"BABY" ITCHY IS SICK. Short of a miracle, she's dying. Itchy is my tiniest roborovski hamster. The illustration top left is not a picture of her, but it's nearest I could find online.

I did a hamster-count yesterday because their tank was full of cut-out tea-boxes and other things in such crazy array they had a chocolate fingers box bridge over their wheel, a multistorey turreted castle-type thing, all cut open with little windows and doors. Because this brought the level of their home so high an enterprising roborovski could possibly clamber out the top, I have been extra careful, putting big books over the highest part, keeping them shut up in a cupboard (where they appreciate the dark anyhow) during the day... etc. I did a hamster-count yesterday and only two! I was convinced one had escaped.

The sadder truth emerged later that night, slumped exhausted under the water bottle. Fur unkempt, eyes shut. The backbone is protruding because she has lost weight. I've seen this happen before and there's little a vet could do. This means she is dying.

Today she sat in my hands, but there was nothing I could do to make her eat. Not even chopped up broccoli leaves, not even flour (which wild mice love ~ I once lost an entire pack in under a week in my scruffy old house where Evilstein was landlord...). She hobbles around but has very little energy. Bashful and Spherical tread all over her, oblivious. Their bright-eyed enthusiasm makes Itchy seem all the sicker...

I had to leave her bundled in a cardboard tube surrounded by hammyscones, seeds and vegetables to go to an antidrugs meeting, so I'm hoping she didn't go while I was out.

How perky-eared and pingy she used to be!...





TOTO: AFRICA
I don't know why, but this comes to my head...

Furry Friday on Saturdays: Dunnarts

THESE PLUCKY LITTLE BEASTS (yes! from Australia) are the ones that emerge from burrow, have fight with funnel-web spider (and slay it), go off, tackle scorpion, crunching it stingless for breakfast... then mating season arrives and the males are so exhausted they all DIE within 2 weeks... and soon a new generation of dunnarts arrives to carry on the fun...

Desirous of Some Detecting

I WAS IN THE LIBRARY, ABSENTLY leafing through a biography of Queen Victoria when I stumbled across the following screamingly funny passage about the deaf Duke of Wellington at Windsor Castle dinner parties.

Has anyone seen that film The Young Victoria? It's about her romance with Prince Albert. I love a good costume drama but our local multiplex cinema specializes in the sort of bland, loud, slap-bang schlock that just makes me fall asleep and doesn't appear to have screened it at all...

IT COULD BE especially tiresome when the Duke of Wellington was one of the guests since he was so fearfully deaf and shouted so. "Very good looking man," he once bawled in Lady Lyttleton's ear, referring to the Tsar, Nicholas I, who sat immediately opposite and understood English perfectly. "Always was so ~ scarcely altered since I saw him last ~ rather browner ~ no other change ~ very handsome man now. Don't you think so?" Lady Lyttleton felt compelled to shout an answer, "Yes, very handsome indeed." On occasions the Duke would talk "as loud as thunder" about some matter of delicate state importance which should have been mentioned only in Cabinet, and the Queen would blush "over and over" and at last succeed in interrupting him by "screaming out upon some other subject".
Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria A Personal History p144

Now do any of yous know The Number One Ladies Detective Agency novels by Alexander McCall Smith. They're hilariously funny. He's a white man but Zimbabwe-born and educated and purveys his grasp of African English extraordinarily well. BBC World Service Radio turned them into plays and they're now on BBC1 television, Sunday nights.

The following extract is from the one volume I have; it happens to be the very story they're showing this weekend:(decade old disappearance of an American on the edge of the Kalahari and Mama Precious Ramotswe of course cracks the case...)

MR J. L. B. MATEKONI, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, found it difficult to believe that Mma Ramotswe, the accomplished founder of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, had agreed to marry him. It was at the second time of asking; the first posing of the question, which had required immense courage on his part, had brought forth a refusal ~ gentle, and regretful ~ but a refusal nonetheless. After that, he had assumed that Mma Ramotswe would never remarry; that her brief and disastrous marriage to Note Mokoti, trumpeter and jazz aficionado, had persuaded her that marriage was nothing but a recipe for sorrow and suffering. After all, she was an independent-minded woman, with a business to run, and a comfortable house of her own in Zebra Drive. Why, he wondered, should a woman like that take on a man, when a man could prove to be difficult to manage once vows were exchanged and he had settled himself in her house? No, if he were in Mma Ramotswe's shoes, then he might well decline an offer of marriage, even from somebody as eminently reasonable and respectable as himself.
Tears of the Giraffe, Alexander McCall Smith p1

