Wednesday and Sunday

THIS IS what I wrote on Sunday, but the (public) computer wouldn't let me publish...

THE CLOCKS went back last night so it's 7pm where it would have been 8pm before. I've taken my pill. There's nothing doing tonight except Downton Abbey in an hour or two.

My computer is kaputt! The hard drive has gone so I'm *****d; only God can help me now. I believe in God. All things are possible. I suspect it's actually the cable not the drive that's gone but that still necessitates a change of drive at £50 for 160GB + £60 workmanship ie £110 or about $170 US.

The stopping smoking is going crap basically. I am cutting down on my ciggies before switching to that gum. The gum does work but I smoked near-constantly without really realizing it... I need to cut down to 12 a day then 8 a day and then 4. I was on about 25 (own rolled) before I tried to quit on Friday things swiftly went pear shaped. Maybe I'm trying to cut down too many things but I don't think so...

I have to go now before I get terminated. Hope you all had a good weekend!

PS I've been watching some horrible films: I didn't know La Reine Margot was so "lusty" or disgusting, Elizabeth shows folks being burned at the stake; Hell lived up to its name... ukh.

Viper: Hard Techno Anthem



This poor mouse doesn't know quite where to go so he just settles down and washes his ears...



OK it's now Wednesday and I'm still coughing and spluttering thanks to the Common Cold. I'm thinking of purchasing an electronic cigarette, you know, the type that light up then you suck in pure nicotine vapour minus any tar. You even see "smoke" that is actually water vapour, a vehicle for the nicotine.

I've been watching Elizabeth The Golden Age, it's much nicer than the first film about Elizabeth, far less gory. The director said he filmed inside cathedrals because stone is permanent blah blah going down the generations etc. But Elizabethan houses were wooden! So I kept wondering why the Queen was at church... I would love to be able to go back in time and tell her "m'lady you shouldn't worry too much about that Spanish Armada ~ they'll get beaten back by the weather"... etc.

I'm wearing Opium perfume that I got at £25 for 50mls about a month ago and I've already used half a bottle. I don't think I'll be getting that one again. One person told me I "smell like a French tart's boudoir" ~ and this is the pour homme version... My favourite fragrance is Chanel's Antaeus it smells like incence...

Now I have to go else I'll get terminated. Take care everyone...

PS I JUST READ THIS BACK. BOY WHAT A BORING POST!!

Hot

THE WEATHER is getting hotter this end. It's over 25C. That's hot for London. Strangely I'm not sweating like a swine these days. Maybe NOT taking heroin has something to do with that little difference. I always knew heroin was doing me no good; it was just hard to put a finger on what wrong it actually did (possibly because it did everything "wrong")...

I feel a lot better now I'm on those pills I was prescribed months ago and did take in the beginning then somehow got out of the habit of taking... I don't know. Even though they're not antidepressants they do make me less depressed and though they're not mood stabilizers they do stop my mood lunging and plunging.

When I found out risperidone is used as an antidepressant, I wasn't quite so squeamish about taking it. Maybe there is, after all, such a thing as placebo effect.

Now I'm lurking down the library hoping to bump into someone who will lend me the price of a drink. Broke till tomorrow. Ukh. Then I'm meant to be meeting one of my creditors at 9am. No rest for the wicked you see.

Ukh I've got to go. It's too quiet in here. I hate Sundays...

Succulent

I BOUGHT A RED-FLOWERING (green coloured) succulent today. It looks beautiful, with things that look like green bananas growing out of tubby tree trunks and the tiniest round red flowers popping out the top.

I've looked for a photo of one like it but can't find one.

I spoke to my Mum because it's mothers' day (and I didn't even know till it was too late to send a card). I think she was afraid of me moving into a care home because she thought it was a cop out. Or more to the point that I would find it hard to adapt to. (I actually found moving into a "normal" home hard to adapt to, believe it or not. That was four or five or more years ago and I'm doing no better now than when I moved in...)

She says sending cards is "just a waste of money". She always says that. I would have given her the plant if I'd seen her. She says she has Killer Fingers (or a killer thumb, to you Americans) that is the opposite of green fingers or a green thumb. She kills houseplants dead. I always preferred buying plants that were growing, it seems a shame to buy cut when you can buy a growing houseplant. Which is where I thought this "cactus" as the florists called it, would come in. I only hope I don't kill it now. I watered it for about a second under the running tap and was going to repeat that once weekly. Surely that won't be too much..?

OK I'm off now, I'm going to try and hunt for a picture that matches it but if I don't find one I hope y'all are having a nice weekend!

