Gledwood Volume 4

MY NEW BLOG Gledwood Vol 4 is open for business at gledwood4.blogspot.com (vol 3 is in German) so go to Gledwood Vol 4 for new postings.

New Socks etc

WHY are socks so expensive? I bought just three pairs today ~ as nearly all my other pairs have holes in them ~ and they cost £5. When I got them home I realized why. Because they're knee length and woolen. But the others they had on display were just too thin. Would get holed straight away...

I keep getting these ill feelings I don't know why. There's no point going to a GP, the GP won't be able to help me. I need a psychiatrist. I feel really wooly headed. I keep waking up what feels too early. I don't want to go into it any further than this. I'm just really glad I'm taking the pills and am trying to remember to take them like clockwork every night.

Did the news about that Italian cruise ship go worldwide? It's lying there off the coast of Italy like a sunken city. Even from beyond the clouds it looks huge...



Lion "attacks" child through glass at Wellington Zoo...



Deepside: Shudder (1992)



Have a nice day/evening everyone...

Midwinter Feeling

IT IS ICE COLD here in London. The weather forecast said "normal weather for January". It feels a lot colder than normal. I sleep under four layers, I'm so cold. You can see passers by's breath as they go past.

I had a bad reaction to some tea I drank the other day. Four cups over the course of an afternoon was enough to put me on a high then a down. The up and the down turbulently mixed together and I felt very paranoid and weird. I think I'm hypersensitive to caffeine. Two cups of strong tea in the morning seems to be OK. I've had one today to see if I feel any better than on two. I might have to cut out tea and caffeine altogether. It never made me feel "high" until I got a manic "high" last year. But it did used to make me anxious, which made me give it up for a few years, and the anxiety flew away.

I have been feeling mentally wobbly for a while and had a really crap day yesterday. Paranoia and depression with anxiety: but paranoid, depressed and anxious about nothing at all and everything simultaneously.

If I wasn't on antipsychotics I think I'd be having a really bad time.

I was going to talk about tiny tits in the trees but I haven't seen any. Blue tits that is. When we had a birdfeeder when I was a child, our garden seemed to be full of them and great tits, which are slightly bigger.

I hope you all are feeling OK.

I finally get paid tomorrow which is a relief as I got the current non-lot of money early because of the new year. Which means it's gone quicker. I've had to borrow £15 just to survive. I must have spent it carefully as I still had £5 yesterday...

My foot is slowly healing. Maybe the vitamins from the salads help with it..? Who knows. I know that eating salad is meant to be better than not eating it. I know it's not very wintery but it's the only veg I can stomach at the moment (apart from baked beans which allegedly count towards the 5 portions a day recommended by The Government.

And last but not least my methadone has finally gone down to 55mg and is going down to 35mg over the next ten weeks. It's all planned out so no need for doctors' appointments between now and then. I can't wait to get OFF the stuff completely. Really can't wait! If all it's going to do is make me feel "normal" why not feel normal on nothing? I'm taking the last bit slowly though. Don't want to be one of those people who goes running back screaming on to it again. I know a LOT of people are said to do that. I can think of two off the top of my head. Well time's ticking must go... see ya next week.



Illustrated: a blue tit in the snow

Food!

I BORROWED a load of money yesterday. It was only £15 but enough to buy DIFFERENT FOOD. Y'know: mixed salad, sardines, bread, cheese. Stuff you can make deli sandwiches out of.

And a big break from endless curly fries and baked beans on toast. Ukh. I was literally starting to feel physically ill from the bad diet (even though I used to eat a diet like that pretty much all the time).

My foot is still weeping slightly. It must be sad. But it's way way better than it was when it was a pussing mountain. It's just very gradually healing. The itching is a good sign. That's always been a sign things are on the mend in my experience.

Black leopard attacks little girl at zoo:
I was looking for the lion clip where it really goes for it but couldn't find it.



Lion hug:






Illustrated: my salad isn't quite this posh...

No more gunk

MY ABSCESS is going down. The skin has all peeled off and it looks more like a pinkish crater than a very rounded purple hill. Also it's going itchy, always a sign of healing. So the time for the doctor has gone. And as I'm NOT injecting heroin there is no reason for any recurrence.

