Sorted

I'VE SORTED out THREE pressing things today that were doing my head in.

1: the council wanted to perform a Residence Check ~ to make sure that the person living at the address really was me

2: my Service Charge payments have been messed up since I signed a form authorizing their direct withdrawal from my account. Nothing has been withdrawn, making me look like a freeloading fraudster

3: and worst of all my only bank account has been hit by FRAUDSTERS trying to take a direct debit off my account and putting it £200 in the red (that's over $300) ~ give or take a few pennies. I rang up their helpline ENRAGED and got told to enter my nearest branch where I was considerably less enraged thanks to chainsmoking and alcohol (which calms me down). Turns out nobody had tried to fraud me. A direct debit from another customer had been typed incorrectly hitting MY account not theirs. Now all £197 has been refunded and I am a fully fledged human being with a bank account once more!

Illustrated: a map of London highlighting Islington, where I don't live... or DO I??!?




HARD TRANCE



ARCHANGEL GABRIEL: TRANCE TEKNO



"AWESOME SEGMENT"

My New Home

I AM GOING TO BE LIVING IN A NEW HOUSE. I don't know when. But within not too long. Mentally supported housing, it's called. That is a mentally ill hostel rather than a mentally all over the place (because everybody here is weird) Emergency Accommodation.

It hasn't been sorted yet, but Deshane is working on it.

I spoke to Naomi tonight who was saying I have to go to a Dual Diagnosis club under a psychotic team.

Now nobody knows whether I should actually be treated by the people I go to see tomorrow because I am housed by one borough and live in another. Nobody is sure. But it seems to me I'm meant to stay as i currently am ie not go to the new place. But Naomi said go anyway and sort it out from there.

Everything is a mess. For once it's not one of my own making.

So I get a new home and hamsters are allowed! (First question I asked.) I want to make the Tubby Swine a new house out of glass with separate burrow compartments etc etc partitioned in the glass. You just use Silicone Sealant to hold the glass apart it's really easy to make a hamsterarium, so I'm told. It needn't even be waterproof, provided it IS only hammies you're using it for...

I couldn't sleep last night so tonight I've taken the risperidone early. It doesn't put me under sleepwise but it keeps me under. My head is lit up with the most beautiful imagery tonight but I'm not feeling hyped up. I feel very tired and I've only taken half of that risperidone. I'm hoping to get really good sleep tonight.

I'm not in the best of moods which isn't a problem as regards sleep. I tend to oversleep when I'm down.

Hey I'm getting a new house a new house a new house. Wow!

Abba to E to Mental Mania

I AM LISTENING TO ABBA. Proof positive if any was required that I am in recovery from SEVERE MENTAL BREAKDOWN. I found Mamma Mia down Morrisons for a few quid. The lurid red heart on the cover made me buy it as a FUCK YOU to sneery supermarket staff, so I made sure I went through the slow isle where a surly person serves you, not self service as I usually do.

The sneery looks make such purchases so much more worthwhile (shame I didn't get one). Same as when I pick up cig ends from the bus stop. It's always better when somebody's watching disapprovingly. One time one Jamaican man had the cheek to inform me "that's disgusting" NOT AS DISGUSTING AS THE EXTORTIONATE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT TAX I shot back. He shut his mouth then. He looked like a Labour voter. Sad.

I'm voting Tory next time as long as they lower taxes for the rich. I want to be rich and I want to pay low taxes so I'm voting for whoever lowers them most for Proper People. High taxes for the poor don't bother me at all. We already have them. It's called the Council Tax. The one I'm being sued for not paying. The one my solicitor wants me "severely mentally impaired" for. Now that I'm a hallucinating paranoid mood swing nutter on antipsychotics I might go for it. Unless I'm depressed again, in which case I don't believe I exist, so I don't bother engaging with forms of any description. Mainly because my depressed self believes it's natural and right that I should live on the streets anyhow. And that the answer for just about everything is a flat-fronted commuter train whooshing into London. (Trains going into go faster than out of. Flat fronts are best for maximum fatal head injuries. I was researching this issue that day when the BASTARD DRIVER actually read my mind and knew I wanted to jump. He waved arms at me! I know I've said this before but honestly how did he know??? I wasn't exactly hanging off the end of the platform.

I was blaring out this Mamma Mia movie when Naomi the Nuttery Club lady rang up re my antipsychotic problems. She said "ooh what's that music" I said "do you like Abba?" she said yeah. I said well you can borrow it on Thursday but she's already got it.