The birds are singing in the jungle

WELL IT'S BEEN NOT MUCH OF A DAY. I barely slept last night I'm happy and unhappy and annoyed and not annoyed and on drugs and not on drugs (ie I haven't taken any since this morning and that was because somebody else paid). From tomorrow onwards it's no drugs for me. I can't believe I backslid so ridiculously. I'm highly annoyed with myself.

So here's some birdsong to strains of drum & bass. MY LIFE KEEPS CHANGING... it certainly does.

It's Sunday night and I cannot wait till all this is over and Monday has begun. I loathe Sundays, absolutely hate them. All time pits day of the week ...

Fabio and Grooverider* played this on their jungle sets on Kiss FM in the early 90s. I spent ages seeking out this tune and found it at last:

VAN KLEEF: LIFE BEGAN CHANGING
I like the birdsong



*Idiotic DJ Grooverider was arrested with 2.16g cannabis at Dubai airport and sentenced to 4 years prison. Unfortunately no public whipping, which he wholly deserved. Considering most tokers ~ bar the most selfish type ~ pass this most noxious and evil of all drugs to their friends, and that cannabis can induce psychosis within two minutes of ingestion, that sentence is very light indeed. They say the only case of death from cannabis involved a kilo-block of hashish falling from a high window and striking an unwitting passer-by in Morocco. What they fail to mention is the living death cannabis induces in its more sensitive users. I can't believe they dealt with this guy so leniently. he even got a pardon 10 months into his sentence. Heroin addicts ~ who merely self-medicate the unbearable darkness of being ~ are treated like the scum of the earth. Just goes to show how The Rulers of the Dark object to any escape from the misery they impose on those who dwell on earth.

Sour Sunday

WHY are Sundays so bloody miserable? Do not tell me I'm bloody miserable. Sundays are miserable. The rest of the week I distract myself from the world, on Sunday I can't. I'm having no difficulty sleeping now. Slept all night, all morning.

I watched Ugly Betty. Well that one's going downhill. I think the comedy came off with Betty's braces. Wilhelmina was pretending to be an alcoholic this week. Then that ended. Then something worse came on. I can't recall what it was. Then my mind turned to my dealer round the corner, and a £20 note. I still have that note on me, so no worries there. Usually I'm penniless on Sunday. That dealer got fed up giving me tick, because I wanted it every week. Heroin was the only thing that made Sunday tolerable.I'm put off heroin not just because I lost a huge chunk of life to addiction. In this time I achieved nothing, except that I learned to speak better German. I achieved this by ploughing through books when stoned, looking up every single word I was not 100% sure of in a dictionary. I must have looked up some words 30, 40 or more times. I also started a blog in German, which is awfully phrased "today I go shop, I did buy tea bags. Since two year my hamster die. I not no more eat tea." That bad. And probably that boring. So that's my one achievement.

What puts me off gear most is how truly dire it got. Not just the blank gear (ie not gear at all) but the last stuff, which kept me near-comatose for days on end, but not due to heroin, due to an "unregistered compound". My suspicion, by the way, is that this compound was leaked from a drug-testing lab and produced in the ilk of establishment that churned out mephedrome (meow, 4-methcathinone), a legal high that really was like coke plus ecstasy (I tried it) and was banned in Britain earlier this year. I'm blaming whatever was in this for that mental episode. The further away I get, the more out of it I see that I was.

Back to methadone. Like an idiot I had forgotten to drink it, in fact the dose was 6 hours overdue (twice daily dosing). I drank it, fell askeep for another three or four hours and woke up without the slightest urge for heroin. I suppose I'm not allowed to say I'd rather die than take heroin as that's suicide talk. Suicide talk is like the rubbish strewn on the ground after a tornado. It's crap spewn out of my drug-infested psyche.

Well I can't think of anything else. There's only an hour and 45 minutes till Sunday is over. I wish I was in Germany, they're an hour ahead. Less Sunday can only be a good thing.
See ya Monday...

DWARF HAMSTER PUP 2 DAYS OLD



That early 80s song Words (under the Tunnel post) is apparently French. I never knew that. With the exception of Vanessa Paradis Joe le Taxi and Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg Je t'aime... moi non plus this is the only French pop song I know.

DESIRELESS: VOYAGE

Why

I AM IN A BAD MOOD. Been that way day. Can't snap out of it (I'm trying). I just went to the Chinese takeaway. If the trek there and back and the crap
with having to bish bash bosh eye contact, pulling face into smile all that crap etc works as aversion therapy then I'm not bothering going again. I only got it because I was indulging a greed craving. Don't feel better for having eaten anything.

I was asked yesterday why I am so hard on myself. Well if someone stuck you repeatedly with drugs of all varieties, lied to you, contantly made promises they caved in on at the first opportunity, made you depressed, drove you cuckoo, tried to kill you twice and made you and your house a complete mess: would you like them? Would you TRUST them ever again?

That's why I don't like and cannot trust myself.