Illustrations, top down: Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, TV adaptation; old Queen Victoria; young Queen Victoria; Princess Beatrice (the Queen's granddaughter, child of Prince Andrew and Fergie (Duchess of York)(a more than passing resemblance to the young Victoria, don't you think?)); No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency L-R Mma
Makutsi (secretary), Mma Ramotswe (detective) Mr JLB Matekoni (Mma Ramotswe's husband-to-be).

YOUNG VICTORIA trailer
It's directed by Martin Scorsese, by the way...



THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY
It's on HBO in America, by the way...



GOA TRANCE
I was surprised, on my Googling, to learn the "vibe's still alive"...
I "leafed" through loads of footage till settling on this, which has the best soundtrack.

THIS IS ONE VIBED-UP PARTY. JAPANESE GIRLS ON EEEEEEE ARE THE BEST!

To see more trancetasticality, click here...

Trapped Wind

I WAS COMFORT EATING OBSESSIVELY at every waking juncture in the last 24 hours. So much so that come this morning and the onset of sewerage-quacking farts and a sensation like a double-knotted balloon in my belly I felt so terrible I thought I was going to die. OK slight exaggeration but it was rather inconvenient. And also made me think: how undignified being trapped in a burping, farting, snoring ukky-yukky human body. I could go on but won't...

IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY'S COMMENTS, I suppose I now have to go on to set up a Wordpress blog to import stuff from here, in case Blogger goes crashing down. How on earth you do any of this I don't know (except commonsensically and if you think commonsense will get you far in today's world you're hopelessly naive, that's all I say...)

LIFE still feels hopelessly teflon-coated grey. I can't see, feel, discern/etc any point at all. Not that I've been philosophizing (just about thee most despairational thing you can do in my view) but trying to give self a "reason" to do anything. I've been sleeping round the clock (how? Not by the power of drugs that's for sure...)

I WISH IT WAS A SUNNY DAY so I could go trekking off in the woods. But I know me, I probably wouldn't go. I'd think up some excuse. That's me: excuses excuses excuses. Insufferable¬!

Also it's my Gran's funeral. I wasn't ever about to go. I'd be telling myself "don't use; don't drink..." Then nerves would make me do it even more. Hopeless!

Righto I'm off now. Take it easy, Kids

;->...

ESCAPE FROM SAMSARA
I tapped in the parties I used to go to and this came up from Youtube ~ they were still going Apparently in 2007. Maybe it was the chemistry, but I remember the music as far better than this...

I'M HOPING I do officially exist as Blogger have removed that warning message that appeared at the weekend and the "read the terrible Dalíesque melting word and type it in" security device lots of people have on their comments has disappeared from my "publish new post" function.

~While I'm on this subject, can anyone tell me how to import this entire blog to a new one without deleting it here? It's essential, if I do this, that it remain in both places at once.

Answers, please!

***

AS FOR ANYTHING ELSE: I'm flat of inspiration; don't know what to do, say, where to go/whatever. Just as I said yesterday. My life's getting to the point where it's too chronic to go on ~ but I haven't a clue what to do with it ...

MICROPOINT
Have a look at this:~

I Am Alive

I WAS BEGINNING TO THINK I DIDN'T EXIST ANY MORE. That's what Blogger seemed to think, and they were making me think it too. Without my blog I am nothing. I exist to no-one. Family and friends sparkle in bubbles of their own, but won't follow me to the big wide world. They don't want to.

What I mean is, I intend to emerge with a massive public splash ~ and I know they don't want to be part of that. That was my biggest reservation as author of this potential "misery memoir" of mine (the story of my life on drugs). There were too many people I wanted to protect. Not because they'd done anything wrong; because I do not see why my captivatingly woven tales (as I hoped they'd be!) should throw an unwanted spotlight on those who unwittingly crossed paths with me. We don't all want the Warholian fifteen minutes (or more) of fame ...

Now I sense my life's at a crossroads or a turning-point. Strange my blog should be threatened with nonexistence at such a time.

Wondering what to write, where to go, what to do. How. How to do it. Whatever "it" shall transpire to be...

