack in the toilet

PS What's he doing in that Faith poster of his? Wondering whether his deodorant's up to the job..?

Inspiration Strikes (again!)

A THUNDERBOLT OF INSPIRATION has struck me yet again.

Another book!

The story hasn't come in its entirety, yet much of the set-up has. And this one's a children's novel. Highly ideal on the wearied hands for typing as it's only going to be 15-25,000 words.

All enthusiasm for works describing (a) my own life, or (b) drug use or addiction of any kind has deserted me.

This one's a comedy that I can write utterly naturally in a style all my own ~ on my own level (ooer!) ~ without dumbing down.

I feel I can speak to children pretty much on my own level. This is for the absolute classic age of children's fiction: the 8-12s. Practically all the classics of children's literature were written for children in this age range. The tale, as currently conceived, is in the tradition of Spike Milligan's Bad Jelly the Witch (click here to read its entirety) and most of Roald Dahl...

So now I've two books on my hands and I am indeed going for both of them.

So wish me luck, please, as this amounts to nearly 200,000 words of keyboard clattering plus two great slabs of A4 500s per copy of both!

No delay! I'm starting today.

Please wish me luck because I'll need it.

PS I'm being sued for nonpayment of poll tax. Council tax whatever the merchant bankers at the council call it now...

PPS Have a nice weekend, see yous all Monday. No more computer time till then!

Here's a video from Seaworld Helsinki, purloined from the Ailema4ever blog

Itchy's Covered in Fur

THE SONG GOES:
Itchy's covered in fur;
Itchy's covered in fur!
Eee-aye-a-dairy-mouse,
Itchy's covered in fur!!



I cleaned out Pingpong (my Chinese hammy; not to be confused with Pingping, smallest man in the world who's Mongolian Chinese...) Man! The amount of goodies he's packed in his pouches and stashed all over the place! It all had to go. And clean food, clean bedding and clean litter were provided in their stead. Pingping liked none of this and spent the next two hours pinging furiously forward on his wheel in an attempt to run away from this horrible newness...

The Roborovski family look more like mini gremlins than ever before, tiny yawning, peering, pinging trotters. They've chewed the entirety of the available blue chalk stick; have now graduated to lilac, a colour they seem to nibble more avidly than ever before!

Come and look at this amazing reflexional fir photograph at Dorrien's (who never replies to me)...

Regent's Park

FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE I went for a ramble into town yesterday!

Found myself in Regent's Park. A very posh royal park (formerly a royal hunting-ground).

Gold-tipped railings. Everything immaculately kept.

I wandered along the Outer Circle, peering through the hedges at the exclusive homes of Chester Terrace (top right).

One day I'm going to live in a house like that and nobody will be able to call me scum.

Though North of the Park (Hyde Park!)/South of the River. Inconsolably vulgar! Plus miles from the shops (that is, the proper shops of Knightsbridge, Sloane Square and the Kings Road) though Regents Park does have the consolation of being near Camden, most convenient for the individual who wishes to live in a 5-storey £10 million* single-fronted stucco'd townhouse in easy reach of indoor markets selling funky fluorescing clubgear...

{*ooo! correction less than £5 million. Number 9 Chester terrace is on sale as we speak. As I say they were only 5 stories and single-fronted (I'd prefer the double-fronted cuboid houses with gargantuan bay windows in Holland Park; that's where I'd actually go if not Chelsea or Knightsbridge) ~ not to mention vulgarly north of "thee" park and execrably pokey.

{I certainly wouldn't feel out of place in prime West London property. And unlike certain vulgar celebrities, when I make my millions I most certainly shall not be shipping out to an outsized Barrat Home in East Essex!

{(Though Barratt have knocked up some delightfully steel-and-glass yuppie flats in the former East London docklands...)...}

Madonna lives near Regent's Park, but I didn't catch sight of her jogging.

The main attraction here (apart from London zoo which I didn't have time, let alone money to poke round) was the supposed red squirrels of North Regents Park, which I've seen with my own eyes (albeit when I was all of seven years old).

