I'm "back"

BUT I STILL HAVEN'T GOT THE POWER CABLE. I've not been well enough to go anywhere. I can barely walk the length of my own road. It hurts to do anything. I feel 105. I take rests on neighbours' garden walls with their moggie circling my legs and purring. I don't know what I've done but I've done my back in and I feel like an old pensioner. One of these days I'm going to drop and not be able to get up... that day is closer and closer. On a brighter note that wound on my leg is healing, having pussed up every pair of jeans I own. I cannot cover it as it's impossible to remove any kind of dressing without ripping it open. Blood and pus and the reek of dead flesh are everywhere. I am exhausted. The only good thing is I lost my appetite, which is saving money on food. I have a dr's appointment on Monday. Hopefully I will make it out alive again..(!) Akh! I've got to do, else I will get terminated yet again...

My brains are turning into:

GUM HEALTH gel. Bonjela Cool Mint Gel contains the active ingredients: Choline salicylate 8.714% w/w (a non-steroidal antiinflamatory) and cetalkonium chloride 0.01% (antiseptic) w/w...

And I'm popping:

like they're going out of fashion.

If the problem were:



instead of just gums I'd be all up for using:

and yanking the offending one(s) out myself... but as it is, it's

and a trip to the

for me!

And in case you want something furry because it's "Friday on Saturday" here's a polar bear stuck on a melting ice floe. I know just how he/she feels:

Jittery

I DON'T KNOW what to say today. I feel tired and shaky and weird. Last night I had endless sinister nightmares. All about getting wrapped up in the consequences of someone else's misdeeds (nothing to do with my drugs ~ I don't often dream about drugs) ~ and all night I was running from false accusations. As per usual.

I don't really think I've got the DTs; I just don't feel very well. I noticed the chemist looking funny at me as she handed over the methadone today. Then I thought: Oh no. It shows. Usually I could be feeling so bad I'm dripping green slime and nobody notices. But odd and weird with no possible diagnosis and the world has to notice. How typical.

I'm hacking at my chapter one on a computer so I apologize to everyone for never being in touch. As soon as my mind turns to the subject I'm being timed out yet again ~ story of my life.

Anyway gotta run. Else I'll get timed out yet again!!

Not Seeing My Mum

I'M NOT GOING TO SEE MY MUM TODAY because my stepdad has "manflu". He is in their conservatory sneezing with a common cold. In a way I'm pretty relieved as, having blown so much money ~ on books(!) ~ I can barely afford to get to the out-of-town railway station they wanted to meet at, let alone pay for anything else!

So the date has been pushed back to next week. And hopefully man-flu, piggery flu and no other type of flu will have attacked anyone else of us by then!





LAUGHING BABY:
I find this advert so entertaining!

... and the one I'm looking for isn't there (how typical) ... but this one's arguably even better:




COW & GATE GROWING-UP MILK ...
o here we are; here's the ad I find so very entertaining ~~
everything from the ting~ting~ting to the baby's face, the milk pot, everything ~ but especially the laughter and the mother's "you've done us right proud!" cheekgrabbing:~~



PS I'm reading my blog back on Firefox... does anyone else use that?
It makes my pages look like they were composited in 1825!

What Happened

I HAVEN'T BEEN AROUND FOR A FEW DAYS: I have been indisposed. It all started out at the weekend, when I tripped on a root. No I have not been pestle-&-mortaring "shamanic" Amazonian herbs. I mean I literally fell over on my chin, nearly broke my nose off and got bruises all over me, because of an inexpertly shorn-off 2" stub of root sticking under an evergreen by the library. I could barely move for 15 mins I was seeing so many stars. And I had headache all day and felt sick. People told me to go to Accident and Emergency but why bother? Last time I went and definitely did have concussion I got discharged! Then spent the next week wandering around not knowing what I was doing!

Then three days afterwards, I realized this pain in my side that got worse after I got up and it clicked notably and then I poked it really hard like a disbelieving doctor ~ it really started to hurt then and I realized I might actually have broken a rib!

So now I have to write to the local council telling them they're lucky I'm not an old age pensioner because I might be on a drip now if I was. I mean what kind of idiot person gets rid of humungous fricassing bushes and then thinks ~ o no! I can't be bothered to pull that last bit out. I'll just leave a 2" high stub and another section trailing like a tripwire. That'll make my employers REALLY HAPPY!

Hmmm... Yes and there's more. A couple of days later the phone rang. It was an old acquaintance offering a free sample of some "legal high" thing he said was "like E(cstasy) mixed with coke ~ you'll love it". Well I did try it. 0.2g of a white powder that smelled uncannily of candy. I snorted half up each side of my nose because he said swallowing it produced more uneven effects among different people and snorting was more reliable. But it killed my nose! Then just three minutes later the most incredibly pleasant high started off. It was far nicer than snorting cocaine and way quicker than MDMA (ecstasy) ever came on up my nose. 20 minutes later I was diving deep in my own brains and feeling like Buddha, a feeling that lasted a good 2 hours, followed by about 4 hours of quite some speediness. I took it at 6:30pm and got no sleep till nearly 5am.

Now of course I feel more run down than ever before. And I don't even know what that stuff was. He said it's called "Rush" ~ I suspect he selected that name as virtually Google-proof. And I'm not at all convinced it's legal.

When I was much younger and far more impressionable I shelled out £20 or so on a vast tome called PIHKAL by Alexander Shulgin. The title stands for Phenylethylamines I Have Known And Loved. Phenylethylamines are drugs in the ectstasy-mescaline category and run a spectrum from quite speedy (MDEA) to very entactogenic or empathogenic ~ or even entheogenic ~ as they like to say (MDMA) to trippy (MDA) to very trippy (2CB, mescaline et al). This man had a licence from the United States Government to manufacture for personal use and experiment with these otherwise illegal substances. There are about 150 of them. He tested all and wrote up notes, complete with dosages and remarks. Now I suspect this stuff was a rarer one of these. I know that stuff called PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine) was going around in the 1970s, and it was then, long before MDMA ever became an issue, that the entire family of these drugs were banned in Britain.

