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...

Freezing

IT IS RIDICULOUSLY FREEZING COLD these days and I trudged up the road wearing 2 jackets, sweating heavily under these and a scarf. Then I drank the evil methadone, went round Morrisons in the worst mood ever and retired to the library for over an hour to let that gloopy green crap take effect. Methadone is the slowest acting drug I have ever tried. It takes a good 90 minutes for any real effect and "peak serum levels" are reached after four very long hours. I wake up each morning sweaty yet cold and it takes a good 2-3 hours to steel myself for that nasty same old same old walk to the chemist for a sip of barely effectual linctus. As you all know I can't stand methadone. I have an appointment in the new year to see the doctor who should hopefully reduce the dose still further from 60mg to 40mg over the course of a month. After that I want to get down to 20mg and from then on if the clinic won't give me take-homes, I'm just buying methadone on the street and weaning myself off it at my own pace.

I got woken up by the crackheads or whoever they are making the biggest rumpus at 5am, then this idiot went and rang every single doorbell in the building at about 11. As if that's going to endear her to the residents of Halfwit House where I live.

I got a call at around 10 saying finally I have a date for satellite TV installation but it's in 7 weeks' time and there are no earlier appointments. How pathetic is that? I'm beginning to wish I'd just shelled out extra and got the installation done privately.

I'm munching "American salad" like it's going out of fashion. The British government recommend its citizens eat at least 5x80g portions of fruit or vegetables per day. Well 2x200g salad bags works out the same and finely chopped mixed salad is just about the only veg I can bear to eat (apart from broccoli and peas). I loathe cabbage (except raw) and hate brussels sprouts. They smell like farts. I eat my salad totally undressed (70s lower middle class style) so I'm keeping my calories to a minimum. I could do with losing a bit of weight. Last time I weighed myself I was 220lbs! ~ that's gotta be close on 15 stone! I've also been eating those industrial microwavable cheeseburgers you get from the chilled meats isle. They come with a relish sachet and aren't bad doused in American salad.

I was reading Jason Donovan's autobiography in the library ~ only the bits where he details his coke habit, of course. I love reading about and watching films of other people doing coke as the drug is so "glamorous" ~ to them, but not to me. Powder coke only ever made me feel jagged and exceptionally moody and there's no fantastic rush like with crack. I always thought crack was rubbish, too. As for heroin, Keith Richards got it right when he says it's all in the name ~ the arch seductress. And just like any dirty tart you can live without her without too much hassle. Methadone is like a stern overweight babushka reprimanding you for past misdeeds but I take methadone as a means to an end. And that end is a life on no drugs at all...

5am SCORE!

IT'S 5:44 I SCORED ABOUT 45 MINS ago and I'm still feeling pretty good. I spent all of £1.59 on my substance of choice. It was corned beef from the local shop.

Why did I write all that crap I posted earlier. It's true it was what was circling round my brains at the time but I just read it back and it's SO depressing. I'm trying to keep my thoughts on positive things. The only positive things I have are Boomer and Valerie. Boomer from Yuma gives Anna Grace Venom heroin in exchange for sex when she goes down to Arizona. Valerie is the Housewife Superstar Heroin Queen of Australia. She has a bouffanted Margaret Thatcher hairdo, a French manicure, wears treble strings of pearls... and imports ten tonnes of China White heroin into Australia and New Zealand annually. Her beer-drinking crack-smoking husband Bruce invests the money in what Valerie terms "respectable enterprises: gambling parlours, whorehouses and strip-joints". I can't really think of anything else to write about. Valerie will be furious for me mentioning her and I'll probably get another death-threat for writing this, but hey.

