Down. Up. Lost. Whatever

I DON'T KNOW WHY IT SHOULD BE that I cannot maintain any "normal" or healthy level of enthusiasm for anything. I go from feeling over-confident to not confident at all. And feel like a fool for ever believing in myself. So I am slogging on with this writing basically. I don't have much belief in it. I press on because I cannot not finish it ~ I hate being in the middle of anything. And of course there's the hope that I might have some success and wave bye-bye to Brown's Britain. Oh by the way I found out there are several states in the world where you don't pay any income tax ~ Monaco, Andorra and the Bahamas being the most attractive three. I wouldn't mind the Bahamas at all. But are there poisonous spiders everywhere? I saw an Australian murder drama last night and whenever they went delving about in bushes etc all I could think was "beware of the funnelwebs!" I don't know about the other places but you don't have to be super rich to live in Monte Carlo. They've a permanent lack of grocer's and other small shop owners and put out a shout on BBC World Service Radio saying ~ come and start your small business here! Which is what I would do, if I got the chance... Anyway must dash I'm about to be timed out, as per usual...

Illustrated: a manuscript page ~ guess whose handwriting...!
Kindly thanks to Aftermathnews for the image link...

Blue Skies!

IT'S A GORGEOUS DAY TODAY AND I'VE BEEN CLEANING MY HOUSE! At long long last. And doing things and addressing things that have gone too long unadressed and undone because I was wallowing in an apathy of ordures, as the French charmingly call their shyte.

Yesterday I had the final consultation in my mental health "probe" (to use Sunday newspaper language). As I told the Operative, I finally wish to address my "issues" in a grown-up way that was not possible previously when I was too para to throw my problems on the table without feeling outmanoevred ~ even checkmated ~ before I even started...

I have two appointments, possibly with two doctors though one's the Shrink. I told the Operative of many of my tangled jangling past of unusual experience. Now the Operative's going to give the Shrink a summary before I go in. So for once I might get a proper assessment instead of a doctor barking up the wrong tree and me too eager to flee out the room to bother putting him right. I always felt whatever I said, whatever I did, circumstances would conspire against me and thwart my efforts at tidying my mess up or building any future. This was another fuel to my Great Apathy.

My Worker was all aglow with praise at my transformation but there's still such a lot of transforming left to do. Today I've to get on with cleaning my house. It's gone scuzzier than I realized, when I suddenly see it through "normal people's" eyes. Then I have to clean up my SELF. And then build a future. Not much to do then.


Q U E E N R E P R I M A N D S P R I M E M I N I S T E R
S i l v i o B e r l u s c o n i y e l l s a t B a r r a c k O b a m a
d u r i n g B u c k i n g h a m P a l a c e p h o t o s h o o t : ~
f a b u l o u s l y f a m o u s e n t e r t a i n i n g f o o t a g e
o f t h e v u l g a r I t a l i a n P M b e i n g p u t i n h i s p l a c e . . .

Piri Piri Potatoes and a Half-Baked Novel

I MADE A PETTY IMPULSE PURCHASE last week! The first one in about ten years (not counting food, drugs, drink or necessity-type items). There I was queueing in the post office (that means standing in inexorable, interminable life-drainingly long line to you Americans. Of course we're queueing next to numerous novelty stationery items and had ample opportunity to examine them, being stood next to them so long. My eye was caught by a tiny notebook, I think it's A6 size which is smaller than I usually like ~ but it was covered in circular holograms of the most amazing motion, like a symphony of ever decreasing circles. Or increasing ~ depending on which way you hold it. "If only I could bring this back to the time of the Pharaohs this would be worth more than the finest jewels," I mused. Then I thought "well you could bring it with you if you went travelling to remote parts. Shark-spearing locals might swap it for a gobstopper sized blue pearl or something..." I looked at the price. About £1.29. Up to that point it hadn't even crossed my mind that I might buy it. To me, things in shops are like museum displays. I never want them because I never even consider them on sale to me. This is one of the many petty bridges I feel burned, or steps taken down to the stygian depths of addiction that separates someone like me from someone like most of you. Something I'd not usually recognize in day-to-day droning dullardness because I'm so used to it I forget, but it puts you and me in totally different worlds...

Anyway I bought the notebook and was nagging at myself early this morning (having woken up at the cheery hour of 4am) on having got nowhere with this book I really do want to write. Seriously it's an A1 idea, I just couldn't muster the joy to get it going. Because it's based upon actual events I'm constrained as to the course of the story, though how I plot the novel and the characters I people it with are of course entirely up to me. We're talking ancient history so I have pretty much carte blanche how I tell it. So I'm thinking, I need to put in this and that and this perspective and that happening. Then I realized if I ignored what I "think" I should put and plan out scenes I want to write instead not only will I have more fun, but I might get a better book out of it. So that's what I did and it seems to be working. In fact I came up with a slapstick comedy scene set in the dungeons that wouldn't otherwise have festooned my brains in 1,000,000 years ...

Righty-ho on to the potatoes. It was Sunday night and I was penniless and totally unappetized by the nearly-empty frozen veg packets and Iceland diddly crispy potatoes. The vinegar had nearly run out. There was no butter for my green beans and worst of all I had no Bisto gravy to slick all over it. Inspiration struck and I piri piri'd my potatoes with Schwarz Cajun seasoning mixed to two parts paprika and a generous couple of pinches of the salt/MSG mix I vandalize my food with every day. Anyway this sprinkled liberally over said diddly roasting potatoes, the potatoes being turned and resprinkled at ten minute intervals, made them gorgeously piquant and crispy. They were a bit like the wedges you used to get at KFC 25 years ago, when they also did black cherry flavour milk shake...

