Just another manic-depressive Monday...

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY. Sun is shining. Weather is fine. I have avoided purchasing sunglasses, radical hair dyes and canaries. I didn't avoid purchasing heroin but I've used it already. Felt no better for doing it. Won't be doing it tomorrow. I'm thinking of getting contact lenses again after finding out they're only £5 a month and you can easily make 3 pairs last 6 months if you don't wear them too heavily. It does seem ridiculous to be shelling out on pair after pair of tinted glasses when you can buy what you need down the pound shop. (That's what I used to do.) I used to have a vast collection of shades ~ and that's the biggest disadvantage of being a spectacles wearer: having to keep switching between prescription dark lenses and prescription clear ones. Or wearing those dodgy ones that go dark in the sun and make you look like a child molester. Don't worry: I have a pair on order but Specsavers aren't half taking their time processing it. Watch those children flee from those amber tints! I've still another week and a half until I can play silly games covering half the lens with a piece of card and watching the remaining half darken. Etc etc. As you MAY have noticed I tend to get consumed by these all-encompassing obsessions for trifling things. They usually begin while my mood is good. But I'm hanging on to the last vestiges of enthusiasm for the present one because it concerns self-image and I needed that new image DESPERATELY. Frankly I'd rather be depressed and obsessed by dark glasses than depressed and obsessed by suicide. I look around and cannot really see anything very positive. But I force myself to do the things I would do if I felt normal like buy food. Buy a film I wanted to see when it came out (Red: starring Helen Mirren as a machine-gun wielding pensioner). All that crap. I even bought an essential oil burner from the pound shop because it was blue. I don't even know where to buy the essential oils these days. I like the resinous ones from trees: frankincense, benzoin, myrrh (ie "church incence"). I don't even know where to buy a new washcloth because I haven't gone shopping for anything bar absolute bare essentials in ten years and my Mum used to buy me shampoos and flannels because I never bought my own. My fingernails were constantly black because my hair was so dirty. You see now why I cut it off: it looked truly horrible.

Pinky, by the way, thinks my natural colour looks nicer than the dye. She says I'm "dirty blond". Dirty. You can say that again. If I can, I'm going to clipper it all off leaving just a couple of millimetres platinum at the ends. That might look really good. (Might do....)

This morning, I met an alcoholic who never recognizes me. He had bags of clothes each side, which implied he was homeless. I did ask, but he didn't want to talk about it. A great lump over one eye and a heavily dilated pupil revealed that he had been in a fight. Yet again. I told him he looked like David Bowie. I told him he needed to see a doctor and he said "oh who cares" and I said "well someone should". But he was too drunk to get through to until I started saying "o wel wel bore da ichi gyd, diolch yn fawr nawr te" which means nothing very much in Welsh but he found it endlessly amusing. He went to school just over ten miles up the road from where I did. Last time I encounterd him he was swaying catatonically in Morrisons' toilets so drunk his eyes seemed lost in mid-space. When I said hello to him then he appeared very surprised to hear his name. Then was immediately lost back in his stupor. This man urgently needs to see a doctor. All I know about head injuries is, if one eye is dilated and the other normal and your eyes are pointing in different directions you need medical attention and quick. But he won't get it. He'll take medication all right. In the form of more booze. And he won't see a doctor until the police surgeon checks him out compulsorily on his next Drunk and Disorderly charge.

I'm still glugging away at the live yogurt. I've found a Polish brand at 79p per 500g ~ cheapest going. But it has no mood elevating properties. If only it did... I'm taking it to get rid of the two black eyes junkie look I've had since before I went on the gear. Heroin only made that look worse. So much worse, in fact, someone once said my eyes looked GREEN. That is, green bags beneath the eyes. Which would have matched my own sludge coloured peepers quite well.

Gotta go now. I hope y'all are enjoying mowing your lawns, repotting daisies or kowtowing to your bosses. Whichever you do.