I wish I were a pingpong ball...

WOKE UP at 3:30pm today, wishing I was a robo-hammy*. Somehow, if I could curl up, like a furry pingpong ball and have another hamster gnaw my fur for me, it might be OK. In robos being groomed means you are bottom of the pecking-order. I don't care about hierarchy; hamsters don't use heroin. Mass-grooming-wise, robos are the opposite of Russian hamsters, where the youngest smallest one washes the oldest biggest one. The old one died and the young one was there, carefully taking care of his body. It was heartbreaking. When Bashful robo died, Spherical, the last one, kept dragging her body across the cage to put in the nest. I moved it out. She knew this, and dragged it back. Perhaps she was trying to bury it. I kept it in there overnight. Perhaps this gives hamster-closure..?

Well this is crazy. First, on methadone I do not really feel inclined to do anything bar the utmost necessities. This is not what is "supposed" to happen. I thought people on methadone got their lives back. No glimmer of that, so far.

It took me so long to get up I missed Iceland, source of £1.50 Chinese chicken fried rice. So I went to the takeaway for £3, £3.50 mixed vegetable fried rice. It was to go with Iceland £1.50 Satay Chicken Curry. I could have done with a vegetable or two. But: CLOSED! They didn't used to close on Sunday. Maybe somebody has died.
NO!!

Then I hung about on the street corner. No gear! No Chinese!! This is beyond the pale.

I didn't feel cold when I woke up. I am not clucking. The methadone is holding me, though the time was approaching to take a second dose. But I still rang a dealer. I knew he would answer but would have nothing. I know him well enough. Nothing's going on, is it? No mate ~ you know I'll let you know. I know, well, take care. You too mate. Things must be rough! At least he's not trying to sell rubbish.

Dose 2 on methadone is drunk. I'm OK now. I don't get why the urge to use is eating at me. It was doing the same thing on Friday. I didn't score then. I have not tried to score since Wednesday. If I can get today out of the way with I will have spent just £12.50 this week on "B". A record low!

I'm still broke. Food (£40 maybe!!) Socks (£6). Andy Warhol book £10 (and it was 2nd hand! I felt really "clean" devoting this much to an old book!!) Whatever else... O I know what it was!! Cyder at ... quite a lot per day, considering it is 79p a can. My drinking has slidden downwards since the beginning of the week. Very high Monday. (High enough to impair my memory, reading and writing ability considerably.) A bit lower Tuesday... and down down down to maybe four cans yesterday. Every single one was mixed with fruit juice. This lowers to alcoholic content to that of pub beer, about 4.5%. But cocktail is like a very nice alcopop. Highly addictive!

OK I'm not going to any Chinese takeaway now. Something called "chicken tikka lasagne" is in the oven. The Chinese takeaway expedition was partially a mission hoping I might bump into a drugdealer with heroin. (Fat chance of that!) Or "heroin" (higher chance).

I found an article by the way, exploding the myth which anyone who uses will know isn't true, about glass, brick dust, curry powder, bleach in street heroin. To those not involved (good on you!) let me explain: if you smoke it, glass and brick dust will be left behind at the top of the foil. Real heroin runs in lines. It melts and the vapour is inhaled. (Not set on fire, as in smoking a fag.) Curry powder would smell exceedingly strong. Bleach would also reek, and probably go black and smoulder. In a spoon, again glass and brick dust would be left at the bottom. Nothing except truly microscopic particles would get through a filter and into a syringe. The 1ml insulin syringe most addicts use has an integral needle only a THIRD of one millimetre wide on the outside. The passage inside that needle would be minuscule. Curry powder would reek very strongly when cooked up. Bleach would also smell strong, plus it is alkaline and would mess up the reaction with vitamin C or citric acid, which breaks down brown (or occasionally white) base heroin.

Drought-wise, the word here is it's WORSE THAN EVER. Though I just heard from Bristol there's good stuff there. (Will it last?) The news is here.

People using in the 70s always told me you just had to put up with shortages that lasted a couple of days or so. In the 80s after Middle-Eastern "brown" became the norm (imported in much higher quantities than the old "Chinese" gear) there were more users, especially in the north where heroin hit large housing estates for the first time (v early 80s). I was told, incidentally, that because you could chase it from foil, some people really did believe that "brown" was some new kind of hash! Well you believe what you want to believe... Anyway drought-wise, point being, shortages were still more common than they have been lately, though they corrected themselves quickly.

