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...

A Late Wakening

I LAID IN BED ALL DAY TILL 5PM then defrosted for an hour (ie smoked cigarettes in front of the television) then HAD to go out to the bloody methadone chemist. Strangely the methadone made me feel much better. Yesterday I was manic in the morning, depressed in the afternoon. So depressed I had to go to bed I felt lousy. Couldn't even eat, so I had to buy a shish kebab. I get the couscous version in the box with salad. A full meal of smoky lamb chunks for £6. The shop that does the less salty salad is shut over Xmas. Lazy bastards!

I nearly had a big row in the library just now for phoning a friend. Some Asian guy kept coming up to me asking me to keep it down. Then he told me to stop talking when I was trying to LISTEN to a very involved story so I yelled I'M NOT TALKING then the rude woman who tells the homeless man not to sleep in the library said "well I can hear you" so I deliberately spoke as loud as possible as I gathered my things and left. Amazingly I didn't feel the biting cold that had me in sweats of misery walking down. That's because my methadone is finally working.

The poor girl in the room next to me has bought an LCD TV and expected to get Freeview channels out here in the twee suburbs where we get the worst TV reception I've ever experienced. I said you'll be lucky. Then she asked me how to tune it in I said highlight analogue tuning and she got 4 channels of snow, just like I get. The other night Gladiator came on ITV. I slammed in the DVD and compared scenes. The DVD was normality. On ITV it was snowing in Rome!

I'm feeling ill. I don't know why. Is it just manic depression again? I don't know. I feel like I want to puke. I have an abscess on my right foot. The abscesses on my legs have gone down after I stuck surgical blue needles in each one and drained them but this one on my foot is too painful to mess around like that so I might have to go to casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) to get flucloxacillin, which is the normal antibiotic for drug abscesses. Yes I'm afraid I was using every day over the Xmas break (and what sane person wouldn't?) but now I'm back in the routine of knocking back methadone like a 40 year old baby in under the chemist's "supervision" I somehow find it easier to keep the old nose clean.

I'm fretting about what I'm going to eat tonight or should I just get drugs instead? I don't really want to do anything. I wish I could have general anaesthesia. I wish I could have £10,000 to put my magazine together. I worked out start up costs would be a mere £1000 for computers and phones but several grand to pay the printers to knock out the things. In this country WH Smith are the main distributors of periodicals but I need more information about how you persuade shops to order more copies. Can you do offers like buy 20 get 20 free? Please if anyone knows anything about the magazine industry please help me. I really need a detailed book on the subject that goes into the mathematics of print run costs and advertising revenue. Websites and links please. BTW I have looked into the idea of publishing online and for various reasons it's a non-starter. The entire point of this magazine is that you take it home and read real words on a real page. Even Dickens published a magazine "Household Words". Not a website. Did you know when American newspapers went online they garnered a mere TENTH of the advertising income from the internet as from paper. Please someone who has edited or better still been advertising or circulation manager on a magazine get in touch and tell me how it's done.

Well I've got to go else I'll get terminated. Happy New Year to one and all. (Just in case I'm not in the mood to post between now and then....)


Illustrated: the standard of technology in my house (except you can't even have a set-top box in my house) ~ the landlord who takes in over £200 PER ROOM per week ie SIXTY THOUSAND POUNDS A YEAR income from this house cannot even be bothered to fit an operational high gain television aerial to our chimney!



HARDCORE TECHNO VOL 4



HARDCORE TECHNO VOL 3

Healing leg

I KNOW THESE aren't exactly my legs pictured, but mine are as clean as this woman's jeans are white and tight fitting.

The abscess on the right leg is going down nicely. No longer does the calf look like a red bowling pin with an erupting volcano upon it. It looks mildly pink with a post-eruption Mount Saint Helens (minus flattened pine trees for miles around...)

I'm feeling much better in some ways. But of course I'm still depressed, so I'm really enjoying that. Drinking lots of hot cups of tea in front of morning television, dreading going outside and pigging out on Mr Kiplings mixed fruit selection cakes and vanilla ice cream...

I really miss not having internet at home (thank you, cable-nibbling goblin) and I miss y'all. Sorry to make everyone worry. (What's new.) I really am better...

... BUT I have a medical question. This is serious and real:

Does anybody know what it means if you have splitting migraine-style headaches for weeks on end, accompanied by severe double vision and one of your eyes becomes mis-aligned, so instead of looking directly at me, it's looking down and to the right. While the other eye functions as normal.

This isn't my problem, but a 65 year old friend of mine has it and I keep telling her to go to the doctor, not to waste her time at Opticians (the optician she did see deserves to be shot). As far as I know she STILL hasn't been to her doctor or to Moorfields Eye Hospital, which is quite easy to get too from here (remember I had to go a few months ago when I had a smut in my eye all night and all the next morning and it just would not wash out...)

I have tried not to mention things like "brain tumour", but I'm dead worried about her. And she's one of these people who the more she worries the LESS she's likely actually to go in and get it looked at (who does that remind you of?)

Answers please! I'm dead worried...

Off to the Doctor's...

I'M OFF to the doctor's in a moment (and dreading it). But I have to go...

The abscess on my other leg (did I mention that one?) exploded with the help of a pair of sterilized nail scissors. Strawberry milkshake pus blobbering out. In the middle was a snotty green "eye". Now it's just running with a bit of fluid and closed over. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad as it did when it was full to bursting...

... ukh. I know I might sometimes give the impression that I love pus and abscesses, but I don't. What I love about them is squeezing them dry and cleaning them out. I don't like pus at all. Especially blocked-drain-stenching dribbles ~ as were running out of my left leg.

My left leg has healed very well after I "accidentally" picked the old scab #2 off, which had repeatedly been stuck back down (by me). Then I'd have a good peer into the pustulating catacombs of near-death that lay beneath... I noticed it always had a drop of something that looked like snot on the reverse side, which I was assuming was necessary in order to get the thing to re-stick to my leg. The scab really reeked of rotten chicken fillets that have been a week too long in the fridge...

Then I realized the focus of the infection might actually BE on this scab, so I got rid of it and ... TADAAA! Thank you God. It has eventually sealed and dried over and no longer stinks bad and is getting smaller. So I'm on the road to recovery.

My back is also better. I can walk more than 10 paces without having to rest on a garden wall or street railings. When I found myself in places with nothing to lean upon I was utterly helpless and stuck. I wasn't so much in terrible pain as the utter exhaustion of my muscles pulled all out of shape...