Righty-ho now before I go just to make it clear yesterday I was not slagging off the idea of working ~ whether 9-5 or any other hours. What I was getting at was that you can be spiritually dead, creatively bankrupt, ambitions unfulfilled and all that whether you're working or not and occasionally I realize this and don't feel quite so bad. But as I was saying yesterday, I never envisaged a life of idle wasting and hate living it now. Most of my life "goals" are what you'd call career-oriented. There are loads of things I've always wanted to do, including: become writer of popular novels of worldwide renown; get bit part in French film; design a board game; design a gameshow and get it on TV; make a "grandad and the singing gnomes" type novelty techno record if I ever live past 70; become an internet cook; set up and run a picture library and design, produce and sell a range of novelty hamster homes the like of which nobody has ever seen because they're so amazing... and so on and so on. So there I'm not lacking in ambition I'm just manured in a morass of drug-addicted apathy I cannot seem to clamber out of so what am I going to do? It's all down to me it's all down to me I know. That's what makes it so scary!

Trapped Wind

I WAS COMFORT EATING OBSESSIVELY at every waking juncture in the last 24 hours. So much so that come this morning and the onset of sewerage-quacking farts and a sensation like a double-knotted balloon in my belly I felt so terrible I thought I was going to die. OK slight exaggeration but it was rather inconvenient. And also made me think: how undignified being trapped in a burping, farting, snoring ukky-yukky human body. I could go on but won't...

IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY'S COMMENTS, I suppose I now have to go on to set up a Wordpress blog to import stuff from here, in case Blogger goes crashing down. How on earth you do any of this I don't know (except commonsensically and if you think commonsense will get you far in today's world you're hopelessly naive, that's all I say...)

LIFE still feels hopelessly teflon-coated grey. I can't see, feel, discern/etc any point at all. Not that I've been philosophizing (just about thee most despairational thing you can do in my view) but trying to give self a "reason" to do anything. I've been sleeping round the clock (how? Not by the power of drugs that's for sure...)

I WISH IT WAS A SUNNY DAY so I could go trekking off in the woods. But I know me, I probably wouldn't go. I'd think up some excuse. That's me: excuses excuses excuses. Insufferable¬!

Also it's my Gran's funeral. I wasn't ever about to go. I'd be telling myself "don't use; don't drink..." Then nerves would make me do it even more. Hopeless!

Righto I'm off now. Take it easy, Kids

;->...

ESCAPE FROM SAMSARA
I tapped in the parties I used to go to and this came up from Youtube ~ they were still going Apparently in 2007. Maybe it was the chemistry, but I remember the music as far better than this...

I Am Alive

I WAS BEGINNING TO THINK I DIDN'T EXIST ANY MORE. That's what Blogger seemed to think, and they were making me think it too. Without my blog I am nothing. I exist to no-one. Family and friends sparkle in bubbles of their own, but won't follow me to the big wide world. They don't want to.

What I mean is, I intend to emerge with a massive public splash ~ and I know they don't want to be part of that. That was my biggest reservation as author of this potential "misery memoir" of mine (the story of my life on drugs). There were too many people I wanted to protect. Not because they'd done anything wrong; because I do not see why my captivatingly woven tales (as I hoped they'd be!) should throw an unwanted spotlight on those who unwittingly crossed paths with me. We don't all want the Warholian fifteen minutes (or more) of fame ...

Now I sense my life's at a crossroads or a turning-point. Strange my blog should be threatened with nonexistence at such a time.

Wondering what to write, where to go, what to do. How. How to do it. Whatever "it" shall transpire to be...

I have too many projects, not enough time.

And far too much time wasted.

They say "what will be will be"... but there's nothing so fatalistic about my life's course: What will become of me is down to me. That's what frightens me the most. Me watching Me who plays "Me" ~ none of whom know how to take Responsibility. If my inner child holds the keys to destiny, then I'm terrified ~ for this Inner Child is the screaming unsatiated febrile baby of addiction, who diverted my life's course down the dead-ends of its whims, who recklessly joyrides my life, while I cower in the passenger seat wondering why we never flew off a cliff-edge years ago...

Yes, it's time to take control. But how on earth I'm supposed to do that, I've no idea...

Reality Check

YOU CAN ALL HATE ME NOW because I've used. I used heroin. I used it last night after I had posted. I was not feeling any good anyhow and now I'm weary of life.

I say that in response to a comment does it feel good or just plain bad?... Honestly..? It felt terrible. Early on yesterday afternoon my mind turned to schemes for robbilng the supermarket of smoked salmon, alcohol, Mach 3 razors and the other shoplifters' staples so frequently removed from my local "emporium" security have taken to sitting at a "workstation" as you enter, consisting of a bank of CCTV-screens across which they supposedly track "dodgy customers"... Oh I cannot be bothered. I was in the frame of mind where you just go kamikaze/suicidal/lose all self respect/however you wish to phrase it... And I really don't know what else to say because I'm so tired. And I wish to go in said shop to get all the stuff I'd run out of by yesterday evening. And to be able to shop respectably... And not be banned from my own local one... Man what a miserable day it was. Yurks yurks YUUUUUURKS!!!

No Rest For The Wicked...