Actually writing is the only thing I can still do when I'm down. Nothing much else gets done at all! I'm stewing already about having to lumber down that chemist's shop to pick up a weekend supply of methadone at nine o'clock. I hate going in there being judged as an antipsychotic-blitzed junkie. When the doc-doc does prescribe a mood stabilizer which he probably will, they'll have even more to laugh about. My drugs worker is making an appointment with the dr which I don't really want. I told him I wasn't really severely depressed or ill or anything, just lazy. Wish I'd kept my big mouth shut now. I was just stewing about being labelled schizo then having looked up the symptoms and seeing I had the "negative" ones. Negative symptoms is a medicalized term for damn laziness. So I'm afflicted with laziness but I can't break out of it. I've tried and tried but I just can't. And I never used to be a layabout, by the way. I somehow turned into one and can't stop it. That's one big reason I never truly got on with the potheads at university. They seemed to revel in lazing around doing nothing. My attitude to life was you had to set goals and achieve them. And I wanted to be extraordinary, not ordinary. An extraordinary person is one who produces extraordinary things. What have I done at all? Got myself addicted to heroin. Felt OK for the first time in my life (early childhood excepting). Now I can't get used to feeling totally un-OK. It's for THIS reason I say I don't really care about losing my mind to a manic episode. Least mania burns brightly and is creative and loud and jazzy and FUN. Heroin is frankly boring. A drug for people in pain (which is why I took it for so long). Depression is beyond the pale. The only psychological state I hate more than depression is anxiety, which thankfully I barely ever get. I want to be ALIVE again. Only time I ever felt truly alive was when I went "manic". So that, if you were wondering, is why my constant references to mania. Mania is a state where you're so full of life you literally fizz over with it. It was the severe mania I had problems with. The moderate grade was fantastic. I can't bear to listen to any of the tunes I did back then, they all sound so flat and miserable now. I want to be ALIVE AGAIN.

My back is still bad which is annoying. Well, obviously. Soon as it's better I really have to tackle the state of my house. Empty corned beef tins, cyder cans, cigarette ends strewn all over the place.

I'm annoyed that Tonkie Ears the mouse seems to have deserted me. Perhaps if I bought some Wild Bird seed he'd be tempted back.

I really wish I hadn't posted up the crap I did earlier. It makes me look like a really mixed up confused soul. Sometimes I do think what I put; other times I don't. I don't know what I think or feel any more. I mean I feel a bit depressed and yet when Anna Grace posted up a lurid sexual fantasy I laughed hysterically. She did exactly the same thing the first time Boomer got in touch. She was down in Yuma desperate for some gear and then a cab driver sorted her out with a connexion who got her a gram of tar heroin for $90, which is supposed to be good value.

You know top notch heroin used to cost only £30 a weighed gram, that's $50. I know they were full grams; I had scales. Proper great lumps of brown (not suspiciously fine powder) that reeked of Afghanistan. I used to love it. Still I binged on it whenever I had the chance. When I begged for a living my usage averaged just under a gram a day, although I could survive on 0.6g (my dealer sold 0.3g for £10). With purity fluctuating between 40-50% in this period that's quite a lot of intravenous diamorphine. No wonder I had problems with methadone. When a doctor tried to convince me 120mg methadone was a stonkingly high dose I pointed out that I'd researched equivalences online and with opinions varying between 1mg-1mg and 1mg methadone to 4mg (neat) heroin, 120mg methadone wasn't very much compared to 360mg diamorphine. In British hospitals, 5mg diamorphine is the usual dose of painkiller for a heart attack victim. In exceptional circumstances the dose might be titrated up to 10mg. So 360mg was quite a lot. Yes, pharmaceutical heroin is used in British hospitals, no need for Dilaudid unless the side-effects profile specifically calls for hydromorphone. Diamorphine is considered a better drug than morphine because it reaches peak plasma concentration far more quickly than morphine (which takes 35 minutes intramuscular!), it can be dissolved in tiny amounts of water (several hundred milligrams in 1ml) and because it DOES provoke euphoria it's considered especially useful in palliative care where the terminally ill could do with every lift available to them. The only reason medical heroin isn't used in America is to justify their "war on drugs" stance, that heroin has "no medical value". It's actually the number one painkiller for terminal care in the UK because it's better-tolerated than virtually anything else.

I took my methadone early last night. Around 2am instead of 7am. I can grudgingly accept it might have a tiny effect on mood as it did make me feel a little bit better.

I'm off the alcohol today. Blew my beer money on corned beef. The corned beef craving actually exceeded the one for alcohol, which is saying something...

Now I'd better go. I still feel crap. I'm so pissed off, it's unreal. I'm going to try watching Michael Jackson to cheer me up.


SAY SAY SAY
This features Paul and Linda McCartney and La Toya Jackson as Michael's "luuurve" interest...