The three great waves of heroin addiction in this country were:
1. late 60s/v early 70s, mostly middle and upper-class bohemian types. Main centre of the trade was in Soho. Also South Kensington (which, if you're reading on distant shores is very posh). Heroin was very much a minority interest. Outside London you'd be very lucky to find it, except perhaps in Liverpool
2. early 80s. Brown didn't hit Britain in any amounts until the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979). Suddenly it was "all over the place" and people didn't know what to do with it. (Smoking heroin was unheard of, here.) If they couldn't get citric acid, or vit c for injecting, lemon juice was used instead, which really can cause to fungal infection leading to blindness (one rumour that is true)
3. Mid-late 1990s, the price of gear suddenly halved at street level. Bored or frazzled by uppers the rave generation turned to it as a comedown-soother or merely as a new drug. I am of that generation. With "ecstasy" pills appearing in all variations, some rumoured to contain heroin anyway (an almost certain lie). LSD made a resurgence in the early 90s. Cocaine, formerly the "rock star's drug" made its presence felt pretty much everywhere. Used to trying new things, to this generation, heroin seemed a logical next step, to those (like me) who were "just trying it once" for "the experience", then "just trying it again" ... and so on. Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat...

Now one last thing.
UNUSUAL HEROIN WARNING

If this drought doesn't sort itself out, there's a chance that heroin from other parts of the world than Afghanistan might make its presence felt here more than it has done recently.
The stuff I'm talking about particularly would be China White, Colombian White heroin and Mexican Tar.

If you encounter gear that smells of vinegar, it might be one of these.
Heroin comes in three basic forms, depending how far along the manufacturing process it is taken.

~In Britain our heroin is normally heroin base. It's normally brownish, as y'all know. Sometimes known (esp. online) as "Number 3". It smokes well from foil. Injecting this requires addition of a fruit acid, hence citric/vit c. White heroin base is also manufactured, and can be very pure.

~In New York City, and the Eastern United States, as well as Australia and other places the gear tends to vary from a very light blond/yellow/beige colour to pure white. This is heroin hydrochloride, aka "Number 4", designed for snorting or injection more than smoking. "China White" is usually from Burma. Most heroin in NYC is said to originate from Colombia. Cocaine, of course, is Colombia's most famous product = Coke is popular here = Heroin could make its way over in mixed shipments. This type of heroin is EXTREMELY STRONG with purities at manufacture in the high 90%s (good Brown is 70-80%). It can sometimes resemble crack. If it smells of anything, it tends to smell of vinegar. It is mixed cold in a spoon, or gently heated. If it needs vit C, it ain't China White!

~Mexican Tar appeared in Los Angeles in the 1980s. It's black and sticky and heavier than the gear we're used to. Has a strong vinegary smell. The hash-looking stuff we sometimes see is not "tar", which is stickier. Tar is banged up by cooking WITHOUT CITRIC. It's black (or brown) because the Mexicans cut corners in the manufacturing process, swapping chemicals, leaving steps out. UK dealers probably wouldn't know how to cut it, so if it hits the streets, it may do so at import-strength. BE CAREFUL. I have heard you can smoke tar from foil. It may spit and sputter more than ordinary Brown, because it's damper, but it's still supposed to smoke. Far safer than banging this into your veins.

~Lastly there is a gear called MEXICAN BROWN (powder). Smells of vinegar. Said to melt into a tarry substance when hot (e.g. kept all day in jeans pocket, as ordinary B wouldn't). Doesn't require citric for injection. Sometimes snorted. May not smoke anything like as well as our "B".
IF YOU FIND UNUSUAL GEAR, TAKE CARE. GO EASY.

Please don't be tempted to inject, just because something won't smoke. It might not be one of the types of heroin just mentioned. Snorting is safer, but has still killed people. Contrary to popular belief, you can die chasing. A batch of 80% B killed a girl in Bristol in the 90s and she chased the killer dose from foil.

Bear in mind all our tolerances have fallen. Whether using on top of methadone or using just "variable" street gear, if anything of knockout strength comes back, that's what it might do ~ KNOCK YOU DEAD. Please take care.

Hope this isn't too much of a mess. If I edit, I'll never post

Sorry this goes on and on. Emails I should have got to by 9pm. I feel like a dr's surgery. Appointments, appointments. Everything behind time! Thanks for all the comments, I will answer as many as I can ...

*robo-hamsters are the tiniest hamsters in the world and curl up pingpong-ball sized. I used to have them as pets (see below)

MARIANNE FAITHFULL INTERVIEW ~ 1994, her autobiography had just come out

Borderline Personality Phone Call

I GOT a phone call from a psychotic nutter friend of mine (with 3 concurrent diagnoses) ~ at first she pretended to be from the kebab shop. I knew it was someone mucking around but couldn't work out who, so I hung up.

She was quite a good friend of Mr Man ~ Mr Mephedrone, who chucked himself in front of the tube train and died early this new year. I told her that even though i didn't know him very well, I think about him every single day. (Which is true.) She said yeah, and she has nightmares of his mangled body every single night.