But disappointment on disappointment. Nary a squirrel to be found...

And the only ones that were were grey

VIDEOS:

1: PINGPING: WORLD'S SMALLEST MAN!

It's oGuinness Book of Recordsfficial. He Pingping, from Chinese inner Mongolia, aged 20 is a big hit with the ladies. This week he was in London promoting the 2009 , in which he claims said title. This guy is barely more than 2 ft tall!

!

2: JACK RUSSEL VS KITTYCAT

There was supposed to be a video of Pingping wrestling a housecat. But being as I can't find that, thought this dwarf dog rolling on the carpet with a much larger tabby would suffice...

Addendum

THIS TO YESTERDAY'S POST:
Furnishing a mind: what I was trying to say, but barely succeeded in so doing, was that, when I realized I can stream and direct my own thoughts I also realized I ought to have (in theory) some control over my own craving.
This is all easier said than done, but the possibility is there.
Just like physical muscles, this mental flexing should eventually build up some strength.
Strength to overcome.


Drugs in Germany

Absolutely Fabulous

I used to find this show hilarious. Here's the very first episode, "fashion"... Edina has had months to prepare a charity fashion bash and now the day has come, her best friend Patsy only wants to push her round Harvey Nichols and ply her with cocaine...



You can watch the rest of it here.

Here's the first episode of season 5 "cleanin'"



You can see the rest of this here.

Insalubrious Firsts

I SURVIVED IT! Survived a bitter weekend blank with lassitude and bleakness.

Before addiction snapped me fast in its hopeless mantrap, in my mid-1990s era, when I was blighted with chronic fatigue syndrome (so bad sometimes I could only go to bed and lie there as my exhausted brain sizzled and zapped like a massively burnt frying pan that is grabbed off the fire, flung to one side and yet still continues to smoke and spit for ages afterwards.)

I used to get so mentally exhausted I couldn't focus on a tabloid newspaper even, couldn't cope with the visual overload of anything, not even television. it was then that I took up talk radio listening. I also used to get so guiltridden and depressed I felt that as a non-contributory member of society I had no place in the world.

I told my Counsellor this and said maybe the fascists of World War II had something, and that the sick and disabled (ie I) ought to be put out of my misery as I was doing nothing but costing the state money. Her response was that in a civilized society everyone has their place; that's what civilization is. A situation where the sick and needy are cared for by those able to do so...

She was a great lady. And I'm no fascist by the way. Such guilt was a symptom of my depression, not my politics. Politically I'm so central and boring that in many countries including this one, I could vote for any major party as I occupy that central space where they all collide...

Anyway! I was trying to say that despite my troubles (perhaps because of them; and my Counsellor used to say that we all have our crosses to bear ~ we cannot pick or choose our cross...) I was growing in self-awareness, self-belief, self-mastery. So my most recent addiction Eureka!s would barely have registered on my old radar...

I'm only just realizing that no matter who we are or what our predicament, we do have the power to pick what we choose to think about; and our musings do eventually furnish our minds.

Such a spectacularly ordinary revelation... well it was no revelation back then, but a fixture of my psyche and one among countless many other fibres of wisdom that held me together and shored me up... which one by one fell away, deteriorated or were stolen from me in the course of my addiction. Knowing how very much I have lost is one of the matters that makes recovery so difficult for me. Each bridge I crossed on the way down was a bridge of shame: even dabbling in heroin put me at such serious odds with some old friends they pretty much disowned me just for trying the stuff...



Then there were the inglorious firsts: my first period of daily use with no break (I never let myself use more than four consecutive days at the start. Each day representing a quarter of a £20 bag as smoked.)...

The first time I held out my arm to let somebody fix me up... My first OD (my second IV "hit", as it goes; and that should have told me something)... the first time I injected myself "skinpopping"... first time I "mainlined" (went into the main vein in the crook of my arm)...