Test scores:
Psymed 43Goldberg 75

The Art of Living and Other Issues

TO START WITH, 2 VIDEOS I SAW LAST NIGHT THAT DISTURBED ME:

BIPOLAR BREAKDOWN ART
How I found this I have no idea. I wasn't looking for bipolar or art but it somehow spewed out of youtube.

I was high on coffee. One single black coffee stopped me sleeping last night. I thought I was doing so well.

It's the last colour picture on part one that I like; it reminds me of visions I have seen when I was out of it (mental out of it not drugs out of it). And it looks like the kind of picture I would draw if I could.

What freaked me out was the energy in that picture. By this time she's gone through paranoia and into grandiosity which is when you're really hyped up. She hadn't slept for seven days straight. Her mind was completely out of control. I somehow related and it scared me.

It pops up at 3 mins 52 it's the blue and yellow one.

[Don't be distracted by my psychedelic mouse: I'm talking about the blue and yellow picture on the Youtube screen Mental Breakdown Part 1 3 mins 52 in.]

Even her phrases like "cycling up" do my head in. Makes me think of a helterskelter. I spiralled up very high and stood on top of the immense cyclone, I stood exalted as high as any human being can ever go.

Then she talks about hallucinations and her art reminds me of my visions:

The last vision I saw, as opposed to a hallucination was when a blank wall suddenly turned into a moving abstract film in full colour. I had had about 4 hours sleep in 4 days (ie I'd done 2 days averaging 2 hours per day then 2 days with no sleep at all). Nothing has ever made me stay up for a week. Most I've ever done is 4 days on that nasty antideressant mirtazapine (Remeron). It made me manic then depressed.
I related to what this woman said being manic AND depressed AND psychotic and the energy and the not sleeping she talked about frightened me. And then I fell asleep. Around seven o'clock this morning.

Incidentally the blank wall was in the mental hospital reception. Where I saw that beautiful psychiatrist with shiny stockings. I was having immense trouble making myself understood beyond simply answering whatever questions were put to me. I was told I kept changing the subject. So no way could I explain about the wall breaking out into a fabulous movie.

I tried to tell her "Usually I need my sleep, but I don't need my sleep now because I have so much energy. Nonetheless it would be good if I had some zopiclone to sleep because then I could have some semblance of a sleep cycle. My body gets tired easily, even though I can't feel it now." And it was just impossible. I got the word Zopiclone out (a sleeping pill) and she gave me a 1 week supply.
That was before I went even HIGHER and started turning from human being (as I felt it) into energy-being.

As the mania came down I suddenly had this sense of being in my body again. My feet felt literally on the ground.

I had been living with the windows as wide open as they'd go in January. Hadn't realized I was cold until my hands froze up too much to type.

If you wonder why all this talk NOW it's because I'm scared of going mad. I'm scared of being sane. I can't handle that one either. I'm scared of being on heroin. Scared of not being on it. Scared of dying. Not scared of being dead.

How much of a mess is that?





I watched Gone With The Wind last night and it's really good.

I woke up this afternoon and have had no alcohol today. I went out and bought chocolate milk. Ironically a half litre of this is more expensive than a half litre of 7.5% ABV cyder!!

I didn't ring the dealer yesterday, didn't ring anyone today. Or see anyone. Or use anything bar a swig of methadone.

So Im doing good. I'm living on black coffee and the minimum food. I have about 4 cups a day (I say this in case anyone assumes "living on coffee" means 40 cups!). Yesterday I had one chicken tikka pilau and 2 full chicken legs. That has to be about 1200 calories. I have to watch what I eat, I don't want to get fat. I find eating offputting when I remember how I used to enjoy certain food directly after IV heroin. Heroin gave the most amazing savour to food. Part of me feels "how can I ever eat again". I knew I ought to work on breaking that heroin-food association while I was still on it.

Now my head has suddenly switched into "not using anymore" mode. The mode, but not the mood (the "elevated mood") I got into before. When I dropped heroin for several weeks on end.

I wish I could live. Actually live. Not just be alive but master the art of living. I know this is my challenge in life, but I don't even know how to start, let alone how to go on...