This woman has the very worst personal history I have ever heard. Abuse, neglect, horror. Psychosis in adulthood. A lifetime of major depressions. Plus a personality disorder to boot. I don't know how she survived. I just don't get it.

Anyway when I told her I hope to get counselling at this psychiatric centre ~ where it's not time-limited to periods of 12 sessions, I mean what can you achieve in 12 sessions?? I only STARTED making any sort of progress last time on two years plus a 6-month extension. This stuff has to be longterm. And I think about Woody Allen and think, does counselling or therapy help anyone at all? Or is it just a tail-chasing exercise..? Or a psychological version of staring at one's own eyes in the mirror and saying "you're so beautiful". I have grave doubts about counselling's effectiveness and what it's used for. And I used to get peeved immensely when my old psychodynamic therapist used to ask me how I felt about her ~ ie of "transference". Something weird happened in our relationship and I confronted this distant (yet close) and clinical (yet warm) woman and got totally under her skin. I know I did. She said one week I turned up, after the 4-week August recess and was crying in the foetal position, yet I can't remember any of it. She kept saying "I think you need more help than I can give you" ~ meaning a psychiatrist. But I had deep distrust of those note-takers who, I believed, would only hold up what I'd told them against me.

Anyway I told her my new nutnut doctor said to me he would have a word with the guy in charge of the Deep Psychiatric Counselling Centre about me becoming a patient there. And she told me "that's where you go when you've got a borderline personality disorder. And I shivered, because that label has risen its ugly head yet again. She also told me she thought I had clinical depression. Of course she isn't a trained mental health professional, but this woman has spent enough years of her life in psychiatric institutions to know a profile when she sees one.

In a way I don't care WHAT name anything I have or am might be. In the past I have tried to avoid any sense of labelling and pretended to be fine when I wasn't fine at all. But this approach never worked, never got me anywhere.

Many nutters wear their diagnosis round their neck like a gold medal ~ and THAT I find disconcerting. So I don't know what to do.

I have another nuttydoctor's appointment in a month's time... so THEN... we might see...!

It's the most wondrous springtime weather and I'm off to get a Mauritian Vanilla cheesecake from the Morrisons best range (£4 if I remember right) ~ I've been craving it all weekend...

The cherries have yet to blossom... I can't wait till they do. They are the Japanese symbol for the passing nature of life and death... our old dog died, fading slowly away under a profusion of pink blossoms. I never wanted her to go. She was grey like a seal and used to open her boze and say "HELLO!" in the squealiest posh accent. You could poke her sides of her mouth and she would "BO" this way on demand...

HAVE A NICE DAY EVERYONE :-)


borderline personality disorder

Paulie the Parrot

PAULIE

I SAW THIS 1998 film (that I would have assumed was by Disney but actually it was Dreamworks) on BBC1 this morning. So entertaining:

A trotterdonkey green parrot flies all the way to Los Angeles looking for his long lost owner, finds self in a parrot donkey derby along the way, then finally comes home (coooooo!!)

Apparently Paulie is a "blue crowned conure" by the way, technically not a parrot, if you look at the lorikeet-like bill...

Paulie Trailer:



Taco Stall Musical Performance



PS: The proper name for a Parrot is POLLY. "Paulie" is pronounced with a long O ~ quite a different sound. How on earth Dreamworks managed to mix this up is beyond me... It caused me a LOT of difficulty Googling, that's all I say...



And talking of entertainers, here's a hyacinth macaw talking... look at that fearsome beak! They can apparently crack coconuts unassisted!

State Visit

MY MUMZY came round this afternoon. By the time she arrived my place looked like a bomb had gone off in an Oxfam shop ~ scattering piles of ragged clothes/etc to the corners. I also put oven cleaner on the enamel hob. And then panicked. And quickly got rid of it, using carrier bags on hands because I'd no rubber gloves and the instructions make it sound like a more noxious version of nitric acid crossed with rycin. I still wasn't sure I'd got it all off after three goes and lots of water. Half expected to find a dirty great smoking hole when I got back ~ with a baby gremlin's eyes peering out from the rust... Anyway it was nice and clean when they got there. Except the floor looked like someone had thrown an illegal rave in a barn. Mopped-up mud everywhere (from where~??!?) And so on...

Do you like the Queen's picture. Look at those emeralds! Not just round her neck, but on her head..!