I have to say it's a HELL of a lot better than I thought it would be. I LOATHE that Dancing Queen song. The only Abba tunes I really like are Money Money Money (of course) and Take a Chance on Me. And Chickadee Chickadoo whatever it's called. I never actually VIEWED most of the film. Just smoked fags and looked at blogs. I keep forgetting to comment so y'all probably think I'm dead rude, ignoring y'all. I'm not ignoring y'all. I'm just plain rude!

Now it's blasting out at 2 in the morning with German dialogue. I love German dialogue. Double value on all my DVDs. I now have a good 16, purchased in the course of a week. Tomorrow I get Burton/Taylor in Cleopatra. I know it's crap, but I like her look and I Like the scenery. Main reason I watch films: bright colours, nice scenery, nice actresses.

I know I should be gay because I like Madonna and like musicals but seriously do you know what you have to do to be gay? Wear TUCKED IN TEESHIRTS, cut your hair REALLY SHORT. Snogging boys I've done just for the shock value but they're not as nice as girls let's face it women ain't called the Fairer Sex for nothing. So I'm plain old metrosexual. I feel desperately disappointed in this [I meant being straight is boring, but it's not boring, I was just being provocative]. Also gay clubs are FAR too sexual for my taste. I've been to a couple of gay-mixed nights, but didn't really like them. When I was a clubber my Big Thing To Do was go to Trade Club... but it never happened.

Trade Club was THEE best club in London. It ran from about 4am to 4pm Sundays. Heavy heavy banging hypnotic E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E music. Ie absolutely fantastic. But I never went. I went Sunny Side Up instead, which ran from about midday Sunday till around 9pm, meaning you could spend Friday and Saturday night actually having a sleep cycle, then go clubbing Sunday afternoon and be daisy-fresh (well as fresh as anyone on an E comedown can be)... by Monday. E comedown doesn't really hit you till 3 days later hence Friday night high: Tuesday blues. About half the people at Sunnies as they called it were spacefaced nutters who'd been going all weekend and had probably had twelve pills each by this time.


Trancy hard house: what I went there for

The other half were like me: people who appreciated a sleep cycle. The press often compared Sunny Side up to Trade because it was thee most banging hardhouse club I ever went to. But Sunnies was a normal straight club. I never liked gay clubs as I say even though most are actually mixed I didn't like the sexualized vibe. Clubbing is about being free and expressing who you are. When I was persuaded into a gay club, I stood out like a sore thumb with my long hair and non-tucked-in teeshirts and no belt. Let alone one with a huge buckle.

Maybe I should play about with y'all and do a protesting too much thing so y'all think I AM gay. Well I'm hardly out of touch with my feminine side am I.

Everything I tried just led to the usual situation in my personal life. Me in bed. On my own. Crying my heart out because I felt broken, empty, abused, confused and very lonely.

That was the end effect of Ecstasy too. Though I ADORED that drug, because it's not just a high, it's transcendently high. Cloud 9, 10, 11... going up up UP!

Everybody's happy. Everybody's smiley. Everybody free. Everybody E.

Then the E wears off and they become the miserable gits they are in real life. And after the after after after party, no matter what adventures happened between then and then I always ended up in my own bed, eventually (never brought anyone back to mine: ALWAYS went to theirs. I had a thing about other people's beds, other people's showers... much more exciting)... after all this I ended up in bed, alone and crying. Wondering why I had said what I said (E makes me ULTRA frank, to the point of friendship-damage)... why I had done what I'd done. Usually it was just me being a tit, dancing on the stage but on a comedown this feels ridiculously over the top)... most of all I felt let down and lied to. Badly lied to. So I curled up in bed, crying again.

I had been to wonderland. A paradise so high I wasn't even dancing with people, I was dancing with fractals, dancing along a rainbow. I didn't just find the pot of gold at that rainbow's end, I picked it up and showered in stardust.

And then I came down down down and reality was just too much to take.

The last few times a kind of trip kicked in as the E-rush wore off. My books were dancing on the shelves. Everything was pink, blue, pastel coloured dots. Maggots in my contact lens case. I had to put the lenses in with the writhing maggots, telling myself they weren't really there. Telling myself this did nothing to diminish the hallucination. Then I took downers to sleep. I couldn't tolerate the cannabis most people toked to come down. I was on Valium (bought on the street, of course). Then I switched to heroin ~ far naughtier.

