A Morning of Domesticity

(THAT MEANS SCURRYING ROUND THE KITCHEN like a blue-arsed fly, cleaning up to you!) yes I turned up the radio to top volume (I don't know why but I nearly always listen to talk stations) so Radio 4 Extra was blaring out The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe with Lucy meeting Mr Tumnuss under the snowy lamppost... then a boring phone-in without Vanessa Feltz on BBC London and then stuff to do with people being at risk of 20 years in a labour camp for not crying hard enough over the death of the aptly named "Kim Jong ILL" in North Korea. Over this time I filled an entire black sack with rubbish including at least five nearly-full cartons of milk and cleared a table top of paperclips, women's eye makeup, Vaseline lip gel and glass ashtrays. I was about to wipe it down with newspapers to clean it when I found a picture of Sunshine or Sweetie, one of the pair of Chinese pandas that have been lent to a Scottish zoo for 17 years, the tubby furry had a stick of bamboo in its mouth and just made you want to poke it in the tummy and twist those black ears round and round!

I'm so glad the "festive tide" is past us. Now it's New Year's Eve, which I haven't done for 9 or 10 years and only ever enjoyed when I was high on Ecstasy which says a lot about New Years if you require mindbending drugs to enjoy it. Then again I was at a psychedelic trance party and you require mindbending drugs to get into the groove there too so... ho-humm. All this was so very many years ago. I just wish I could kick the drugs I still occasionally take now. Even Valium is bad. I know it's nowhere near as bad as taking heroin, but I'd rather take neither. Do you know the one decent Valium dealer I know of via a friend (I also happen to know his mother) sells a minimum £20 bag. Just like a lot of heroin dealers! 20 blue (10mg) Valium for £20. The only drugs I have clinical need of are the occasional sleeping pill ~ as longterm readers will know I go through periods where I simply do not sleep. Usually I am manic and high or manic and exhausted at these times. I also get occasional panic so I started taking Valium for that over the summer. I had a near panic-attack at the Nutter Club (dual diagnosis drugs and mental illness meeting) I used to go to (where nearly everyone was bipolar, I might add and 50% of bipolars admit to their doctors to indulging in illegal drugs which means the number actually having used them must be far higher. Interestingly nearly all the street drugs tweak the same three chemicals ~ serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline aka norepinephrine ~ that are activated in manic episodes, are known to go haywire in psychosis and are probably at low levels in depresssion which is why antidepressants are occasionally categorized according to which of these three chemicals they tweak. Antidepressants can actually precipitate mania in susceptible individuals, which is why when I took Prozac I was constantly being told to calm down. One girl, who had a manic-depressive mother and sister said I was acting "manic". I did calm down... about four weeks later. And took Prozac very irregularly after that as it just made me so agitated sometimes I literally could not even sit in a chair I had to pace pace pace. This is the start of my bipolar symptoms, back in my mid 20s when my diagnosis was actually chronic fatigue syndrome. I heard a fascinating description of that condition on television last week when a former sufferer said it's due to the brain being over-activated, hence the extreme tiredness yet inability to sleep at night. I definitely had CFS and wouldn't wish it on anyone. In a way it's worse than severe depression because severe depression is taken seriously by psychiatrists whereas a person cabbaged by "M.E." (as CFS used to be known) would probably still to this day be treated as a neurotic by certain members of the medical profession. One characteristic CFS sufferers are said to have in common is a tendency to push themselves past the point of exhaustion even BEFORE they become ill. They work hard and play hard. They are not the type of people who lie down to take rests before an afternoon of activity. Yet when you have this horrible condition you absolutely have to spend your energy like a person spends money on a tight budget and you have to lie down and close your eyes and it actually gets so bad you can't even watch television because it's all there in your face. This terrible world. Glaring at you. That's what they call photophobia. Oh those were the days. My early twenties. Totally messed up by an illness many people don't even believe exists. Not even I believed it existed because it was me and I had no rights to be ill. I still had to push push push even though I'd already pushed so hard I'd broken. Not one of my friends ever truly gave any support. Except perhaps one, who did it in a subtle way. Then one day someone I'd only just met, who'd asked me about myself ~ and we were on Ecstasy after a huge party and so talking intently ~ said to me Your life has been ruined by this thing. And I cried because that was the one person. The one single person who ever listened to me, understood me and belived me.