I have too many projects, not enough time.

And far too much time wasted.

They say "what will be will be"... but there's nothing so fatalistic about my life's course: What will become of me is down to me. That's what frightens me the most. Me watching Me who plays "Me" ~ none of whom know how to take Responsibility. If my inner child holds the keys to destiny, then I'm terrified ~ for this Inner Child is the screaming unsatiated febrile baby of addiction, who diverted my life's course down the dead-ends of its whims, who recklessly joyrides my life, while I cower in the passenger seat wondering why we never flew off a cliff-edge years ago...

Yes, it's time to take control. But how on earth I'm supposed to do that, I've no idea...

Am I Alive? Am I For Real?

OR AM I A SPAMMING AUTOMATON? That's what Blogger appear to believe about me...?!? For real! Their message said:

This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.

This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone know what's happening?

I buy time weekly at an internet caff, in blocks e.g. of 10 hours. When I know time's running down I prepost for the weekend, hence my "meme" Furry Friday on Saturday which recently has always been preposted. I dig around for interesting "tid"bits in advance. Yesterday's "rainbows" theme was along similar lines but evidently too much for Blogger, who closed down my blog with the above message and refused to publish until I'd clicked terms of service and review.

It's weird this happens just as life hits another turning point signposted, you might say, with bleak warnings in ancient Middle-Earthy Hobbitron tongues: "ROCK BOTTOM". So aye; yer not wrong there...

SOPHIE ELLIS BEXTOR
Murder on the Dancefloor
Luuurve the English accent ...



MIKA
Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)
The tune thing on this is really funky...

Rainbows:

Furry Friday on Saturday: Mouse Rides Toad

THIS was pictured by National Geographic, and took place in the Indian monsoon...

Mouse Murderers

MY EVIL LANDLORD'S HENCHMAN and a Council Officer came knocking round (had to knock as half of us have disconnected doorbells already) demanding an inspection. The "furry baby mouse" mentioned yesterday's apparently an intrepid explorer and has been setting off horror, shock and alarm downstairs. He's so tiny and cute and I practically grabbed hold of him by the tail yesterday night.

Apart from that no news to tell. Spring has sprung. Outside, the weather's beautiful. Inside it's dismal and I'm sleeping a good 12 hours a day.

HOME LEVITATION ~ how to levitate.
The foot furthest away simply goes up on tiptoe.
Sorry if a useless advert runs first. It did for me the first, but not subsequent times I saw it. Should be over in about 17 seconds...


Levitating Magic Trick (Its A Doddle!!) - Watch the best video clips here

My Flaming Shirt + A Baby Furry Mouse!

NOT AS DRAMATIC as the illustration, thank God, namely because I wasn't wearing it when it caught light. I was using said shirt as an oven glove, when ~ DURRR! ~ may I say in mitigation I've got used to retarted electric hotplates and now I've got gas? ~ flames from the top ring set off a smokey smell that made me think "Oo: Mornings in Goa!" (where they burn rubbish nightly on great heaps, so refuse is still smouldering merrily by morning). Then I realized whacking great flames were spouting out, so I had to douse the whole lot in my foot-deep Ikea washing up bowl. Thankfully my trayful of Iceland's best Diddly Crispy Potatoes was spared...

MY LANDLORD, most annoyingly, sent round henchmen the other day. Whenever they come round it's 99 times out of 100 on a timewasting expedition and this was no exception. "My friend! I am fitting buzzer!" So now we have a totally unwanted doorbell system and have a totally useless noise-maker in my room. Useless because one thing I rapidly learned on moving from country (where I grew up) to towns and city (where I've spent my adult life) is that ANYONE who approaches your front door without first telephoning (or, in emergency, yelling your name) is an utter timewaster. My "noisemaker" is now rendered 100% useless because the batteries are sitting on the sideboard waiting for a more worthy appliance...

The only interesting aspect to all this is that unlike old-stylee doorbells which required extensive wiring, this one's radio-controlled. Which I thought might be lots of fun to hide it in the neighbour's front garden and set it off whenever they come home or... I dunno. Can anybody think up a better practical joke?

And that's about it, newswise. O yeah and I've a full-on multistorey trottery now, thanks to various cut-open PG Tips tea boxes... yep and that's it. Here's some dregs from St Patrics day I pulled because I didn't want them sharing a post with my Gran:

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, A QUESTION TO ALL YOU ST PADDY'S CELEBRATORS from IrishSayings.com

An bhfuil tú ar meisce fós?