The fact that my friends disapproved only made it more attractive. I thought they were really uptight, snorting weak coke, thinking they were it. I scored heroin via dealers I met through the local homeless (my true home crowd: they never judged me, always accepted me. Only true acceptance I ever got was from the crustie junkies. My true crowd. Not the shoplifters or the prozzies. The crusties. And nearly ALL are dead now. The only people who "got" me. All dead. I'm one of very few left. So I took this heroin in secret. Because it was forbidden. Because it worked for me. Because unlike that coke, even the dealer's personal... it was crap. Washed crack cocaine: THAT worked. Heroin worked. In the end I switched drugs totally.

Raving and clubbing burns you out in a way not even crack does. Taking eight ecstasy in a night really does hammer brains and body. I was never into multi-pilling. I did 1.5 say at midnight, so by one I was flying. By two this dose was peaking and it was time for my second dose: one more pill. By three am I felt fantastic. by four everything was going full blast. Most clubs chuck out at six, so my 2.5 pills were coasting down luxuriously from six to eight.

Usually I went to someone or other's house, but was home by eleven when a couple of blue Valium pushed me down enough to get three or four hour's sleep. I never slept dirty. Always showered first. Showering on ecstasy is like that "dancing naked in the rain" song. Showering on ketamine is like showering in a spray of diamonds. Mushrooms added extra sparkle when I wanted it. Those were my holy trinity: ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine. Ketamine was attractive because though I couldn't tolerate spliff, ketamine was OK to me. And lots of people were scared of it, which only increased its appeal (have you noticed I can be a contrary person?)

I genuinely loved the K trip. It's quiet and sparse. Very sparse compared to acid, which is sensory overload. On ketamine you float through outer space. One time I flew through the thorax of a gigantic metalic insect each rib clang-clang-clanging as I thrummed past it. The vibrations of ketamine (you literally feel a low-pitched vibration) were to me AUM, sacred syllable of the universe.

These drugs were my religion.

But you need to discard any ideas that I was somehow a fucked up acid casualty. I used E ONLY at parties. One per weekend. Any more was just overdoing it too much, you really do fry your brains on too much E. I knew about E, knew the bad brain damage neurotoxicity publicity so I took it with care. Yeah the last couple of times I took 5, then 8 pills but that was just 2 occasions. Through most of my E-phase I was known as somebody who DIDN'T TAKE IT WHEN I DIDN'T WANT IT. Even though I ALWAYS had it on me at a dance party (only the desperate score in the club where prices are more than double what they should be).

Like most drugs, like an empty glass once you fill what's full, what's as high as can be, you don't get any higher, the full glass overflows, the drug overflows sideways. Instead of Eeeing you're tripping. This is the law of diminishing returns. Didn't Jesus counsel "moderation in all things"? I'm sure he didn't have MDMA in mind, but it's good advice. If you WILL take drugs take this advice and TAKE THE VERY MINIMUM NEEDED TO GET THE EFFECT YOU WANT. Taking more is just wasting money, wasting serotonin, dopamine etc; wasting brain cells.

So that's me and E. Me and raving. I adored it while I did it, but eventually it all got too much and I wanted to do other things. I cleared myself out for several months but the mood swings I'd experienced since my early 20s were worse. I felt like the sea. High tide (me buzzing on nothing) meant a low tide was coming (depression). Heroin squashed my moods into a flat line and I thought I was cured of this cyclothymia. Then it came back ON heroin (ie heroin wasn't working any more). And y'all know what happened lately. Those mood swings were severe even by psychiatrists' standards. I know what mild-moderate-severe mean in the context of bipolar. Now I have bipolar symptoms.

The doctor didn't use that word but he did say when handing over the risperidone script "it should damp down these mood problems". What I experienced was definitely bipolar in that I swing between two opposite extremes. Bipolar disorder is another matter and it must be carefully diagnosed. So I don't know what's wrong. But it would be just like me to be a manic-depressive junkie, wouldn't it?

I've gone past wanting an excuse for inexplicable behaviour and self-neglect and neglect of pretty straightforward responsibilities like filling out council tax benefit forms and sending them off. I got to a point where I was engaging with nothing. It all seemed pointless. I felt like an utter waste of space and a fraud. And I was usually able to put on a convincing front which confused friends and drug workers. It was Mother Hubbs, who says she was on lithium before she dropped it in favour of heroin (both are mood stabilizers) who told me I was bipolar ~ years ago. I thought she was exaggerating. Then I asked her more recently, "do you really think I am?" and she said "you know you are".