Phenylethylamine, the substance after which this entire druggie family's named, naturally occurs in chocolate. It's also known as PEA. Women's magazine articles will cite this and it's supposed high-inducing properties. But Shulgin found it to be orally inactive in any dose...

... (Unless, that is, something else in chocolate kicks the stuff in!!)

And also, I just realized, of course, he's a MAN ~ it's WOMEN who get off on chocolate... so maybe that's our PEA-mystery ....

Now I've little more to say, and apart from all this I've been totally absorbed in my book. I read the entire thing; now I'm ploughing back through with dictionary and notebook, so I can read yet again ~ and every single word with which I was unfamiliar's been translated ...

And how was YOUR week ..??!?

PS If you're interested in any of those mysterious substances mentioned the best place to read about them is EROWID.

PPS: read Dr Shulgin's write up on PEA, the supposed "active" ingredient in chocolate here.

MADONNA TUNE
The UK top 20 was playing last night and MOST of the tunes had this Ibiza-trance sound. I've never heard the British charts sound so ridiculously similar ever ...

And all else I can say is: Madonna, you're a 50-year old woman. Really!

CELEBRATION

I Don't Want an HIV Test

MY DRUGGIEWORKER is on at me to get tested for HIV and hepatitis. I really don't want to get it done. I was negative last time. She doesn't think I have HIV (and remarked she thinks this is distinctly unlikely, I don't "look" like it either). But she believes hepatitis C might be a possibility because I'm so exhausted so much of the time.

Hepatitis is a "retrovirus" just like HIV. Retroviruses, as far as I understand, alter their genetic coding like the twists of a rubic's cube between generations, which is why it's so very tricky to make vaccines against them. Like HIV hep C is transmitted most "effectively" via blood-to-blood contact (hence the connexion with IV drug abuse). Unlike HIV, the hep C viruses are extremely hardy and are thought to be able to survive for months outside the body.

In the minds of the general public it's "dirty" (used) needles that spread such infections. In actuality hepatitis is said to be more likely spread via shared spoons. The microscopic viruses pass from the end of a reused needle into the drug solution and from here find their way into the myriad micro-scratches that lace the bowl of any drugs spoon, no matter how "new". It's here, in these scratches that hep C is thought to congregate and pass on and on...

... it is also suspected that hepatitis C can spread via used tourniquets (that could have micro-scabs all over them, even if they look clean) and other shared drug paraphernalia, including the citric acid or vitamin C European heroin users add to the mix to break down brown Afghan heroin.

On top of this, the testing nurse, who I've spoken to, says she knows cases who have NEVER INJECTED AT ALL ~ but caught the hep C virus most probably by sharing crack pipes. Tiny cuts or burns on the lips allow the virus in... and wahey.

In most cases hep C remains asymptomatic most of the time. When symptoms do manifest, they tend to be along the lines of constant fatigue, "brain fog", run-down-ness and depression. A very similar picture to the chronic fatigue syndrome I got diagnosed with over 15 years ago. So I really don't want hep C on top...

In a smaller number of cases, about 10-20% hep C leads on to severe liver damage and cirrhosis. In a smaller percentage, about 5% liver cancer results.

I know someone who is walking around today with less than half of his original liver as cancer ate a chunk out of it and surgeons cut a chunk more. He's the only person I know who's had interferon combination therapy to kill of the virus ~ and it worked! None of this is anything you'd go through voluntarily. After weekly "therapy" he said he could barely get out of bed for the first four days...

I have had at least four "blood bourne virus" tests, covering HIV, hep A, hep B, hep C and syphilis. Each one so far has been negative for everything, thank God. I don't know, am I being childish? I just don't want to be tested again, at least not right now. I also have reservations about just how "confidential" the results might be. Considering that even in the supposedly anonymous GUM clinic where you're encouraged to give a name "you can remember" with your real date of birth (for ease of memory, though I always made one up). Security cameras film your face on entering and leaving... Just how anonymous is any of this anyhow? Excuses, excuses I know.

I basically don't want the test...


ILLUSTRATIONS: top and bottom = HIV virus; middle = heptatitis C virus

Hair Cut!

FIRST THINGS FIRST~
HERE'S the Furry Friday on Saturdays bit:


I WAS SO DEPRESSED THIS MORNING I was yelling and screaming and banging my head on the wall. So I got a pair of scissors and did something I'd been meaning to do for years: in 4 cuts I hacked all my hair off. It had grown long, straggly and horrible ~ a look I used to like and, for a brief time in my late 20s believed suited me in an Interview with the Vampire kinda way. More recently it's only been long because I lacked courage to cut it ~ in other words it was the tired kind of style many people end up with by default. I never mentioned I was a long-hair here because I hated it and it didn't even suit me any more.

Although my hair does look like it was hacked off by a mentally ill person (it needs some finishing off) the style where I left it long enough to sweep backwards seems to suit me. I know this looks a bit aristocratic, but chavvy fashions just do not suit me. Even when I was so incredibly dirty because I just was not looking after myself at all, people still thought I was posh ("too posh to wash") or "from a rich family". Which amuses me and winds me up by turns because I simply am not...I am blandly middle-class down through 300 years of ancestors ~ probably just like the rest of us.

Poor Baby Itchy. Of all my hammies to go, why did it have to be her? I was very upset when she died because she was so tiny and cute. Between my assuming she'd escaped (because I emptied out their tank and found only two) and then discovered her looking extremely unkempt beneath the water bottle was less than 24 hours. Many a time I've seen what happens when hamsters get old. They progressively lose muscle tone, reduce activities almost to nothing, spending all their time in bed, they get more and more scruffy because they're too sick or weary to wash. And then within a month, they die. Itchy was a more extreme version of this: she'd lost so much weight her backbone stuck out like a piece of wire. Her eyes were half closed. Half-asleep all the time, she weighed next to nothing. She sat quietly in my hands or hobbled across my furry sweater.