(It means, "Are you drunk yet?")

OH DUR!!!! I 4got to tell yers about the baby furry mouse.... T'will have ter wait till 2morro...

QUEEN: A KIND OF MAGIC
This is me last Freddy Mercury vid for a while, now I've posted up most of the best they've done...

Night-Night Gran

MY GRAN DIED AT THE WEEKEND. She had been battling terminal cancer for over a year and was living life in such a medication-blurry daze she barely knew what was what or where or whether she was coming or going. Not that "coming or going" was an issue any more; from my understanding she was almost totally bedridden for the last months of her life.
I sent some letters and got one extremely shaky reply, which was touching. To see my Gran, who had been a secretary all her working life and wrote immaculately, fading before me on paper as it were, in tiny, shaky writing, just about said it all.

In the end, letters had to be read aloud as and when she was conscious enough to take bits in. Not fully realizing this there was one particular missive in which I really did prattle away, yakking on about the intricacies of the Japanese writing system (because very gradually I am learning Japanese) and illustrating my descriptions with characters from the Chinese. My poor Uncle, who'd had to battle through all this, (I heard months later) had said they were fascinating...

She left me some poetry books. Here in tribute, by William Wordsworth, was one we both liked:

"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

MUSIC

AGNUS DEI sung to BARBER'S ADAGIO by the CHOIR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
THIS is the musical tribute I wanted my Gran to have. It's the best version of this classic tune ("music from Platoon") that I know:

Parrot in Past Life

I'M SERIOUSLY STARTING TO SUSPECT I was a Brazilnut-cracketteering plumage-be-ruffling parrot of some sort in a past life. Not only have I the capacity to eat entire tubs full of Just Brazils, hazelnuts, walnuts, assorted nuts, mixed nuts with- or without raisins, not to mention should-not-mention parrot mixes of all descriptions but I'm plagued by constant urges to shout randomized phrases in accents far north of my person parsonagges homelinesses. E.g. those from Ooop North. I.e. I'm rolling down't street and overwhelming urge seizes me to shout AYE YER NOT WRONG! I was in a shop just now and instead of prating "thank you" for 39p change I so very nearly exclamatorioed "YER IDLE! AND YER BLOODY BONE IDLE AT THAT!!" tut buzz-eyed shopworker!

This is a peculiar eccentricity that's plagued me my entire life through and I'm desperately wondering: does any of yers think it means I might have been a parrakeet in a past life?

I often get flying dreams and the urge to seize wooden furniture peck it wi' me sharp end and woodcracklingly wrench it apart with my humungous nutcracking beak.

And then the urge to talk vaguely comprehensible rubbish seizes me over and over. And please don't tell me I could have been a Minor Bird. Mynah birds are glorified linguistically fluent soft-fruit bingeing diarrhoea-full logorrhoeaic übervociferous GARDEN CROWS! Take my word for it; I've seen 'em wimme own eyes and there's nowt special about 'em. Parrots rule! Parrots rule roost! As yer've all seen in't Feathery Fridays, I do love Rainbow Lorikeets and Aussie King Parrots, but the intellibird I love most of all, as illustrated above is the HYACINTH MACAW!

ENJOY YER MC-CONTEMPLATIONISTISHONS...


http://hyacinthmacaw.org

THIS is such a shame: one of their best songs, yet already we see poor emaciated Freddie on the way out...



AND LAST BUT SO VERY DEFINITELY NOT LEAST LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

PETER KAY, KEN AND DEIDRE AND STARS! AMARILLO!!

THIS WERE ONE O'T BIGGEST HITS O'T 21ST CENTURI. I saw't documentary onnit yesterdi naarght and bloodi Northern Accent went raaght insaad mi hed agairn. This is track wot put bloodi parrot parroting inside me head again!

Here is documentary review link.

Here's special AYE YER NOT WRONG! link fer Akalemalu and t' other Northerners readin't blog, aye!

Furry Friday on Saturdays WOMBATS!

These are enormous robo-furries... from? Guess where? AUSTRALIA ha-har!!

Bankrupting Electric Fags!