I don't know what I "know" but I know I'm up against something pretty formidable. More formidable than any drug I've ever tried. I mean this high I had not very long ago, the one that had me posting rubbish for days on end... that literally did feel better than any drug I've ever experienced. Now I'm down towards normality I'm pissed off, to be frank. Well if you got amazing free highs, wouldn't you want to keep them? It was the agitation, volatility, physical exhaustion to the point of nausea (having forgot to eat), utter inability to focus on anything longer than a few seconds, a total lack of judgement ~ not so much regarding should I or should I not do this, but judging what was or was not right for another person... I honestly had no idea... the utter inability to care for myself, the inability to think of anything without the idea popping open like a flower, every petal exploding with streamers and little ducks dancing down these streamers saying "hello! hello! hello!". Utter distraction. It was this. This mess that I could see I was in, yet didn't really care about. That I was hearing walls, cars, ceilings talk to me. I knew I was going crazy but didn't care. Yet I was angry enough at having been ignored, written off, misdiagnosed that when my druggieworker suggested I see a psychiatrist I agreed wholeheartedly. I knew in my heart I wasn't right. The psychiatrists knew where I was coming from. I wasn't complaining of feeling bad. I was telling them I felt EXTREME. And I was going very very fast. so fast I lost touch with my own thought process repeatedly. If I put food in the oven I didn't know it was in there till the smoke alarm reminded me. Well it's past 3am and I've not slept. Sorry to go on about my mental probs yet again. You must understand this is a big deal to me I have to reach some solution, some serenity, some sanity. If sanity is good then I want it. If it's boring: no thanks. I wasn't bored when I was mad. See I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've messed myself up so bad I don't even know what "ordinary" or "healthy" or "balanced" really are any more.

I need a Speak and Spell machine. Perhaps then I can phone home. Maybe somebody will rescue me. I'm lonely here. Nobody seems to understand where I have been. I went to wonderful places more beautiful than you can imagine. And I was tripping on my own natural Higher Power. No drugs. If you honestly do still think I'm on drugs then do yourself a favour and stop reading this blog, because you're totally missing my point.

Well this has gone on long enough. From Abba to Ecstasy to me being a nutter. What's new. Take it easy people. Sorry if this is a mess. I'm not editing, else I'll get uptight and won't want it to go. All I'm doing to this is spellchecking, paragraphing it out then BAM! It's yours to skim or pore over or have a good laugh at.

Take care, lots of love

xx

PS I can just tell someone is going to read this and assume I only took heroin to be "naughty" I had many motivations. Its deadliness was a big one. The fact it made me FEEL BETTER was what kept me taking heroin. "Self-medication" as the nurse who never medicated me (did she think heroin was a good thing?) used to spout...

The flakes on the spoon are ketamine, cooked down from medical ketamine for injection into dried ketamine salts, which are snorted up the nose. Ketamine is NOT horse tranquillizer. It's a dissociative agent used for emergency anaesthesia and pain relief where more diamorphine is not appropriate. IF YOU HEAVILY ABUSE KETAMINE WITH HEROIN AND HAVE A BAD ACCIDENT, DOCTORS MAY HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY ADMINISTERING ADEQUATE PAIN RELIEF... YET ANOTHER REASON TO GO EASY!


MAMMA MIA MOVIE: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME



ABBA: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
fully original version
don't anna frid and agnetha look a bit like men in drag?...??



MAMA MIA MOVIE: RED NOSE DAY SPOOF



This tune is the kind of stuff I used to go E-E-Eing to. Without the tacky voiceover. And less cheesy eurotrance. More hardhouse with trance on top. Or hard Goa (late 90s Return to the Source type clubs were my favourite parties; tranced-up hardhouse was my favourite music)
shall i add a few more dance musical terms just to confuse you more if you're not into this shit? hardcore-jungle-tekno, drum & bass, speed garage, grime, deep house, trip-hop, amyl house, psy-trance, gabba, acid techno! There ya have it!!

Stay of execution...

THE IDIOTIC COUNTY COUNCIL have given me a month to get them documentation that they ought really be sending off for themselves. Don't we live in a 24-7 wired-up world? Isn't identity theft on the up? So why don't THEY establish my factuals, instead of leaving it to me to bring in pieces of paper that could really be concocted by anyone with access to a half-decent scanner and laser printer..?

And now for a musical interlude:~

AVE MARIAThis is one of my favourite tunes:

Sorting it out...

TODAY I've an appointment with the evil council who are suing me, taking me to court, sending bailiffs round (I'm surprised a pickup truck sporting mobile guillotine and blood-proof basket with Head-Right Technology (TM) hasn't arrived at my door...
... Well anyway, I sort out the horrible tangle today. (Supposedly.)
Please wish me luck!