I'm gonna have to run, else I get terminated again, but thanks for all your good wishes. I would have gone hospital if it had got really bad, but I started feeling better and am clearly over the worst.

(Found the picture online, my wounds are a bit like those ...)

I'm "back"

BUT I STILL HAVEN'T GOT THE POWER CABLE. I've not been well enough to go anywhere. I can barely walk the length of my own road. It hurts to do anything. I feel 105. I take rests on neighbours' garden walls with their moggie circling my legs and purring. I don't know what I've done but I've done my back in and I feel like an old pensioner. One of these days I'm going to drop and not be able to get up... that day is closer and closer. On a brighter note that wound on my leg is healing, having pussed up every pair of jeans I own. I cannot cover it as it's impossible to remove any kind of dressing without ripping it open. Blood and pus and the reek of dead flesh are everywhere. I am exhausted. The only good thing is I lost my appetite, which is saving money on food. I have a dr's appointment on Monday. Hopefully I will make it out alive again..(!) Akh! I've got to do, else I will get terminated yet again...

A NEW COSTUME DRAMA hit our screens tonight. Downtown Abbey on ITV. In common with the BBC's dreary, bourgeois Larkrise to Candleford, it's an original, not based on any classic novel.* But it's quite good. A modern Upstairs Downstairs. And it stars Dame Maggie Smith. If you're reading this on foreign shores, keep a look out for it. If you like historical drama, you'll probably like this. I think historical is the only stuff produced for British TV that's in the same league as the best American telly.

My one gripe with the genre is its tendency to reinterpret the past in the light of modern (politically correct) outlooks. For example the master of the house objects to a war-wounded servant being referred to as a cripple. "I hate that word." But in those days that was the expression; nothing condescending or insulting was meant by it. Here's the trailer. Perhaps someone'll load a longer extract to Youtube by next week ...

*that statement isn't quite true: according to the BBC's website, Lark Rise is based on Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood...



THE WOUND ON MY LEG is less manky since I stopped covering it up and have been cleaning it with alcoholic ("pre-injection") swabs every few hours. It isn't oozing chocolate sauce, just a hint of strawberry. It still smells like a drain, just not as strong. My wound and I are off to hospital tomorrow to see what the emergency doctors think of it...

I hope y'all had a cheery weekend. What are you doing next week? I'm making a start cleaning my life up in a literal sense. My house is a mess. I have that festering sore on my leg. Not a clean stitch to wear. I have to wash my jeans as they've absorbed pus down the leg. So I'm starting by laundering my clothes so I can skulk into casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) looking at least vaguely respectable. Then I'll get the wound seen to and hopefully dressed. Then I can set about cleaning my house. It was cleaning my house that set it off last time, with things knocking into it making it bleed. It's been itching lately. Itching is a good sign with these things; in my experience it tends to mean they're healing.

Broadband is back!

I HAVE A NEW SIM CARD firmly taped into the dongle from which a naughty goblin stole it (yes ~ when I was fast asleep. My life is nothing if not bizarre). I searched EVERYWHERE for the missing card and no sign. The only way it can have possibly left my house is by getting stuck to the sole of my boots and trodden out (highly unlikely; I checked the tread and it's not of SIM-card-grabbing proportions) or getting stuck on my bum, falling off in the loo and getting flushed away (my own pet theory). Or God took it to stop me wasting time on the internet (which is quite possible, in my opinion). Or a goblin sneaked in and stole it (my second favourite theory, though I actually believe in God more than goblins). So there we go.

NO BIG NEWS from when I last was "properly" online all those weeks ago ~ EXCEPT I have a horrible old wound on my leg, which is at least 6 weeks old and hurts and just will not heal. The fact that I "might" have accidentally picked at it constantly for the last fortnight after it started itching probably hasn't helped. It was oozing red gunge, so I thought I would "irrigate" it ~ ie wash it out with home-made saline (freshly boiled and cooled water + table salt). This only made the scab soft enough to partly fall off, and now it's oozing chocolate milkshake coloured gunge that reeks (mildly as running sores go, but still disgusting) ~ of rubbish bins. It's only about 1.5"/4cm diametre, tiny as necrotic ulcers go. But I'm worried it might turn into one.

I don't know what to do. I am fed up of being lectured and patronized by doctors about my druggie proclivities.

I covered it in toilet paper taped down with clean newspaper. Think about it, a newpaper fresh off the press is as untouched by human hands as anything else I can think of. 6 hours later I couldn't resist having a good look. Loads of gunge had seeped into the toilet paper ~ and it had dried enough to rip the edge off the scab. Ach!

Now it's covered losely in taped-on (clean) newspaper. Then again it is the 10p Daily Star ~ what's possibly clean about that?? This has stopped the scab getting constantly rubbed off when I walk, which was getting increasingly painful. But the newspaper doesn't stick to the wound. Which will hopefully heal now. Have I done the right thing?

Ach, I must go. Kippers under grill. Hope y'all are well, see yaz!

PS: perhaps I should have maggot therapy

Abscess Pus and I Know the Bach Tune Now...

I DRAINED THE FOUR baby abscesses on my thighs the other day. I didn't even know anything was wrong until I clonked into something on the bus and went YAROOOO!! in full Billy Bunter fashion. Closer inspection later on revealed a lovely boil-sized hot-spot on my right thigh. A couple of celulitis attacks aside (and not to mention the great barbiturate burn of February that I thought was going to put my in hospital) I've been very lucky with abscesses. You have to realize these can get bad enough to hold literally 100s of mls of pus. I went to a draining session at my friend Rebsie's house and the abscess had burst already the night before: all over the carpet. It looked like somebody had been violently sick all over the place and that was the pus! Mother Hubbard did the kneeding and squeezing whilst I was the one who dashed to and from the kitchen boiling up sterile saline to "irrigate" the newly emptied cavity in Rebsie's thigh. She was lucky, for though it was big (like a packed-out wallet under the skin) it hadn't tunneled inwards towards the bone. I've seen one that had, both pre and post surgery. This had to be packed with tampon-like material and I saw for myself two pus-tunneled "fingers" (that you could literally have stuck your fingers down, had you felt so inclined)... stretching right into the flesh of the thighs and dangerously close to the bone. Bone infections are the very worst kind (apart from bacterial infection of the heart)... they really can call for amputation. And I've met anough people with missing legs in my time...
... yes this was all down to my "skinpopping" habit, which is what you do when you can't get a vein. The gear is injected under the skin rather than direct to the bloodstream, which gives any nasties a longer chance to fester, and just occasionally they do...
... do I drained all four of mine with a giant blue needle and got nowt more spectacular than a few beads of pus and some runny bloody weepiness, all of which I carefully mopped up with alcoholic swabs and lots of tissue paper...
... Hmmm.