I WAS ALL FOR PURCHASING AN ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE this morning ~ (for giving up smoking, obviously). This stick looks just like an ordinary cig and indeed lights up when dragged on. It also delivers heated "atomized" nicotine from replacable cartridges. No smoke is involved and you can theoretically "smoke" one anywhere ~ though explaining this to a brain-dead security guard might take quite some doing.

But imagine my horror when I discovered that one such cigarette, a charger and spare lithium battery complete with only 2 full strength cartridges (you get 4 weaker ones but they're useless to me ~ I can easily do 40 cigs a day and you want to see the ashtray-like stains on my inner teeth ~ absolutely disgusting. Anyway imagine my horror when I found out the introductory pack was £43!!!!!!!

Having recoiled and (partially) recovered I thought "well I could save up for one". Of course, unlike far less glamorous smoking cessation products these are not available on the NHS.

I did once try Zyban (buproprion) a USA-licensed antidepressant licensed here only for giving up smoking. Basically you take it for a week. Smoke as normal. Nothing happens. Carry on taking it. Within 2 weeks cigs taste of old tyres and the desire to light up all the time rapidly diminishes...

Talking of antidepressants, I only took Zyban for 2 weeks and got no untoward effects. Now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding these because I'm feeling more and more I need them ~ exhausted all the time, wading through mud, dismal blah blah ~ and yet they tend to have the most extreme effects on me when they do work (sometimes they do nothing at all). Suddenly from sluggish, morose and boring I'm hyper-alert, rushing around, barely sleeping at all etc etc. The last one I tried (Zispin/mirtazapine) actually made me hallucinate a dead body in the bathroom mirror (not my reflection, it was reflecting sideways so this corpse was hanging "off the side of the door"). It was well creepy and refused to go away for over 5 minutes. And no I didn't dare try and touch it. It was actually sparked by a load of "drying" clothes (in other words clothes stored there for lack of any better place to go...) At the time I was blaming all this on my efforts to quit drink so I really don't know. What I do know is I'm too tired to risk flipping like this. And also, within a few weeks the initial excitement had totally worn off and, despite continuing with the pills I was feeling more depressed than ever before! So what on earth am I going to do?

I had the concluding interview about my psyche. The Operative had shrunk back from the Childhood Monster Theory (thank God) and we tried to tackle the issue in an adult way (certainly a first for me). Then I go bang into a meeting with my druggie worker who bangs on at me that I'm not depressed at all. I just enjoy shutting myself up alone 24-7 and need to be forced out under duress and psychologically broken and remoulded in the image of the virus that spawned HER.

Nasty business!

NOW HERE'S A TUNE... this is always voted Greatest of all Time in UK polls...



And here's another, in honour of what the Druggie Service are doing to my head...

I think this proves what an A1 voice Farrouk Bulsara/Freddie Mercury had...

Nourishment

I'VE HAD YUMMIE ROAST BEEF DINNERS three days in a row now. This is a great advantage of living in England among what the French call "les Roast Beefs" ~ you can get frozen ready boil-in-bag roast beef or lamb in gravy, along with ready-crisped roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings (which I eat as snacks. They start off like a small cookie, rise and are done perfectly at 200C in 20 mins) or la crème de la crème: Iceland's own Crispy Potatoes, which are diddly roast potato bits "in a light batter" (which you'd never notice due to't immense crispiness) and... oh my Mamma Mia with broccoli-cauliflower-carrots selection frozen veg it's heavenly!

Is it true you Americans cannot buy add-hot-water gravy mix in your Walmart-type supermarkets?? If not then wow. I've eaten so well this weak ~ pub lunch every day ~ it's unbelievable.

Now while I'm ont subject I must apologize for't Northern Accent all't week long. I can't help it, me mind's bin brainwashed ter-wards it..

So from now on Majesterial Queen's English prevails...

Oh while we're on the subject (ON THE SUBJECT, note well, not "ONT SUBJECT"!) Iceland now do one of my all=time favourite bakery items (I can't call 'em cakes because they're not) ~ that is caramel chocolate shortbread slices... 7 for £1 yummMEE! Today I got on special offer for £1 2xpacks of Fox's Malted Milk Creams. I luurve malted milk, it goes ultra-well dipped into British Rail-style tea I like to make. Caramel Coloured drink so strong the spoon "stands up in it" as my mother used to say...