Into Town/Bailiff news

I WENT INTO TOWN yesterday, rode the tube for the first time in ages. Once I changed Central Line and sat opposite two Pakistanis, a Somali and a Korean-looking girl and a miserable British business type I felt like I really was in the metropolis.

I went up Tottenham Court Road, where you can stroll for five minutes passing nothing but electronics shops on both sides. The prices weren't as bargainacious as I remember (Argos, a shop that stocks almost everything and you pick from a colour catalogue and collect from local stores where I buy nearly everything in the toasters/kettles/lighting/non-computer electronics league, still beat most of them ~ but Argos only started stocking computers last year) and I tested about 280,000 laptops. I also closed their lids to get a proper idea of how big or small they were, and gently lifted them up ~ which made the Indian assistant in one shop nearly have a coronary. She got straight on her phone. I am sure she took me for a would-be shoplifter. Anyway I found a machine I wanted. But I refuse to fall in love with anything electronic. I suppose at least electronics though they do break down and dislike getting wet are more reliable than most human beings, so at least that is something...

I saw my Mum and Branzie (my stepfather). We had high tea near De Beers' diamond shop (extremely unimpressive display, considering they MINE the things ~ can't they affort proper bulletproof windows? Endless pavé-set sparkly-covered gold and platinum in every window ~ nothing so big as even one single carat to be seen anywhere!

I felt so exhausted I had to go home early. I'm sure they thought it was drugs. No ~ THAT is one of the illnesses everybody thinks is nonexistent but I had for years BEFORE the drug addiction!

Today I went to the council offices. No wonder I couldn't find them before ~ nobody knew where they were even when they were right round the corner, and they were MILES away. Though I DID like the suburban shopping centre ~ bigger than Reading's shops ~ just round the corner. Anyway, the lady I saw rolled her eyes when she saw me trundling up with documents sprouting from every orifice, made SOME sort of sense of them and got me an appointment on Monday with the bod who actually presses "APPROVE" on the computer that pays. THEN, so she says, the thugs can be kept at bay.

And my solicitor telephoned this morning, saying she is faxing everybody left right and centre. She hasn't faxed the prime minister or the queen, but she appears to have faxed everybody else...

Sued by the council! Yet again!!

I GOT A BAILIFFS' LETTER THIS MORNING for unpaid council tax. (Thanks a lot Margaret Thatcher.) Of course my first impulse was to break open a safety razor and do myself in the throat. But of course I didn't do that. I rang up the council (not the Bailiffs ~ I'm not talking to them) in a tone of confusion. They said I was supposed to give in proof of income months ago. I told them I never got the letter. (And anyway why can't THEY contact the Benefits Agency? Why should it be down to me? Idiots.) They said I must reapply. So heaven knows whether they will be willing to backdate the claim. They should do because I am housed here by a DIFFERENT council. Never in a million years would have chosen to live in this borough (thankfully its Conservative, which means terrible services and really low charges! That's why we have no wheelybins and foxes spray rubbish far and wide up the streets. Low council tax. Hell will freeze over before I pay this bill.

If I am liable, they're getting 50p a month max.

Talking of suicide, the man who sold me the miaow mix (mepherdrone) ~ remember that mysterious designer drug I tried that I didn't even know what it was called? That stuff. Well he was a really nice guy. (And before you call him a "drug dealer" bear in mind mepherdrome is currently LEGAL in the UK.) Well I met another friend of mine in the druggie agency reception; she told me he has DIED. Jumped in front of a tube train! How desperate would you have to be to do that??

When I was depressed once I went to the railway station to study the trains ~ ie which was best for maximum head injuries (the flat-fronted express commuter trains running INto London). One of the drivers actually (somehow) seemed to see what I was thinking and, in the split second before he whooshed on by I saw him waving arms at me. I suppose train drivers must know this sort of thing when they see it. But I'd never in a million years do a tube train. Knowing my luck I'd probably fall down the service trench under the live rail!!

I was supposed to go and see computers today but, thanks a lot council ~ am now too distracted. I feel far less depressed than I was before I got the bailiffs' letter though ~ there's nothing like a good fight to give purpose to an empty life!

LONDON TOWN: UNLIKE NEW YORK CITY, with its five cantons, London is divvied up into innumerable local councils. True Londoners take pride in not having a clue where anything is, (entire areas like "Barnes" escaped my attention for years when I first moved here)... or not being able to pronounce place names like Holborn (I say "Ho-burn" ~ like a prostitute doing the splits over a deep fat fryer) or Theydon Bois ("boyss", NOT bwaah!)