Poor Baby Bashful's still lost and peering fruitlessly in the dark. Makes me want to cry...

I've been researching my new literary project. My longest cherished ambition in life has always been to be a writer of fiction. My trouble has been that as a youngster I just didn't have the inspiration of anything much to say. Now I'm older (though I won't claim to be wiser) I do feel I have a certain grasp of human nature. This I shall apply to my story (an historical tale)... and let's see where it takes us!

I was inspired today to dig out my old poem tome and if you click herebelow you can read three of my works on Gledwood's new Poetry Blog!
Please comment profusely under each "work".. many thanks!...

All this talk of pomes and tomes has made me starving hungry for cod in batter with intellectual tomatoes and oven chips, so I really must dash now...

VIDEO:
I had been wondering for AGES what on earth this tune was called. It sounds fantastic when played any way except in that dirgy off-key cello style (which I think it was written for) but really ruins the potential of the tune...
This is well worth some moments of your time...
BACH'S PRELUDE played by the most sublime guitar...

Trotters' TV/Hillary yeah-yeah-yeah!

I SNAPPED MYSELF OUT OF my nightly tailspin last night by positioning Itchy, Bashful and Spherical's home (burrow-side first) right before me, to be instantly entertained by their sleepytime hilarity. (I call it sleepytime: typically one is scratching furiously at the glass floor, as if this will magically enlarge their newspaper-fold "burrow", another is fast asleep but sat bolt upright and the third crawling, living-hat-like atop this one's head in a bid to get out for a trot on the wheel. When I disturbed them earlier by pulling the blanket off their home two tubbies were trotting rapidly on the wheel... and the third ('most certainly poor light Baby Itchy) was flashing round and round and round her Daz-white undercarriage as she clung onto the wire wheel for dear life, the heavier trotters thundering obliviously onwards as she exhibited this dizzying robo-fortitude...

Yes the most horrible thoughts go through my head nightly nowadays... I was going to post them but thought I would save you the silt-stirring mud-kicking of a disturbed subconscious...

What I will tell you is my dream. It seems sick at first hearing, surely; but was actually heavily symbolic... I mean, if I tell you I dreamed I was squeezing my own mother's breast would you think that sick?... Nothing "sexual" about this... And bear in mind that she had breast cancer little more than a year ago; I've had these pussing "wounds" that I've squeezed the poison out of. (I disagree with my drugs worker that squeezing the huge wet-scabbed lump on my arm was of little use: genuinely within 2 days of my kneeding at the lump (which I'd previously left alone) it went down, which shows that I must have squeezed the poison up and out.) So by squeezing this breast I was ridding her of illness... which is an obvious wish-fulfilment... OK, still seems weird I grant you, but do you get how the subconscious goes in circles, that a plain "weird" dream has a genuine meaning behind it? I woke up straight away thinking what was that about? ~ and the above answer came directly to mind. The most instant interpretations tend to be the truest interpretations of dreams, so I've found...

And on the subject of oddness: no that was NOT my leg pictured yesterday. As if! My legs are far bulkier than that. The hairs would NOT look good under stockings. And I've never worn a stilletto in my life (would probably fall off; that's if they could find my gargantuan size...)

That dreadful Rush Limbaugh FAILED to read my email in the TWO HOURS I dutifully tuned into his boresome show. Honestly. For the first HOUR the guy just prattled out his unoriginal opinions. Then he let a few callers on who proudly proclaimed stuff like: "I'm from Texas and I'm a conservative," as if that would impress anyone (are people honestly that insecure in their political views that they need to endure an endlessly bigotted show like this patting them on the back "there there; you're not alone, there ARE others who think like you..."...? I mean..? This Rush Limbo-Dancer whatever he calls himself was declaring Hilary and Obama will end up on a joint ticket (as long as Obama's for VICE-president to let experienced Hillary do the real work that sounds brilliant to me) he said this will shoot the Democrats in the foot. How, why, wherefore he did not venture to explain. The guy's not even articulate... what on earth he's doing on national radio I really do not know. Can anyone enlighten me? Please...??!?

... Poor Hillary is still one hundred or so what-jer-mer-call-it nomination votes behind Obama... OK I have nothing against the guy but what does he stand for? Except for being a charismatic rather circuitous public speaker? Who glitters wondrously forth on the American dream and all that's good as mother's apple pie. But what about the economy? What about foreign powers who want to deny America their oil?

OK I admit I DO relish the prospect of Bill Clinton hosting First Lady coffee mornings for skeletal couture-outfitted 80-year old billionaires' wives socialites (isn't that what first ladies traditionally do?) or playing his sax on the Letterman show... well what else is he going to fill his time with... really having lived under a figure as controversial but as able as Margaret Thatcher (and I certainly do NOT agree with perhaps half her policies and actions) I'd love to see what Hillary does or does not do for America.

Well I'd better shut up now... Bimbimbie said I ought to kit out in cheerleader's uniform to chant my Hillary Hillary Hillary praises... what has got hold of me? She's the only candidate in ANY election (including the sappy choice of candidates we get over here) who's ever aroused even the vaguest of political passions from my acheing old bones...

... righto I really had better go I've food shopping to do and bandages to change. Take care everyone!

Video: On the Rocks ~ the American Pika

Blog of the day:
Costa Rica (including bizarre cows...)

Leg Wound Update

IF YOU DON'T WANT to hear about drugs, scabs, oozings and associated pussing; just scroll one post down to yesterday's leaping lambs:~ far more Positive Thinking...

Right: you have been warned!

I WOKE UP into a classic tailspin last night. Have you ever done that?... well surely we've all done it once or twice; but have you done it lately? Y'know when you go "oh my life is ruined boo-hoo-hoooo..." etc etc... Then I slept through deeply until the Vanessa show on BBC London radio at 9am sharp. Vanessa always cheers me up.

MY WOUNDED LEG is healing nicely. It reduced from (at its worst) treble the size of my palm. One palm of blistering ("2nd degree burns") another palm of horrific bright red, dead white, deep purple, orange, pink and every burning psychedelic colour in between... ("1st degree burns")... and one palm more of patchy purple bruising... NONE of this infected; all the result of ONE single injection of literally half a millilitre (ie about a thousanth of a pint or a two thousanth of a litre) of yukky street heroin....