Now I have a new idea for the future. Something I'm going to do that I could make good money out of. But it's a business requiring start up investment. I would need £5-10,000 so how I'm going to make that I've no idea. Maybe I should get writing the children's books. I know it's not the gateway to a fortune but I heard you get about £3000 in advance per book. So if I wrote 4, I'd have my money. Oh yeah but there's tax, agent's fees and VAT. OK maybe if I wrote ten books I'd have my money. But I'm determined to do this business idea. It's a magazine I want to publish and I'm sure people would buy it. So that's my wish that can and will come true. My family will remember that as I grew up I'd run to my parents with "business ideas". I was full of them. I even daydreamed of becoming a property developer. Aged 10. People don't understand me. Just because in the illegal world of drugs I'm unwilling to get deeply involved, they think I'm either soft or stupid. I'm just the type of person who likes to do things above board and to know that what's mine is mine and that the Proceeds of Crime Act ain't gonna take my plasma TV away. Know what I'm saying?

Well I'll leave y'all on that note. Have a very Happy New Year everyone. Here's to a fantabulous 2012!!




Illustrated: I love pandas and Freesat is coming! (Without the Plasma TV (for now)).


HARDCORE TECHNO VOL 5

Good Morning

GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING. Finally I have got on a (public) computer that works because the mad woman who's always hogging it isn't here today. That kebab I had yesterday had way more salad than in the picture by the way. I woke up at 7am-ish so I'm already craving a lie-down. But no! Dishes have to be washed. I have purchased brand new Alpine flavour washing up liquid just for the occasion. Also I am dead set on FINALLY EMPTYING OUT THE COLLECTED ASSORTED RUBBISH MY HOUSE IS FULL OF. I have found out I am a compulsive hoarder of spectacular proportions. Eg I have at least 4 if not 5 televisions. I haven't a clue whether any bar the one I use actually work. I threw out 3 dining chairs earlier in the year. Clutter clutter. Endless pears of jeans with busted pockets. Or huge holes in them. Or too small. Or too big. Or just wrong. Endless clothes with fag burns and holes and motorbike-repair-style oil stains upon them. No! Life is going out of control. And I missed Jeremy Kyle (stuck record talk show host who "resolves" loud lower class people's problems and is 100% likely to criticize anybody who dares not to have a job!) because I was glugging my methadone. I did drink a can of cyder this morning, but my alcohol is less than half the govt's recommended weekly limits, meaning NO DOCTORLY PERSON CAN CRITICIZE ME for the odd drink. I was never into AA type meetings because everybody seems to say "I'd have one drink then I couldn't stop" whereas I always could stop after one. I'd space my drinks throughout the day to achieve a mild but constant intoxication. I never liked the taste of booze. And I never liked feeling drunk and out of control. Ironically it was a feeling of being IN control that hard drugs, specifically heroin, gave me. Confidence. Energy. Antidepressant effect. My problems were over! (So it seeeeeemed, ahem.) Oh cripes I had better ping off now else I'll only get terminated mid-sentence. Take care y'all!


Illustrated: A a hearty breakfast; B Jeremy Kyle (looks just like my brother!!!)

On a moonless night

WHAT A LOAD OF BLAH BLAHS I posted yesterday. Those are the product of an unproductive brain. All I have done... ALL I HAVE DONE is skim through this one novel in French. I haven't a clue what happens because my concentration span is too fractured. Every single word I didn't know I looked up and wrote into a glossary notebook with the intention of reading back from page one, novel in one hand, notebook in the other now with a completely clear understanding of the text. O yeah and I took up Spanish, which is really easy. No more idiotic pictograms that all look the same. No more hong dong bing and bong words all nearly the same. I was looking for a project I could complete that had some usefulness. Chinese will never be useful to me at an intermediate level (ie after 2 or 3 years' daily study) unless I go hardcore backpacking. It won't be useful to in a career context unless I get past university level. That means 6 or 7 years' study at home. I can use Spanish just by flying to Spain for £50. Actually I'd like to go to Paris, Berlin and Madrid on the same trip. I love big cities. I once spent half an hour in Madrid. I looked out over this huge city, simmering on an endless plain, thinking "wow, I'm in the centre of Spain". British tourists hardly ever go anywhere but the coast and Madrid is about 200 miles from the sea.