CLICHE, cliché, cliché... and yet how very true... who on earth thought up the saying deserves a pat on the back or a knee in the ..**** (well that's wicked)...

I never feel I've gained sufficient rest for the "demands" of my jam-packed soul-empty days...

Suffice it to say I feel exhausted; I won't go on about that...

More to say I have THREE potential writer's projects about to go. OK one, my memoirs is "going" except, as you may well have surmised, it really has stopped. Autobiographical writing is so very much harder than fiction, I can tell you...

Picking over any modern novel you'll soon realize there's a certain strict protocol to constructing a scene and it pretty much works out as a third/a third/a third. That is, almost any chapter of fiction will tend to break down into a third dialogue, a third description of action and a third character-introspection or explanation. That's very roughly so, but speaking from experience when I have written fiction before, once you get the knack of the protocol of telling a tale (and I can only speak for myself): it comes very easy.

The memoir writing did not. Partly because I refused to "novelize" my own experiences: that is construct long-past events into neat scenes (which nearly always involves conflating experiences together, simply for the sake of neatness), then re-inventing dialogue to fit. And slotting the whole lot together into a fast-flowing narrative. In the novels I've attempted yes there were times I feel I managed this. But the memoirs are naturalistically told, ie raconteured in a more blog-like fashion, so what I recall I write, what's less relevant I race through and what's sticky and tricky I attempt to explain. Still, well over 25,000 words in (a good minimum third of a book) I don't feel I truly have the hang of that manner of writing... And I'm still not 100% sure I'm into the whole business of self-exposure on that potential scale ~ my whole life to the "whole world"... So I don't know.

As for the other two projects one is a historical tale so unready I can't tell you what it's about. And it would obviously require much research. The last is my fictitious tale of junkies and addicts, the one with that great mythic hellhound Gwendolina, still locked up in the kitchen to this day for her doll-chewing misbehaviour ~ and baying at the striplight. The rule is ~ most especially for the new and inexperienced writer and this is how I count myself ~ write what you know. This is what I know, and if it comes easy, it's surely what I ought to be writing.

I have one draft of such a book already done but it has such glaring flaws ~ not on a line by line basis, but inherent in the plot itself ~ that the entire tale requires rewriting. What I actually did in my first draft was to break that cardinal rule write what you know, spin off into other areas not adequately researched, and came unstuck.

So I do have things brewing up my sleeve (my sleeves are always smouldering, always festering, always seething out smoke; always have been. Sometimes they fulminate so vigorously they emit volcanic lava...)

So that's me. And as for yesterday, that was another thing I have to contact someone else to be able to do ~ someone I don't actually know. But if they like my idea they should hopefully let me do it. I hate posting "oo, it's secret" but none of this stuff should remain secret in the long run. Unless I garden-out or whatever the expression is. Veg out? Lunch out. That's it. I'm thinking rocket salad here...

Righto I'd better go and squander yet another afternoon... my attempts at room reorganization have turned neat stacks of things into a pigsty explosion of upended furniture upon tartan-bagged robos and falling piles of paperbacks etc...

So I'd better go. In answer to some queries of a few days ago, my robos are fine. They have ceased squabbling, thanks to living again in the same lightbulb box. They trot around quite happily at random times of day and night (seemingly no rhyme nor reason to when...) And they still love me (more to the point seem intrigued by me) at some times; flee in utter terror at others! And that's about THAT...

So bye for now!

Up My Sleeve

AT LONG LAST I've formulated another plan. Found an opening. That might get me a little more attention. But I cannot post my plans half-baked or actions undone. Just to let you know I am live and thinking...

Still I am feeling depressed. Every time I stop and have nothing imminent to happen or to do, I'm left feeling the great black hole inside forcing its gravitational force against my extremities... sucking me up... imagine I'm wailing into the reverbational echoes of hyperspace now as I yell: aaarrrrggghhhh!!!

And still I don't feel I'm sleeping long enough or properly. Still that light dazzling the brain behind the eyes and blinding me to whatever rich tapestries the world has woven round me...

Well that's what little me is supposed to say. I'm not supposed to say my world is bleak and harrowing because I've made it that way. I'm meant to see merely a dazzling multiplicity of eventualities that I might make my own through consistent striving...

As if!



VIDEO:
Record-breaker. These are highlights of Britain's highest-ever rated soap episode, Christmas 1986 and an audience of 30.15 million... as I said that's over half the nation so imagine 150 million + watching Stateside and you have some grasp of this tellyshow's magnitude at it's very peak...

EastEnders ~ a telly prog that in its heyday attracted a massive following both male and female from across the nation. You couldn't score drugs when it was on. Probably could now because many many folks, including me, have dropped it from their "must watch" and now merely catch it while they can...

If you're unfamiliar with the drama, the episdoe has been pared down to just the central characters: Den and Angie Watts, landlord and lady of the Queen Vic boozer and their daughter Sharon. In a desperate effort to save their long-failing marriage, boozing and Valium-popping Angie has lied to Dennis that she has "only 6 months to live"... unluckily he overheard her confessing this to a stranger on a train...

Now the do-dos are about to hit the fan:~

(... and in the very last scene we see Pauline Fowler, spotting her dreary daughter Michelle (never liked her) conversing with Den and Den handing her money... now Pauline realizes at long last who actually IS mysteriously absent Daddy to her granddaughter...)