Someone told me I should write a book. Strangely the plot of an amazing story came to me. More to the point the END of the story came to me. I cannot stand writing not knowing where I'm going. I've always planned my fictions like a series of shopping lists. I don't take voluminous notes. If you're going to write, write the bloody book I say. But if you can't see where you're going jotting down each paragraph shopping list style makes the writing very much easier. This is a children's book. The type you can write again and again and again merely altering the scenario. My best scenario has a huge gimmick only it wouldn't make a good book number one (as it couldn't be topped or bettered for one thing). So I'm writing the plainest most basic story first. Then they get more and more gimmicky and full of novelty as they go on. Of course I cannot reveal my Grand Designs to anyone until the writing is done. I did write a short story about a different character, but short stories are difficult. Before they've barely begun they're over with. Novels gain momentum as they go until the writing becomes effortless, but you don't get that with short fiction. So I'm writing novels for kids. I mean the 8 to 12 age group. I do believe the world of children's fiction needs a good slap round the face. And a departure from wizards. Children's book editors must be sick to death of would-be J K Rowlings. I'm the first me and I don't really want to go through the pain of writing my life story (I just liked the thought of profiting from my pain and being paid by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film. Or Paul Bettany if I had to be an English actor. Or Danny Dyer except he'd have to live up to his name and dye his hair ultimate platinum and get a personality transplant to play a white mouse like me.) Well I'd better go: this book won't write itself.

I chose writing by the way as it was the only meaningful activity I'm capable of doing to a high standard despite my bad moods.

I've got to go to the fucking methadone doctor tomorrow. Along with Duta. Which I find very oppressive. Meaning I cannot use a doctor for what a doctor is actually for: to confide in. I'm not prattling a load of positive-sounding shit for anyone. If they rile me to it I will tell them that I only want to clean up so I can die. That's about as positive as you can get, if you think about it. Means whatever mood I'm in I still wanna be clean. The lower I get the more I crave heroin. But this craving is tempered by a hatred of drugs and all they stand for. The more energy and oomph I have, the more vehemently anti-drugs I become. It's all good, you see.

Wish me luck for tomorrow. I really am not looking forward to this doctorly bullshit. Three whole weeks I've been at this shit-arse service and already it's time for a "review". Like I say this means an absolute waste of time. You can't say anything meaningful to the doctor as your pig-ignorant Worker is sitting there. Anyone who seriously thinks 110mg methadone is a high dose really needs their head testing. I cannot handle anything more than a few false smiles and meaningless pleasantries these days so if any more is expected I'm afraid Duta is going to be sorely disappointed. I might bring up the fact that the less heroin I have taken in the past the more mentally unstable I have become and that I want something else apart from methadone because methadone is causing mental derangement. If they won't listen, I'm considering launching an official appeal. I'll get myself a lawyer and everything. I think I am entitled to medical care appropriate to my case and I don't feel that I'm getting it. So Duta and Doc-Doc can shove that in their crackpipes and smoke it!


☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆



three trance classics ...

HYBRID: SYMPHONY 1997



THREE DRIVES: GREECE 2000



INFECTED MUSHROOM: MUSHI MUSHI

All to the good?...??

MY QUEST for ever-perfect grooming goes on... with Elnett hairspray (found months ago on street) sprayed to front of head causing permanent pilo-erection. Paddster says I remind him of Billy Idol.

I've also done this trick I used to achieve with a crusty old washcloth but the cosmetics version is nicer. You exfoliate three times in a row with the grittiest facial scrub you can find and then continue to use this scrub every day in place of soap and if it works on you like it works on me you'll look a good five years younger.

In fact when I take off my dark glasses (I'm wearing them at all hours, to get full money's worth)... then stare at my blond microdermabrasioned image in the looking glass I look like an angel. My old look was something like an extra from a Hollywood bubonic plague epic. That kind of look.

So I'm doing all I can. I even wear P20 sunscreen (expired 2001) the sun lotion I took to Goa and Madras. It's so powerful you exfoliate (very important) then apply just ONCE to unmoisturized skin (why moisturize when nature provides something called GREASE??!) anyway so you put this stuff on once a day. It never needs reapplication and even if you swim all afternoon it only reduces 2 factor points to 18.

Oh and I eat pro-biotic yogurts and drink tiny mysterious vanilla flavour drinks that are so nice you knock back eight in a row, ya know, the type containing bifidus digesticus lactobacillus. That habit originated in India too. I came back glowing with health without my normal two black eyes look. Months of pondering ("was it the food? No. Indian farmers use about twenty times more pesticides"... was it the lack of cigaretttes? No. Ciggies are 15p a packet of 10 in Goa so we smoked three packs a day each... I did catch giargia food poisoning but I don't think that would make me look much healthier. Then I realized my biggest change in diet (apart from barely any meat at all for six weeks) was "banana lassi" morning noon and night. Lassi is Indian drinking yogurt. Live yogurt. So maybe there is something in this probiotic bullen-scheisse. I'm rotating brands to get as many "friendly bacteria" as my body can take.