Did you know HM the Queen is supposed to have a jewellery safe 14 feet high in her Buckingham Palace bedroom, full of countless pieces belonging to Queen Mary, the Queen Mother... and so on and so on down the line... only a tiny fraction of which she ever wears (what a waste on the ones that never see daylight ~ that's what I say!) When Diana married Charles, her jewellery was only given to her on loan, on the basis that when she became Queen, she'd be custodian of said pieces anyhow... I do like a good bit of jewellery, me ("jewelry" if you're in the United States of America). Never wear it. Jewellery on men, when it's not sharks' teeth or rave beads etc looks distinctly dodgy at the best of times. But it's lovely to look at. I was into doing jewellery design at one time. There's more to it than meets the eye ~ everything must be carefully sized and measured for one thing... It was fascinating. Jade Jagger does it for a living. Not, I am sure, that having an international rock star for a father gave her a bunk up that particular career ladder... I'm sure not!

Anyway, back to today, we had a charming Greek dinner and she bought me some chocolate and museli and I'm going to post up Pingu at the Dentist if I can find it ~ hope y'all had a cheery weekend. My novel's coming on swimmingly... Goodnight all!

"Diana, Princess of Wales" (as she was "supposed" to be titled...) lovely sapphires...

"BANNED PINGU"... Can't find Pingu at the dentist; but "at the hospital" (see under Penguins, yesterday) is similar... whyever this was banned I'm not quite sure... and why the Scandinavian subtitles I've no idea (we never get subtitles in English, do we and they're gabbling BabyFinnish...) this one's trotterdonkey enough...

... o I get it. The jokes here are in the Swedish/Danish... e.g. "get me your strongest whisky" etc. I can just about make some of it out...

... o no they're not.

o how rude! One of them's peeing on the floor now!!...!!!

A Perfect Day...

This BBC short, played between programmes was never intended to be a commercial pop video, but was released (so they say) purely to answer public demand...



MADONNA ~ VERAS
Spanish version of You'll See, which is a really good tune with a really good vocal:
The English lyrics sum up my attitude to relationships:

You think that I can't live without your love ~
You'll see
You think I can't go on another day
You think I am nothing
Without you by my side...
You'll see ~ somehow, someday...



TRAINSPOTTING
I haven't the patience to read a book in Scottish and the film annoys me because it doesn't tell the "truth" about heroin... it leaves so much out!



OVERDOSE
I had a heroin death-wish for such a long time. Eventually I had to confront the reality that I HAVE to live. Don't even know why most of the time. Just have to ....

One Hour Extra Free

THE CLOCKS WENT BACK LAST NIGHT, giving me one hour extra free in bed. An hour, to be honest I could have done without on a dank and stagnant Sunday but there we go. So I stayed up extra late making out intricate Japanese motifs on notepaper to the sounds of NDR North German radio and the all-night interactive casino (how on earth did that ever get allowed?!) on Channel 5. I finally went to bed at 7:30am in the new time and rose at 3pm.

DOES NO-ONE like my axolotls? I'm scrapping Fridays on Saturdays, blobberous, furry, fishy or otherwise if that's how little they're liked: I had just one comment last time I checked!

IT WASN'T RAINING last time I checked ~ but any excuse to bring up my favourite Japanese character. "Ame" ~ it means rain. How poetic!

And now I have to vanish into the wintry night. Cheery-bye all!

A Brave New World ...

DRUG-FREE and frightening ...


I am making yet another attempt at living completely heroin-free. I failed before because I didn't know how to do it. Now I have better ideas. For one thing, because I'm miserable without that in my system, no matter how much methadone I take, I came to the conclusion I somehow have to learn to enjoy misery. How on earth I shall manage that I don't know.

I don't want to go on injecting all my life. My veins have run out and unless I want to go in the femoral (crook of the thigh) or jugular (neck) I really have run out of options. Sticking needles in the feet and the veins still blowing is unspeakably horrible. And it makes me feel like a desperate, desperate junkie.

Well I think I passed one test today: as I walked out here I spied a dealer ambulating down the other side of the street. In previous times I'd have called out, coughed up all my money and promised to settle the balance (because I didn't have £10 on me) tomorrow. And I didn't. Of course I was rewinding this over and over my head for the next half hour ... but, y'know... one step at a time ...

PS Tiny trotterdonkeys of the deep... Yesterday's seahorses post now has the videos I omitted to add: see the very end of it.

... But here's perhaps the oddest looking seahorse of them all: the East Asian Dragon Seahorse, filmed here in Singapore Sea Life Centre:



PPS Good luck to all Germans on today's elections. You'll need it...

Free Drinks Galore!

THE MORNING AFTER lots of other people's night before I went out a-wondering at 6am and what should I find but two full bottles of vodka-lemonade mix plus a pint glass sitting on a bollard. No urine or fag-ash to be detected; the contents proved to be vodka-ated sweet cyder. Yum-yums!

I was half-cut all through Friends and Hollyoaks on Sunday morning.

