Dazzlingly Clean and yet... Dirty

MY HOUSE HAD TURNED INTO A PIGSTY... bits and pieces, trish and trash everywhere, tomato-spattered floors, fag-ash by the bed and the hugest mound of washing up I've seen outside the catering trade. It took nearly half an hour just to do the washing-up (properly). Then I sprayed Cillit Bang on the floors and mopped them so clean they've been dazzling me. That's the great thing about teak-effect plastic laminate. I know interior designers like Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen would probably puke over it, but it is practical. The tiled area round the cooker is also nice and easy to keep clean ~ though scraping off dried-on Ragu-splatterings took some doing. (I eat about a bucketful of Ragu a week now.) What's inconvenient about tiles are: they make a plate-smasher's paradise. And for the not-so-nimble-fingered like me that means what looks like the smithereen remains of a Greek wedding end up scattered there. And I don't keep shrubs in pots (no green fingers, no garden) hence no need for this "crocks" collection... Yes so the place is spotless once again. Blank surfaces glare back at me...

... and so of course I am dirty, and though I was craving after crack all day (it was Monday) I resisted. But got stoked up on the "brown" nonetheless.

There was a 150-kilo seizure in London around a month ago, and I wondered whether that would cause any dip in the supply. Seemingly it has, because I've been hearing stories all around of garbage-gear in circulation. I managed to avoid it, though apparently my old "best" dealer's had something that resolidified like jam in the works so you just can't take it. No way am I negotiating my way through another heroin drought. Basically what happens is the price effectively doubles and you never know who to go to, who to trust. Extraordinarily strong gear of any colour suddenly hits town, suddenly China white is around, which is normally rare here. But most of the gear's heavily adulterated (sometimes to the point of being unusable like the jam gear I just mentioned).

You'd think people dealing in drugs (and successful ones almost never "get high on their own supply") would trouble to learn the basic properties of their merchandise. But no, some people are thick. There was once, up and down the country, which means multiple kilos must've been thus adulterated, a phenomenon called the "oil slick gear". I heard tales about this from as afar afield as Birmingham and Norwich. I scored a bag once. Cooking it up, the powerful and distinct aroma of myrrh accosted me. I looked down at the spoon and thought "I don't remember leaving the filter in". Something brown and soppy was floating in the middle. I fished this out: it was the proverbial "oil slick" (and it didn't half smell nice). Probably one thicko dealer had said to another "so what me cut dis gear wid?" and the other would have said "resin" (meaning the stuff you rub on violin bows: powdered down this probably would look like "brown"). So the idiot goes to a Neals Yard-type herbalists, asks for a resin and gets all this myrrh, mixing it into kilos and kilos without even checking what it does... O boy. THIS is what makes me wanna steer clear of heroin and the "drugs scene" and all they stand for. I don't want to be worrying about injecting my legs with violin resin or myrrh. And I'm fed up of losing touch with friends for a few weeks then automatically wondering whether they're dead.

This is not a war zone. This is not a life. They say heroin is for those too frightened to live. And yes, ever since I found it I clove to it like mother's milk. Yet I was not born a junkie. I should not need opiates to survive. I've had enough, had enough of this. The time is coming to leave this mess behind...

PS: Notice how the illustrations for heroin seizure and powdered myrrh appear almost identical...

MUSIC:
EIGHTH WONDER (PATSY KENSIT) ~ I'M NOT SCARED
Written by the Pet Shop boys, I think this version's better...


Patsy Kensit wanted to be "the most famous person alive" and, watching the vid you see she did have the star quality to be a British Kylie or Madonna... she was so trendy in her day, dropping "E" at Shoom club (British birthplace of Acid House ~ actually a south London gym), marrying one musician after another, culminating in Liam Gallagher where she lost it so much she turned down a part in Friends... now look at her. She landed in a helicopter in Emmerdale, now she's a nurse in Holby. Hey: it's a job!

Here's allegedly original footage from the legenday SCHOOM CLUB, 1987

Baby Itchy's Human Mountaineering

I TOOK OUT "BABY" ITCHY ROBOROVSKI, the smallest and tamest Tiny Trotter for a ramble today and she spent half an hour mountaineering along my arms, up my knees, then disappearing down an inch-wide long plastic tube I rescued from a skip and shoving around my sleeves. I say shoving because she does this nudge nudge digging thing with her nose which is really ticklish what with her 2ft long whiskers (in robo-feet). She can also climb it when it's literally vertical, then appears at the top, all furry and surprised, as if saying to me "where do I go NOW?"