I hope this post isn't too much of a mess: I can't be doing with editing today

Illustrated: a psychedelic mouse! Yes a psychedelic mousie ha ha

ANNA GRACE: the way this guy talks is the way everybody sounded to me at one point:
http://gledwoodvideo.blogspot.com/2011/04/psychosis.html




HERE IS A TUNE!!
this is Elevated Mood

IT'S EXALTED

what's up: monday morn

I SLEPT LIKE A BABY last night I don't remember how long maybe 6 or 8 hours i don't recall what time i went to bed (maybe around 4am) I got up after 10. Next thing I knew the stupid alarm was going off. All I wanted was access to my own money from that ridiculous Second Class Citizen Card (ie not a shiny one with Visa Wings you pay money INto because you're rich; one you take Govt money OUT OF because you're poor that rubbishy post office card I had to get because I withdrew £700 I didn't have from my former bank account. I had a real nice heroin/crack binge on that £700 it has to be said. Unlike America you won't get arrested for that over here. In fact I'm considering suing THEM for negligence. They allowed me to overdraw. No fraud was involved. I only went into supermarkets, bought cheapest sparkling wine and asked for £50 a day in cashback (cashpoints wouldn't give this money, neither would over-the-bank-counter) once I realized this was a ready sauce of unending cash I spend away. Shit only hit the fan quite a while later and now they're one of some number of people trying to sue me over these debts. I'm not exactly losing sleep over it. Why do you think I enjoy being crazy so much? Nothing to come back TO.

Well this nonbipolar thing is still going nicely when I get walking I hear lovely voices saying "fuck up" "call a doctor" "oo that's mental" etc. This does have something to do with having watched Angelina Joelie being Mentalist Chic in Girl Interrupted this morning. Those voices don't upset me. Takes far more than THAT to get me upset (no heroin used to do it big time). The drs think I have a real healthy attiude by considering "auditory hallucinations" (ie Reality Plus) as "free entertainment" (which it is) the best one happened yesterday after Valium Marilyn who wasn't half banging on about her problems poor woman anyway I heard my own voice doubled and out of sync in my own head. It was really poetic. [Hearing 2 of me thinking. That was cool.] And the cars on the street start doing this thing where they either speak random words (not so much nowadays as it's piss weak nowadays) but they also sound really whoosh-oosh-oooohhh!! rather than just boring like cars normally do. A bit like a car sounds after a nightspent at a particularly funky hardcore rave.

So I'm sleeping for ages. Oh yeah! My bowel problems! I knew y'all would want to hear this. I feel like I've swallowed a giant jellyfish whole and it's blocked me up. Terrible inconvenience. How will I ever shit again? I'm eating a breakfast cereal wtih cocolate hazelnut inside called Kraves. The kind of stuff us Brits used to look down at Americans years ago over "how CAN you eat marshmallow for BREAKFAST"? Mcdonalds have it all wrong the number of times I've been refused Big Macs before 10:30 or whatever ridiculously late hour a HAMBURGER JOINT actually starts serving up HAMBURGERS I hesitate to recall.

Well I must go I feel fine now. I was all dull, drab, dysphoric etc a couple of minutes ago. I wanted to cry earlier. I had Better Not be coming down. If I am I can just feel it, I'm going to feel really SHIT. Well best not consider that option. Also Naomi will really love it if I'm down next Nutter Club she'll think it serves me right for having had a Personality last week. Well I'm off have fun!

ps i'm watching the aviator or did i say that? very slow moving but quite good. i want voices talking about aeroplanes and hollywood movies, not boring psychiatric crap. i hate psychiatry why did this have to happen to me? only good thing about psychiatry is the other patients they're really funny

oh yeah i had some nutter links but they are somewhere else, here's one that proves a desperate person is capable of speaking plain english (do nurses really believe you have to get to the jib-jib-jib phase before you need help? oh yeah they call that "acting" so just ignore 'em. that's what i do. except when you wanna go outside in which case it's first name terms and lots of flirting. best nurses are always female so be male or a lesbian if you want to go outside

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100402182556AAQgrJZ

can't recall why this came up but it wasn't what i was looking for. why do they close answers down so fast? i'd have said try sulpiride

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

£9.30 takeaway

Tonight I had balti chicken with nan bread, yogurt dips and a green salad for the princely sum of £9.30. Well it's not going on heroin, I reasoned. Heroin is a thing of the past, yet again. I can't believe I ever went back to it. And with that friend who tempted me I am highly annoyed. I have had enough of people. People bring nothing but confusion. They mess up my existence. No thanks.