Now as for drug addiction "news" there is none. I keep fantasizing about taking a day off and making that the beginning of a life free totally of drugs... somehow somehow this just does not happen...

And I don't know why, because this never used to be the case, but I feel nervous and uptight before going to antidrug meetings and just want to get out as soon as possible.

I've yet to be tortured right through the end of this false memory therapy multiple personality psychotest I'm stuck into. I dread to consider the results... My poor little Trotters might have to go without an owner/ feeder/someone to poke them with a chopstick when I'm permanently sectioned and tied to a chair in a Victorian lunatic asylum on receipt of copper-plated Indian inked handwritten con-damnation!

I don't know what else to say except a caramel-dark shot of morphia is all that can soothe these itchy unpleasantnesses... the same unpleasantness from which I so long to be freed. But how can I ever enjoy a roast beef dinner again? or face a day? or force self under cold needle-sharp dawn shower? without hardcore opiates dulling my system? How am I ever to cope with life on its own short terms, let alone quirks I lob into the kettle of fish!? Of this I've no idea at all!

... As purloined from David Tellez's blog...

Roast Beef Dinner!

RIGHT! I'VE just gone nuts in Iceland (finally remembered to do it while I still had money fer't trolleydash!) I went berzerk in't boil-int-bag roast beef in gravy, crispy industrially roasted potatoes and Yorkshire puddings isle. Oh aye! I can't wait to get me purchases ont hot stove!

If yer wondering about me Northern voice, I'm sorri I can't 'elp it. I'm all over't shop 'ere. I keep wanting to stick me 'ead out' tut window an gerron wi shoutin' "Yer idle! Yer bloody bone idle!" burrocourse that should be me Am talkin' ter. I console meself by mytherin' tut Trotters: "bin int nest? Aye yer 'ave that!"

For some reason they look at me like I'm utterly deranged...

This has to be a fairly quick post as food's int' oven and ont' 'ob now. I had one RBD last night, then woke up at 4 int' morning and 'ad industrially batter-crisped potato bits (I got industrially fatted roast potatoes as well but tiny ones are nicer...) and Yorkshire puddings, what rise like nobody's business. As I suspected it's far more wuthwhile buying't ingredients separately and slamming together int oven than spending £1.75 on industrial pub lunch platter, which is fine, but the amounts of potatoes, veg and meat (choice of beef or lamb~ woo!) in gravy is rather stingy...

Righto: better go. Trotters say hi!



THIS IS CLASSIC! Purloined here from't Australian Heroin Diaries blog...

Aye an' yer can tell "private party"'s meant ter be dodgi cause o't white girl dancing wit' "negro" around 4mins 17 seconds inter it!

HELLO from me; HELLO from 't Trotters. They're all in their nest drowsing after a night of urgently dashing through their 3-level tunnels set-up, frantically nibbling at the Italian soft cheese tubs they use as toilet and bedroom (but thankfully not normally both at once) and scrabbling at the corner glass as if it's somehow going to give way, leading to a crumbly paradise of roborovski seeds and treats.

Sergeant Bashful has not tried to savage me for over 3 days, which is quite something. Itchy did a ping off my hand yesterday and nearly ended up on the floor, which could have been fatal. She's so very quick and always determined to make the absolute most out of any unexpected freedom, which has made the average length of previous disappearances over 48 hours ~ long enough to have totally given up hope of ever seeing her again, dead or alive (without lifting't floorboards...)

How come the hamsters on the internet always look rounder and tubbier than mine? I'm hardly underfeeding. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Perhaps mine get too much exercise..?..

I WERE NOT IN A PRETTY MOOD AT ALL EARLIER; I were forced into an antidrugs group, where the Invigilator, or whatever they call themselves, enquired of me "what was my best hope for today's session"?
I had to bite so hard on my tongue not to say "my just getting the hell out of here and going straight home". In the end it got a bit more constructive. But like a jackhammer on the brain, it hurts...

NOW I'M OFF TO PURCHASE FISH FINGERS. I've eaten all't old ones. Even't value ones are all gone (and how gross were they? I'm convinced part of the recipe was mashed up white fish entrails. From now on I'm into strictly fillet fish fingers only ...

RIGHTY HO I'd better go before I drop off ter sleep or send yous all off dozing... bubbyes (as we used to say in hardcore primary school)...

Tut following vid were filmed at Freddi Mercuri's 39th bithdai paati...