The time I eventually ran out of all money, credit and borrowing options and had to go out and beg on the streets... my habit trebling from £10 to £30+ a day, which was nearly a gram (3 x 0.3g: that dealer sold £15 worth for £10) ... and the first time I realized that £20 of heroin wouldn't hold me all day and I needed that £30 or more worth just to stay normal...

My first speedballs (crack IV'd with heroin)...

My first attempts at rehab, where I spent nearly all the time in the counselling room in pieces before just running out the door and back into the welcoming arms of my beloved drug. And so on and so on.

I lost my dignity. I nearly lost my mind (on crack). I lost myself. Will I ever get anything back?

SONG:
RADIO HEAD KARMA POLICE
Do you like this or hate this? Do tell!


PS Vivienne Vyle
Does anyone like this? I posted the entire series on my random blog (like a lot of British comedy this is all written by one person (in this case Jennifer Saunders, who also stars as V Vyle) and runs to all of six episodes..!

Took me ages to realize the pun: Vivienne Vyle/Jeremy Kyle!!

PPS NB the male guest's ridiculous Jerry Springer guest hair (stick-on moustache-stylee...)



You can see the entire series on my Random Blog:
Rest of this (episode 1)
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

Daily Dairy Meeces' Pieces

NOTHING GOT POSTED YESTERDAY because the internet shop was shut at midday. How unforgivable! Also I'm not posting the "thoughtful" piece mentioned last time as it's not completed yet. I've been having lots of rodent dreams.

One dream in particular is based on a joke I ridiculed my good friend from Wiltshire, Parsnipetta, with. I informed her that creamy cheesecakes re more expensive than plain because the piggles round the side are a rare kind of mouse milk only ordinarily available from Harrods' deli. And she believed me!

Then I either saw on telly or read on the internet or had a vivid dream ~ I'm assuming it must have been the dream ~ that there really are mice from the mouse dairy on teeny-weeny milking machines and the cream they produce is a true international delicacy..(!)

Surely it was a dream? You don't actually get dairy mice, do you? My robbies do like it when I coo such crap at them. They gaze up at me all beady-eyed and adoringly... But maybe it's just the sound of my voice...

The neighbours must surely believe I am going crazy. "Have you got perky little petal ones? Yes you have!" (Petal ears: bonsai roses.) Or "glittery little beady ones!" (Eyes.) I wonder if next doors have any idea what I'm talking about?.. Or who I'm talking to?

See! No mention of death, despair or heroin needles! Have a fine weekend, y'all!

G xx

PS My Dairy Mice have nibbled an entire 1/2 of a chalk stick (cobalt blue).

PPS My friend Pascal is no longer taking my calls after I dared feel too ill to ride the back of a motorbike in ill-fitting helmet carrying outsized mirror in pukeworthy condition (the Night of the Vomiting...)

VIDEO:
All Saints: Pure Shores
Official soundtrack to the Leonardo DiCaprio/Cate Blanchett film, The Beach:



Black Coffee
This is classic. Hear this one 2nd

Sick in the Night

I WROTE OUT quite a lot of a highly thoughtful and hopefully all perceptive and blah-dy-blah-ey post yesterday afternoon but have yet to finish it and it all got derailed by illness...

My friend Pascal, who is French-American phoned me yesterday wanting assistance "carrying something". He was going to pay me £10 for doing this. I was intrigued as to what on earth he might want me to carry. I knew nothing "dodgy" was in the offing but still... turned out it was a great oversized mirror and I was to ride the back of a motorbike holding this.

As the evening transpired I was totally unable to do this, having been violently sick all over the place, hot and cold in the arms and aches all over and a penetrating headache. How on earth could I have ridden the back of a bike with this kind of nausea and the threat of vomiting into the crash helmet? No thanks. Eventually he desisted and found somebody else to impose upon and I lay back in bed unconscious until the late early hours of the morning, when I got up and wandered delicately to the local industrial park in a hunt for stray tobacco.