I felt so stupid wielding that needle around hands and feet and legs. Over the time I'd stopped I'd grown totally unfamiliar with the process of banging up the Z-grade narcotics found on Britain's streets.

I wasted more than £80 chasing a high from rubbish that was never going to do anything for me. £80, £90... nearly £100. The binge went on for four days. I call it a binge because compared to not using at all for weeks on end, that's what it was. A huge waste of time and money. I only had the money because I'd NOT been blowing it all on piss-weak "heroin". And what did heroin ever do for me anyhow?

Nothing. It only ever was a massive waste of time.

True, very briefly the drug put me back together again at a time when I felt I needed to be together, to function, to get things done.

But the upshot of heroin use after years is the very opposite effect: protracted apathy, low-grade misery. A wasted life. I never really needed heroin then. I certainly don't need it now.

Bears

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is on. No wonder I'm depressed. A mad guy living with bears is on the other channel. Black bears. Why do they never live with teddybears ~ proper brown ones? Brown bears are far cuter, not to mention tubbier. O hang on I think one's doing a poo in the woods.

Those black bears are barely any bigger than a domestic dog! They're tiny.

Now I must go. I ate an Iceland steak pie and I'm in a bad mood.

Winter is here!

IT'S RAINING. IT IS MISERABLE. I am miserable.

So I went to Morrisons and bought cheapest brown bread, tomato soup, ground black pepper (to go on the ridiculously over-salty Value Soup), kippers, tea etc etc.

Winter hibernation here we come!

Also my goblin cure should hopefully be with me tomorrow, or the next day at latest. Then I'll have the luxury of home broadband back. Hurrah!

Kipper Addiction

I HAVE JUST REALIZED I AM ADDICTED TO KIPPERS... haddock, mackerel... smoked fish of all kinds. this is terrible! What am I going to to?!

Like a clucking junkie this morning I trawled the supermarket in desperation along the chilled meats isles. Finally I found smoked mackerel with peppers all over it (coloured and black, yes you can even get chili-peppered mackerel these days)... my eye drifted along to haddock and then "kippers". There is no such fish swimming in the sea as a "kipper". It just means smoked herring. Tescos yesterday wanted £3 for 200g ie £15 a kg. Morrisons own were 78p for 200g ie £3.90 per kg or nearly a quarter of the price.

I took them home gleefully and indulged in my habit with toast, behind closed doors.

What am I going to tell Narcotics Anonymous? Hi I'm an addict and I'm addicted to heroin, crack (as was, gave that up January 1 2009), drink, the odd Valium and KIPPERS! Ukh. But they're so moreish....


NAOMI CAMPBELL was in a crimes against humanity court today. Hurrah! I thought. Finally the beautiful monster is getting nailed for her offences to fashion, music, novel-writing and film. But no, it was some silly case that she would inevitably answer no to, because no-one will admit in front of the taxman to a potentially multimillion pound gift, that the President of Liberia gave her a whacking great blood diamond.

She says no (quelle surprise!) But she did wake up in the middle of the night at the Presidential Villa in South Africa with two mysterious men standing over her (she didn't lock her door, what a tart!) who handed her a "bag of dirty stones".

Hmmm...

I bet she gets more in free gifts off her millionaire boyfriends than she ever earns on the catwalk or in front of a lens. I heard she only makes £2 million a year, which sounds fine and dandy till you realize her agency takes a whacking cut, then the tax man ~ 50%! ~ which can't leave more than about £700,000 a year. And how are you meant to live and buy a decent house on that!!

Those horrible "real housewives of New Jersey" were boasting of the value of their homes. Well one was. And I translated dollars to pounds and thought, hang on a minute one of my old houses was worth that.

Yes a standard £500,000 London home, housing the poor and destitute!

Illustrated: kippers, Naomi Campbell ~ mobile-phone lobbing queen of mean, Millennium Star diamond ~ 203-carat D-flawless!