On the Dotted Line...

FINALLY and at long long last I have signed the paperwork for where I live!

This after more than six months of floating in a noman'sland of computorial nonexistence (despite signing weekly registers TO both "nonexistent" addresses; despite receiving council tax bills at both)...

Yes finally! And at long, long last...

(Of course I was late for today's appointment and a bolshy woman said I would probably have to wait for ages. So I sunnily replied "that's fine" and spent nearly an hour at my old internet cafe, the one that was always interminably slow, where I used to live and hated living ~ the place where I hardly ever posted because I couldn't find a netcaff to accommodate my basic needs...)

Then I saw da man and he was fine about it all. I had all the appropriate papers (a first ~ for they were actually on me) ~ I signed up. When he asked whether I had any questions I flickered and glibly bowed out of the issue of my alleged half-year of nonexistence and the arrears I would supposedly owe for that.

I'm thinking of taking the council to a formal complaints tribunal for their negligence in that matter. Knowing full well my "mental" and "druggie" situation (I actually said I was on heroin on the original application forms) it is to THEIR negligence not to have furnished me with the appropriate payment slips and plastic swipecard immediately ~ let alone six months down the line...

I will be getting a Housing Services Payment Card "in the next three days" ~ but that's for this place. At least I shan't be running up arrears here ~ I'm resolutely determined not to.

This charge is minimally just under £10; but I would owe more because I so-uniquely WORKED ~ for over TWO YEARS before plunging into the morass of "welfare" I get National Insurance Contribution-based benefit which is slightly higher. Except what the government give with one hand the Council's Housing Department swipe back with another. Meaning I'd actually be far better off (and in a less complexicated situation) if only I'd not bothered working to start with.

And that's my biggest gripe against the British Government. Hard work is rarely rewarded. If you're stupid enough to save thousands and then need nursing care in old age you're expected to burn up these savings ~ and yet profligate folks who drank and gambled every penny in their lives will get such care absolutely free! Which is one more reason I fell out of love with this cursed country and want out as fast as possible.

I shouldn't gripe because anyway I exist now. I really do! I'm on the computer. I've signed the forms. I exist! I exist!! I exist!!!

THERE WAS A KING IN ORKNEY:

Here's another favourite Goethe poem (from Faust I again). Der König in Thule The King of Thule ~ Thule was a mythical isle to the "far north"; it is possibly Orkney (north of the Scottish mainland) or Shetland (the furthest north isles of Britain) or even Greenland...


Es war ein König in Thule
Gar treu bis an sein Grab,
Dem sterbend seine Buhle
Einen goldnen Becher gab.

There was a king in Thule;
faithful to the grave,
who, dying, to his mistress*
a golden goblet gave...

You can read the rest of this in translation here.

Or in the original here.

Or with music, here.

*I haven't a clue what a "Buhle" is anymore. I thought it meant a kinsman; but the internet says it's a mistress... does anyone know any different (and hopefully better ...?)

This is quite funky. Not the sing-song tune I know, but very good. With silent footage of Faust:



Here's the original poem in German, narrated with illustrations:

Sweaty Day: Fur Stuck; Bleach Purchase

IT'S A HOT AND SWEATY DAY here in London. Meaning basically it's not far over 20C. But NOTHING is designed for heat, cold, damp or dry in this country where the railways once announced closure due to "the wrong kind of snow" (not to mention "leaves on the line" ~ yes autumn leaves, the kind that fall each and every year...

ONE OF MY BABIES GOT STUCK to the bottle-tape! I'm glad I found her. Had to stick it with huge swathes of gaffer-type tape and Bashful or one of them I discovered yesterday STUCK BY THE SHOULDER to it. She quickly pinged away when I released her.

I'M STILL COLLECTING INSPIRATION for my pie. (Thanks Nicole.) I did know cottage pie was beef and shepherd's lamb... Tesco's supermarket aparently don't. They sell industrial "Finest Beef Shepherd's Pie" straight for the oven. How very vulgar of them...

OK this has to be quick. I'm on a detour. Have to get back. No news... good news. The local council's computers HAD to go down right on the day I FINALLY dragged myself in there to settle their botched accounts of me... (typical!)...

PS O YEAH and I now have a massive bleach collection for my toilet...

VIDEO:
LEONA LEWIS: BETTER IN TIME GMTV PERFORMANCE
This song has been going round and round my head... I couldn't post it up because some idiot(s) who have posted the proper video to Youtube had "embedding disabled by request"~ duh!?! Why do people do that?? Anybody know..??