Well anyway (to recap the story) after my trip to casualty, my consultant's review a couple of days later and being properly dressed (not just me: I mean the wound was "dressed" too...) and being put on the strongest horse-pill antibiotics merely as a preventative measure...

I went to the local drugs service where they gave me a "dressing" with no padding. Of course it stuck on the top and pulled the top off all my blisters (how was I to know any better? Instructions said "dressing: put dressing on wound" so I did put it directly on top. So blood and gunge running everywhere, nothing to do but fold up a table napkin and stick that on top. Of course this stuck too and pulled my wound open yet again. (I think I spared y'all these details at the time as I'd stressed enough people out with my medical upheavals by this stage...) In the end, the remaining dead skin, which was lying atop this wound like sluggish, slack clingfilm I just peeled off, knowing the whole thing would just scab over... and sure enough with three hours of exposure to open air it duly did.

The only trouble is (and this happened to the little one on my arm which HAS duly healed)... the scab is loose in parts (and I'm NOT picking it), oozy and wet in others, intensely painful at one end. In short NOT the supersealed natural dressing it's meant to be, probably because the damage occured underneath and is rising up and out... yesterday in frustration I sat and squeezed it all out, all the blood and runny "pus" (blister-juice from under the scab) and saw that it is indeed healing even though not as gracefully as I'd hoped it would. About a week ago it was a large capital i shape with stalk and upper and lower bars two inches long... it is shrinking.

So that's my leg update! No more limping. No more nights of agony (and it really DID hurt: just like a severe blistering burn at worst)... it was more like a tropical spider-bite than an ordinary "wound"... the way the blisters kept spreading and blazing pain at me literally a week and more later. How ridiculous. Whatever Afghan or Turk put whatever rubbish in that "gear" deserves to be shot. Oh and it came back from the test as "benzodiazepines" not "barbiturates" which scuppers the blisters theory (barbiturates cause blistering as a standard symptom of overdose: benzos (Valium/Rohypnol-type drugs) are totally unrelated chemically to the (1950s, 1960s sleeping pills) barbiturates (phenobarbitone/phenobarbital, Seconal, Amytal, Tuinal are famous barbs but the dose is in the 50s, 100s of milligrams); benzodiazepines are less dangerous (unlikely to kill you in overdose) but many times stronger per milligram. E.g. Seconal came in 50 and 100mg capsules; Valium comes in 5 and 10mg... considering how out of it I was on this adulterated heroin I would surely have taken double or treble a "medicinal" dose of whatever adulterant found its way in there. Rohypnol (yes the infamous date rape drug) is willfully abused by junkies when they can get it. It causes memory loss (in a patchy type of way, not a total blackout)... the standard nighttime dose is ONE milligram... so my questions about what on earth this stuff that burned the hell out of my leg, practically had me walking into lamp-posts (Mother Hubbs, incidentally blames that gear on her near-"stroke" type occurance: she stood up and when BANG! down on the floor... but I wasn't there. Next day she did look to me like she'd had a stroke: face fallen, totally doped up (but not in any drugs-type of way I've ever seen...)... a £20 bag of heroin weighs minimum 400mg (ie 0.4g), whatever adulterant found its way in I'd suspect was pa small dose by weight but potent... (sorry is this boring you I'm puzzling aloud what on earth it could have been...)... well I'll stop babbling. If I did have barbs it wasn't within three days of the urine test I asked for... whatever damaged my "soft tissue" is still mystery. If you're young, depressed, lost and thinking heroin is the answer: take note and beware! Maybe one person really will read my tribulations and be put off and that, as the cliche goes, "really will make it all worthwhile"..!

On this note I'd better go. Take care everyone..!

PS Calling New York: I'm trying to get talk radio online from New York City... can anybody local please tell me the names of the local stations... what's 77 WABC like? Further Information Please!¬


PPS This was my message to Rush Limbaugh:

Hi Rush this is London calling. Found you online. Please don't let that faux-Martin Luther King impostor Obama get in... Hillary please. Us rest of the world are fed up of George W Bush and don't trust your Republicans that much. But more to the point I wanna see Bill Clinton as America's first ladyboy and a madam president. We survived Margaret Thatcher. You can ride out 8 years of Hillary! All the best from Gledwood in London Town, UK.

ps go to my blog if you want entertainment: http://gledwood2.blogspot.com "hamsters and heroin"

{I kept a copy in case my transatlantic message gets lots... ? lost? or lost lots. whatever...}

Self-Aspirated Blisters/etc

I'M INCLUDING A PIC of that beautiful giant mountainside trotter the PIKA, who collects poisonous flowers for the winter, that, as they slowly break down over the cold season, become nontoxic and edible before they rot... and that is how the tubby little pika feeds himself... and did you know this...= 100% true? In the wild, roborovskis use the established rambling paths of and sometimes live inside the burrows of pikas!... that is 100% true and correct! Imagine what the giant pikas think as my tiny robbies quickly scuttle on past into their personal deeper levels... "grrr! Bloody vermin! Tweetie-Pie meeces in my house again! We shall HAVE to put down more poison!!" (Robos are too intelligent to nibble the pika's poisonous flowers...)

I'm very sluggish and slow and miserable today... not entirely sure why... leg a little less painful by the day. Pain seems to be caused by the blisters re-forming/filling (where of course underneath it's red raw...) On Friday the A&E nurse "aspirated" these for me (basically means she burst 'em with a whacking great horse-needle and sucked the gunge into a gigantic syringe... surely something we've all wanted to do? ... Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree? To pop a zit by sucking it into a syringe... or to do likewise with a boil or pussing abscess... or even plain old "brandy"-filled blisters...

Anyhow, seeing as it's now mostly dried out and scabberous by now, and going all itchy inside I felt I wanted to change my dressings myself... cleaned it up and "aspirated" my own blisters (barely anything to drain they're sinking down into soon-to-be-scabs now...)...

Even Mother Hubbard, whose last abscess was so spectacular, the doctors asked if they could photograph it for their records, (it required surgical intervention literally on the FIFTH day since first appearing... and was so deep it required "fingers" of tampon-like interior packing... she was lucky to have sorted herself hospital-wise so soon as these "fingers" (which I saw myself: empty, I could literally have inserted my own fingers into them... this was the infection's jamboree of drilling not one but TWO attempts right down into the bone and it very nearly had reached there... abscess is VERY difficult to get out of bone... that requires the highest antibiotic doses of all... that is what loses people their legs...

Anyway, Mother Hubbs said my wound was pretty spectacular considering it was just a "miss"/partial "miss" caused by bad drugs and not even an infection... that's NASTY business.