Naomi Campbell talks cocaine addiction with Oprah Winfrey



Vauxhall Corsa: the new supermodel 1992 commercial
Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington et al... and a car

No drugs for dinner

I'M HUNGRY...


Not for that...
I've food on the brains.



These Fox's Viennese chocolate melts...



...were very nice dunked in tea the other morning.


Flapper usually isn't far from his cherry tree or the neighbours' luxury TV aerial 10 houses down. When he sees me he takes off... Flapper by name, Flapper by nature...


Chinese chicken curry is calling my name!
But at £6.20 with egg fry rice it's too expensive, and it's too late in the day for a combination box...


So I'm going Southern Fried instead!

IT WAS 5AM when I first thought of writing this... somehow an hour has flown by. I am dipping Turkish chockie biccies (Ülker Biskrem Duo ~ they have chocolate creme inside) in hot tea while the birds tweetle and chirp like crazy in the trees outside. On my road just now I saw a giant tubby pigeon. It flapped away the second it saw me. I don't know much about pigeons but there seem to be three types round here: gutter street pigeons (equivalent to me, a gutter street junkie); posh loft pigeons (equivalent to The Queen) these are kept by owners with whistles who race them or do whatever pigeon fanciers do... and finally, the type I just saw, which appears to be a different type, with white sash round the neck. These are wild birds of exquisite rareness. The supermodels of the pigeon world ~ Linda Evangelista or Naomi Campbell. And all I could think as I trotted down the street, chocolate biscuits in hand and spotted it was "that would make a nice pie!" (I must've been hungry.)

I have found the German equivalent to Coronation Street! (A lower-class soap opera. British soap is always working class. I wanted to make a new soap, a kind of modern Dallas-Dynasty combined set in London-Paris-New York (well you'd only need to shoot a few minutes of exteriors per season, most could be improvised in a studio garden anywhere). It would star an ageing Larry Hagman as evil patriarchal billionaire with Joan Collins as his bitchy matriarchal billionaire wife. Roger Moore would come in as Joan Collins's luurve interest. I would do all I could to get Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Lauren Baccal and the Hollywood old guard to put in guest appearances. The younger generations are all classless so I'd get some dogsbody to cast them. I would ensure that an international cast of actors with followings across the most important television markets of the world got parts, to boost foreign sales and ratings.

The German soap is called Lindenstraße, "Lime Street". Launched in 1985, it was the first ever German soap opera and was modelled on Coronation Street. I would say it is more similar in spirit to the British daytime soaps about doctors surgeries, or Australian soap, than British prime time TV (and this goes out 18:50 hours Sunday on Das Erste ~ which would put it up pretty much against the dreadful Larkrise to Candleford ~ a truly awful piece of British costume drama. I also had an idea for a costume drama soap, but trust me, it would be nothing like Larkrise! More Anna Karenina ~ all aristocrats and ballgowns, laudanum parties and duels. Not chatteringly dullard middle classes. Anyway, the episode I chose to watch on Flashplayer was called Schnee ~ "Snow". I thought "how lovely, a German winter wonderland on TV"... little did I realize the "snow" in question comes in little white lines for application straight up the nose! Of course when I realized it was drugs I was riveted. A butch lesbian dealer had an argument with her femme girl who has a motorbike helmet haircut. If I were her I'd worry about my hairstyle first and sort out the druggie girlfriend later, but that's TV for you.

My Mum has cancer. It came back. I saw her Thursday. I could see she was ill. I went out and bought a gram of heroin after that. My counsellor says I have to talk to my mother. She also says I see heroin as my Saviour. (How did the counsellor know that?!) But now the heroin has less appeal. I can't say why, but it does, and I say that sober. Usually junkies only want to be clean when they are high. Bring them down to earth and all they want is more drugs to get back up to la-la land, where they can look down and convince themselves they want to clean up yet again (but not now: "tomorrow") and on and on the cycle rolls. Eventually they give up on giving up and accept "I am an addict. I am powerless over my addiction, so I will simply go on using". Then they realize addicts DO have a choice and the choice is to STOP. (Using isn't a choice, using drugs is automatic to a drug-addict) ... eventually they might come to a place like NA where they say "I am powerless over my addiction, so I surrendered to a power greater than myself"... This is the mysterious "higher power" these 12-step groups talk about which "restores us to sanity"... I believe only God can save me now. But God would not be interested in someone who loves heroin more than him. (What a Catch 22!) My higher power is God Almighty. For me, no other power is high enough or powerful enough!