The idiotic shitheads from the council are coming round tomorrow to criticize me for living like a pig. So I'm having a half-hearted effort at cleaning up. I'm just afraid of making a worse mess where I can't find "important" documents etc. I'm terrified of throwing something important away. Hence the hoarding. Anyway, least I can clean up to loud Spanish dialogues. I don't get why I can follow Spanish very easily, even when the words are just as unfamiliar as any other language. Eg an apple is una manzana. Yet Chinese words: hong dong shui dui lua I cannot remember. I think maybe it has to do with Spanish having grammar parallel to French. The little words are nothing like the French. A shop is una tienda; a street is una calle. When you get to posher vocabulary things are more similar to the English: libertad, igualdad, fraternidad and of course la electricidad.

I'm reluctantly agreeing (with myself) to go back on medication. Yet again.

I desperately need to see a doctor yet have no psychiatrist ie nobody willing to alter or tweak my meds.

When I went to this God-forsaken new methadone clinic I was promised continuity of care. This has not happened. The old clinic had a consultant psychiatrist who diagnosed me and prescribed the pills I'm on now. The new clinic's doctor said she could not prescribe medication so I lost my psychiatrist and appear to have no hope of getting a new one.

The bullshit on the clinic wall says you are to be involved in and allowed to make choices in your treatment. This has not happened. I am on 110mg methadone against my wishes. I want the dose lowered. And they force me to drink it in the pharmacy meaning I drag myself up there feeling crap each morning and have to wait 2 hours to feel OK. For years I drank my juice in bed meaning I got up feeling fine. I don't know whether the pharmacist is watering my dose but that is how it feels. I'm not using on top; haven't used any heroin in however many weeks I cannot remember, yet I go through spates of quasi-withdrawal symptoms in the mornings. Anyway my new worker, the third one I've had in 3 months, is getting me a clinical review so I can hopefully pick up my methadone like a normal adult and drink half of it before I sleep and the other half before I get up. The 2 times I really need it and it's not there now. He should also get my dose reduced. It was meant to stay at 110mg for 4 weeks (for no good reason). It's been on this ridiculous dose for 6 weeks. If they don't give what I want I'm making a detailed formal complaint as I feel totally let down by this clinic. The titration nurse was bullying, coercive and rude, forcing me into groups therapy I had no interest in. I went twice only so I could say I'd tried it and hated it. The second time I left within 4 minutes of it starting. Once you've been to one such group you've been to them all. They're set up as a punishment for people caught shoplifting so at least half the group announce at "check in" that they do not want to be there. I used more toned down language and said I was giving it a try.

The only week I stayed the entire session I was hypomanic enough to dominate the entire discussion. Then of course my mood crashed and I couldn't face the same group of people who I knew would have assumed only crack could make somebody that high. My experience and the life of the average junkie have diverged a lot over the last few years. I haven't been out begging or shoplifting since I can't remember when. I cut down my heroin use gradually with no help from any clinic or group. All these clinics do is put excessive pressure on you. I did a bit of crack ~ for the first time in ages I might add ~ about a week and a half ago. I used the stuff 3 or 4 days in a row. I gave up by buying a gigantic French dictionary, notebook and novel and forcing myself to look up every new word I found. It felt like Chinese torture in the beginning, then I couldn't stop it. I was up at 4am with 6 Feet Under playing and those dictionary pages whirring. I didn't "enjoy" this activity but I liked the brain-dead emptiness of it. As I say, I lost contact with the narrative flow nearly all the time so I was just looking up words words words and the same words cropped up over and over "mes larmes" means "my tears" I now know. But French isn't onomatapoeic. So a brush which is shush-ush-ushshshshshy, sweeping over the paper, is le pinceau. Which I looked up endless times yet still could not remember out of context.

So my mind is blank and my mood is low, despite all this talk.

I'm going to have to take risperidone, when I really want something else. Because I have been let down YET AGAIN by a network that seems deliberately to be constructed with man-shaped holes for people like me to fall down.

That's it for today. Don't be offended if I haven't visited your blog in an obscene length of time; I've visited nobody.