The knife I used, by the way, had one sharp spike on the end, not two blunt ones like the one illustrated. I just couldn't get a picture of tomatoes any other way.

I'm set to borrow money tomorrow as I'm so broke I'm down to beans on toast every day interspersed with oven chips on their own. I'm really hungry even though I've had FOUR small slices of toast and one ENTIRE can of beans this morning. That must surely add up to 700 calories and the risperidone (antipsychotic) I'm on makes you fat. It does this by altering the way your body processes sugar so you need fewer calories. SO I SHOULDN'T FEEL HUNGRY AT ALL. Bloody pills!

I'm due a small plate of American style curly oven chips soon (not yet broke enough to go for straight English ones) plus I have over two litres of 50p cloudy lemonade (more calories) that I use as a substitute for cyder when not drinking. Ie every day. Hasn't stopped me having the occasional one, but the constant hand-to-mouth cigarettes and alcohol is now reduced to just cigarettes.

Speaking of which. I probably shouldn't have tried to give up smoking while I was reducing a methadone dose. And I have an appointment with the DOCTOR at the clinic tomorrow morning, which I'm dreading so please wish me luck. I have to go else I'll get terminated by this public machine. Be lucky everyone!


Illustrated: curly fries and beans on toast ~ what my diet has been reduced to. But only for the next week....


SOLAR QUEST: ACID AIR RAID
This tune doesn't properly get going till nearly 4 mins into it. It's still good though...

I stuck a knife in my foot

THERE WAS an abscess on my right foot. It was only about the size of a large coin but stood out hemispherical and purple and it hurt a lot. Especially putting shoes on. So I burnt off the end of my tomato-cutting knife, wiped it on my jumper then stuck the end right in, a good quarter of a centimetre and squeezed ~ oh and the bright red bloody pus that came out was gorgeous. Just when you thought it had all gone more huge globs oozed to freedom. Eventually I'd squeezed it so vigorously my abscess was flat. Unfortunately it's started filling up again, so I repeated the action yesterday and pus-water literally fountained at the ceiling. My two other abscesses are nearly healed.

I feel ill all the time in a run-down type of way that is probably called "depression". I've given up taking drugs every day as I can't afford it. I have £15 or £20 to last until the Monday after next, so I'm stocking up on baked beans and mini Hovis bread. I've also been feasting on sardine and mixed American salad sandwiches.

I don't know how to cure the depression. I wake every morning feeling like I want to pee and even when I do I still want to pee some more. So I get up and the uncomfortable feeling goes. Then I force myself in the shower. Many days I can only persuade myself to wash the bottom half. I get in there literally semi-clothed. But at least I've had half a shower. Then I wash my armpits in the sink. I know this is all terribly sad but when did I ever claim not to be a sad person?

I have a business idea that I reckon could really take off. Finally ~ my passport off benefits. But I will absolutely have to hire staff once this thing gets going. Purely because the running of the entire business will be down to me and I simply will not be allowed to be sick. Not even for one day. I worked out I will probably have to work 12-hour days in the beginning. But it's better than being on state benefits. If I don't get off benefits I will die on them. Probably by suicide. My single biggest regret in life is that my suicide attempts, which were serious, did not work. When I'm angry and down that's what I dwell on sometimes, because I had the drawer full of tricyclic antidepressants; I had the wherewithall to take them all. And I stopped at 70 pills. Pathetic. Truly pathetic. And when I woke up I felt more sick than I've ever felt in my life. Truly poisoned to my core.

Well I have to go. My foot is still hurting a bit. I'm looking forward to another session with the tomato knife. Maybe tomorrow during This Morning ~ as long as Holly and Phil are presenting.

Must go; hope you're all well. And HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Hey wasn't I stupid, thinking it was New Year's Eve when it was December 30? Just shows how much the ceremony means to me these days. I haven't been to a New Year's Eve party in a decade.

TAKE CARE EVERYONE.


WHY WE'RE BIPOLAR: NORMAL LIFE SUCKS
Thanks Buggerlugs THIS is real...