As things are, I have left it with the clinic that I'm not interested in reducing my methadone dose any more. That I would rather go on as I am and use several times each week and let nothing change.

I didn't tell the druggieworker this, but I thought, having such a great track record at breaking every resolution and promise I've ever made since Heroin Addiction, perhaps if I promise mediocrity and inaction ~ I might break THAT one too, and all for the best!!

... And you wonder why a mere AVERAGE length of heroin addiction is 14 years..?!


View Lindenstraße

PS I THINK the pigeons I keep seeing are WOOD PIGEONS ... they make the famous coo-coo you hear on hot summer days that is not a cuckoo... (they are musical cuckoos)

ILLUSTRATED: "DOUBLE UOGLOBE" is heroin from Burma's Northern Shan State; other pictures refer to Heroin Assisted Treatment, a scheme which might well have got me off drugs long ago ~ and would certainly have severed my connexions with dealers... but as it is ~ miserable methadone or street heroin. Or go through hell trying to stop (probably to use again at the first opportunity ~ let's be frank). What fine choices!

Results of Dutch supervised trial of injectable heroin hydrochloride or smokeable heroin base (for "chasing the dragon" though I have never heard ANYBODY except a journalist use that expression ~ most people either say chasing, or when they get old and can't be bothered to sound cool just call it smoking. Smoking or injecting.

www.opioids.com/heroin/holland.html

Magnus Bread

I HAVE BEEN EATING ultra-wholemeal Polish seedbread... Very bourgeois... very nice.


Usually I eat Hovis bread. Crack open a fresh pack, put your nose in ~ mmmm! That lovely malted wholegrain..!



It goes really lovely with Lurpak unsalted butter...



Last week I survived almost solely on fishfingers sandwiches... Unlike this one though, not dripping with baked beans!!!



Today I bought CREMA DI NOCCIOLATO ice cream: "hazelnut ice cream with nougat sauce (17%) and hazelnut pieces" ~ a bargain at £1.79 from Lidl.





Here's a tiny doggie film:
TWO NORWICH TERRIERS DOGGEDLY PLAYING AT HAVING A FRIENDLY LITTLE SAVAGE ON AN AMERICAN LAWN...





For those of you interested in a mysterious dialect moo'd by black-&-white cattle, here are some literary works written in the same... a couple of links I stumbled across yesterday on a Dutch website for literature in the Frisian tongue...

Frisian literature link: http://www.sirkwy.nl/intro.html

Article on Frisian literature with links on UbA blog Nederlandse taal en cultuur: http://vakreferent.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/sirkwy-digitaal-portaal-naar-friese-letteren

Polish Village Bread ltd company website: www.polishvillagebread.co.uk/en/manchester/products.html

RBD

I'M HAVING ROAST BEEF DINNER "for" Xmas ~ even though I don't keep the dastardly waste-of-space day I know everyone else does so I feel left out if I waste the day off my head on heroin, which is my customary way of "celebrating" Christmas.

Today I'm having a literary Christmas, I hope.
I bought those paperback ringbinder things, (dunno what they're officially called) ya know ~ those things students use to bind a project ~ to stop my errant papers blasting all over the place. I'm in continual terror of losing a page...

I hope everybody has a pleasant day out there... "pagan"-mas "Saturnalia"... Roman-Catholicized "Christmas" // or whatever your "bag" happens to be.

And most importantly of all: HERE'S WISHING EVERYONE A SUPERLATIVE 2010 ~ first year of the century we're allowed to say "twenty" at the front without sounding pretentious!!

Cheery-bye everyone!!

LION-TIGER-BEAR
"Naturally" a Bengal tiger, African lion and American black bear would never meet... and yet, thrown together by persons who didn't have their best interests at heart, what a story!
Cuddly friendship... How cute is this. They were rescued as babies from evil drug dealers who wished to keep "high class" exotic pets in the garden... their thoughtful keepers at the zoo to which they were taken were insightful enough NOT to separate the three... and how amazing... have a look:

Here's the report from ITN news:



First Person: Lion-Tiger-Bear Harmony..!