I Am Who I Am And I Feel How I Feel

THIS is what my very good friend Welshcakes Limoncello (in Sicily) said to me, and I happen to have agreed with her over the course of the weekend, before, I got to peruse her pearldrops...

Hi, Gleds. No, I don't think you're a nutter but the people assessing you may be! They like to suggest in-vogue disturbances. Now, if you believe you are going mad you will, so don't! You seem a perfectly normal, nice young man to me. Ok, you gotta weakness but who hasn't? At least you are open about it and are trying to overcome it. Don't beat yourself up, Gleds - there are plenty of self-righteous hypocrites out there willing to do that for you.

From what little I know about "dissociation", those liable to it (and that appeared to be the accusation implicitly levelled at me) are the most highly suggestible of all people. So if I am a sexually abused false-memory-therapy type, then any madness suggested to me shall be picked up.

Which is why I'm turning my attention rather irritatedly to my forthcoming book. I know this sounds hopelessly naive, but I'm SO hoping it will bring in the funds to supply a full year's (or hopefully several years') full living. NOT just so I can be a "millionaire" but more to the point so I can at long last finally escape from the relentlessly pressuring thumb of the State Benefits Welfare system, get well and truly away from it, pay myself through the luxury rehab where they put you to sleep then blockade you against heroin ever working again for months on end, leave the country and, then if "mental-ness" is a continuing "issue" pay for a private psychiatrist myself, wallowing in the luxuriant assurance that me and state benefits are long since parted, that I'm no longer paid for being ill (that's essentially what sickness and disability benefits do). How I would love to cut a permanent divide between the reality of my own unhappiness and it qualifying me for state welfare handouts. Surely that connexion is the very unhealthiest, unhappiest of all...

No, as Freddie Mercury sang, I want to break free...

I yearn to do it after my own manner and fashion, NOT IN THIS DESPISED COUNTRY OF MINE which I'm growing truly to loathe, thanks to the petty-minded petty-bureaucratic attitude of our tiredly-outdated "New Labour" government... Oh please let me go free!



Do you know where I'd really like to go? Apart from Berlin and various of the Canary Islands (I'm not put off for a moment by dark-grey volcanic sandy beaches: how funky is that~!) I'd really like an extended stay on Sardinia and/or Corsica...

PS: 17:22hrs GMT I just ran away fromt telly half hour ago cos I were watching't' Deal or No Deal wit Noel Edmunds ~ aye! ~ and jer know what twonk playing't' game said? Now bear in mind 'e'd come tut end ot game near enough wi' £250,000 still intact int' box, another £5000 in another box, plus two blues: 50p and summut like £25. Now if yer've never seen't pror-gramme b4 then bear in mind at beginning o't show, yer aves 16 boxes wi' 16 randomly assigned amounts of money int boxes. O'course nor-body knowes what moonnies in where. 'Cept Banker an' e's bloodi born idle, aye 'e is an' that I'll tell yer fer nowt!
Highest one's £250,000, second highest is £100,000, then £75,000, £50,000 and so on down. These are colour-corded red. Blue amounts under £1000 go down tut 1p. Sore randomly opening't boxes and taking whatever's int box left ont table wi' you is summut o't risk ~ aye, I'll tell yer that for nowt!
Any road, this feller's got summut like 50p, £25, £5000 and £250,000 and Banker phornes wit deal sayin' Aye! Yer not wrong! I'll give yer £15,141.30 (that is 15-14-13) so no more running't risk of 4-1 odds against you pickin' oop quarter million. And look on't guy's face o' such pain: I were thinkin' TAKE DEAL, LAD! TAKE £15,000 and forgerrabout quarter mil cos I've seen't show enough ter see 'ardly anyone wins it.
And what did 'e do? But look like 'e were about to be sick in't shoes and carri on. And first box 'e chose to eliminairte were't £250,000 ~ aye, so e's lost mooney now. Instead o shoutin' at screen I just turned off, aye. I were well wound oop, aye, that's why I'm sittin' in 'ere...What would yous lot 'ave done, yer mytherin' load o' mardies? And jer like me Northern Accent..?!?

RIGHT: YER BONE IDLE! I've got ter gor, it's 7 passt 6 at naaat, Simpsons is on, 'ollyoarks'll be on in 20 minutes. Sor righty-hor then, gubbye!