The day afterwards I had to go out for an antidrugs meeting so I left her. Luckily she was alive when I got back. I made a cave with my hands to keep Baby Itchy warm because her sisters, bright-eyed and eager trampled back and forth all over her when I hovered overhead bearing biscuits. But nothing would make Itchy eat. Not soggy biscuits, flour, nothing. Wouldn't even sup water. By evening she was so light that probably a hummingbird would have tilted scales against her.

I put her back in the nest supposedly so her sisters Bashful and Spherical could "say goodbye". But they seemed more intent on eating the chocolate remains from around her mouth! And promptly ignored her.

Next morning I fished her out, but was horrified to discover a dark patch ~ greeny-black, underneath just beneath where her bellybutton would have been. I don't know what on earth it was but I'm glad she wasn't left any longer with the others. Quickly I grabbed everything from their tank, put them in their diggery and bleached the tank. Spherical and Bashful weren't too happy about losing their old (cardboard) toys but it had to be done. The wheel's still there.

It's Itchy's funeral today. She's been tied inside multiple carrier bags inside a huge jar somewhere safe and Mother Hubbs said it was OK to put her in their garden where three people are buried (as ashes) and innumerable cats.

Thanks for all the sweet messages. I tried my old email by the way and it is working, so I dunno why some of yous got messages bounced back..?

Right I'd better ping now, Roborovski style. Have a charming weekend...

I really wish they'd put something at least half-decent to watch, movie-wise on television:~

Cured My Illness

I CURED MY ILLNESSS YESTERDAY by borrowing £20, going out and scoring off a different dealer. Miraculously all aches, pains, sweats, sneezes etc etc went away. I think I had indeed been under the weather anyway but a very mild state of withdrawal was compounding the issue. Compounded because it was Sunday, methadone running out. I loathe Sundays anyway... I was craving "B" all day... and so finally I got it.

I was going to try writing a post explaining the hows and wherefores of heroin because a lot of what it does seems to be counterintuitive to the ordinary person's way of viewing it. Even addicts of other drugs seem to exist in a different orbit to heroin. I remember a friend who had been in a rock band and made enough money to go nuts on cocaine for more than a year. He told me "you can't keep chasing that original high: it won't come back"... but that's not what heroin's about. It's not about excitement (that's what crack's for). Heroin blunts life's sharp edges, makes life feel manageable. The more you get into heroin the more you rely on it utterly to cope with the most basic functions of life like getting up in the morning, sleeping at night and even eating. When my habit was really bad I had great difficulty shovelling any food into my mouth unless I had a hit right beforehand (or was already stoked up enough to be stoned). The fact that I put on weight vastly during this period is testimony to how much of the heroin I was actually taking.

How on earth my eejut drugs worker, who knew all this (or should have known if only she'd asked because I was hardly keeping the extent of my habit a secret) thought I could possibly be ready for rehab when I had issues like these around the drug I have no idea. She was a famously crap worker anyhow...

Anyway life's sharp edges. They were just about all I could feel yesterday. And I had sweating bouts the like of which you would never believe. Before I got into heroin I never had problems with heavy sweats... the only exception being when I was certifiably ill with flu-type viruses. (I remember being confined to bed for a week with one bug... this was just at the time when my life was tipping down the turning point from some kind of even keel to the swirling lavatory bowl of drug addiction... I got hit by a virus of some kind and it slew me. I remember when I finally recovered enough to clamber out of bed at several days' end, the sheets swere covered in brown puddle-marks, as if someone had spilled bottle after bottle of white wine into them...

... heroin plugs into fear. It works at a "deeper" level than you'd credit unless you know an addict intimately. (why else would the habit be so exceptionally difficult to break..??) Sick or strange as this may sound, the state that heroin induces is the nearest thing most adults will ever experience to being held like a baby and gently rocked to oblivion. Just like an infant the addict comes to rely utterly on such attention. Being without heroin is a terrifying crisis situation comparable to those rare occasions (surely it's happened to us all) when, as a small child, we've inadvertently wandered off in the supermarket and lost contact with Mummy. The absolute panic is viscerally real.

Yes I know it sounds weird making these comparisons but I was musing this yesterday, trying to find something that might give ordinary people a tiny insight into the mindboggling power of this addiction. As I say it works at a deep primal level, replacing some of one's natural coping mechanisms with the glories of a foreign chemical. As soon as the chemical is withdrawn mind and body go into crisis, bereft. Suddenly there is nothing to hold on to. Without realizing it, heroin rather than any healthy sense of balance, has become the bedrock of all our stability in life. (Of course it's also the very thing making us unstable and that's the irony of drugs, heroin in particular. Your best friend is also your killer. Your soothing balm is your destroyer. When you take heroin it does not feel like a nasty substance. It doesn't even feel powerful. It feels soft and fluffy and mild. Its true effects are subtile and pervasive. In the beginning, heroin gave me effects that other people seem to get cocaine. Only the effects lasted longer than four hours from a single dose worth only a few pounds. Suddenly I had an amazing sense of confidence. There was nothing shaky, hyped=up or paranoid about the high. I felt unambushably serene... All my ills physical and mental were miraculously remedied... Suddenly life felt do-able. It's because of this all-encompassing way that heroin gets relied upon that heroin withdrawals are such an all-pervasive horror. Medical texts say silly things like "the patient should be reassured the withdrawal syndrome will not kill him and will pass within a few days" (in otherwords, Nursey: be patronizing and dismissive!) Trust me, if only the withdrawals could kill then suffering them would be a far more comforting process.

And there I think I might stop this splurge about drugs drugs drugs otherwise I might go on and on for ever...(!)