There I claimed my usual spot under the shelter and watched the herring gulls wheeling and diving in the violet hour of dawn. Beautiful birds. There's also tiny little black and white birds that run exceedingly quickly across the carpark and fly in a highly agile fluttery fashion, gusting up like blown leaves then down among the puddles. They've long tails that flit up and down. I'm not sure that they're not pied wagtails, though they're a bit bigger than I remember those being. At that hour of the night it's very hard to see very much at all... but I love my seagulls, who always seem to be fighting over who gets to sit on the central streetlight. See even birds have cliques and "cool" and "uncool"!

Video:
Sarah Palin: America's Punishment
I always said those Democrats should have picked Hillary. Now now America shall get its just deserts in the form of that moose-eating Republican lady!
This borrowed from Mary's blog:~

Clique Clickety-click!

O! HOW GLAD I AM to be getting old! So many things thankfully falling away!!

Getting to musing this afternoon, I was reminded of my university days. Mine was a campus university at the opposite end of the country to my home or any of my roots.

There I was in late September, thrown together with 500 other 18 and 19 year-olds, all away properly from home for the first time, crammed together into bombproofed 2-storey H-blocks on a disused airbase barracks across town from the university itself.

Posh rooms on the main campus went to foreign students, exchange students, mature students and the like. In other words, all the more straightlaced and "square" students were chucked in together over there, while us immature students were chucked in together over here! On this disused airbase, as I say, complete with Naffi shop. 500++ 18 and 19 year olds, finally away from home. Just imagine it...

The social whirl was legendary!

Anyway: my mind was jogged this afternoon specifically to a phenomenon I've not experienced for so very many years it had totally escaped my memory up till today: that is, the situation of being young and innocent adn truly wanting to make friends, however you come across somebody (usually of the same sex, and there's nothing sexual about this, it's no "crush" as such...) You're in such awe of this person that you might barely consider yourself worthy of their friendship. Merely engaging this person's attention is nearly as special to you as a personal blessing from the Dalai Lama or the Pope.

Does everyone remember what I'm going on about here? And just like me, had yous all forgotten..?

I also remember from my first year at uni how a certain group of second years who all lived together in a house on Fairfax Road, seemed held in awe. They were thee people to be with, to be invited to be with, to be seen with and most of all of course to be friends with.

I met them all quite inadvertently in the course of my very first and brainfryingly bad LSD trip.

Sucha traumatic drug experience rubbed my face in the fact that most of my just-aqquired friends, being "straighties" knew nothing about what had happened to me. Only the hash-smoking druggier students "understood" the horribleness I'd survived to any degree and to this day I've never met anyone able to describe a trip as horrendous as the one I had.

I plainly remember standing at a crossroads: and I took the wrong turn. I gravitated towards these people.

One of my new acquaintances was a long-haired hippie from my own year called Zebedee. he and his friends appeared to do very little else each evening except congregate in somebody's room after 8 or 9 o'clock. When the telly wasn't on, something like Reactivate 2 (tekno) or the Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds would be tinkling in the background. On and on we would smoke until the early hours.

Zebedee used to boast all the time of his friendship with these Fairfax Road people, constantly namedropping people and drugs and spinning anecdotes of waht such and such a person might have said or done on a trip of LSD or E. (We were very young back then, ecstasy was the drug of the moment and the whole experience still had a transgressive "awe" about it...)

I recall getting a little over-obsessed over a couple of people. One was the girl who introduced me to "E". On entering and leaving my own block every night I would traipse slightly out of my way to crane my head round, counting the windows along her floor to see whether she seemed to be in or not... How sad is that?!?

Then one of the all-hallowed people from Fairfax Road mentioned to me that it was her birthday next week and she was throwing a party. The Fairfax Road party was thee social event of the season. A student E-rave of some renown. A nationally known DJ span the records and people talked about the night for weeks afterwards.

So you can imagine how offended I was and how acutely my nose was shoved out of joint when I mentioned this casual invitation to E-girl's boyfriend who promptly dis-invited me, saying, "I'm on the door that night. I'm going to have to turn so many people away." And so I didn't go. I was such a delicate flower back then that a little remark like that was enough to put me off. If I felt I wasn't welcome then I couldn't cope. I spent that Saturday night down the pub with my own milder and more boring friends who were so "straight" that they weren't even aware of such a party, let alone whether or not they'd been invited. I was in such a glowery bad mood that people were constantly asking what was wrong ~ but never in 1,000,000 years was I about to confess...