Illustrated: the book I'm reading by the Chinese immigrant Dai Sijie who, incidentally, had lived in France only 14 years when his French got good enough to write novels in the language. The title means "On A Moonless Night"

Day well spent

I CLEARED OUT a great swathe of my room yesterday by piling up Everest-like peaks of books ~ all due to go out to the local charity shop. Along with the books are a host of indispensible accoutrements for the modern home: Digital 8 video cassettes marked up with somebody’s holiday to Zambia (found on street corner). A white arran knitted jumper (found in skip by my house). Etc etc etc.


Then I fell asleep most of the afternoon. Cleared some more. It still looks like a bomb’s hit the place. Just leaving much less rubble.


Then I slept all night as well so it was a day well spent!

Cup a soup day

I COULD have waited till this evening to post. But you'd just get a longer rant on a miserable day; so you might as well get it now.

I got up at nine. Took methadone. Drank a chicken vegetable Cup A Soup with croutons and watched the Royle Family Xmas Special while I waited for it to come on. By ten o'clock I didn't feel like a block of ice any more.

Went up the methadone chemist. I'm too paranoid these days to bother doing anything much outside my house. I got the hell out as quick as possible. Nothing at all to eat in Morrisons. I'm strictening up my diet again. I'd gone in there for coleslaw but had gone off the idea by the time I got near the shelf.

My drugs worker seems to have totally the wrong idea. He thinks I'm on a level because I'm not cycling up and down any more. Yeah a level. A level of misery. I could ring Naomi but her Nutter Club, the one good thing in life, has been cancelled. And if I phone her I'll be asking for help. I don't want to ask for help. I have this horrible feeling that anything I do say could be used against me in some way. I know it's probably "paranoia", but I can't help feeling this way.

I don't even know whether to take my pills again. They're not antidepressants and my problem is that I'm a miserable bastard. I'm not psychotic anymore. In fact I'm not even sure that "schizoaffective" isn't a misdiagnosis. Risperidone is a psychic blocker. I don't even know wether my psyche should be blocked out. I could have got a job as a medium some years ago, but didn't want to get possessed. It's this psychic function that antipsychotic meds block out. So I don't even know that they're a good thing. What risperidone did was put breaks on my mania and stop me hearing voices. I hardly ever hear voices now, despite no risperidone. The voices I do get are in my head. True, my head is more and more confused. But I'm too confused to tell anyone. Like I say they would probably find some way of using my own words against me.

I don't feel my drugs worker understands much of what I say to him. I'm too scared to admit how I really feel (that drug addicts, especially me, should be lined up and shot by firing squad). It's probably good to put it in a comedy way like that.

And by the way those bastards in Switzerland are holding a public vote on whether foreigners should be able to travel in and make use of the country's liberal euthanasia laws. Cut off my last hope why don't you.

Anna Grace sicked out her small opiate relapse and was clean last I heard. I don't know what happened to her elevated manic mood but it probably helped her through the worst of the cold turkey. The worst thing about being opiate-sick is that it makes you see how harrowingly bleak and worthless an existence this life is. That's why most detoxing addicts want to kill themselves.

I would say I hope Anna stays clean but she would say that's hypocrisy as I am the ultimate limp handshake as far as any determination to stay drug-free goes. I've decided to give my life 2 days from now, to see how it goes. Then I don't know what I'm going to do. There's no point being on heroin. I'm shocked by the local junkies' low standards. The guy they say whose gear is best is selling utter shite. It's like a gear version of crack. You can only feel it going in, a little whoosh as you IV it. Then nothing. The whole point of gear in the olden days was that it made you feel way better ~ all day ~ than crappy methadone ever did. Unless you're willing to dose yourself somewhere towards 200mg, which the dr offered me, but I never wanted. The drugs clinic's equivalence tables were ridiculously skewed, advising mizzling small methadone doses that never compensated for street gear of decent quality.

Well that's it for today. I'm nagging myself to clean up my house. That's why I got up early to begin with: to turn on Vanessa Feltz on BBC London radio and do the kitchen whilst the populace of this great metropolis ring in to have a good moan.

I just checked yesterday's comments. Too para to open up anything earlier. Don't know who I thought had got in touch with me but ... whatever. Yes Jeannie if I'd been born in earlier generations there would have been no psychiatric treatment bar glorified prison. Least I can take those pills. I wish my head wasn't so confused about all this. I don't know why I am confused. Or how. I just know that I go round and round in circles about it all.