That's the problem, dwelling far out in the twee suburbs. it's not like Desperate Housewives land (London doesn't really have Wisteria Drive-style suburbs; we do have a lottery winners' equivalent or multimillionaires' row ~ far from the stately squares of Mayfair ~ Belgravia ~ Kensington & Chelsea or the Avenues of Holland Park (Holland Park: double-fronted detached houses, outsized bay windows, high ceilings. Ultra-leafy gardens... is where I'd situate my London residence if I won a multi-rollover on the Euromillions lottery...)... far from these places and round the corner from the media-centric Champagne Socialist heartland of Hampstead ~ famous for its heath, the biggest patch of uncultivated land anywhere near London "proper"... London's tasteless multimillionaires' row, Bishops Avenue is packed with the kind of Hollywood Wives style homes that look like if you stood outside and sneezed the front wall would blow in...

That's Bishops Avenue for you... Anyway: how did I get on this subject? Oh yeah you hardly ever make decent finds by way of food ~ alcohol ~ drugs on the streets where I am now ...

Where I used to live it was kebab-city. I'm very partial to a decently chargrilled shish. On Saturday nights the local rubbish bins used to be brimming with them. Newly discarded. Barely touched. And vomit-free too for the most part. Noshing down these, you could eat like a king! (Well, a homeless drug-addict King ...)

I cut my hair again, while I was still half-cut. It was looking like an unpleasant cloud of horribleness thundering round my head. Two thirds of it has come off. There it lays next to the television set, glistening in its slick chestnutness, shimmering with streaks of gold. You might think some expensive shampoos and hair products achieved this. But no! It was value frequent-wash with-conditioner (or more to the point Nature) that achieved it. Shampoo adverts are a load of Bullenscheiße, as the Germans would put it.

Glancing in the mirror this morning I was confronted by the image of an escaped mental patient staring back. But I'm keeping it this way, at least till tomorrow afternoon. Because I need to go to the council and make a good excuse why some benefits forms weren't returned a month-and-a-half ago... Wish me luck!

Cheers everyone! (Ching-ching!!) I hope yous all had a cheery weekend too!!

BIG BROTHER Classic Tasks ~ Electric Shocks!
THIS clip is hilarious.
1} The shockers you see going off here are apparently used in high-tech S&M games...
2} You'd think Rex (in gold) would have troubled to wear underwear on national television...
3} I've heard feminists telling me loads of times that women have higher pain thresholds than men. So how come two women ~ and one a lesbian at that ~ gave up totally!! "I'm not having that on my arse for two hours," said Lisa.
Noreen, the pretty one, was up for eviction this weekend but stayed in ~ huraah! Lots of people don't like her because she had two men and a lesbian after her at different times over the seven weeks and handled it badly. But I like Noreen. I don't think she has done anything else except be herself...



DUR!: AND I was wondering what made me feel sick on Saturday morning... of course... it was CELINE DION~!!

Rainbows:

Tiny Trotters on Film!

I FOUND A REALLY NICE MOBILE PHONE in the internet shop an hour before closing. So I sat with it and minded it, waiting for it to ring (hoping no-one would). Nobody rang and I wasn't up for handing it in for someone else to "appropriate". And one technical hitch aside, when I turned it on and off only to get demanded some crackpot security code (Googling Nokia instructions manuals told me the default code was 12345 and I got straight in) I am now the proud owner not only of a telephone registered in FRANCE but a two megapixel camera with videotastic features for filming furries! Which is just about all I have done with it since.

So enthusiastic has been my homemoviemaking with Baby Itchy as star that the batteries are so seriously low I'm about to be terminated.

I've got all sorts of furry film of her looking tiny as a ping-pong ball and half-heartedly doing her party trick where she vanishes inside the magic wand only to reappear looking surprised at the other end. Usually she would use this juncture to clamber out, but my having to film one-handedly made things awfully awkward and every time her pink nose appeared at the other end, followed by a kindly sniff-around, she promptly reversed up to re-appear fur brushed backwards looking like a fluffy furball with beady eyes on my hand.

Oh and of course all the background clutter really shows up on camera. A certain sign that I really really need to tidy up!!

If anyone can reveal to me how on earth I get to post these up on Youtube ~ bearing in mind I know NOTHING and have never used a USB cable in my life. In fact don't own them as I "inherited" said telephone... Also how do I post my own photographs on blogger? I've a lovely over-exposed one of Itchy rambling on my hand. She's so washed out by such major flash she looks blue.

And that's all I have to say on an otherwise killer-drab Sunday. I'm missing EastEnders' omnibus to post this so I hope y'all are happy!!

Laters, peeps ~ and take it easy:~~...

The Saturdays ~ Issues
this has been going round and round in my head; it's got a real catchy "hook" this one...

Sludge!