I hope YOUR weekend was a little more successful than mine. My only achievement this week has been finishing the shorthand manual I went back to (been working through it for years ~ wanted shorthand originally to be a journalist, but the fascination stayed with me even when I didn't need shorthand. The secret symbols in their cursive hooks and tangles fulfilled in me a need to doodle. I can just about take dictations at 80wpm though I need more practice to write outlines neatly at that speed. 60wpm I can do easily but then again I can type 60wpm without batting an eyelid (one word a second: I don't know whether that sounds fast or slow...)... anyway I'm going to have to go. And I bet I'm gonna wanna delete all this come tomorrow (if not just ten minutes' time)... it's all too much babble...

Sorry for that. Hope you're having a pleasant Yuletide of the Season's Greetings Ahoy Malarky!!!

I Hate Sundays

SO MANY WORDS AND NOTHING TO SAY... Was just reading over what I spewed yesterday. Blah blah blah!

I hate Sundays. Nothing ever is doing. Somebody gave me some sleeping pills so I took them (at night) and couldn't even get zonked out. I don't know why being tolerant to a totally unrelated family of drugs should affect the response in this way but it's what I hate most about being an addict. The feeling that I can take so much of any poison I'm practically immortal.

Also I feel ill all the time. Maybe I have a fever. I am sweating so bad. Sneezing etc etc. Neither methadone nor heroin seems to be helping me.
Aaaaaaaaargghhhhhhh...............

Got to go I have the Limpopo river running down my back... I really need a shower....

Accidental Spliff

IT COULD ONLY HAPPEN TO ME... but I got quite swirlingly stoned the other night without even realizing it until it had, well... happened...

It's all my fault for running out of tobacco and indulging in my bad habit, acquired in my days as a homeless or semi-homeless street addict, of picking up dog-ends from the bus-stop and re-rolling them into fresh cigs of my own.

So I was smoking away, distantly musing, "this is a bit 'herbal'" ~ but thinking no more of it until the stream of my thoughts seemed to break off and swirl round my brains in a constant circle...

Then I heard a voice saying random words... yet nobody else was in the room...

I spent a couple of hours feeling very merry, then thought, "I'm not doing that again".

I gave up cannabis many years ago (so long ago it was just before the current craze for superstrength grass kicked in: I always smoked hash back then...) I gave up because it played havoc with my memory and has, in the past, induced very severe paranoia complete with "voices" ("real" voices you actually hear, only nobody's physically speaking to you...)

... and got clean of all drugs for a while. Then somehow heroin crept in and the rest, as they say, is history...

Crazy in LA

I SAW AN AMAZING TV PROGRAMME ABOUT AMERICA LAST NIGHT. Louis Theroux (son of travel writer Paul) was trawling the LA market for the most lurid life-improvements he could find. And boy did he find them!

Image, the body beautiful. Plastic surgery. "If I see it" (if I see something askance with my body) "that's enough" (then I get it "fixed"). Said the receptionist at one top clinic (who got free "procedures" as a perk of the job).

Talking of "perky", her breasts had been "enhanced" to the point they appeared ready to break free and float just like helium balloons to the ceiling...

The worst character of all was the botoxic image consultant life coach who, for $2000 a day will tell you what changes she sees fit for you to make. The changes might be surgical or practical but every one is for your "happiness".

"Butt", breasts, eyebrows... All can be nipped and tucked to oblivion. This poor lost sheep of a woman with $2000 a day to spare was being shipped from pillar to plastic surgical post by her surgically enhanced mekon of a "guide". She must have spent $10,000 on that set of procedures alone.

I cringed the very most when Lost Sheep came to the subject of her boyfriend of 8 years. Life Coach was studiedly quiet as soon as he was mentioned and I knew what was coming. Lost Sheep Girl had "empowered" herself by dumping him. Life Coach gave her a big hug and dabbed at tears that weren't there. When men can't see the inner wonderfulness that is you "we have a four letter word, don't we? Next! Next!"

I wanted to throw a brick at the TV.

What I found most depressing of all was the knowledge that underneath these glossy smiley LA people were the same twisted knots of hatred, frustration and anxiety that curl within us all.

When will they invent plastic surgery on the brain, I wonder? So bad feelings can be isolated then permanently cut out.

Surely when it happens it will come first to LA!

PS Illustrated Jocelyn "Bride of" Wildenstein... rich surgery-obsessed American divorcee who exceeded even Michael Jackson's "perfectionist" extremes...

Click here to watch the show.

STOP PRESS: HERE'S SOME AMAZING CLOSE-UPS of an Australian mouse from near Brisbane...

MUSIC:
SEAL: MAN'S WORLD
This is a masterpiece



SEAL: CRAZY
He has that rare type of voice... "primal"...

What a Rotten Night

A REALLY HORRIBLE NIGHT last night. Woke up in heavy sweats several times. And cold. And over-hot. Opened the window to attemptedly soothe things. Relied on hot chocolate with added lemon to try and equalize temperatures a little more and found myself getting up to pee about 20,000 times in consequence.

It was -5C outside. I have double-glazing and heating that rarely seems to go off so perhaps that's what caused the odd hot-cold feelings...

This morning I felt little better. Soon found myself on the loo "executing" the stickiest, most disgusting diarrrhoea. (You really wanted to know that, I know. For further textural and perfumier-type details on the matter click here..!)

I "obtained" a current issue of Tatler magazine, a publication dedicating itself to "high society" people and happenings from the local Chinese takeaway of all places... (what on earth it was doing there I'll never know. I just cannot see Chinese immigrants having any interest in London "Society". But hey, it takes all types...)

I leafed through this with fascination mingled with repulsion. Even their idea of who's "it" wrankles me. They're so old school, obsessing about "hons" (ie children of the aristocracy), minor royalty and the horsier, sloanier end of the upper middle classes. I met a lot of this type at university and ended up with a complex. Not that I didn't feel "good" enough; just that the British social scale has only accentuated in me a feeling of never really belonging. People from lower down constantly assume that I'm somehow "posh" ~ but I'm so not. As for the higher echelons, my French classes were full of them and I never quite clicked with their horsey, sloaney outlook. Ho-hum.