All by Myself ~ Celine Dion
I know she's a bit gawky and geeky but man ~ what a voice! And I love that Scottish-sounding one she did about Kate Winslet throwing the Hope Diamond into the chill depths of the Atlantic after Romeo di Caprio died... how romantic!



Images: lovely roast beef dinner as only the English can pull off (must include cauliflower cheese and Yorkshire puddings and lashings of gravy..!)... I've not written probably 100th of this, but that's what War and Peace would look like in MS form...

Sleeping... Eating...

THE WEATHER'S extremely chilly. Fallen leaves everywhere in a brown mush. A "nip" in the air, if I can say that without being racist about the Japanese (according to the Official Politically Correct Handbook, not ...)

All I want to do is eat and sleep. Eat stodge, that is and go to bed in the day. And sleep all night into the bargain. And then when I'm awake all I think about most of the time is doom and gloom. This is depression (again).

I saw a documentary on Japan last night. Japan and Japanese things barely ever come on British telly. Well, nowhere near as frequently as I'd like. Of course there are people from all over the world in London and the UK, but no great community of Japanese expats, so Japan and Japanese things are pretty exotic here.

But there was this British man, who motorcycled (and ferryboated) from Sydney Australia to Tokyo Japan. He was on telly last night. Id' seen some of it before, but this was was the last episode, the Japanese instalment. I sat glued to the screen and nearly fell over when a couple of street signs appeared and I could read them!

京都駅: 京 kyō means "capital city" ... this is the same character used in Tōkyō 東京 ("East Capital"). The second character 都 can be read to or miyako, meaning "the seat of Imperial palace" or "capital".) (Kyōto, by the way, was capital of Japan before Tōkyō took on the title in the modern era.) Railway station eki = a horse 馬 (lefthandside) coming to a halt on the right, 駅 where they say the R should be used as a mnemonic for Railwaystation ...


THIS IS IT: Charlie Boorman ~ Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means ...

A Very Pleasant "Repast"... And More Cockroaches

I HAVE JUST SPENT £4.50 on the strongest cockroach spray I could find. Yes I am (of necessity) an expert on the various domestic insecticides and their relative dosages and potencies. Yes: the plague has come back. In fact I have a horrible suspicion I have now encountered a third species of roach (under my fridge) ~ the beetle-sized oriental cockroach! Horrible things. The last lot of ant powder just lays around looking grey and ashy, but does not seem to exterminate, even when they're covered in it. My two cans of tropical-strength Raid have run out so I had to buy Rentokill Insectrol which at 0.46% permethrin is more than double the strength of ordinary (UK-strength) Raid. And I should think so too at £4.50 a not-very-big can!

The "repast" was really nice. I've conjured up a new dish called Yorkshire trotettes. I'ts basically industrial style yorkshire puddings stuffed with roast lamb or beef and seasonable vegetables and it's very nice especially when you made six of them that you only remember at 4:30am. They make a brilliant midnight feast.

Maple Syrup my druggieworker, who says I should go on a proper language course (for Spanish) was even suggesting I do a DEGREE. I'm not so sure of that. But I did start looking into studying German IN Germany (why on earth do a course in German in LONDON? Makes no sense to me, not if you are free to travel... I spent a lot of the afternoon pouring over the Freie Universität Berlin's online "startseite". See my German ain't that good: for I thought Deutsche Philologie meant German linguistics. Apparently Philologie doesn't just mean "philology" it means "the study of language and literature" ... They even do Japanese there ... hmmm.

And just to lower the tone I had a poke through a selection of hens' teeth ~ sorry foreign language periodicals ~ you can't get them round here. And walked off with Bild ~ Europe's biggest-selling newspaper (apparently). With a 5,000,000-a-day circulation in the 1980s and 4,000,000 a day until 2002, it now sells a shamefull 3.8 million examplares pro jour... Have a click here and see why.

Sorry for such a boring post... even I'm bored today ...

Illustrated: Rentokil Insectrol; Freie Universität Berlin's 1960s-style main entrance ...