A YURKSOME yukky slumbersome, sticky, intractably drab Sunday. Do you know: either I am going crazy or the same Cinderella film has been on for over 3 hours and STILL the Royal couple have yet to tie the knot? Honestly. I have very little to say apart from this. I hope your weekend went better...

Another Yukky Siberian Sunday

I HATE SUNDAYS. I never have any money. They feel dragged-out and boring; all I want to do is use.

While I'm on that topic let me state clearly: I still don't think I'm ready to stop. The best I can hope for is to do what the old age pensioners I know still using do: to keep it to a bare minimum.

Once I was addicted to the heroin (and remember I was in my late 20s by the time it turned round and got me), I gravitated in general to people who were older than me. All of these had given up "grafting" (kiting (that is: cheque and card fraud) or bombing round shops "relieving" them of vast quantities of alcohol and other desirables... One of them, my now dead friend Lucky was dealing when I met her. I had phoned a massive Jamaican who had driven twice past me. So when I phoned him again he said "me friend comin' out for ya" and a tiny grey-haired woman appeared cooing "yoo-hoo!" That was Lucky and the beginning of a 10-year friendship. Though I was careful not to get too close. I noticed that over these years I was just about the ONLY person there at the beginning still there at the end. I don't know what it was: it certainly was nothing sexual, but she filled her flat with younger men who I suppose looked up to her. One actually called her "Ma" and she loved that. He died of a heart attack in her lift after running from a security guard. Of course the fact that he was high on crack didn't help save him...

Anyway the point I was making was, people who only told me crime "wasn't worth it" saved me from getting in far out of my depth.

I don't know I'd ever have made a good enough criminal anyway. I'd always be thinking fingerprints, DNA, cameras, focusing on what could go wrong. I'd never be able to relax into it...

I'm not trying to claim I have not been drawn into various indiscretions over the years because I have. But I hated stealing. I don't even like lying. I made my money by begging and when I wasn't begging (and am not begging) I find myself still a raging junkie but in semi-retirement...

Re: the illustrations: top L is probably from a "safer injecting room" bottom L shows a Middle-Eastern man "chasing" his gear. Our gear in Europe comes as (smokable) middle-eastern heroin base and this is how you smoke it... Top R appears to be a pretty good batch of "B" (Afghan brown heroin base)... Bottom R: no it's not Christmas cake mixture, that would be "Mexican black tar", a product every bit as bad for injection as our "B" and similarly smokable...

Incidentally if you're wondering about heroin smoking: brown or white powdery or solid with a bitter, musty "opium" smell that melts into a transparent blob and runs along tinfoil: that is smokable heroin. Heroin hydrochloride smells of vinegar. This is more readily water-soluble (without citric acid or vit C) and not good to smoke... The exception to this is Mexican tar, which, so I'm told does smell of vinegar and yet ~due perhaps to its high content of opium residues ~ can still be smoked...

I'm posting this here in the name of harm-reduction, kids. Smoking equals no needles equals reduced threat of catching anything...

PS Following yesterday, here's the best link on that most mysterious drug, ketamine...

I don't know what else I was going to say here ~ but here's three videos of note:

SPARKY THE SWEARING PARROT

The full-blown Scottish accent's subtitled for those Americans who might be otherwise confounded...



THE GRAVE

THIS is my second-favourite Don McLean song, here montaged to WW1 footage... Very depressing... look at the state of all those trees ...



EVERYTIME ~ BRITNEY SUICIDE VERSION

I WONDER WHAT POSSESSED her to make a video marking her own death like this?... And several years before all that drugs-and-coot-head trauma...

It's Snowing!

THE AIR IS CRISP, the hum of traffic hushed. And all around, spiralling, flurrying ~ the tiniest snowflakes you ever did see!

None of it's settling on the grey pavements of London ~ that would be far too romantic for this clapped-out town. But hey it is nice to have some noteworthy weather for a change.

Other good news: I only slept about eight hours last night! Perhaps the fact I was curled foetal-wise in a whirlpool of a nest didn't help prolong unconsciousness; but then again I felt quite comfortable.

Tomorrow, Monday, is a test day and I make no bones about succeeding because I never have before. Despite all the best intentions and resolutions a week ago tomorrow I found myself in a room full of junkies waiting for the best dealer to switch on. And though I protest I don't want this life, unless I actually do something by myself, I'm like a prisoner rattling his chains as if that makes him more free...

O well. Tomorrow as they say is another day...

Sloomy Gloomy Rainy Sunday

IT'S A RAINY SUNDAY with repeats all over the TV and I didn't want to get out of bed except a craving for a cup of tea and cig with new vanilla Hobnob creams dragged me to the shops. Basically I can't wait to get back to the safety and shelter and my half a bottle of methadone left. I'm avoiding the world today!

Here's a tune that keeps going round my head:

Richard Marx: Hazard