And the sneery look on "nurse aspirator's" face at me the "barbiturate injector"... I TOLD them it was unwittingly and inadvertently done... I SAID I haven't actually "seen" a barbiturate capsule in my life. (All I "saw" prior to that injection was scummy brown heroin!)

I am going to have to get my dressings changed properly and professionally tomorrow... the GP's surgery will supposedly do this for me... if not the drugs service...

Hmmm I am TIRED. I slept for a LONG long time last night... from a miserable 6pm turn in to a 9am "gotta run!" I sorted myself out gloriously...

... gotta get my chicken pieces and peppers and all... y'know. I found some Arabic Coca-Cola on the street (in date! Just because it was covered in unusual writing and obviously some kind of special edition it had been judged inedible/undrinkbble and so chucked outside...) this had me peeing all night... When I awoke in the early hours, full-on robo-tainment was happening...

Hey best of news: my robbies seem to have stopped excessively washing and itching... seems they've left their "mites" far behind themselves... and their harvesty-coloured coats smell all fresh and harvesty now, too... not that they ever smelt nasty but they're fresher than ever living on and behind newspaper now... excellent stuff... Even pingy Baby Itchy seems well... too well almost... she was squabbling with Bashful this morning. Which made me wonder where that power-struggle will end up... with Queen Itchy I ruling over them all, do you wonder?...

... I dunno! Well I better had go. Hope all is well with y'all my friends... take care...


g
xx

I am behind with my Videos, so here's a whole list of all the most recent. If they aren't upscreen then click on anything you like the sound of and you'll go straight there on whatever other blog it's to be found on...

Staxx: Joy
Liza Minelli: Losing My Mind
Talking Cat
Madonna: The Power of Goodbye
Two Cats Chatting: Translation
Michael Jackson: Stranger In Moscow
Madonna: Hung Up
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Kraftwerk: The Model
Right Said Fred ~ Too Sexy ~ Daz Commercial

I love doctors' medical memoirs: this is a good one you can "listen again" to from Radio 4: Trust Me, I'm a Junior Doctor by Max Pemberton. If you want to hear it all from the beginning you'll need to clickonit today as (last) Monday's (the first) instalment vanishes as of midnight London time tonight...

Consultant

THE RECEPTIONIST FROM LAST TIME was having a fag outside when I arrived at casualty 20 minutes early for my appointment. She smiled ruefully but directed me to the right part.

Bang on time a nurse called my name. Went through the fairly needless procedure of asking why I was there... "senior review" it is apparently called...

A very friendly Indian doctor had a look at my marbled chemical burn and blisters thing... confirmed again: no infection (even though it is bright red and hurts all the time a bit and intermittently quite a lot as if the burn is spreading... looks far worse than the illustration (about six times as many and probably bigger) but the pictures I yahoo'd were either far less serious or much worse than mine so I thought I'd veer on the side of not grossing people out today: "if it was infection it would have spread all over by now" he declared. But transferred me to an even stronger antibiotic Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanic acid tablets 500mg and 125mg one three times a day). He said keep the flucloxacillin in case you ever do get an abscess. I don't know about "getting abscesses" any more; had enough.

I didn't want to sound all junkie but remembered to ask about these suspected barbiturates in the gear. Yes! Barbiturates cause blistering all over the place, he said and we have our diagnosis. Barbiturated heroin. No wonder I was weaving all over the place last week...

The nurse (only black woman I've ever met with an Aussie accent) rather grudgingly drained about 10-20mls of yellow water (not pus) out of the blisters with a huge needle and syringe. "Sharp scratch," she said. But I felt nothing. Even when she said it "might sting" and I dreaded I would hit the roof I barely felt anything: this sticky brown stuff like cuprinol... Now I have transparent patches all over it (are these for burns patients? They looked highly professional: never seen anything like them before...) All posh packing and bandages on top. One bandage even came on a crown-like fixture I put my foot through then pyoing! ~ It's on my leg... From now on the GP's surgery have to rebandage twice a week so no staving me off from now on else I'll start talking about... actually you probably don't wanna hear.

On the way home I passed a shop selling tiny trotters of the winter white variety (they're twice as big as robbies and have the softest fur I have ever felt on a domestic pet... just like chinchillas they take dust baths... beautiful animals (but roborovskis are more pingy and panicky and exceedingly inquisitive and copy one another more which is hilarious to watch...) I found a beautiful "cage"... it was a glass tank not much bigger than what they're in now; only this has two layers of caging on top fixed with ladders... it's beautiful. But they want £55 for it. Is that too much? Can I afford it? (Not really...) Maybe it will give me more reason to steer clear of that nasty brown rubbish.

I feel wounded and depressed and cannot sleep properly. Lost my appetite too.

Do you want to hear Vanessa? She is the most fluently articulate speaker of English I have ever heard ~ bar no-one ~ can let slip any word in the language past her lips without ever sounding pretentious...

Navigate past the red list on the right to "listen now/listen again": choose listen again Friday 22/2/8. She starts on banned atheletes. But I think her "should cheap alcohol be banned" speech is hilarious... "do you stay at home because you can smoke and get plastered for tuppence ha'penny?..." she piques us... and so on. Blah. Clickonthis if you do...

I just looked up some barbiturates on wikipedia: aparently Judy Garland died on only ten 1.5 grain (approx 100mg) Seconals... they must've been powerful pills!!

Thanks everyone for your messages of support I'm sorry not to have been back to anyone for several days... I think I am getting better. I am trying to be good. Too depressed to bother racing about anywhere...

Uh? Ukk.

WHAT? UH? O! Whatever: I have to remember this vital appointment is tomorrow morning. Doesn't feel that close... On close and distant and reflexion I've realized the guy I saw yesterday, whatever class of doctor he was, basically did not know precisely what was wrong with me or why it was blistering (which is unusual) or what was going on. So I am particularly thankful for tomorrow's consultation with a Consultant Dermatologist.