Fallen. Rise.

FALLEN? FALLING? RISING (HOPEFULLY). WOTEVA - O! Gimme some sweet inspiration!

THIS MORNING was my scheduled appointment with the nice lady from the Council (who technically are my landlords) re my rent arrears. These have peaked at a shocking level. I highlight the word "peaked" as no way can they ascend any higher from here. I dare not disclose the number either because it is shocking and shameful.

Well I crawled in ther like a depressed water snail and when the lady came down she couldn't see me for ages. We couldn't get a private room and so sat between partitions for this meeting, during which she said mercifully little. There's nothing to say; it's all been said before. When my memoirs finally do come out I'm dedicating them to her because it's only her personal kindness that has kept me of the streets. She could easily have had me removed for running up arrears that ridiculously huge.

Thankfully I wasn't asked any whys or wherefores. I hate excuses and bles the fact that I wasn't pressed to give any. I now have a brand new rent book and so no excuses from here on in.

I smoked so many cigarettes before and after (but not during!) this meeting.

Hey I got a Sly and the Family Stone CD for £2 the other day. It is so phunkie, seriously.

Right now it is raining and I gotta go. Brollies and cars splashing outside. A massive red London bus just trundled by. Righty-ho ...

These are me clips of the day:
Music
Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer
Other
Thai Cookery: Satay, Peanut Sauce. Mmmm.

Laundretta is Not Mentally Retarted*

*THOUGH SHE IS LIVING WITH MATRAN.

THE COUNCIL MAN HOUSING MANAGER was pokeing about our house this morning, according to Laundretta. She's been spinning me some repeated cock-&-bull story about regular visits from a council officer to sort out her Council Tax situation. I'm afraid, after hearing her vociferously complain about mouse infestation (she has mice - not me! If anything the smell of my Chinese Mouster has been putting them off venturing across my territory) and then launching into her serial gripe which goes: "nobody ever cleans the bathroom except me!" I've told her time and again it's Elvis the Gnome downstairs who diarrhoeas up the side of the toilet and nothing to do with me but as I said, she wants me chucked out of here. Matran, her slimy, sleazy boyfriend is not speaking to me at all. Which is a relief, as I didn't like it when he did speak to me. Too much of slimy, false mannerisms nauseates me.


On our doorstep, where she was kncking back Special Brew, chainsmoking Richmond Superkings and flicking through the Daily Mirror, she feigned sympathy for my housing plight by enquiring solicitously how my housing "transfer" was going.

I'm actually, as far as I know, not having any transfer at all. But I've made out to her that I'm dead keen on this supposedly promised "transfer", as I want her to believe her and Matran's ousting campaign has been working ...

When Matran returned to witness her in dialogue with me he brusquely ordered her UP! and huffed past me into the house, slamming the front door momentously behind them.


I don't know on what grounds Laundretta's claiming her urgent rehousing requirements, as she professes neither to be signed off "sick" by the State, nor to have been put down as "vulnerable" by the Housing. Which means Laundretta, who has set off the fire alarms, headbutted a hole in the back window and did, until a couple of months ago, throw regular fake-weeping tantrums on the staircases (Valium Marilyn revealed that they were faked-up and Valium Marilyn of all people should spot fake tears when she comes across them...) and so on and so on and her staggeringly drunken behaviour. If Laundretta counts as mentally normal then - I'm serious! - there's hope yet for us all!

31C/88F was yesterday's official temperature and it's just as sweltering today.

Phew!

Does anyone know the famous Pensioner Youtuber Peter who posts filmettes of his reminiscences? He goes by the moniker "Geriatric 1927" and his most popular confessionals have accumulated over 2.3 million viewers each ...

Geriatric 1927 is my video star of the day.

Also: have you all seen my Animal Crackers Blog? Give it a mighty great click: I promise you'll love the escapades and entertainments.

Right: that's my Post of the Day over and done with.

Give Geriatric 1927 a click!

Head Shrunk

PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT TODAY. Got there on time (so psyched up, set alarm for 9am for 10:30 appointment). Man! It was exhausting. We only got a half or a third way through the potential ground to be covered. So I'm not bandaged up in str8 jackets yet ... The next appointment can't be till after August as that's holiday season (not as bad as in France. But still; you can rarely ever do anything important in August ... He knows all about my supersonic hearing episodes, handwashing episodes, depression episodes, hair falling out episodes (never even mentioned that here), suicide "episodes" (psychiatrists love the word "episode" - perhaps it's because they can sit back, tuck into the popcorn and lasciviously wait until the next drama unfolds in that patient's life: the next "episode" ...)