*

Photoblog:
Me and My Puppies: Life Through A Lens

Blog:
My Journey Through Life (Malaysia)

Grey Skies

REPOSING HOME ALONE of a weary Wednesday afternoon... white-grey skies slowly shifting, stark light floods my double-glazed top window (bottom section blanked), the radio prattles on subdued volume; every now and then the front door goes banging, letting some busybody personnage in. Busy body: I am all but busy. I feel like those clouds: ever so distant, drear and insubstantial. Just like the weather, my heart feels chilled.

"Time goes by so slowly for those who wait," says Madonna.

But what about me, waiting for nothing? Time goes terminally slow.

Of course I must fabricate my own future. And that's what's new, I realized in my despair. I'm one of the people who's forever waiting for my boat to come in.

In lifetime past I was, of course, accustomed to sending out many little boats. All the time, on a frequent basis. Even though they usually were the tiniest of boats, out they got sent; and many did come back in...

For instance, I used to send off my answers on a postcard (remember those competitions? Before the blanket predominance of email and premium phone numbers?) By selecting prize draws with care (e.g. from trendy magazines whose readers mostly considered themselves above such trivia) I won all manner of nicknacks: guides to snowboarding, manga anime videos and so on...

And I had an endless stack of eyecatchingly funky specimens from the "please take a postcard" racks in trendy bars. I collected hundreds. These eyecatching postcards definitely helped me win...

I also applied myself to writing (unpublished) fiction, poems and other "works" I don't feel I wasted any time in so doing: firstly, writing is way more satisfying than timewasting old crosswords, sodoku and so on... and second, you actually have something to show for your efforts. As the only worthwhile author of writers' how-to guides, Dianne Doubtfire, pointed out; nobody expects to perform other acts of craftsmanship such as banging together furniture, or etching glass vases without first completing a rigorous apprenticeship. And so it is with writing. So none of my time or efforts have been wasted. I try to approach my memoirs etc with a sense of mellowness... Well I do try...

I was watching Trotters TV last night (ie handfeeding bits of bread etc: and they were so funny. I only gave one blob of wholemeal bread roll and Spherical grabbed it, who is top peck. Bashful immediately took up nibbling the other side, but Spherical reared up into wrestling position. Then Itchy's ears went up as she finally realized food was in the offing and it was right beside her... She stuck her nose out... till she realized Spherical was playing top peck, and didn't even attempt to have a nibble. Off she slunk to the wheel and let Spherical, now alone and relaxed, finish her top peck meal in peace...

Watching them I realized suddenly how very tiny they actually are. And why I gravitated towards such tiny trotters in the first place. They're just like kittens or puppies at two to three weeks; yet you know they will never pass the "tiny enough to sit on your palm" phase. Plus they do trot round and round like a furry horse race at times of tubby excitement.

(And I'd promised myself no robo-rants today. Sorry!)

And last but not least MORE legal news:

The Express Newspaper Group has reached a $1.1 million out-of-court settlement with the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, who was apparently snatched from a holiday apartment in Praia de Luz in the Algarve, Southern Portugal, last September.

The Daily Express and Star newspapers had libellously suggested that the little girl's parents had something to do with her disappearance, which I'm sure most reasonable people consider to be absolute rubbish just as I do.

As part of the settlement the Express newspapers' legal team made an apology before the judge in open court, and more to the point were compelled to publish grovelling FRONT PAGE apologies in both national titles this morning. The Daily Express and the Star have a combined daily circulation of 1,400,000 and a readership of over three million.

Click here for the Independent newspaper's report on the matter... (The Daily Express and Star are mysteriously not googlable this evening...) I got the article from the Express online via msn; but on further clicking "the article ... may have been deleted"...

OK post over. I'm off to SLEEP... I've not slept properly since Sunday...

GOOD NEWS for an Australian lady in Hanoi, Vietnam. She got caught with about 3kg of heroin in her shoes (must have had a very funny walk; you imagine 3 bags of sugar in YOUR shoes...) a high court has downgraded the life sentence she was inconveniently awarded into a sentence of death... why on earth people think life is "merciful" but death "cruel" I fail to comprehend... the British prison service are especially pervy... keeping double child killer Ian Huntley alive after two (rather pathetic, it has to be said) suicide attempts... if death is so against "human rights" why not have an elective death penalty? Where anyone sentenced to life can make the decision to die at any point during their sentence and be permanently out cold within the hour? Now THAT is civilized for ya...

BEES BLOG

MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY... lack of recent peace... taken over so many say by a country soon to have Olympics, though the country soon to have Olympics has, so I hear always thought of the mountainous land as an annexe... to see recent pixx click here

Plotting... (& "only" $50million!)

NOT MY WIZZY NEW NOVEL, I'm afraid; though I wish it was. I've been plotting the course of what might eventually become part of another book (if it gets into my memoirs)... And that is: my FUTURE.

I sat up for what seemed like hours last night, penning all manner of conceptions to paper...

I would particularly like to set up a Gledwood podcast. Surely that's the way forward for "freestyling" radio these days rather than taking the hospital or pirate radio route...

(Just what would I cast about? Not more hamsters and heroin; it has to be grown-up stuff...)

Well that's about it. No point telling ideas before they're done. That's called "fiction" or, to put it perhaps more kindly; tends to turn into "plans never executed"... I'm only into planning the future present. The only kind of planning worth doing!

*

AND I NEARLY FORGOT! LEGAL EVENT OF THE YEAR: Heather Mills McCartney yesterday obtained a £24.3 million (ie $50 million give or take a couple of months' interest) divorce settlement from Sir Paul.

