Alcohol?

AMY WINEHOUSE'S FAMILY now think it was giving up drink that actually killed her, according to today's Sun newspaper.

Whatever it was, the authorities must be pretty sure of the cause of her death in order to have authorized her funeral so quickly. My friends who have died suddenly have been kept in the fridges for weeks on end... My friend Lucky who died of multiple system failure was in the morgue for over a month before they finally cremated her...

*

I'm vegetating here in the public library, my brains feeling sluiced out with water. Washed clear. It's not exactly first thing in the morning; it's 11:20am! I've had my methadone and I'm fine. I'm very tired. I think my pills are making me fatigued.

Now I've got to go. I'm trying to be well and embrace a bright future. Only way I have of doing that is by chucking rubbish out of my house. Today I gave in 3 pairs of reading glasses and 4 books, including the autobiography of Gay Byrne, into my local charity shop. They're gonna love me (not!) by the time I'm finished with them. Yesterday I gave in records by Henry Mancini and they seemed overjoyed to receive them.

Now I've got to go: my brain's all over the place.

Why?

THERE'S NOT MUCH TO SAY about Amy Winehouse. What can you say?

It always got me that she was supposedly signed to do the James Bond theme. But couldn't get it together to produce one single song. With all the help and backup she gets. Not even five minutes of recorded sound.

I wonder what did actually kill her. Maybe it was suicide. Or was it slow suicide? Or was it purely an accident?

Amy

RIP AMY WINEHOUSE

Found dead at her London home on Saturday afternoon. No surprise to me. No surprise to any of us. This is what drugs really do: kill hope, promise and talent and eventually take life.

Amy having a good try at snorting a white powder while on stage:~


BACK TO BLACK ~ official video
... not just "the heart of Amy Winehouse" ...

A gaggle of geese, a murder of crows... a donkey derby of pizza boxes.

YES REALLY I'm talking of abortive posts scribbled on old foodcardboard, untapped in, unfinished. Sometimes I accumulate loads of them, but they're always boring (hence unposted).

In days gone by I used to scrawl out man a post in advance... not "man a post" ~ MANY a one! Lately I haven't done this, hence the boring blog and the degeneration into a morass of chinchillas and Japanese inus.

By the way, Morrisons own sweet chili chicken is nothing on Iceland's fiery chicken pizzas, which are proper stonebaked, and far more generously chickensprinkled.

Now talking of donkey derbies I think I need a Narcotics Anonymous sponsor more than I need a Native Japanese or European curlytailed furrydoggie... Also, living in the big bad city I'm scared somebody might burgle my furrydoggie from outside a shop or NA meeting (well I gotta walk the thang ~ mightaswell kill 2 birds 1 stone, ya know...)

And I don't think naming the shiba-inu "Snarler" will necessarily rub off on her character enough to put off local tea leaves.

Which is where sobriety comes in. Sobriety doesn't moult everywhere in spring, never gets bored and tears up the newspapers, will not tip over frying pans full of sausages and run off with them. It doesn't bark at strangers or scurry past park railings and into main roads.

Sobriety is hard-won yet free as a bird. It is guaranteed never to pee on the carpet (and you are less likely to pee on the carpet when you're sober), it does not need an ID-chip and unlike a cute lil dawg, nobody can ever steal it from me.

So sobriety it is.

God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference!

3 GOOD SONGS ~ or ought I to say "top tunes" to be hip-n-down wid da kidz..?

tHESE ARE BY FAR THE BEST (in my view) OF THE uk TOP 20 ON LAST NIGHT'S TV

#18 PROFESSOR GREEN ~ NEED YOU TONIGHT
Classic tune ~ with that DER-DER-DER from the original.
And rap WITH AN ENGLISH ACCENT ~ very modern & all...



#15 KATE NASH ~ DO WAH DO

Phoney American accents are bang out of fash these days, if you're Brit. And I love the air-hostess stuff, it reminds me of the late Princess Diana's fashion sense...



#1 LADY GAGA FT. BEYONCE ~ TELEPHONE

Musically I don't think Lady Gaga's tunes are that catchy or amazing but I do like this vid featuring Beyoncé ~ Beyoncé who ticks every gorgeous-by-numbers box, yet sexy-on-video she ain't. I think what I've seen of her acting's actually much better than her shrill singing... but anyway.
And doncha think Gaga looks like Aimy Winehouse wid da shark-eye curves?