Well no other news except I have to post this now as am off home and not coming out again and it's raining. And the council man: I only found out this morning, was coming for "inspection" today. Well good luck to him because far as I was concerned he was coming Monday and I'll tell him that if anyone ever asks and spick and span is one thing but I live in that room. In one room. With no storage elsewhere. So I'm not making it un-lived-in for anyone. I've done the things they wanted. If I do more I know they will only find fault so I'm keeping my actions to the minimum. If my room is not in a perfectly acceptable state ... well I will eat a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ...

Right I gotta go because I'm tired. It is 3pm I've been out all day and I want to see what if any nasty correspondence/other things have been left for me back there.

Cheerio!

What Happened Next

I AM IN A CYBERCAFF. Everytime somebody's phone near me rings, the opening bars of La Isla Bonita come shrilling out. I am not homeless yet. (Nearly wrote "hopeless" there by accident. If that "slip" ain't fraudian, what is?)

As I was trying to say yesterday. - O man! La Isla Bonita again!! - As I was trying to say. But as usual probably got distracted before time for the point came before me ... Basically I had to go to the council offices about being "chucked out" and "confused" though that latter was the Vietnamese reception officer's assessment. Which was spot on bc I was exceedingly confused and still am. People lying, manipulating. Trying manoevres on. Etc. That is the truth: an ugly situation. Anyway Council Reprimander Guy arranged to come pointedly in the afternoon. "You must make room shipshape by then," he repeated several times. ("Shipshape" was my word. He adopted it off me.) OK OK I will. Then ... well I said yesterday. You gonna turn up three hours early when you told me to chuck mosta my stuff out? You gonna find rubbish piled by my door! Where's the surprise.

Anyway, now it just looks like a room with lots of books in one corner, some suitcases lying on a packing trunk under the sash window.... hammy hidden on cupboard by cooker (that cupboard is the real "fire hazard" ... being as heat rises and it is practically on top of the hotplates. Evilstein saw Hammy's tank. Was quite pointedly staring at it. Full of (clean) woodshavings. With various obviously nibbled toilet tubes and a Marlboro Menthols packet with a hole chewed right through the middle. Hammy has never been mentioned so I assume is allowed to stay. He is going for a celebration ping all over the newly cleared carpets this evening.

And that is that. I am ponderously reading (bc I can never stick with anything. Harrold Robbins is out the window.) Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel (might as well have titled it Murder At Clardiges - woulda given their business the same boost the Orient Express Venic Simplon got from the book of similar name. Did you know the Orient Express used to run all the way from London to a boat. Then get on another train at Calais and go all the way to Turkey? Does anyone know whether it is running thru the Channel Tunnel nowadays? I hope so. Even EastEnders has been on the Orient Express. Angie drunkenly shot her mouth off and Den overheard. (This was in about 1985.) ... Slept for a great tranche of the afternoon as was tired. Dreaming of Harry Potter (ukk! Never read one. Did try. Never got past page one. I used to love "fantasy" aged ten. Now I have real troubles with it. Lord of the Rings confounded me with a description of a dragon (firework) passing overhead with "a roar like an express train" - what express precisely? The 9:27 to Mordor ... come on JRR!

Right gotta go pee. Hope this statement doesn't result in pervy ads to my top right ...

***

WHY AM I SO HUNGRY? I've been munching on bread rolls with brie. The brie I accidentally left out while I slept so it went horrible and sloppy (I am English; not French!). Once while I was in France we had this horribly sloppy French cheese that was just like white horses' diarrhoea. I swear you could taste the rancid chewed up grass in that slop. And man! It stank! Ukk. How can people eat something like that. Also there was a mental hospital nearby from where this man used to go out dressed as a red Indian squaw. And the truks on the roads were enormous! The size of American trains almost (actually, maybe bigger). Also to make an emergency call from a phone kiosk you had to insert 10F (this was well before the days of Euros!) - even though it did spit it out again after I was utterly disgusted by this. What? So muggers, rapists, etc. can just make sure their victims don't have 10F left on them? What then. I was truly outraged by an international sense of injustice. Just thought I'd leave those "thoughts" with you.

If anyone has pertinent complaints or observations about Britain (not stupid stuff like Iraq, please! We all hate Tony Blair for that.) I would love to hear 'em ...

PS Tomorrow I'm going to get currants and sugar (already have the white self-raising flour and an egg) to make Welshcakes ... as in Welshcakes Limoncello, yes ...