The press have had a field day baring all of Miss Mills's "porno past" etc. Even the judge insisted on taking the slightly unusual step of making his decision public... his judgement branded her an "unreliable witness"... and awarded her a fifth of the alleged £125/$250million she had claimed from Sir Paul's £400/$800 fortune (though the press have claimed he is worth double that...)

Poor Heather Mills. Though I'm hardly her biggest fan I don't hate her as the tabloid press do... If you click on this link the full tabloid post mortem plus some lovely photos should pop up, showing her seemingly utterly deranged. The press are so clever at getting these. My diagnosis is of a single-minded lady of great determination whose mind has become focused on this divorce to the exclusion of nearly all else: which has led her to become over-wrought... so over-wrought, in fact that as soon as the case was over she allegedly ran up to Sir Paul's lawyer and doused her over the head with mineral water (it was a posh brand though).

Hopefully Miss Mills and her $50million can now move on to fresh pastures and poor Sir Paul can retire in peace to his Scottish hideaway and live out the rest of his days $50million poorer, but with $750million still intact...

BLOGTHING OF THE DAY:
American "high end" motorhomes (poshest personal coaches I've ever seen: these are fantastic... if you could get one shipped over you could have SUCH a lark driving around Europe in one... (so much more glamorous, as I said in their comments than camping in the awning of a shivery 1960s Dormabile!!!)

BLOG II Spanish-seeming person's Wales-looking photos...

PS why are Chinese and Japanese schoolgirls into such candy-coloured kitch like this..?

Furry Future

HAVING THOUGHT ABOUT THE FUTURE, my mind turned to pets. I have always wanted to get a giant rabbit, you know, the sort you can put in a harness and take out for a trot each morning (a hop, perhaps...)... then I think: hey what about a pika~?!? But you can't really get domesticated pikas (those giant hamster-like critters that live up the Rockies and bound about with flowers and grass bunched in their mouths) they are, apparently, too likely to bite (who does THAT remind me of..?) Then I come to realize in that case I might as well get the world's furriest animal, which looks like a rabbit from Mars into the bargain: yes the amazing chinchilla! They run on 16" diameter wheels and watch television in their spare time. If you haven't got satellite or get the channel or volume wrong they'll protest with a squeak... (click here and scroll down if you don't believe me!)

Then I realized I already have the world's cutest rodents: my three trotterovskis. Surely if a rodent beauty contest were held my three would win..?

When I was first a drug addict my family used to despair that they just wanted the old me back. I, to be frank, was happy to be killing him off: a millstone of a personality I'd tolerated round my neck all my life I'd grown up being told I was useless at school (not by the teachers: I mean the other pupils) and so learned self-loathing... So I had no sorrow for any personality my addiction to heroin might have "lost"...

... now, however, I do look back at some of my good points of old. I remember pushing myself through several situations (job interview type occasions etc) where I was so nervous my voice literally declined into a kind of bleat because I was trembling so much. And yet I pushed myself through. And how I did have some stubbornness and moral "fibre" (if you want to call it that)... and determination. Sometimes I want to get these aspects of the old me back, plant them in a pot like seeds and grow giant sequoias of them...

Wasn't I barking on yeserday! Like a twelve year old kiddie in a sweetshop!! I did achieve something. What I achieved was the near total (and utterly unexpected) demolition of my long- longstanding fear ~ nay, TERROR ~ of work.

Don't get me wrong; I've never been "workshy" in the sense of laziness. (Though like anyone I can be terminally lazy at selected times...) If only I could work and feel good about it and be well paid, I'd have been happy. My fear stems from bad experience. The experience of being hopelessly depressed and yet flung into work and social situations I could barely cope with (I literally had not enough hours in the day at one point to sleep, bathe and eat before getting back to start work again...)... my selfconfidence was at rock bottom and never really improved from any work experience I undertook, paid or voluntary. My last job I felt so very rotten I just wanted to curl into a ball. I could barely focus on anything I was that exhausted. I used to gaze longingly out of the stairwell windows and fantasize about flinging myself out. And I pushed and pushed and pushed against myself and only made myself iller. Then I discovered I really did have something wrong: it was called ME (so-called myalgic encephalomyelitis; though I hate that name) it is better known internationally as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) which I believe is a more accurate description... this was the same so-called "yuppie flu" of the 1980s: and it does tend to afflict people who, far from being lazy at heart, will push themselves too hard...

Then I got signed off sick... drifted... found that heroin "cured" not only my terminal lack of confidence, but all my physical aches too... and my world pretty much ended there.

All I can say is that yesterday I felt I glimpsed a vision through a very narrow crack of a newly-opened door...

SONG:
Dolly Parton: Jolene (listen to the chat she gives beforehand; it's classic!)

Regrets I: Japanese

STRANGE TO SAY but until I was well embarked upon the project, I hadn't really considered that writing my memoirs would make me examine my past (yet again) and, of course, wonder where I went wrong.

Well here's one crux-point I can identify: university.

So let's rewind 17 years or so...

I had vast troubles deciding what I was going to study and where. In fact the whole matter was stressing me so very much I wimped out of applying for the next acacemic year and ended up applying late on deferred entry (giving me a gap year which I wasted - not through lack of will but lack of money and opportunity).

If one proverb applies to my life it's this one:

If you chase two rabbits you'll catch neither!

That was the problem I had with uni courses.