Having said this I hobble up to my chemist's each morning, drink over 100 mls of pig-sick and spend the next hour wanting to puke. My sleep cycle is all over the place. A couple of days ago I was exhilarated to be dropping off at 5pm and getting up with the nightingale at 11. It meant all the bad films I'd missed while I was a heroin addict got caught up on.

I spent all day yesterday telling myself I wasn't really fighting incoming waves of depression, I was just PISSED OFF AND ANNOYED THAT SOME BASTARD HAD BOUGHT MY PET CANARY. The most beautiful one in the shop. Heartbreakingly, this little bird actually sang to me before I said goodbye. (Rather stomped out in fury.)

And if you're wondering how it sang to me after being purchased: this is the very crux of my irritation. The **** who paid for these birds left them in the cages on display so people like me could fall in love with their royal chirpiness only to be told "nah: the two that look like crash-dieting sparrows are on sale but some bastard's already bought and paid for the proper pair"...

So I'm officially feeling SHIT and it just goes to show, as I always knew, moods come and go. They have very little to do with anything else that happens because I've lived in a pigsty covered in cockroaches and been so manic I literally felt my body turning into cosmic energy. Now that's HIGH MAN!! I've also been depressed as can be when I had everything going for me. I frankly don't care any more. Oh and I did buy heroin this morning. And no it didn't make me any better at all. Best move I ever did was memorize the last arrivals and departures into and out of London. It means when suicidal thoughts strike late at night I know what time to lie across those rails. I give my odds of survival at 50:50. I have nothing worth living for. Not really.

Yeah yeah I can distract myself watching the news, smoking cigarettes, being glad I never bought a loudly chirping canary (recipe for psychosis) but deep down. No, I tell a lie. Barely a millimetre deep under the glowing exfoliated peroxided good health is despair just as black and pustulent as it ever was and I don't think it will ever go away. That's why I wanted to win the lottery. The proper Euromillions lottery, at least £100,000,000 lump sum untaxed. Then I could prove to myself for once and for all that happiness is a mere illusion. In fact when I think I'm happy other people think I'm mentally deranged. So what does that say about me?... More to the point WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THEM??

The back of my head...

YOU WANTED TO SEE THE BACK OF MY HEAD here y'are....

I didn't get any canaries yesterday as some BASTARD went and bought all the yellow ones while I was talking shit at the drug clinic. Only bird I want in there now is the "goldfinch mule". This is a European goldfinch crossed with a canary. He has very attractive pink colouring but seems to live in permanent terror fluttering to and fro. I was half tempted to buy him out of pity, to try and calm him down.

I'm trying to feel positive, the depression is seeping back, just like high tide follows low tide. Only good thing is I've not bothered with the heroin. I got a phone call at 2am (I got up at midnight) from my old dealer, but didn't bother answering. This is the one who handed his business to a schoolkid who tried to sell me one "ten" for £20. So I say hang on a minute. He gives me another. Then I say "no, it's three for £20" (which it is, from this dealer). So I opened them up and there was about £10 worth of gear in all three, at 2002 prices. I hate drugs, I hate drug dealers. Every morning I feel SICK before I collect my juice. I wish those bastards would let me drink it at my own pace. Then I'd never feel ill. So I am sweating like a bastard knowing the dealer is at far closer hand than my chemist.

Anyway I have to go. I'm using the library's ethernet or whatever the hell they call it. Gotta jump on the bus before the urge to score eats me up.

PS my hair isn't as yellow as that. It's "absolute platinum" ~ that's the name....

Tennis Ball Head

ON SATURDAY NIGHT I got out the clippers and shaved off a carrier bag full of conker coloured hair. On Sunday I went to Wilkinsons, the budget houseware suppliers, and spent £4.40 on Schwarzkopf Ultra Platinum XXX hair dye. I now have bright yellow hair à la Christopher Walken in view to a kill.

I have to say the treatment stung my scalp. Literally within 5 minutes my hair was nearly white, which frightened me into washing it off 28 minutes later. I was going to do the whole 45 mins to get maximum value but was frightened by then I'd have melting jelly for hair. With smoke whisping out.

This morning I woke up thinking WHAAAAT have I done??! To add insult to injury I realized I'd missed bits round the back so I had to repeat the performance.

If you want an idea of the colour, it's a very artificial light golden blond. Last thing I wanted was anything tasteful or understated. I might have the personality of a mouse, but I like EXTREMES. I still have half a packet left for next time.