Furry Friday on Saturday (#5 or something): HELLO POSSUMS!

...AS DAME EDNA WOULD SAY... Yes g'day to y'all. Today our furriness descends to the humble possum. Australia's finest. Yes I am plumbing an Australian "vein" (so to speak) because I nearly was born in Adelaide! How cool is THAT!! And if I'd been born in Adelaide, I surely would have harped on about how I "nearly was born in London". Yes the glass is greener in the Land of Gled.
Yeah man: it's a robo-possum!!
And don't you think their faces look like robos anyway?... at least a bit? I do...

PS This (do clickonit!)is why I want my bumbling fat-bum roborovskis to wear radio-controlled bumble-bee wings harnesses, to be set furrily bumbling about the great Blue Yonder... (how cute would THAT be..??!?)

Horrific Childhood Monsters

RIGHT, SO I FINALLY had this nutnut test. I was in there an hour and a half and STILL no conclusion. The operative who took it (not a dr. I hasten to add) congregated questions round moods, thought process and childhood trauma. I googled the key words and the horror of dissociative identity saddo syndrome came up. Yes, I admit I do (sometimes, under stress especially) hear thoughts from other sides of my head filtering through, like a radio in the brain. No I was not sexually abused (which seemed to be the crux suspicion). Another dissociative thing that happens to me is, I can convince myself that anything, no matter how patently real it is, is not happening to ME. So all in all I went home feeling paranoid that the Operative was playing mind-games and laughing behind my back at my sad failure to even be a coherent person, let alone live one even mediocrely happy life. AND THAT'S THAT.
To add insult to confusion, in the midst of all this my New Drugs Worker (remember I said I thought she was working for her own ego and not for me) burst into the room three times in a row, demanding (the 1st time) "What are you doing talking to my client like this!?!" See ~ living in a madhouse is it any wonder I flip?
Then she busied in in the end with a doctor's appointment. I was far too exhaustedly compliant by this time to question what exactly FOR. Then she had a go at me for not attending groups and demanded what on earth is this interview here about. I said well I DID have depressive "experiences" since childhood... Oh but you're on heroin. Yes but childhood occurred EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER. I'm talking about depressed enough to obsess about death enough to nearly convince myself I WAS dying. That's fairly extreme. Hey! And another string to my psycho bow.
Well I'll update you next week for full entertainment!!
Cheerio~~

O AND BY THE WAY, TALKING OF CHILDHOOD MONSTERS: MICHAEL JACKSON YESTERDAY ANNOUNCED "RETIREMENT" (though he "loves you all" (his fans) CONCERTS AT LONDON O2 (mobile phone) arena...

Official "teaser"...



II: DOES MICHAEL JACKSON THINK HE'S GOD?
See this and see for yourself...
Also he hasn't done 750m albums. More like 100million solo. (Liar!) + Have you ever seen a line of 30-year-old grown men (probably) pee their pants like that??!?... Even if they ARE "Michael Jackson fans" (hey at least I'm not THAT mental...)



PS SOMEONE please reply to my horrid post and assure me this psyo-psyching isn't really real. Surely not!!

Furry Morsels

THE TUBBY ROBOROVSKIS have been de-cluttered and now nest under a corrugated cardboard roof culled from a Christmas chocolate box in a kind of robo-favela, which smells of frankincense. Spherical is still highly annoyed at being called "Carrot Nose" but here's a picture of her (to the right) pulling her Carrot-Nose face. Yes it is her looky-likey. I'm not capable of taking photos as good as that, but all Robos look "the same" at least colouring-wise. Which is why I STILL get mine mixed up, specially Bashful and Itchy. Sergeant Bashful, as I call her when she's being "assertive" adopted the posture of a large aggressive dog leering over a garden gate and took to snapping at my fingers the other day. She's always trying to get an unauthorized nibble of me and I find it quite annoying.
To the top left you see "Baby" Itchy looking like a Furry Morsel. Look at that shot, imagine her deep-fried in crispy batter and you'll see what I mean. She is literally bite-size. Like a robo-chicken-nugget. Once, when she was rambling about on my hands and I called her "that" she took such fright she bunnyhopped half way across the room in utter terror. I don't know why. I WAS working on a video of me making an Itchy sandwich at the time, but apart from that she'd not have a clue I was thinking of having her for dinner...