Come on, personal experiences in the commentary box, please!



Vid:
The Orb
Little Fluffy Clouds
(gets ***** 5 stars on youtube: this is ambient classic...)



PS Radio 4's weekly Woman's Hour (though nearly 50% of their listeners are men!) Drama: Balance of Power, story of a poor relation of the Duchess of Marlborough who, in 17-something, becomes Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen of England and gets to witness repressed lesbian lust, amongst much else! If you clickonthat you can hear it yourself...

My Clean Dream: A Pipe Dream?

This quotation from opioids.com that "long term opium use can cause physical and psychological dependence, creating in the user a craving for the drug and a feeling that life is not worth living without it." (You can say that again.)

"A writer named H.H. Kane (quoted by Jill Jones) reported that smoking opium would evoke 'a condition of dreamy wakefulness... a state in which the devotee feels himself on a stratum above his fellow men and their pursuits--at peace with himself and all mankind -- a pleasant listless calm and contentment steals over him... This waking dream, this silken garment of the imagination, will take its shape and coloring from the most cherished and brilliant strands... and puts out of sight the real and unpleasant crudities of life.' The mood, however, did not last long. 'Then the good spirit of the pipe disappears, giving place to a demon who binds his victim hand and foot.' (Hepcats, Narcs and Pipe Dreams by Jill Jones (Scribner, 1996)."

And I suppose that is my situation in a nutshell. The picture on the top right shows abscess blotches like mine, though I only have two ripe ones plus another three or four dead or dying or shrivelling out.

I have noticed a few times that opiate addiction seems to be more difficult to kick than addiction to anything else I've seen. Crack and stimulants might be far more intense, but I suspect that, like me, most people can rationalize how staying that "high" all the time just isn't possible. Opiate addiction is more profound, in that, like a Persian rug, it unlerlies all you are and do in life. It's only when you try to detox and stop that you realize the rug has been pulled from under you and you're freefalling like a raindrop in a universe of terror.

What on earth I was on about yesterday I have no idea. All those links to drug porn. Why? I certainly was not "high". Yes I had been trying to be clean and had fallen (yet again); that's all I seem to be good at, falling. (Boo-hoo!)

Last week, I had attempted some renunciation of my former ways, but was not successful, as per usual. I just found myself maudlin, miserable and so bleak that, as I said, I could barely be bothered with getting out of bed, so I did not bother.... blah blah... time has passed and now it's today...

My mind is focused on my book, a complicated, fictional, tale of human nature. My attempted "memoir" writing fell flat as no creativity is involved and I found writing page after page after page about nothing but me me me me me excruciatingly dull. Also I was forced to delve into possible reasons behind my old behaviour, plus certain alternative pathways for my old life showed up. I was none to happy to see these roadways spotlighted so long after I had inexorably passed them by.

Last night I got bored and played hamsters. They have a posh new plastic tube (very nibbleworthy) plus an up-ended miniature cheesecake container that has provided endless fascination for Itchy et al: poking her head into it, peering about in astonishment. They also now have a luxury piece of chalk taped to the side (well they seem to particularly love the taste and this stick is blue). Spherical now answers to the name "Mrs Tubbymouse". She doesn't glare at me when I use it.

I am listening (online) to the BBC Saturday Play: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ~ Alexander Solzhenitsin's sketch of life in a Siberian labour camp during Soviet times. For some reason my teenage reading of the book stalled (I used to love things like that. Orwell's 1984 was a particular favourite...) what I do recall is that temperatures of less than 40 below allowed the population to stay indoors and not work. How they must have hated those days that were not quite so cold!

My Clean Dream

Famous Panda Sneeze
This one's had 20,000,000 Youtube views!!
From Baino: now on my pets blog too...



Hello this is a post lost in the midsts of time (let alone the mists)...