Basically I was interested in:
English literature
Russian literature (the great novels) - but wasn't really up for learning the Russian language

European languages
I was doing A levels already in French and German and could have started a degree in Spanish if I'd wanted, from scratch.

But my biggest daydream was
Oriental languages;
most specifically Japanese.

I have a fascination for all things Japanese. Japanese television, Japanese electronics, Japanese poetry, Japanese writing (most complexicated system of writing in the entire world: uses Chinese characters plus TWO home-grown syllablaries plus the Roman alphabet!)... everything Japanese, in fact, except the food (though I've had Japanese curry at a Soho restaurant called Zipangu and that was yummy).

Now I know myself and I'm motivated by novelty. If only I'd bitten the bullet and gone for Japanese ... I can see this now; my life might have taken a totally different turn altogether.
Rather than continuing on the tired old subjects I'd done at school the course would have entailed immersing myself totally in an alien langauge and culture... If I had done it, I'm not sure I'd have derailed like I did and ended up dropping out less than halfway through a four year course...

Guess what I chose in the end?
You guessed it: French and German.

How I wish I'd followed my heart!
I still get a little flutter inside when I think about the three courses I was interested (in descending order):
London SOAS
Cambridge
and
Oxford

As it turned out, however, my grades were one point too low for SOAS which asks for BBB. I got BBC. Good enough for the course I finally applied for... but on Results Day I cried. Because I felt I'd failed.

And THAT, dear Readers, was a turning point, a beginning of the end. For from that moment on I took to throwing opportunities away, one by one. Until, within a few years I'd taken my future, crumpled it in a ball and tossed it in the trashcan of life....

Where would I be now if I'd gone for that degree in Japanese I always wanted?

I wonder
I wonder
I wonder ...

***

Clickfor:

Funky Japanese language blog...

Tuesday - Soporific Nite

OK; not quite nite yet. Evening time. Time for slow jazz or the neighbours' wailing reggae:- "Rolly-polly rolly-polly-no!" or have I verse 3 of Obie's Teeth rap nibbling my head? Naomi-Joy says rap 'n' hiphop ain't the same. Will some-1 please help me cos it's not my music. If it ain't "rap" - what da hell is hiphop den?Hey the reggae's perked up somewhat. BTW, wot is that chang-chang-chang every other beat? That seems to mark out reggae from every other music. What is it? I always assumed it was some honkeytonk or stummed guitar or something. But what is it? Please sm1 tell me as I've got it on the brain ...

Talking of things "on the brain"; the advice of Jesus Christ comes to mind: "Moderation in all things." Since when have I ever been capable of doing anything in moderation? That is my biggest failing, I think. And yet paradoxically, conversely, I also suspect it shall be the very thing that, put into action on the right thing at the right time, will finally give me the NRG to drag me up, lift me clear of this morass in which I'm helplessly wallowing, to lift me out and keep me on running until I'm not just clear but well clear and all this jumble, this confusing nightmare of existence isn't mere memory but a vague fadedness, as indistinct as it deserves to be. Lost smithereens of another lifetime will not be worth collecting in the future. Which is why if I'm gonna do it, I'm commencing penning my memoirs right now. So that I know. And my readers shall most definitley know. That the story I tell is real. Then I can let it go and my past can go two places simultaneously where it belongs. The dustbin. And the dump-bins of bookshops worldwide!

I'm behind, both in life and in blogthings. I know I'm meant to fulfill at least two "tags" (why do they call a "tag" a "meme" now? When a "meme" merely means (supposedly) "a unit of cultural information"? Can anybody explain? Because I'm confused by that one. Seriously confused.) Also I'm meant to email at least two people. If anyone else wanted me to get in touch for whatever reason and I don't - please would you remind me? (More to the point, re-remind me!) I am not just human but easily "confused". Even the local council says so - so just bear that in mind! And I do apologize. I can't even do one thing at one sometimes, let alone all these things I'm often meant to do and yet cannot recall even to do as the time comes round ... ho-hum!!

Tune of the Day: Cafe del Mar "Open Your Mind" - especially for Claire who's disappeared in Guatemala.

And here's Obie Trice - Got Some Teeth lyrics (click here too see the video!)

[Obie Trice - talking]
WOO!
Damn ..
There's a lot of bitches up in here tonight boy
I'm about to get drunk
Let's hold down,
Where the bar at?
[*crashing noise*]

[Verse 1]
Okay, okie dokey Obie's here
No more focus, hobo's got a career
And I like your brassiere and there's a party in here
And I'm ready to talk naughty in Veronica's ear
She erotic and it's hot, saw Heineken beer
Put her to the side and invite here to "Cheers"
Pull up a chair, nigga swear no drama
prepare for a player your workin with a MONSTER [*yelling*]
I ain't got time to waste, let's vacate the place
Shut blinds and drapes, grind to your face in a grimy state
Concentrate, you will find that your bound to get
But we found what's fate
We can watch two incredible mates masterbate
Why settle and wait
Let's Escalade to the nearest Super 8
To your rear is on the mirrors and they smearin booty cheeks
C'mon

[Chorus - 2X]
And this is my favorite song
Now sing along when the DJ throws it on
And if I leave here tonight and I fall asleep
And wake up, [*sound of water dropping*], hopefully she got some teeth

[Verse 2]
Okay holy moly derriere
Look around the club booty everywhere
She caught me starin
And my homies darin me to approach Karen
She's model material, but she got a venereal
Tons of baby fathers', baby bottles and cereal
She holla cause I got a lot of denerio
The DJ's playin Obie song on the stereo
And she's impaired and she wants to be headin home
With the real thing not the dildo clone
And I know I don't wanna be headin home
With some double D's full of silicone
Ten hoodrat chicks surround me outside
Found me outside, clown me outside
'Til I popped da trunk and they found me outside
Cussin' at the bitches screamin "off to they rides!"