What really did grab me in Tatler (apart from the house adverts) was the fine jewellery on display. The magazine is full of it. I love jewellery and would love to work with it. I loathe wearing it. Rings never fit, especially signet types with tops, which can look dodgy anyhow. I've never been tolerant of anything round my neck. I think men's jewellery can be dodgy at the best of times. The best stuff is for women. And this bling-bling's what I love to eye. Years ago, after I'd taken up making fluoro-beads/etc for wear in nightclubs, I was told I ought to do a proper course in jewellery design and I'm thinking that I should do it again.

Mother Hubbs came back from Australia with a one-off yellow and white gold opal and emerald ring. It's really funky. And designed specially around the specific shape of that fiery green opal. (Not like the bit of opal I used to keep at the back of a drawer in my school days. Hers is quite wondrous...

The nicest bits of bling from the magazine were from a photo-shoot where ultra-fine jewels were draped over glassware, cakes and other kitchen items. Being: a platinum, diamond, pearl, blue topaz and aquamarine necklace draped over a teapot (p74; December 2008) and a platinum, white diamond, yellow diamond, blue saphire and pink saphire with 30 or 40ct blue sapphire pendant on p72. All the stuff I like is priced the same: "POA"!

(Couldn't find anything quite as chunky as these in "images" but the illustration: platinum, white diamond and pink sapphire necklace with pendant drops shows the order of "bling" we're talking about...)

If you want to see more of what I'm talking about, Harrods do a good selection by all top names...

PS: HEY ~ do you like my new "main page" background colour? #66B5FF pale blue to #ffffff white... About time too! You might well state (that's what I say...) I've wanted pure white infinity for ages ~ it goes really well with many a picture's white background ~ but have been too emotionally constipated to go for it...

MUSIC: KYLIE MINOGUE + NICK CAVE of the Bad Seeds
I'm not too into Kylie, but I like this one:~

Run Down

VERY RUN DOWN and exhausted today. No idea why. Went to bed spectacularly early (about 8pm) and slept through. How glad I was not to be disturbed. It's a nasty day and empty. I just want to go back to bed. Outside it's chilly. I would like a plast of intellectual chicken-mushroom-peppers fried rice (slice the mushrooms realy thin) and Lea & Perrins these and the chicken towards the commencement of frying...

Not a lot else to say. STILL no sign of my phone's owner and it's been switched on all this time...

... I agree with the person who suggested requesting they post up my tubby trotters' video as a reward for their phone's safe return. But they have to call me first! Surely the very first thing you DO upon losing a mobile phone is to call it straight back to find out where on earth it's got to..? Or maybe this person's stinking rich, has another five to spare in different sock drawers and just does not care..? Who knows?

Better go now. O, what a dismal day..!!...

Drugs News:
Weak Heroin Badly Manufactured More Often Than Deliberately Adulterated

Daily Blog Choice:
Glacier Photo Blog

Secret Passage

...Secret passageway!... during my recent robo-re-removals, out-cleaning, lightbulb-box-filling etc etc when I changed their newspaper I left the new paper (one of the free London commuter papers; not The Sun any more so maybe that's why it didn't fit... where it was too big I just let it flap up one side... and to add entertainment to "injury" I hid a standard toilet tube, plus Baby Itchy's "Magic Wand"... ie her personal half inch/2cm diameter clingfilm tube that only she can ping along on through...
... None of the robbies knew anything of this secretive area as I basically made things like that and left them...
... Only early this morning to be puzzled by Spherical determinedly scratting against the glass in attempted burrowing... alternately grabbing the piled up newspaper in her mouth and furiously nibbling at it...
Clever girl! I thought. Despite no food, no treats... nothing more exciting than two of their familiar old toilet rolls being hidden behind there she had detected the "sectret passageway" I'd hidden in their home!
... Eventually I got frustrated and wished to pingingly hurry things on a little... so I dropped Baby Itchy behind the newspaper fold right into the secret passageway where she very amusingly smelt it out and cautiously explored. Of course I could see right through the glass so there was nothing "secret" or even obscure about it to me... though Itchy, by her supreme caution, appeared to feel very differently...
... and Spherical grabbed at the paper and heatedly gnawed on and on... which terrified Itchy, to see the walls shaking and bowing out and being so viciously nibbled upon.
... And then she realized another robo was on the other side and highly amusingly made contact whisker to whisker and paw to paw through the tiny gap...
... Then Spherical desisted her furious scrabbling and scratting... at which point Itchy chose to squeeze through, from the secret side, the hole Spherical had been so dedicatedly chewing... o! the look of sheer astonishment on her face as her dear old housemate suddenly emerged from that secret compartment! It was so hilarious I had seriously to restrain myself from cackling aloud at them both...
... Now realizing there was indeed something worthwhile hidden behind there, Spherical bit open, scratted apart and burrowed through to the secret passageway in record time.
And of course where one robbie ventures, the other two rapidly follow. it was so entertaining witnessing them exploring their new secret burrow together. And once I'd taken the narrow length of tubing only Itchy could fit inside away; the three of them had the run of the place...
... Every now and then some scrabbling noise (ie one of their own kind) would cause terror from the main side of the divide to the new secret burrow... then the burrow's occupant would panick and spring out like a furry jack-in-the-box...
...And presently, at past three thirty pm all three are stashed behind the excess newspaper in this secret tiny burrow... even Evilstein, glancing in, would assume the tank was empty with just waterbottle, wheel, seedbox ~ and nothing else... do I didn't cover them up... just being able to see their naturalistic behaviour in such a confined space is hilarious... how they scramble over one another... suddenly their pink nose to pink nose robo-greeting makes sense... they have to do this in the burrow to ensure the whiskery bedmate is friend not foe!... One time yesterday Itchy was rambling the wheel on and on while Spherical sat idly by... Itchy stopped about five times in three minutes to pink nose to pink nose do confirmational greeting... poor swine! She is bottom peck and so has to be subservient. Bashful and Spherical do a weird borderlilne-squabble greeting where one wrestles the other backwards so the "loser" is lying on her back with Daz-white undercarriage on vivid display... then she gets her private parts forcibly groomed for her...
... And if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it...!