Well I have to go. Cup A Soup is powdered soup Taffeta. You add boiling water, stir and eat the croutons off the top. Anyone who buys Cup A Soup without croutons, in my humble view, deserves to be shot between the eyes.

Mop

YO WHATS UP DUDE. I'm watching the Wire learning American drug talk. I now know that a g-pack means something like an ounce or a thousand dollars worth of heroin or crack. Anna Grace put out a desperate shout on her blog for anyone to sell her some gear in Yuma, Arizona or New Mexico (somewhere down there) and got this message back:

Yo Babe dis Boomer from Yuma. I king o dis town. You want some Venom? I got da best Venom in Yuma. Dimes, twenties, you name it I do it for ya. You suck my cockie I giv y'all 50% discount. I'm only 13", dat be easy for a big ho like you to handle. I smear chocolate sauce on my cock and dip it in chocolate cheerios you lick that shit off. My cell number be 7252217 so gimme a tinkle any time, mothafucker

Anna said she laughed her head off and she's got depression worse than me. So Boomer did her a favour, even if he didn't supply her with "venom" (the local heroin brand). I hope Boomer isn't offended ...

I am up at 5:30am to clear and mop my floors for when the council rats lady comes round. I ain't got no rats but I did have a psychotic break and leave my house like a pigsty. The landlord came round when I was manic and hadn't slept for days. O man the look on his face was a picture to be observed! Then this mad lady came and asked whether I was in touch with mental health services. Did I have eyes on stalks or something? Far as I was concerned I was having a whale of a time. Only problem was I was too manic to think sentences. Just random words pinging back and forth across my brain and funny boing boing boing noises. When I got really manic the ceiling kept talking to me.

I could do with some mania back as I'm stuck in depression (still), sleeping ALL night long from as early as 5pm some nights... sleeping right through sometimes to 10am. When I wake up earlier, I just make up the "lost" sleep in the afternoon.

Reading back that "down but not out yet" post annoys me. My ranting about drugs drugs drugs and how much I love the needle and hate people who don't love it too (that was my point: being bundled together as "addicts" when our patterns of use and degree of dependence varies as much as red does from violet. The full spectrum.

I skipped day 2 of the Intuitive Recovery Course and regretted it instantly. The course tutor phoned me up and said I can still come to day 3 next week so I will. I felt like the biggest idiot for babying out like that. And I know I sound like a snob talking about the other people in there. I don't look down at them, more to the point I feel like they are looking down at me as the bigger fuck-up. And I don't relate to hardcore crack addiction. Shoplifting, robbing for crack. Crack is a high; heroin is a medicine. Heroin soothes me. Crack just winds me up. I don't know why I was sounding off so empty like that but it's just how I feel and I felt very uncomfortable that my heartfelt answers were unacceptable. I use not to feel high but to feel OK, maybe an exaggerated OK. That's why I call it medicine. That's no excuse to use, but it is my reason. Heroin smoothed out my mood swings dramatically from day one.

Yes I was having mood swings that seemed suspiciously "bipolar" long before I ever medicated them with heroin. Only difference then was the downs went further down than the fleeting high ever lifted me up. It was early this year that I had a full blown mania with no drugs to blame and no withdrawal. I was no longer medicating with heroin so the only medicine in my system was methadone and methadone never cut it mental-problems-wise. Hence my continual use of heroin. Anyway this mania took me way up high. The doctors saw it (there was no hiding it). One doctor saw me when I was so out of it I couldn't even answer a straight question without babbling on 234 subjects I thought were desperately pertinent to what had been asked. They kept cutting me short saying I was "derailing topic".

Why am I babbling away on this. O yeah because I got to mop my floor and I don't want to. I'm having a cigarette now. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it. How I'm ever going to live my life off drink and drugs I have no idea and there's no heroin coming today. I've had an alcoholic drink and I've had caffeine. Caffeine does nothing for me when Im down, but when I was high I had this thing going on that coffee comes from Colombia, so does cocaine, there's cocaine in my coffee ~ that's why I feel so high. I also thought (or more to the point felt) that I was turning into electricity.

Well I've got to run. Take care y'all and hi Boomer.

Illustrated: this mop is far more clean and white than mine!