Many a miserable day spent attempting to be "clean" of heroin and just to stick to methadone has ended yet again in FAILURE.

What else am I going to do? I've no idea. And I'm too tired to think about it.

I looked up some things to do with drugs, drugs of choice etc.

There's been a bit of a drought in the heroin supply of late, meaning all manner of weird variations in the ordinary standard of the drug have surfaced. Perhaps the most noteworthy being so-called "China White"... hard white rocks of heroin (though it also comes as a fluffy white powder)... in this case slightly offwhite, cooking up a solution the colour of white wine... exceedingly strong... had me standing in the middle of the room in a collapsing Z-shape...(!)

Also that stuff smells strongly of VINEGAR. Anyone know why?
Or is it just the ACETIC ANHYDRIDE used in the processing of morphine to heroin..?

Righty ho I have to go before I babble yous all out... take care!!
United States Heroin Details

Snowballing/speedballing (injecting heroin & crack mixture ~ I used to be head-over-heels addicted to this) most popular injected drug choice by 80% in UK...

Difference between Afghan Brown and China White heroin...

Afghan Heroin flooding Australia... "needs citric acid"...

Crack compared to crystal meth...

Khat: a Somali drug (leaves I once chewed in the grounds of a mental hospital. When we got bored of chewing leaves we inhaled lighter fluid instead and the Somali nutter's conversation hit us like a punch in the face...)

How Kiwis supposedly make "heroin" from codeine...

PS Remember that "definition" of my name Gledwood the other day, that I didn't believe..?

Well I just MADE UP a name, and here's the spiel thereupon..!

The meaning of Xaser

What Xaser Means

You are incredibly sexy and sensual. You have a naughty vibe that no one can ignore. You have an unquenchable desire. And you are unrestrained in your passions. You have a tendency to be unfaithful. Whether you fight it or give in to it is up to you. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are the total package - suave, sexy, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do. You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together. You are wild, crazy, and a huge rebel. You're always up to something. You have a ton of energy, and most people can't handle you. You're very intense. You definitely are a handful, and you're likely to get in trouble. But your kind of trouble is a lot of fun.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

In the Crackhouse

I HAD JUST SCORED HEROIN off the B-man the other day and was buying cyder from the corner shop when I ran into Crackhead of the Century, who took up haranguing me for £1 for cigarettes. I said I couldn't afford it; then he said he'd give me a bit of rock for £1, so I caved in.

He introduced me to his latest fast friend, some Polish guy who thinks that because he's been piping "white" for a week, a simple "hello" is beyond him then I said "where are we going to smoke this?" and he lead us to an address I'd already clocked as a crackhouse very near to my own. He also asked where I lived now, I gave totally false directions!

So we approach this house, rather than knocking, crackhead just slams at the front door and it pops open directly (almost like my old house, though at least this had some semblance of a "lock"). People from downstairs start slagging him off over some previous encounter but one joins our fray, so there's now Crackhead, Pole a deranged black woman and me.

He charges upstairs and, breaking another dooor open takes us into a back upstairs flat. Everyone sits down. I really needed the loo as I'd been imbibing cyder all afternoon. The bathroom appeared locked and I pointed out someone might have been in there but no-one could be bothered.

Crackhead took a huge draw on a pipe. Dished out a bit for me. Everyone else was smoking by the time I realized that not only could I not use the loo but the door was barricaded by a chair and Crackhead was talking paranoid nonsense about someone "standing behind" me (no-one was there). This was too much like a scene from a seedy movie throwing the chair out of the way I left, crack in hand. Crackhead went all aggressive on me for daring to do what I wanted: most people seem to be pretty pliant around him, I've no idea why as he's just scum.

Got home and the food I'd put on was overboiling, smoking etc. Knew I should've been out of there! Had a sweet sweet hit of heroin-crack on HIM (not as if he didn't owe me from times past past past...)

... and so on.

Then I decided to be all frugal and sanctimoniously not using anything at all and had such miserable time I could barely get out of bed. As a result my book has gone no further than it was as of that last post... It's well past sundown, Friday night. Have a cheery weekend y'all!