Cajun Chicken & A Real Ink Pen

I MISSED MORRISONS' special deal roast chicken legs yesterday lunchtime so I bought two raw drumsticks from the butchers by the MSG-chipshop (they have some secret recipe thing going on and I suspect MSG in the frying oil is surely it). These drumsticks were so enormous they looked like they'd come from a turkey. If not a swan. Anyway, rather than bang them in the oven 200C for 40 mins plain, I did a home-rapid-marinade consisting of Schwarz Cajun Seasoning in Value rapeseed oil Rapeseed's normally 10p a litre cheaper than sunflower or soya, is homegrown and lower in baddie-fats than either of the other two. Anyway I was quite liberal with the spicing and slavered on at least a flat teaspoonload on the two megalegs. These went in for the appointed time, after which I turned off the oven and let them cook inside as it cooled. Imagine my disappointment when, a full hour later, I knifed one open only to find a suspiciously pink interior. Unwilling to touch chicken that's even slightly underdone (and it would have been slightly undercooked if at all) I sliced the chicken off the bones, spread it out on the plate and oven-cooked for a further quarter hour.

This time, if anything, it was over done! But the cajun spicing and the skin came out amazingly crackly and gorgeous.

I will have to try this recipe again. for next time I have another lot of spices hardcore marinating in my cupboard (or should I slam it in the fridge?)

I was thinking of mixing this amazing cajun seasoning ~ which is quite similar to tikka masala, if you know that ~ in with flour to do home-made KFC. Can you do KFC in the oven? I don't really want to deep-fry because of the fire risk.

***

Sorry about yesterday's post. I was so down and tired and empty nothing came to mind. bar what I'd seen on the previous night's Big Brother...

***

I FOUND a fountain pen on the street outside a public toilet. A real live fountain pen! Yes: it was running around on its little legs, then stopped, peered up at me with sad eyes and implored, "Please help me find my owner. Pretty please!"

And it is quite pretty and girlie. Covered in rainbow stripes and stars. But it's made by Parker and they're the best (after the Swiss brand Lamy). Lamy nibs write as smoothly as if broken in 10 years ago ~ right from the day of purchase.

When I was younger (and pretentious enough) I wrote in real ink all the time. I was thinking, maybe I ought to take up that habit again. It might inspire me to pen a mighty work of Great Literature..(!)... (Or something)...

***

AMY WINEHOUSE has been found not guilty of common assault after she gave a black eye to a "burlesque dancer" (stripper) who "shoved a camera" in her face without even asking...

***


And how was your day?

***

Illustrations: top ~ my chicken legs came out just like this. And I roasted them in a thing that looked exactly the same... Yellow pen by Lamy. Best fountain pens in the world. Amy Winehouse... looked far more sober than this at court today...

Winehouse Crack "Shocker"!

POOR AMY WINEHOUSE! Caught piping crack by the sneaky Sun newspaper's undercover exposee team and now splashed over four million copies of that newspaper's front pages...

I always found it difficult to credit that Amy, a self-avowed heroin and crack addict one minute could jet off on holiday to the Caribbean with hubby Blake Fielder-Civil the next and return home miraculously non-addicted. I just didn't believe it.

Her husband is a goodlooking if slightly spivvy-seeming guy and she obviously worships the very ground he walks on.

In fact, if you listen to Amy's CDs her weakness (long before drugs) always seems to have been men. Not just sexually; I mean that she appears to be one of those women who at first glance appears to be strong. Independent. Assertive. And yet her whole existence, her self-esteem and everything seems to be held not by herself, but in her man's hand. To me this is a real weakness.

When the story of Amy and Blake's excessive drug using hit the papers, the blame seemed to be passed to Blake by most of the press. I am not sure this is true, as Amy was heavy drinking for months before she got married to this guy.

But having been in a druggie relationship myself (how do you think my habit kicked off the ground?) I know how two people fixated on drugs can very easily use the other as their own excuse to use. That's why rehabs often "try to split couples up" ~ if you know about addiction you will hear this allegation time and again. It's done for a reason: unless you're unusually focused and strong, as I said, relationships where drugs have played a prominent role have an uncanny habit of returning to that situation...

Now, with her man in prison (accused of assault and attempting to "pervert the course of justice" ~ ie to bribe or otherwise nobble a witness in the forthcoming assault trial) and her British tour cancelled (because she "can't do it without her man") Amy's spinning out into an ever-decreasing spiral of drugs, drink and depravity.

Speaking as an addict who's seen it time and time again I'm long past the assumption that just because someone is using heroin (as she WAS) and crack (as she IS) they are "going to die". We're all going to die and some addicts can live a long long time. But having seen Amy's frailty, her weakness and her dependency ~ not just on alcoholic and chemical fixes but on her man and the flybynight "friends" who seem to fill her home, I must admit it's very sad. I see a woman with a rare talent who's doing all she can to mess up her career (cancelling live engagements ~ you can't do that! Those gigs represent birthdays, anniversaries etc you can't just walk out of a booking because you'd rather have a drink! Whatever happened to "the show must go on!"? To mess up her life. And yes, I hate to say this, but if you're a fan of Amy Winehouse, then try to appreciate her while she's still here ...

because I'm really not sure how long she's going to last...

***

Today's screen:
Winehouse Smoking Crack

***

Fascinating never-b4-found addict blog of the day:
MANTRAMINE ~ "the art of being" ...