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
Okay rolie polies everywhere [*horse naying noise*]
Gotta find a slim chick's atmosphere
Obesity's glarin and she got me fearin
She's gonna come over here and try to eat me literal [*crunching noise*]
-ly, like a box of Cheerios
Carrot cupcakes and chocolate Tootsie rolls
I'm outta order cause I gotta big girl disorder
So better cover up that blubber or I'll split [*feet running away noise*]
And I ain't got time to play
Let's investigate another place today
Ladies less in weight and the dress they shape
Dresses pettite, no window drapes

[Obie Trice - talking]
Word to mother, they god damn okra and beans
Got ya Oprah in jeans
Seems to me a little lean cuisine
Wouldn't hurt much, hot don't touch

[Chorus]

[Outro - Obie Trice - talking]
Haha, haha, ha
You gotta have teeth baby
It just wouldn't look right
Look, me big lips ..
You no teeth, it wouldn't work
You know what I'm sayin
Haha ha, yeah
I'm feelin good
Shady Records man
Obie Trice
C'mon

Cuboid Eyes

MY EYES ARE SQUARE, my brain is fried. Ziggies are zagging from retinal glare right back to the right back of my head. Why did I actually decide to post up a blog full of trash? Paris Hilton. Lindsay Lohan. That's what people wanna see. So in a moment of madness I posted it all up. If you wish to view it, press here.

As it is I am now tired and unsure. And hungry. And have to wait to get the money to eat. Which is so typical.

I did have a meeting with yet another drugs nurse today. She encouraged me to write out a brief sketch of my life so she at least has something to go on. This is a good sign. It means they may actually see the wood rather than just the rotten trees, know what I mean?

Also I did a wise thing and told her that if I am to get clean I wish to go abroad. Europe is suppsedly a single Union and I should have the same rights to training, housing &c as here. There are Members of the European Parliament supposed to protect these rights. And agencies through which millions of euros are funnelled who are supposed to inform me of these rights. At present I'm looking for an access point that will put me in touch. Google just has the obvious stuff for businessmen wanting to trade overseas.

Perhaps my earlier posts gave the impression that I want to travel. That isn't really it. I want to uproot myself and plant down somewhere else. Whoever came up with that idiot saying "Grow where you're planted" ... well plants can obey that little credo. I have legs for a reason. To get me out of places I've had enough of!

Basically, what I want to do is pick a town (not necessarily a large city but those are the places I gravitate to) and make that home. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin would be the kind of place. Or somewhere hot by the sea ... Costa del Sol, Barcelona, Italy somewhere, Greece. I'm blessed that I do pick up foreign language pretty easily so that isn't the biggest barrier. But where I end up... eventually... wherever I like I want to stay. I hate feeling like an outsider. I'm willing to be one but only while adopting pastures new as home.

As I said the other day my family sometimes seem to think I'm assuming the grass is always greener. I know it is the same grass just a different field. I have a vision of being somewhere overseas with people babbling all around me feeling miserable, thinking what am I doing here. But I'd rather be thinking that any day than be stuck in middle-England feeling more isolated, let down and flabby because I never even made the effort to go anywhere to begin with. My family is scattered worldwide because of itchy feet in the past and now I've just posted my own daydream. Well... we'll see ...

Moneytime/Nighttime

THEY SAY TIME IS MONEY. CLICHE, CLICHE. So how come I seem to have so very much of the first commodity without ever getting paid very much of the second? Come on, somebody. Don't explain this limp load of verbal poppycock. Just pay me. A nice purple-factored £20 note would do the trick rather pleasantly. Provided there's somebody around to commit alchemy.

For that's all money means to junkies. Notes become magic passports to those tiny topknotted polythene bags of heroin.

***

NIGHT. No idea of the hour. Matran and Laundretta have been up and about for hours which tells me it's late. They are two of the most antisocial people I have ever met. Every time she returns home, which is often, (she's always popping out ofr drinks and cigarettes) - she comes stomping back upstairs and bursts into their room almost falling over (yet again). He has been periodically yelling and exclaiming "Don't f--- with me," (one of his catchphrases; the others are too disgusting to repeat). Both of them go stomping on the ceiling to a ridiculous degree. Laundretta says the guy downstairs from them has made a very vusial pass when "coming" out of the bathroom. Then again she says such stuff about most men. Earlier she was going nuts because she couldn't find her phone. Matran has sold her phones before to get more crack at five, six, seven in the morning - whatever time her whorehouse earnings run out.

Cars are whooshing across the horzon. Sometimes I think it's tyres on road I can hear.

Mother Hubbard's given up smoking! Well over a yer ago she knocked booze on the head and has not gone back. Which makes two out of three (in my mind). As for the third one: "why should I?" she said. For now she's happy swigging back meth(adone) all week and having heroin "hits" three or four days out of seven. Those hits are the highlight of her week.

Digger Dodge, her "old man" (partner) was out seeing his old man (father) in the old folks home where he now resides. Mother Hubbs makes a "home" sound like a fate worse then death. I don't see that it's too bad. It's a fully private facility. You're allowed pets. And all bedrooms have satellite TV. It's considerably more luxurious than here. But then again, so are some prisons, judging by what I've read in the papers.