Illustrated is Google images reply to "necrotic" that is NOT the appearance I conjured or the guy seemed to be saying yesterday. From my experience necrotized flesh tends to look white, dead. It's open, like an open sore and may be weepy or wet but isn't pussy to any great degree. It looks and more to the point smells like what it is: dead flesh. My exhousemate had what he claimed to be a shotgun wound on his leg the third time he told me. The first time: it was an injecting "miss" ~ and that's precisely what I thought it was... The other person I knew with "necrosis" or chronic ulceration was a guy who'd already lost one leg (OK: technically half of one) he was a beggar on crutches... I remember walking past him one day and nearly puking... he smelled so bad. The worst smell ~ no exaggeration ~ I have ever smelt in my life. I've never smelt a dead body but would infer that they smell the same. Necrotic number one actually volunteered to inject me (he was a raving crackhead who'd lost his own veins, so he said through injecting speed)... something in his cavaleer attitude made me draw back... when two of the local prostitutes stayed in his room for a few weeks (and he would have me believe they'd left him "exhausted" through their indomitable bixexual lesbian threesome "services" they moaningly "bestowed on him"... as if! :~you haven't seen the guy) I asked one of the girls whether he had injected her (yes) and whether he butchered her (yes) so my instincts as per normal were bang on. In fact nearly everyone who I've let near me has butchered me up: missed, blown the vein by pushing in too quickly, partially missed (because when skin is rimpled up and the needle fully in-vein, the pressure of skin may eventually lapse, pushing the needle out, even though the needle hasn't moved a nanometre) and so on and so on. So whatever these problems of mine are caused by, bad injection technique is not it. As the man said yesterday it is bad (more to the point heavily "stamped on" ("cut") drugs that cause the trouble as well as the low-grade "number three" brown heroin: it never has been meant for injection. It's more popular with dealers than the higher grade "number four" white because it can be "smoked" (off of tinfoil: through a rolled up tinfoil tube:~ the socalled "chasing (the "dragon": though I've never in my life heard an actual user say "chasing the dragon": that is a press and media phrase...) Of course a smokeable drug is more saleable than one effective by snorting or injection only (heroin smoking isn't quite like smoking crack: unlike crack which vapourizes all at once the moment a flame touches anywhere near it ~ allowing considerable doses to flow straight to the brainbox; heroin (which also vapourizes rather than "burns") takes ages to "chase" along tinfoil line after line after line... I only used to smoke at the very beginning of my habit... then I realized "skinpopping" that is injecting subcut (subcutaneously) or IM (intramuscularly) had a double-strength effect and took about as much time (about ten minutes) as my then-tiny smoking habit to affect body and brains...

I only STARTED to inject myself because I was by this stage in a relationship with a 10-year junkie who had left works, citric acid (for breaking down the crappy brown heroin), swabs... all I needed to make up a hit. And because when I had been hit up before the junkies doing it had almost perversely made me cook up my own gear: I had no problems judging how much water/heat/citric/timing were required (well it's hardly rocket science)... anyway...

... so I find myself (many years ago) alone: fully-made-up "hit" in hand. I made some half-hearted attempts to plunge it into the crook of my arm but was basically too scared to hit up intravenously... and so I took up injecting but by skinpopping.

Skinpopping compares to IV injection as trickling warm water into a bath over ten minutes or so... over plunging straight from a cold pool into hot at an Icelandic sauna... skinpopping (at the time this meant an SC/subcut/subcutaneous injection which means pronging the needle just under the skin at a 45 degree angle...) with acidified brown heroin what happens is that within about five minutes (if not straight away: it is dreadfully low quality gear ~ almost as bad as that West Coast American Mexican crap)... a welt starts to appear: like a giant mosquito bite... walking around will move the drug faster through the system... within ten minutes I felt like I was fully immersed in a hot bath; totally relaxed... and free enough to contemplate what a "terrible habit I had and how I needed so desperately to come off"... in the one compelling heroin memoir I have read the author states the same point in different words:

I was never so determined to get clean as when I was dirty...

If this sounds counterintuitive or contradictory then bear this in mind: in withdrawal ALL ANYONE: that is YOU or ME will think about is HEROIN: how to get it. As quickly as possible. Into the body. To stop feeling this bad.

BTW: the above procedure only worked for me with pracically NO tolerance... at my very worst I could take heroin even in quite big amounts and literally feel next to NOTHING... an utterly despairing predicament...

Of course NOBODY in withdrawal will want to get clean... if this were so the AVERAGE length of a heroin habit would not be 14 years! No! You only WANT to get clean (at least anywhere but the very end of a habit) once you are HIGH... and have the luxury of jazzing about in a mindwandering space where you can judge life rosetintedly from afar "my problem is so bad... I really must stop. I HAVE to stop... tomorrow..." (cannot stop now you are stoked up and high!)

The IV injection takes about 30 seconds to come on (unless administered ultra-slowly into an exceedingly narrow vein); peaks in about two minutes... within 6 minutes (so I hear) the heroin has transferred into morpine... but not before the superior (and more addictive) heroin buzz has (in the not over-tolerant individual) suffused body and brain...

Which: yes. Around and about and by the houses, I hope has told any miscomprehenders or doubters or people who just don't get it out there precisely what this habit is ABOUT...

PS Following my own intuitions I googled "barbiturates" and "blister" and, eg here, found out that... seemingly (among the near-impenetrable medicinal language...) barbiturate injection CAN cause skin-blistering... which is why I wanted to get treated by a specialist and not someone who did lots of straw clutching... you want to know how I KNOW he was clutching at straws: he pointed out a bit of "inflamed" (just buised) vein and said "knowledgeably" "this might turn into phlebitis" (which is inflamation OF the vein itself... I've already HAD this: it was like a red hot poker stiking up the side of my thigh... and which, all in all along with his "not infected" (then why as well as feeling literally like a hot oil burn at worst of times did it the night before my hospital appearance go red hot and raging with heat?)... I really think this guy didn't know what the hell was going down and just spouted his reflex "scare the junkie" with not-spot on approximations talk... THIS talk is what leads junkies NOT to believe doctors (because they are being lied to: or the facts are surmised rather than 100% surely KNOWN)... likewise doctors don't believe junkies (specially when drugs come into the equation: "I'm in agony dr!"/etc... because junkies, being so used to being fobbed off and dismissed ~ or if given medication, under-prescribed to ~ become accustomed to exaggerating or lying merely to get the meds they genuinely feel they need.

Valium is for anxiety. Zopiclone is for sleep. Morphine and diamorphine are for severe pain. No dr, far as I'm concerned has any reason to withold any of these just because someone is an addict... when to most old ladies the same drugs are dished out like sweets!!

***

RIGHT: I've found some abscess pus youtubes... only nothing as hardcore as I was hoping for... and the bestlooking one some twat had categorized as "login/adults only" how prissy can you get??

Really I was hoping for some general anaesthesia ~ arse-scooping brown fulminating bloody pus multilitre pusbags but only got these... the first one (on some poor guy's back: my video of the day) is the best how it swooshes out! Hold your breath, prepare not to puke and have a beautiful pus-indulgence (ugh what a phrase) everyone!