Cuckoos in the Crackhouse: click here to see how evil dealers take advantage of the vulnerable to turn their flats into crackhouses and see innocents turfed out on the streets (I've seen this happen twice 1st hand!)

Literature-trician

FINALLY THE OPENING OF MY NEW BOOK came to me! So I've written over 700 words! That's nearly 2 printed pages! And promptly had to rewrite it all! And have yet to finish doing it! But it's a start! So wahey!!

Even when I thought I'd lost a £10 note this morning, I glanced down at my writing (which begun on the back of a pizza box: how much more starving-in-a-garret romantic can you get in this late day and age?) and thought to myself truly, "That writing's worth far more than a tenner." Wow. That's a really difficult thing to think about one's own work, as any would-be writer should agree.

There is a real knack to prose narative that you have to get used to if you're going to write a lot of it, and I've been trying to slip back into that mode... Of course I've also spent a lot of time feeling sticky and stuck and cringeingly rereading knowing this has to change... Of course (unlike my blog) it all has to be succinct, yet vivid. And word perfect. Which it is not (yet). But it's a start.

Hey hamster news: I caught Pingpong the Chinese hammy running on his wheel tonight. For the first time ever. Honestly he is so retiring and has never shown any regard whatsoever for hammytoys of any type. Even once when I hooked his old wheel to the back of a chair 3ft in the air with nowhere to run except ever onward into hammywheel-land (must be an enticing prospect, because something keeps those little critters scurrying for hours at a time on their little exercise wheels...) anyway nowhere to go (fallbreaking quilt pillows strategically poised beneath in case in sheer desperation he should jump, which is just what Itchy would have done)... he just sat there looking desperate and very sad. And ran nowhere! So big improvement. Pingpong the Retiring Hamster has somehow got Less Retiring...

Video:
Kinks - Days
I love this tune and it seems to be everywhere at the moment...

Chalky Roborovskies

I RETRIEVED A COLLECTION OF COLOURED CHALK STICKS from under a bus stop on my early morning fag-hunt. Chalk I had originally been minded to use for Pavement Art, a business I was peripherally involved with some years ago. So after decorating various doors and boxes with psychedelia, shrubs and daisies with mystical inscriptions beneath, I turned my attention to my hamsters who, according to an old owners' manual can, in full-blown hissyfit mode (and if you've never seen a hammy throw a full-blown tantrum you don't know what you're missing: the paw-stomping, teeth-gnashing, up-in-the-air-springing and yes poisonous-serpent-style hissings are not easily forgotten, especially as one's just witnessed one's docile (but ordinarily vigorous) tubby pet turn from domesticated furball into ferral streetfighter. They can allegedly in such revved-up states, easily snap a stick of chalk in half with one single chomp of 2cm razor-gnashers!

Not so Bashful Tubbymouse-Roborovski. Having examined said mineralistic intrusion with some consternation, she did seize it with little hands and took to nibbling it with quite some inquisitiveness. Tiny little toothmarks were left all over it. Spherical took one glance, fled, then glared at me furious through one of many Bashfully-chewed-out holes in the toothpaste-box! Itchy took to gnawing with far more enthusiasm than Bashful. Then promptly bit the end off!

All of which has set me to pondering what vital collective memories of long ago eves on the Mongolian steppes might be revived by such nibbles. I've heard pregnant roborovskis do well to gnaw on a posh piece of chalk called a "mineral lick" ... so I'm off to purchase the very same right now and see how well they do on it. Mineral lick? Mineral Chomp, once "Baby" Itchy's gnashers get anywhere near it..!

Speaking of which, here's a song by Noel Coward, specially adapted for Spherical:

Don't let your daughter get the mange Mrs Tubbymouse;
Don't let your daughter get the mange!
She'll itch, Mrs Tubbymouse;
She'll bitch, Mrs Tubbymouse ~
So don't let Baby Itchy get the mange!

To be sung to the tune of "Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington" (click below)...