PS... this is a bit of a major thing to leave for a "ps"; I know... but I didn't know what/how to say it... I will say it tomorrow... Mother Hubbard's had a stroke! She looked utterly done in yesterday, her face all fallen, everything... dreadful...

PPS My leg I've been told is cellulitis... true enough it hurt so bad I was close to screaming point on Saturday night... seriously bad, like a burn from hot oil still sizzling away under the skin. All I wanted was to cut it out... and this, of course, I could not do... I've been told contradictory things about whether or not I ought to go to hospital. It doesn't hurt anywhere nearly as much (it's about 4 days old now)... since it blistered up... it seems to be that the nasties gnaw out the human flesh which can be excruciatingly painful (my one is nearly behind my knee; the main bit's palm-sized... (which means 1% body area)... and it goes on all mottled and bruised for another palm-sized area... the main bit which was excruciatingly painful at one point has blistered up, just like the bit on my arm did... now it hurts far less. It feels like the flesh-eating bug has at least eaten-out some of the flesh... which kills some pain in the process... I don't know... or something like that. I've been told to go straight to casualty by Mother Hubbs' friend who says they may keep me in. I will have to go to the laundrette before that as all my clothes are dirty. I really can't go in as I am I would rather die. OK I shouldn't say things like that but you know what I mean... or I could just go to my GP (family Dr) and get flucloxacillin/something like that... surely that will work... there is no point being in hospital except for the free shepherd's pie (which I love... you know that mafia expression "do you like hospital food?" well I love hospital food... all mushy and squelchy... really yummy and not challenging at all... beautiful food. Well I won't need that as I'm making a dr's appointment for 1st thing tomorrow morning right as soon as I've logged off this... and am purchasing chicken fried rice ingredients forthwith... which is essential for my mental wellbeing!

And how are you?


Video: 2 Cats Chattin'...

Music: Madonna: The Power of Goodbye (specially for Audrey)...

... Come to the House of Lime for some excellent winter pictures...

... right I really am going to have to get in touch with my dr's forthwith as I found out how serious this cellulitis can be I honestly didn't realize... no wonder I was in such agony!

... ps: and this is a fantastic birds blog...

...Leslie's blog has some especially atmospheric snapshots of the winter weekend...

Put A Cork In It

I WOULD IF I COULD, BUT I HAVEN'T any spares lying around and besides, I don't drink wine so I'm not wasting the money...

I thought I felt a bit better last night. Then a dreaded rumbling, gluttering gurge 'gan to bubble up somewhere ominously deep inside me...

I slept soulfully quiet....

BUT MY ท้อง "TONG" IS STILL VERY MUCH เสีย "SIIA?"!

And the diarrhoea made a spiteful repeat attack early this morn!

Curry sauce was spraying out everywhere....

All I've eaten in the past 24 hours was a small portion of MSG-fried rice and some dry handfuls of chocolate wheatie breakfast cereals... I've not dared drink water, though I know I should. As I just thought it might add "thunder" to the "rotting Niagra Falls" of the morning...

Paging down my blog I was astonished at how very much of it is food-inspired. And pictures of hamsters. Frankly all that cuisine's making me feel sick.

In desperation I turned to the works of Shakespeare on my bed of death: I've so far gone through Macbeth and half the sonnets and am shovelling my way through Antony and Cleopatra.

Then, feeling inspired, I attempted to write a poem of my own...

... but it was just a load of crap!

FROM THE NEWS:
BRITNEY SPEARS: "suicide runs in family" story of tragic gran
TIME TO GO BACK TO BLACK, AMY: Winehouse's hair "looks like pig's bed"
STURGEON GOES ON AND ON: 2 Brit anglers land 10-ft fish

THANKS ~ EVERYONE ~ FOR YOUR MESSAGES OF PERSONAL CONDOLENCE...

I had some drinks with Laundretta this afternoon in strict contravention of "how to treat diarrhoea" though since this morning's spite it has shown no sign of a splurging return...

... I showed her this story: I fell in love with MARCO, the Brazillian escort my boyfriend booked,... and she was laughing her head off...


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Videos of the last 2 days...

Bodysnatch Euphony Just 4u London
Zefirelli Romeo and Juliet (1st sonnet)
Faust

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MORE NEWS EXTRA!
VIOLENT GERMAN YOUTH SENT TO SIBERIA! For nine months' "intensive educational experience"... (is this 2008? or 1958..??)
GEORGE MICHAEL TO WRITE OWN MEMOIRS SHOCKER! The "superstar" has signed a deal with HarperCollins worth $7 million US of which $6 million covered "British rights", or, more probably, "those areas of the world traditionally covered by British publishers" which means everywhere in English except the United States... plus, that's right! ~ he's fully intending to pen the entire manuscript himself...

... and then rely on a hard-bitten HarperCollins editor to pull the entire thing into some vaguely publishable shape on the company wordprocessor...

o!

and I nearly forgot this cracker from last Sunday's News of the World:
INSIDE THE DEN OF EVIL: soccer star's dad's drugs and vice shame
with full pictures inside the crackhouse
(must say, the "punters" are far more glam-looking than at the crackhouse I used to visit...)

ps I just found out the average purity of nasty British heroin is 39.9% I find that hard to believe...