1. Draining a Massive Abscess (on the back)...

2. Brotherly Love: Lancing a Boil...

3. Infected Abscess Removal

4. Burst My Abscess (in the mouth)...

FREEDOM! AND GOOD HEALTH!! (Not mine: he said it did NOT look infected; but prescribed 2x250mg flucloxacillin x4 a day anyway to stop this...) What he did say is it was the consequences of injecting bad drugs "heroin does not do this" he said pointing at the blisters, which have been packed under special drainage pads. "If this does get infected or you continue injecting in that leg it could go necrotic." Which means dead flesh and I've seen and smelt it it's absolutely vile. It's like an ulcer that never heals. So that told me!! (I have to say for "not infected" it looks remarkably colourful. Bright red patches, purple bits, dead-looking white bits (not "necrotic" open sores) all warbled and marbled. Ukk. I'm not saying anything more. This happened at casualty/A&E/ER by the way and I have an appointment for a consultant to see it on Friday... I'm so glad I'm not stuck in there I had visions of carting a drip stand downstairs twenty times daily for cigarettes (found it hard enough going without in casualty)... I have to go I am exhausted. Whoopee!!!

Fobbed Off

I GOT TO THE DOCTOR'S on time... asked for an appointment with a nurse or a doctor. Said it was urgent. Nothing available till FRIDAY and a room full of "sick" people (ever noticed how nobody in the doctors' surgery actually LOOKS unwell most of the time... maybe that means they're a good doctor with a really high cure rate... whatever... I was directed to a 24-7 walk-in centre which is MILES away and allied to the biggest casualty department (ER) I have ever experienced. Let the fact that the British government have decreed to all NHS trusts that ALL "customers" MUST be seen WITHIN FOUR HOURS tell you how long the waits in these places can be... and of course you have the dregs and drunks of society haranguing, arguing (or in the best circumstances performing) in front of you... NO WAY did I wanna go up there. I got the phone number of another walk-in or drop-in at a hospital that is nearer and better (why not automatically referred there then? Literally it has to do with being on the "wrong side of the tracks"... or to put it another way, having the wrong postcode...) I am glad I had the presence of mind to telephone this place first. The young man who answered took an immediate interest in my complaint... "an ABSCESS?" he queried excitedly, (I wasn't even going to go down the "cellulitis" route: too exotic for most people)... he lowered his voice to intimate tones: "is it a peri-ANAL one?" "No. It's on the back of my leg." And then to throw an instant explicatory light upon the matter added (and I know I didn't have to) "I'm a heroin addict" oh I see. Then I DID get some good advice. Do NOT leave it. Come into casualty tomorrow morning or go to the drug service. They never HAD a walk-in (I'd been misinformed)... Once I was told to go to the drugs people I was relieved... they were the only place I wanted to go anyway. No lecturing Nigerian doctors; no four hour weights. They know me and I know I can come at 9am and get seen within half an hour. They are not meant to be a first-line treatment setting for stuff the family doctor's supposed to see to unless you don't have another doctor or (as in my case) the doctors have in essence refused you... Injecting infections are obviously a speciality and so I'll get a proper set of advice and treatment. I really did NOT want to go to casualty tonight... though my leg is dipping into chip fryer mode again... it does feel like a huge chip-fat burn sizzling away sometimes; then it gets a bit better and I think maybe it's not so bad after all... y'know how it goes...

I spoke to Mother Hubbs on the phone because she called her Dodgy (he is anything but dodgy actually) when we were down the pub round the corner from the doctors'... she is with her grandchildren across the country. She sounds normal now. When I spoke to her before seeing her and how her face had literally fallen: eyes barely open... after a "fit" she said she had... she sounded smashed out of her brains. I think she had a stroke but I know what she's like she will put off and put off seeing any medical professional... hmmm... who does THAT sound like?...

Well I am definitely going tomorrow my leg is only getting worse and worse. Weeping wet blisters and purple mottling with bits going white around it... doesn't look good...

So it's 9am at the druggery for me... and my hamsters are hiding in their huge tartan bag... maybe for several days...

RIGHT I HAD BETTER REPEAT HERE FOR REITERATION: IF FOR SOME REASON I AM NOT ONLINE FOR A FEW DAYS IT MEANS I AM IN HOSPITAL. THEY WOULD ONLY PUT ME IN HOSPITAL IF THEY THOUGHT I NEEDED IV ANTIBIOTICS. AT LEAST NOW I'M GOING TO THE DRUGS SERVICE DR AND NOT JUST A GENERAL ONE I GET A SEASONED APPRAISAL OF HOW BAD THIS THING REALLY IS AND IF THEY THINK I WANT TO BE EATING SHEPHERD'S PIE FOR A WEEK THEN SHEPHERD'S PIE IT IS (AND JELLY AND ICE-CREAM FOR PUDS: YUMM!) ;->...

PS I am now listening to Billy Bunter's Birthday Bash... it is so entertaining... do you know Billy Bunter? That 1950s nasty tubby schoolboy... like a humanized evil version of Spherical

Off to the Doctor's...

RIGHT I AM OFF TO MY LOCAL DOCTOR'S surgery... where I have been very reluctant to go... especially having been lectured by an ignorant Nigerian locum last time "why don't you just stop?"... (if I could it would not be called "addiction" ~ duh!)... if I am offline for days and days it means I am in hospital I am avoiding there like the flying plague though I know Evilstein will only use it as an excuse to throw out my robbies/make me homeless/etc. I am just about to leave for the "surgery" now... assuming I got the details right they don't shut till six... And I will only ask for an appointment with the nurse. Why? Because assuming this is really as dreadfully terrible as everyone says she will be utterly horrified and get the doctor right away and I will have someone on-side backing me up against the probably barely-English-speaking doctor... If I opt straight for the doctor I will be assumed to be a timewaster (as most patients are: coming in with common coughs and colds that no medication can really treat anyway...)... blah blah and so on right I'd better go