My chemist asked me if this was my new disguise. Even the internet café guy, who knows me from days of yore when I used to shamble in shoelaces untied, vacuum cleaner dust coloured hair exploding out in all directions like a mentally retarded scientist, said he liked the colour. I now get stared at everywhere I go.

I'm glad I didn't go for Sun-in. For one thing you need a hair dryer to activate Sun-in full-on, which I don't have. And like I say, the last time we sprayed that stuff on the hairdressing trainees at our local technical college informed me I was risking permanent hair damage.

Yes, true to title, I do have a bit of that tennis ball head thing going on.Yet I don't look anything like an escaped convict. The colour is far too striking for prison chic.

Now you can all leave lots of compliments about how fantastic I must look. And I do, I promise you!

Glasses Alert

HEY! I'VE FOUND A PICTURE OF MY NEW GLASSES. These are exactly the pair that really suits me. Won't they look amazing in light brown tint??! And can't you see now why I'm so irritated at having to wait TWO AND A HALF WEEKS for this sheer trendiness to be perched on the bridge of my nose in a with snazzy amber lenses? I want to know what y'all think of my excellent taste. Frank opinions only, please!

Nah! Just kidding. Those are the horror glasses I had when I was at school. Note I say "had" not "wore". I hated them so much I'd glance at something important then, in the blink of a myopic eye they'd been snatched away to spare my dignity. Everyone wore glasses like this in the 80s. Everyone who excelled in science subjects. Or had poor social skills. Or a face full of boils. And they made most of us look like multiple child killers who spoke English as a second language. Actually what am I saying. No nation bar Britain would ever countenance such execrable eyewear.

My current specs are the only pair I've ever had that I actually like wearing. Which either says a lot about glasses or it says a lot about Specsavers' range. I've only ever shopped at Specsavers. They do live up to their name. But their staff are offhand and they take AGES to process a simple order for photochromic lenses.

They look like this:I used to have such a thing about eyewear when I was younger (contact lenses not glasses) that my parents got me a job interview at the opticians (gotta work with something you love). Never got the job. That was the old me: so tremulous, I was bleating like a lamb.

I remember when my housemates went on holiday to Mororcco. All I could think on viewing their photos was how their fly-eye shades were so two years ago. This was 1999 so you'll all know what I'm saying.

Now I've got to go. I've a haircut to think about. My friend Pinky says I should go for shaved sides and a bit longer at the top. What do y'all think? I'm neutral. I hate haircuts, just as I hate choosing spectacle frames. Any enforced gawping at my ugly mug in the mirror does my brains in.

If I do get a decent haircut I'm dying my hair too. I used to dye my hair all the time using that Sun-in bleach. I only stopped doing it when my friend Lona took me to a student-run trainee salon where a scarlet-faced, trembling 16 year old scurried back to inform me quavery-voiced, that my strand test not only MELTED under their dye, but started curling out whisps of SMOKE. The schoolmarmish supervisor strode up and demanded to know what on earth I had been putting on my hair. When I said Sun-in with a hairdryer she rolled her eyes and ordered me never to use that product again.

My hair is naturally the colour of dust from a burst vacuum cleaner bag. So what colour should I turn it? Reason I always used peroxide was that it rapidly goes the colour of spun gold with no need for any additional chemicals or colouring. And I've never used those packets of dye meant for middle aged women covering their greys. What do I do? Could my hair turn to jelly and melt? Would I be able to light cigarettes off it? I'd need a ciggie if it melted.

Well that's about all appearance-wise. I'm trying to get some self-esteeem back you see. Y'all have to bear in mind that basically the day I went on heroin was the day I gave up ever shopping for anything bar absolute essentials. Since then I literally have not bought ANY clothes, bar socks and undies. The day things really went tits up and I could no longer afford heroin was the day I turned into a street beggar, with the look to match. Teeshirts, tops, jeans etc were all donated, found on the street or fished out of bins. My footwear came from the boxes people leave behind when they buy new trainers. I used to wear army surplus. Now I just look like a street drinker on my worst days, a down-at-heel student on my better ones.

Another thing: I urgently need a dental scale and polish. My teeth are so badly stained from chain-smoking that there's pretty much no point poshing myself up until a hygenist has given me a white smile again. That service used to be free. Now it's £40 ~ NHS or not. My teeth are so rotten I fully suspect most of them to be HOLLOW. The last dentist ~ who did the emergency extraction on that molar that had rotted all the way up the root ~ was compelled to take an x-ray and read out the state of my gnashers to his surly nurse and I'm sure I heard the word "extraction" at least three times. I only had one hit of heroin and one drink before I came into that shithole of a surgery and yet he treated me like scum of the earth. I lied on the "medications taken" question. No way was I telling that bastard I was on 140mg of methadone!