Porkie Baby Itchy/ท้องเสีย~Diarrhoea Attack

MY BOWELS ARE AFFLICTED!
I SEEM TO HAVE COME DOWN with the diarrhoeary norovirus that has afflicted around three million people in Britain so far ... no vomiting in my case just the most horrific diarrhoea. I barely had the confidence to step foot outside even this afternoon after a trotting morning of it... whatever could be the cause (apart from the virus that, seriously, has his 1 in 20 in this country so far and is so widespread that doctors' surgeries up and down the country are advising people not to come in with it unless it's extremely severe or has been splurging out for more than a week. Also, unusually, they recommended people quarantine themselves and not try coming into work (how could you? without leaving splattering puddles of "curry sauce" behind you?) ... in their national attempt to stem the diarrhoea's over-eager "flow".
Either that, or it's that dodgy blackbean sauce I got reduced to 37p a jar last night ...

BABBY ITCHY LOOKS JUST LIKE A PORKSHIRE TERRIER this afternoon. Her fur's been all bashed up and licked to sogginess by the other two in their bizarre robo-compulsory-grooming-on-the-youngest ritual.
I sought for them in vain this afternoon. Not in the teabox. Not in any tubes.... I honestly thought they'd escaped. Until I realized all three were packed inside one small Parmesan cheese tube. Probably they'd kidnapped Itchy in there and were using it as their hideout as they groomed her to death....

TALKING ABOUT DEATH I don't feel so very far away from it's hallowed "door" so I had better go before yet more urgent splurging occurs!

Till tomorrow folks -

and good health!!

PS The Thai term for diarrhoea is ท้องเสีย tong siia?- which means literally "the stomach has gone rotten"!

Apostomus: income, then practice virtue

Last Weekend Before Xmas!

SO IT'S THE FINAL WEEKEND before nasty old Yuletide!

Mother Hubbard invited me to her and Dodge's Xmas. They weren't too sure whether Xmas at home was on the cards or whether they were vanishing away was more the thing.

So after a few bad hitches (when at one point, Xmas seemed to've been cancelled altogether) I'm as certain as I can be that I'm going to theirs. I would say "Godwilling" I'm going, but Xmas is a pagan and thus utterly Godless (in the conventional sense at least) festival. The tinsel, snow and lights are pretty, though.

You can see the True meaning of "Christ"-mas on my video today: Stonehenge Solstice Celebration.

No cooker: no heating! Man! It was absolutely perishing last night! Repeatedly I woke up. And repeatedly had to re-cover self with pink-&-green psychedelic blanketting I'd unwittingly thrown off under the weight of dreams... In the end, my head shoved b'neath the covers was the only thing to keep me warm.... And that made me oversleep in... (How typical!)

Did anyone see my "Our Lil Turkey Farm" vid? It was inspired by a feature on the radio where this lady showed the audience round her turkey shed. Wow: the sound effects! Girls laughing crossed with little boy's electric lazer guns crost with mini dogs baying at the moon. (Have you noticed: "baying" is one of my new favourite words!?!?) She herself warned us: don't ever get just a few turkies. They will get under your skin and you won't want to get rid of them. And judging by the entertaining birds on her own farm I could see (or rather hear) why...

Tony Blair, our former (long, long time ago) highly charismatic Prime Minister has become a Roman Catholic. Big Deal. So now he's worshipping Rome. We all knew he was a "Christian" during his decade of premiership (though his fledgling police state policies strangely weren't...) Well I thought I'd mention this but from hereonin I'm keeping my thoughts on the matter to myself!

Many thanks for all your "name the hellhound" votes. The dog is a household pet, by the way. Please keep voting because I'd not have asked for assistance if I wasn't stuck for a decision on the name. Come on! Vote vote vote!... (above)...

Britain's National Health Serviceis under fire (yet again!) this time over the issue of mixed sex hospital wards... and why on earth do we have them anyhow? Even the interviewer on Radio 4's PM show shillyshally'd round the point and blithered about the "cost" of restoring wards to single-sex (which they always used to be, even in my day, let alone my parents'...) So what about the "cost" when poor old ladies are being harrassed by senile 80 year-old dirty old men? Surely whatever space these hospital "trusts" have (and it's all about "trusts" these days, incomprehensible as they are to us ordinary folk...) Why can't someone just grab hold of the each hospital's floorplan and simply chop it up: M~F~M~F? Simple. Only far too simple for today's penpushers (mouseclickers - sorry!) Yes??

Sticking with the news: so-called "low copy DNA evidence" is centre of the latest media cyclone. It's an ultra-sensitive forensic technique that can get a reading from samples so microscopic they're literally dust.

One of the most fascinating articles I ever read was about common old dust: and that's the thing about it; it gets everywhere. So much so, in fact, that it's quite probable that in your home are particles from the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, the Hiroshima bomb in 1945 and even the ancient tombs of the Pharaohs.

And that's the thing: in analysing "dust" from a Northern Irish bomb, DNA came up and was matched to a teenage boy from Birmingham, which is on the British mainland and hundreds of miles away. This boy had come into contact with the police, because everyone who's arrested is compelled to give sample DNA in this country. But he was no terrorist and had never been near Northern Ireland in his life!

Britain has by far the lartest DNA database in the world. Over four million samples! Add to this the four million PLUS security cameras filming our every move on this island and the car- and mobile phone-tracking technology that is being increasingly frequently implemented and it seems to me our silly government has set up the beginngins of a futuristic nightmare police state. Right here in Britain. The supposed home of democracy!


Videos of the Day:
Leona Lewis: Homeless
Jethro Tull: rare promo for Solstice Bells - 1976
Stonehenge Solstice Celebration

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Dairycow Entertainment Blog

Have a "gander" at these ridiculously multicoloured parrots from Queensland in Bimbimbie's back garden....

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Oh SOMEONE please help me!
Some blithery-hearted liberals are gushing on Radio 4 how if some teenage terrors are terrorizing you (an old age pensioner) from coming out of your home "the underlying issues should be evaluated, and perhaps a mentoring programme instituted"

No!

Cane them until their socks are clots of blood!