Secret Passage

...Secret passageway!... during my recent robo-re-removals, out-cleaning, lightbulb-box-filling etc etc when I changed their newspaper I left the new paper (one of the free London commuter papers; not The Sun any more so maybe that's why it didn't fit... where it was too big I just let it flap up one side... and to add entertainment to "injury" I hid a standard toilet tube, plus Baby Itchy's "Magic Wand"... ie her personal half inch/2cm diameter clingfilm tube that only she can ping along on through...
... None of the robbies knew anything of this secretive area as I basically made things like that and left them...
... Only early this morning to be puzzled by Spherical determinedly scratting against the glass in attempted burrowing... alternately grabbing the piled up newspaper in her mouth and furiously nibbling at it...
Clever girl! I thought. Despite no food, no treats... nothing more exciting than two of their familiar old toilet rolls being hidden behind there she had detected the "sectret passageway" I'd hidden in their home!
... Eventually I got frustrated and wished to pingingly hurry things on a little... so I dropped Baby Itchy behind the newspaper fold right into the secret passageway where she very amusingly smelt it out and cautiously explored. Of course I could see right through the glass so there was nothing "secret" or even obscure about it to me... though Itchy, by her supreme caution, appeared to feel very differently...
... and Spherical grabbed at the paper and heatedly gnawed on and on... which terrified Itchy, to see the walls shaking and bowing out and being so viciously nibbled upon.
... And then she realized another robo was on the other side and highly amusingly made contact whisker to whisker and paw to paw through the tiny gap...
... Then Spherical desisted her furious scrabbling and scratting... at which point Itchy chose to squeeze through, from the secret side, the hole Spherical had been so dedicatedly chewing... o! the look of sheer astonishment on her face as her dear old housemate suddenly emerged from that secret compartment! It was so hilarious I had seriously to restrain myself from cackling aloud at them both...
... Now realizing there was indeed something worthwhile hidden behind there, Spherical bit open, scratted apart and burrowed through to the secret passageway in record time.
And of course where one robbie ventures, the other two rapidly follow. it was so entertaining witnessing them exploring their new secret burrow together. And once I'd taken the narrow length of tubing only Itchy could fit inside away; the three of them had the run of the place...
... Every now and then some scrabbling noise (ie one of their own kind) would cause terror from the main side of the divide to the new secret burrow... then the burrow's occupant would panick and spring out like a furry jack-in-the-box...
...And presently, at past three thirty pm all three are stashed behind the excess newspaper in this secret tiny burrow... even Evilstein, glancing in, would assume the tank was empty with just waterbottle, wheel, seedbox ~ and nothing else... do I didn't cover them up... just being able to see their naturalistic behaviour in such a confined space is hilarious... how they scramble over one another... suddenly their pink nose to pink nose robo-greeting makes sense... they have to do this in the burrow to ensure the whiskery bedmate is friend not foe!... One time yesterday Itchy was rambling the wheel on and on while Spherical sat idly by... Itchy stopped about five times in three minutes to pink nose to pink nose do confirmational greeting... poor swine! She is bottom peck and so has to be subservient. Bashful and Spherical do a weird borderlilne-squabble greeting where one wrestles the other backwards so the "loser" is lying on her back with Daz-white undercarriage on vivid display... then she gets her private parts forcibly groomed for her...
... And if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it...!

PS... this is a bit of a major thing to leave for a "ps"; I know... but I didn't know what/how to say it... I will say it tomorrow... Mother Hubbard's had a stroke! She looked utterly done in yesterday, her face all fallen, everything... dreadful...

PPS My leg I've been told is cellulitis... true enough it hurt so bad I was close to screaming point on Saturday night... seriously bad, like a burn from hot oil still sizzling away under the skin. All I wanted was to cut it out... and this, of course, I could not do... I've been told contradictory things about whether or not I ought to go to hospital. It doesn't hurt anywhere nearly as much (it's about 4 days old now)... since it blistered up... it seems to be that the nasties gnaw out the human flesh which can be excruciatingly painful (my one is nearly behind my knee; the main bit's palm-sized... (which means 1% body area)... and it goes on all mottled and bruised for another palm-sized area... the main bit which was excruciatingly painful at one point has blistered up, just like the bit on my arm did... now it hurts far less. It feels like the flesh-eating bug has at least eaten-out some of the flesh... which kills some pain in the process... I don't know... or something like that. I've been told to go straight to casualty by Mother Hubbs' friend who says they may keep me in. I will have to go to the laundrette before that as all my clothes are dirty. I really can't go in as I am I would rather die. OK I shouldn't say things like that but you know what I mean... or I could just go to my GP (family Dr) and get flucloxacillin/something like that... surely that will work... there is no point being in hospital except for the free shepherd's pie (which I love... you know that mafia expression "do you like hospital food?" well I love hospital food... all mushy and squelchy... really yummy and not challenging at all... beautiful food. Well I won't need that as I'm making a dr's appointment for 1st thing tomorrow morning right as soon as I've logged off this... and am purchasing chicken fried rice ingredients forthwith... which is essential for my mental wellbeing!

And how are you?


Video: 2 Cats Chattin'...

Music: Madonna: The Power of Goodbye (specially for Audrey)...

... Come to the House of Lime for some excellent winter pictures...

... right I really am going to have to get in touch with my dr's forthwith as I found out how serious this cellulitis can be I honestly didn't realize... no wonder I was in such agony!

... ps: and this is a fantastic birds blog...

...Leslie's blog has some especially atmospheric snapshots of the winter weekend...

Treats for the Tubby Trotters

I HAD TO THROW OUT THE OLD TEABOX as I thought it was full of mites. The bedding in there was months old and raggedly falling apart. My robbies used to stash their seeds in there and then sleep on top of them some nights. A highly sensible security procedure with those wild sewer-mice roaming so closely nearby...

I have given them a new "granary"... this one's a lightbulb box, taped shut and with holes cut at the front and back top. This I slotted inside a slightly larger box with correspondingly cut openings. This was mostly as a mouse-deterrant as I'm genuinely scared something will sneak in and leave its nasty germs and droppings about the place... I filled the inner box to the brim with Bill Oddie's luxury bourgeois birdseed, plus some "hamster mix" (though the coloured "scones" are too big for my little robos' tiny pouches...), then I added Weetabix and Cheerios breakfast cereals and half a broken up custard cream biscuit. Spherical really liked the scent of this and was frustratedly nibbling away for hours making the entry big enough for her tubby frame!

The righthand picture of the robo on the spoon came from a web-page on some of the world's smallest pets... if you clickonit and scroll down you'll also see the world's smallest Golden (or Syrian: that is a "normal") Hamster. Who looks quite raggedy but is apparently quite healthy despite having stopped growing at only a few weeks of age...

I hope your weekend is going well. I have been in agony with a sore on my leg which I will have to take to hospital if it gets no better. I have to sleep with my leg up and bent and it can't touch against anything else I would say "yaroo!" and hit the ceiling!

Have a cheery weekend (what remains)... it has been minus five degrees (C) here in the Big Smoke...

... and how's things at your end..?