Mother Hubbs has plans. I think, as soon as she's able, she wants to up sticks and leave these dismal shores for the brighter climate of Melbourne Aus, where her sister lives.

The travelling bug (or more to the point, the upping sticks and plonking down somewhere else blog - I'm not into moving around for the sake of it) has bitten me too as I reported a couple of posts ago. If and when and everything I can and do get it together to clean up and straighten out, I feel the call of European shores. Amsterdam has alwyas been an attraction (why does everyone associate the place with drugs. I'm not even going to argue this point. Drugs are everywhere and not everyone in Amsterdam is on them. Read Nicole's blog. Berlin I have always wanted to see. And I can easily speak German well enough to get by there. Then there's Paris. I've been there twice. YOu can wander the streets all day long without feeling you could be somewhere better. It's so cool and calm. Easy to forget you're in a city of equal size and stature to London and New York ...

One thing my family cannot (or will not) understand is my desire to travel. I just don't understand why. They cannot seem to grasp my viewpoint that a day lived abroad is a day full of tiny thrills that simply do not happen in one's own country. It's basically because things are just a little bit different. Different buses. Different trains. Different money. Different stamps. Different food. Different people to inflict my dreaded pingpongball dumplings upon ... just kidding (of course) ... It's ten times easier to make friends abroad. People want to speak to you because you're different. This is not idealism speaking, it's experience.

Another aspect my family wouldn't understand is that I spent years studying the French and German languages and this has given me an insight into their cultures that is simply out of reach to the average monoglot Brit. Of course I'm always swimming against the tide with this one. Our insular view is that "all foreigners speak English anyway, so why bother?" The best riposte to this argument would be something I once read in a travel guide. And it's simple: imagine staying in New York or London for three months and not speaking or understanding a single word of English. How much of the culture would you understand then?
- I rest my case.

Basically I feel that if I live out my life not having lived abroad when I have the chance, I will have failed myself.

What will I do with myself when I'm out there? This is a New Europe. Supposedly "Unified". Anything I can do here should be possible in France, Holland, Germany or Spain. I'd like to train up for a profession. And I'd like to write and get paid for it. You can do that anywhere these days. Which is precisely my point.

And that, my dear friends, is as simple as that ... And here endeth the present drivel!

Where Did The Old Me Get To?

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT this morning. Matran wasn't hurting Laundretta yesterday btw. I wouldn't have laughed about it if that was so. She is up and about this morning. Quite sober and together: especially for her. He is being very quiet. He's a quiet guy. I woke up not thinking of drugs this morning. I'm pondering over and over more and more what am I going to do with my life these days. As I've stated before, the days are long gone when I ever wake up thinking, "What am I going to do with this day?" What will I put right? Attain? Achieve? Those days, which were a big part of my old life, have well and truly flown the nest. The way grown-up children inevitably do. But I want them back. The grown-up version of Creative me. Creative people by necessity do create. Their actions preceed them. I am not creative. O yes I am potentially so. I have the potential to be an extremely creative guy. But I'm not. I create nothing. I do nothing: except lumber lugubriously from day to dismal day. And I want out of that morass. This isn't even (merely) down to drugs. It's due to laziness and melancholy and the inexorable result of years lived never for tomorrow, always just to solve the problem of today. The drugs problem. The problem of getting enough drugs to fix up not to be sick. That has been my life. My only wonder has been that it has not lead me into far more trouble than it actually did do.

The old me decided to go to Thailand and took up learning not only to speak but to read and write Thai. Long story but I ended up in India: don't ask. Story of my life. The old me saw a job going for a clubbing correspondent in a music magazine. I was clubbing every week at the time and knew the "marketplace". What do I need for noisy nightclubs where a dictaphone will pick up more background noise than speech? I definitely need shorthand. And so I'd learnt the basics in a week and given up smoking at the same time. (I used the shorthand pad to make endless doodles every time my hands wanted to reach for cigrettes.) The twin goal-setting worked really well. Although I never got the job I did stay off cigarettes -- completely -- long enough to go all summer and through New Year's Eve not touching the dreaded tobacco. Now I'm smoking so heavily the inside of my front teeth are black. What my lungs look like I hate to consider. Though I've never been the type to jump up and down proclaiming "what I'm going to do", I did used to seize opportunities, set goals and actually (after a fashion) attain them. I don't set any goals now. I don't think about them. A couple of years into this drug addiction I stopped myself one afternoon realizing: I don't daydream anymore. I used to spend my entire life planning on what to do next. As an addict I knew what to do next. Make money. Spend it on heroin. Take heroin. Make more money. And so on. So simple I never needed to consider anything more than where the money was to be made and who I'd ring once I had it ...

Maybe this is what growing up in Britain does to you, but I remember a few years ago telling a friend that if you wanted to be successful (and why would you want that, he probably asked himself) the key was to set goals. He looked at me wide-eyed and queried: "REALLY?" This was a new concept to him. I couldn't have survived without having set goals day to day. Another thing I learnt was that life is fulfilled day by day by day. Not by lunging into things quickly and getting them over with though of course there's always a time and a place for that approach. But a little of the same thing every day mounts up. Books are written. Languages learned. Money saved. Et cetera.

I want the old me back!!

PS I suppose I have indeed created something lately: I've created this blog.