Slept/drum & bass/jungle/hardcore/cleaning/shopping/etc

I THOUGHT I WAS running out of energy, having spent most of the night awake, then pinging down the chemist for my methadone, then going home, then having a black coffee for energy (physically tired), then another coffee, then having the most fun cleaning I've ever had in my life. Then feeling physically like I was on speed. Then feeling like I was going to have a panic attack.

Physically exhausted, I put myself to bed, saying "you are ill, and you are mentally ill, lie down, this will pass" ~ so I slept the expected two hours till it sounded like Loose Women or Doctors was on (different channels; couldn't have been both) ... I put the covers over me like a tent and slept some more, aching all over and genuinely feeling ill. Then I got up feeling so hungry I was sick. I seem to have lost a stone in weight: or the scales I found on the street were inaccurate. I've no idea. [One stone is 14 lbs or about 6.5kg.]

This evening I did some irritating little things I had to. Then shopping. Morrisons supermarket. Tex Mex pizza. Best ever. The self service till was like a robot at a hardcore rave. Please please scan (an) the next itemplease scan WAIT FOR AN ASSISTANT!!) lots of fun. And that pizza is amazing. I only had chips (which are Iceland American style curly fries (do they actually have curly fries in America? These are lovely). Then Holby City (hospital drama) came on. I missed EastEnders.

I'm scanning the radio for decent pirate stuff. The drum and bass they're playing sounds a good 17 years old! Proper Ragga Jungle. That's what I'm looking for.

Drink is down to 2 cans at 7.5% ABV ie 1 litre. It's up to 85p a can! Will this torment never cease??!! Nah, don't wanna be a drinker all my life. The alcohol is GOING!

Now I have to not drink coffee, which I appear to be hypersensitive to. I mean this was full on speeding on TWO cups normal one heaped teaspoon. Coffee has never been quite that strong before. I mean, this was physical, hence the anxiety. The highest hyper highs I have had have been totally out of sync with any coffee drinking. E.g. the Mental Hospital Day ~ hadn't had a cup for five hours. Had only had one or possibly two. Don't need caffeine. Nicotine has to go as well. Cigarettes are a terrible poison. Why should I be dependent on outside drugs to poison myself.

Now I have to finish what I barely started that is clearing crap I don't know what is relevant or not. No I'm not allowed a flamethrower, which would make clearing up far easier. Yeah yeah highly irresponsible I know so it's boring old chucking out. Let me indulge a fantasy once or twice. So now the hunt is on for Proper "Old Skool" as they call it to make me feel ancient (ie hardcore rave 1991, 1992) or Ragga Jungle (probably won't find that) or ancient sounding but probably modern rapid drum & bass with an overgrown schoolboy running out of rhymes on top.

Traaaaaaaa!!!! How are y'all. See I'm not irritably ranting tonight. Clean clean clean and cleaner. Clean me clean up. Live a clean life. Clean and Serene. That's me goal ;-)



21:29 London Radio: Eh, the Greek stuff ain't bad...
01:22 hrs Love FM Live .com (lovefmlive.com) good garage after midnight

Nearly Normal...!

... WELL I SHALL BE nearly normal, fairly soon.

The landlord's kindly henchman came by this morning. He mentioned there's still a problem with dirty floors. I pointed out that when you clear as much as I've cleared, clean floors are the last priority. They inevitably get scattered with residue of everything, so Cosmetic Cleaning, I'm afraid, has to wait till last.

I've thrown out ~ literally ~ at least 20 black sacks full of rubbish.

There's still a lot of tidying to do. My clothes need sorting. The 50% or more that don't even fit are due for the hospice shop. Those that are too torn or cigarette-burned to sell on get recycled, so it's all good.

Plus I have a leaning tower of pizza of paperbacks also yearning to be chucked out ~ hopefully sold on at a good £1 each. If only I could find a decent bookshop that takes in second hand books. In my area the second hand book market is a cartel operated by charity shops
who demand all donations FREE. Charity begins at home, MY home. They're getting my clothes free of charge. For my dearly beloved books, I'm afraid, I require a little bit of HARD CASH!

Now I must ping because it's nearly midnight and I wanted to post something on Tuesday.

The real news is in my next post, due in an hour or so ~ HOT NEWS! ~ SIT TIGHT!!

Illustrated: lovely pine floor boards. No mine are nowhere near as clear or as clean as that. And won't be until I move out and some less scruffy bastard moves in!