Sorry. Slight exaggeration of my views there but HONESTLY these bleeding hearts I cannot stand them.

Someone actualy had the cheek to say it was "ridiculous" that a child should be prosecuted for stealing a sausage roll from a bakers.

Well I'm sorry but when I was age 10 I NEVER stole ANYTHING from the shops because I was TOO TERRIFIED. Yes! ANY LITTLE S**T caught stealing from the shops SHOULD be punished. I'm not sure about giving them criminal records (which will make them grow up to think "what's the point in behaving, I'm branded a criminal already") but something pretty drastic has to be done. The children in this country are as evil as that slavering hellhound I proposed putting growing, savaging, baying and upholstery-ripping into my forthcoming novel. They are children of the devil. It really makes me wonder what planet these do-gooders live on.
Yeah, if I'd come down from Mars I'd definitely agree with the liberals over the conservative "have 'em whipped!" contingent. But if you have ANY experience of what these disgusting, subhuman little piles of **** are actually like I suspect your views would take a rightward turn as mine have done - and they turned right through bitter experience. Not through some stupid ideology I read in a book!

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A phunky bush photo
from
The Eyes of Pod

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DOES EVERYBODY HATE ME because I sound like a Nazi? Well I'm not going to protest too much because that's sad. But let me tell you this (and I'm talking for Britain here, most specifically London)... somehow, somewise (actually, distinctly not wisely at all...) a generation of youngsters is being raised with scant idea not only of good manners and all but more importantly of the morals that underline them.

Stupid Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, took it on himself to give to this entire generation free bus transport. When they are quite capable of walking. And yet because of Livingstone's idiotic move, the respectable paying public are absolutely innundated by nasty, yelling, hollering, baying, unruly schoolchildren who have no respect for their elders (though they expect respect for themselves)... who do all they can to make us feel as uncomfortable out of place and massively encroached upon and as near-assaulted as possible by this noise-in-numbers that comes piling on the bus causing misery and discomfort to all. This isn't just my view - almost everyone who's had the misfortune of boarding a London bus just before 4pm when the brats from school pile on ...

When I was younger my views in most things were pretty liberal. Now, however I'm not alone in feeling opressed and depresed by the negative plunge our society is taking. This is serious bad news. So when I hear these people piling on the radio to defend behaviour that isn't merely bad, it's nasty. I'm scared. Scared for our future, for with nasty selfish brats like that ruling our streets as they undoubtedly do, that future is destined to be anything at all but comfy and bright...

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Aargh! Moralizing moralizing moralizing. Ho-hummmmm....

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The more I think about "her"; the more I want one of those giant Thumbelina dogs.

Oh no! That's a fourth name I came up with there!!

Of course I cannot have dogs where I am now; but when I get a normal home (well, if I ever do) I definitely want a giant black swinesly dog to guard my newspapers and empty tins of beans!!

My New Japanese Blog; Windy Experiences; Diarrhoea Stopped; Itchy Exhausted

BABY ITCHY is so exhausted after "partying" with those wild mice behind the cupboard for 24 hours. No wonder such a lot of squaking occurred. Quite probably it was poor Itchy being terrorized by those squealy worm-tailed long-lost cousins...

At least now when I say "Come out you pink noses! Come out you tubby gremlins" three twitching sets of whiskers appear. It was mighty depressing with just two.

Baby was so exhausted last night that when I lent over and said hello hello she stuck her head out of the teabox only to fall right back to sleep. She looked so amusing dozing away like that.

I have a new Japanese blog!
グレドヲードの日本のブログ
"Guredowodo-no Nihon-no burogu"
Yes my name in Japanese is "Guredowodo"!
They have a certain way of pronouncing syllables quite unlike western speach. There are no consonant clusters. So that a Japanese person saying "string" would say something more like "suturingu". Four syllables to them, but to our ears so rapidly elided together it's not rendered as clumpily as first sight might suggest. Did you notice that "blog" turns into "burogu"~?!?
It's at http://gledwoodnihon.blogspot.com ... "Nihon" means "Nippon" by the way. An expression I'm sure more westerners are familiar with (though over here, for some reason it's a make of highly effective ant- and cocroach-killing powder! With the Japanese colours all over the bottle!!)

Really I put this new blog there to improve my own Japanese but it's open to all. It's Youtube screens, like all my other blogs, but will by no means consist of only language lessons. Anything Japanese (like documentaries) go there too.

If you watch Let's Learn Japanese: Basic 1 Part A (Mishaps at the Airport) as posted up tonight I wonder if you'll marvel like me how, during the series of mishaps at Tokyo International Airport the other man didn't pick a fight when trolleys clashed. And that the young woman picking up the camcorder said "is this yours?" rather than making off with it quick-style in modern British fashion!

The Japanese are so polite. All that bowing? Do you think they get bad backs? Did you know several people are killed each year on the Tokyo metro from bowing on the edge of platforms as trains come rushing in ...

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was on horseback in Windsor Great Park with the then King of Arabia when her horse thunderously "passed gas" as they say in America. "Oh I do beg your pardon!" exclaimed the Queen. "That is quite all right your majesty," replied the King, not realizing quite who had in fact let rip. "It happens to us all on some occasion!"

Did you hear about the story from the reign of Elizabeth I when one of her nobles, (the 17th Earl of Oxford), obsequiously bowing lost control of his bowels and quacked out a resounding emission of wind right before the royal throne? So mortified was he that he fled for some years to France only to return when he was sure the embarrassing consequences of his gaseous outburst had died down. And dear Queen Elizabeth, ever the wit; the first thing she said was, "It's all right. We've all forgotten the fart"!

Well my own injurious bad health is in recovery enough that I'm risking my own cooking yet again. If I'm dead by the morrow someone else will have to post for me....

... and then I'll never finish those lumpen memoirs. Or learn Japanese!


Videos of the Day:
Sushibar Conveyorbelt Scenes
Tokyo Airport Mishaps