Ideas

I SLEPT AND SLEPT and slept and slept and slept in really lake, till past 3pm. My phone was chirping and chirrupping like crazy, but I turned it down so I could dream some more. I dreamt I was on a long train journey, where I accidentally dropped my methadone bottle down the side where it smashed; then I was up in the woods with exotic birds hopping towards me; then I woke up and supped cup-a-soup in front of the telly, wondering how I was ever going to engage with the day.

I made such a hash of trying to explain why I wanted to write my memoir didn't I? All I was trying to say was the idea came to me when I was feeling really negative; but I still wanted to go for it. Making lemons into lemonade type of thing.

I need to keep my story as short and sweet as I possibly can. Apart from Anna Grace's, the only drug memoir I know is Kate Holden's In My Skin. The tale of a middle class girl, very similar to me, who gets drawn into the seedy world of heroin, eventually takes to prostitution to fund her habit. Rather than feeling exploited, she talks about prostitution as a process of self-realization. I never went that route; I begged money off strangers. Heroin was a lot cheaper in London than Sydney so you could fund a habit of over a gram a day on £30 or £40. That's $48 to $64 a day in American money.

I've decided to continue with the NA. They talk about the same issues that bugged me: resentment at life not being set up to cater for the needs of the opiate addict. Which makes me want to throw in the towel all together. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking heroin, but I'm fed up of going against the flow. Something's making me want to stop. I cannot put my finger one what it is, but whatever it is, it niggles and niggles away and now I want out.

If I did get any money from my memoirs, I want to use it to clean myself up and leave the country. Burma, the most fascinating foreign land on earth for their mysterious beautifully scripted language, fried hornet cuisine and opium farming tradition is of course completely out of the window. Burma is the world's foremost supplier of high grade 97% purity white heroin. So I can't go there. Fortunately I've had a fascination for all things Japanese for about as long as I can remember, so I would go there instead. Japan is really expensive travel-wise, so I'd need an international bestseller to afford a trip there.

The other country I can see myself visiting is Morocco, where I've been before. It's like an African India. Very exotic. Very cheap. Yes they do happen to be one of the world's foremost producers of hashish, but I loathe cannabis more than any other psychotropic substance, so that's no temptation. I'd use Morocco as my personal alternative to rehab. Instead of talk talk talking about drugs I'm no longer taking, I'd take the opposite tack and let my wounds heal by leaving alone. I do think excessive counselling can be a psychological equivalent of scab-picking. Not good for you. There's research that shows that disaster victims who go in for talk therapies are more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and to suffer worse than people who are allowed to heal in quiet. "Least said, soonest mended." This is why I want to write my story BEFORE I leave the drugs behind. And to me, methadone is every bit as much a drug as heroin. It might be legal, but it's more addictive and less effectual. And I just want away from it. If they're going to insist on giving that to addicts they should at least give injectable amps. But you need a private doctor to get those. So a private doctor is what I intend to get. I'd need to write a book to pay for one.

My head has gone resonant yet again. That means I'm hearing words in the air. Not voices as such, but psychic emanations. This gives me a fear of going mad abroad. I need to make my own money so I can get away from mental health services. No travel insurance I know of covers mental health. If I had to pay doctors' bills myself I just wouldn't see any doctors. So that's nice and straightforward.

Hey this naturalist on the telly has picked up a tubby little vole. It's rambling about on his hand. Fully wild, yet strangely tame. Tamer than a roborovski hamster, that's for sure. Now some naughty baby short-eared owls are gobbling dead voles. They're on the island of Skomer in Wales.

Well I'd better go; it's nearly half past nine already...

TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

THE RIVERBANK CLOCK
"What can Hammy and Roderick possibly be doing?" asks Johnny Morris, the narrator. As Hammy patently obviously sits there washing his ears (again...!)



HAMMY THE FLYING POSTMAN
A terrible thing has happened; the post-boat has sunk. And now Hammy is trying to get the letters back... in the diving bell.
Then Hammy goes flying. And looks really entertaining doing it...