OK so what should I do with this hair of mine? Ideas please. At the moment it looks like a grey mop and I hate it. I hate long hair. It's long because it hasn't been cut. Fashion doesn't come in to it. (When does fashion ever come into long hair for men?) Last time I cut it I did what I'd long fantasized about: grabbed scissors and literlaly hacked away until only a centimetre length remained. I thought it was OK. Partly because I'd recently had a psycho flare-up; mostly because I'd done 2 £20 bags of heroin before the haircut. Over the following weeks I kept finding long bits, ridiculously short bits. I looked like a fledgling bird with schizophrenia.

Branzie, my stepdad did buy me hairclippers but I'm scared of getting that ex convict look. I won't look hard with that kind of cut. I'll look like Sinead O'Connor crossed with a Red Army Faction terrorist.

So come on. Advice. Needed. DESPERATELY.

Should I shave my head grade 5, or what? Should I hand in my glasses and demand an exchange for the stylish pair up top? Should I take a mood stabilizer to stop me very nearly walking out of petshops with exotic singing finches? My life is a mess and I'm on methadone. Please help me!!




★★★★★★★★★★★★


PS don't forget today's other posts:
Furry Friday on Saturday: Shetland Ponies
Betty Ford Dead at 93
Watch the Birdie (about me nearly purchasing a singing finch for £35 + £12 for the cage)

Shortest Ever Hair

I'VE BEEN (INTERMITTENTLY) AT MY HAIR with a pair of nail scissors all weekend; and the result ~ my shortest hair for 20 years! All the long bits, the crap bits, the straggles are gone!The remaining crop's uniform just-over-1" long and deliberately styleless. No dreadful parting anywhere to be seen. It stands up readily ~ electroshock mad professor-style with a hint of fledgling birdie chick chic.

Because it was cut with nail scissors, you can still see where it was chopped off in clumps. A look I was hoping to achieve.

THE RAZOR-BLADED EXPECTORATIONS of last week's non-piggery-influenced Common Cold are cruising smoothly to oblivion. My last cold post ~ you know the one exclaiming something like "Better Already!" ~ was, I now confess, a little over-enthusiastic. The fiery worst was over, but my airpipes were and still are cobwebbed in choking, membranous rattling phlegm. I have coughing fits an ancient pensioner would be proud of.

But it's not a rattling old peabag cough ~ and that's the point. Nothing coughs up. I just feel like five thousand grains of half-buried itching-rice are semi-dislodged by my hackings. Yet still: nothing ever comes up.

Here's Britain's "socialist" National Health Service (o yeah what a commie idea ~ not to demand a dying man's credit card before he's out of the ambulance! ) ... Pandemic Flu Service site. Do have a non-public hysteria whipping peek.

I read that last sentence back and read it wrong. But I won't tell you what I read. You can read that into it yourself...

ANYWAY I FEEL we're in the 21st Century now. man: I really feel it. WH Smith, Britain's biggest stationers, no longer sell bottled writing ink!

So now-a-days you get 6 or 8 Parker cartridges ~ containing about a bottletop full of ink ~ for £2.60 (I ask you!) ~ which is far more than a 2 fluid oz" (is that 56 mls?) bottle of Quink ever cost me.

Not to be deterred, I'm Harrods-bound ~ Harrods being my favourite shop in the world: the food halls in particular are amazing. And their downstairs stationer's dept. sells every brand and colour of writing ink imaginable. Last time I got Montblanc (click and see), which comes in a shoe-shaped container; the "heel" being reserved for a pen-shaped filling-reservoir while the toes house the swilling year's supply of ink...



Montblanc's Mickey Mouse-style Meisterstück is theee fountain-pen of choice for treaty-signing world leaders. Tradition being that upon signing, statesmen swap "Stücks" as a nod to international harmony. (Then swap straight back as soon as the eyes of the world's media are off them ~ Meisterstücke cost $800-$1000 or more depending on whether you go for gold-nibbed or platinum...

HAVING SAID ALL THIS I'm in an emotional fight for survival (again!). My mood is down on the floor. (Perhaps Harrods might sell something to lift it. But I doubt it. Their heroin dept. closed down in the 1920s ...

PS Gledwood Volume 2 got 355 hits yesterday!

I can barely believe it. Perhaps my hit-counter is wrong ...

Just who from..? I'd love to know ...