I got one drugs telesales call when I was fast asleep at 10 o'clock this morning. The screen said TWONK (ie it's someone I wanted nothing to do with anyhow...) he quickly gave up within around 6 rings...

I've had such an obsession with gnocchi I used the entire 500g packet, together with half a jar of Ragu Oregano and Basil ~ half price (66p). You have to be careful which of those pasta sauces you buy as Ragu is proper ie 150g tomatoes go into every 100g (they are boiled down during production). Supermarket's own brand (£1.15 for about a litre) was only 40% tomatoes, I noticed, and contained added water, as such sauces should never do. If you want added water, add it yourself during cooking (it makes 'em go twice as far). Another top tip is to add Ragu to chopped tomatoes. The Ragu taste you simply cannot get, even from concentrated tomato puree. Your tomatoes must have gone through the specialized 3-hr lidless oven-baking sessions to get the mega-mellow taste right. Adding just a bit of Ragu to chopped tomatoes and puree makes it just right. But without that little bit of Ragu... you're nowhere near there! I've also used half a tub of grated Parmesan in about 2 days: yummm!

La Toya Jackson (yes! Michael's sister: looks how he probably wished he looked) is on Celebrity Big Brother, together with a tiny Hollywood actor guy called Verne Troyer (played Mini-Me in all them Austen Powers films), together with "Gangsta's Paradise" rapper Coolio. (Do click those links ~ they're hilarious!) For those of you without access to Limey TV, here's a clip of the first two discussing the third:



PS MY "WHERE IN THE COCA-COLONIZED WORLD" COMPETITION from yesterday's still open. Will somebody please gimme an answer on the mysteriously-lettered bottle. I know you don't know so just GUESS!

No Heroin But Italian Food

TWO NIGHTS AGO I WROTE out a lovely little post, all tiny and succinct about how I was quitting gear "just for today" ~ and the £20 in my pocket's going to my bank account not the dealer...

Only for all this to be scuppered by my waking up feeling slightly chilly which caused me to run screaming (metaphorically!!) up the road to "the flats" where £20 was exchanged for a lump of what looked like mud but was powerful enough to knock me out. Then, not having slept properly for days I slept on and on and on and woke up feeling so mightily depressed I decided to post more about my rising Italian food obsession than on how bad I felt. I am fed up of my own voice, whining...

Last night I wrote out no posts, but have reminded myself WHY I want NOT to use the heroin. And so, despite having £35 left ~ £30 still in the bank, the change from £5 on me. I only withdrew the minimum over the counter today. I am NOT spending on drugs. But there's a supermarket trolley round the corner with my name on it and I need a list of cheap things: thin bleach, sugar, Dolmio, gnocchi. I hope I can get all those for £4.40...? Well let's see. Anyway I must go: those gnocchi are calling my name!

PS: Wherever I go, I always crave Coca-Cola!

PPS: Can anyone guess where they all originate from? Especially the really mysterious writing on the bottle? Clickonit to make the image larger...

Black Pepper & Tomato Pasta Sauce

I'M SO TIRED I SPENT most of the day sleeping... It took some something-or-other to get out of bed and come here; today I am too blackpeppery and I didn't feel like it. Not into gurging out selfpitying whingeings yet... I wanted not to use anything and did. The lump of powdery dried mud knocked me out... "helped me catch up on lost sleep"... I have not slept properly for days. Sleeping somehow sometimes feels too much like giving up...

The BBC have put on a new version of the Diary of Anne Frank. Never having read the original I can't say how much it compares. What they have done is remake it in the image of the present time focusing on arguments and her burgeoning romance with the Jewish neighbours' son. They're all in hiding together. Perched in rooms off a back staircase, which is hidden behind a bookcase, upstairs from a shop. Final episode is tomorrow and I don't know how much I can handle watching The End, when all these characters in such sharp focus... well: knowing what happens to them.

When EastEnders came on afterwards it seemed so trivial I went out of the room and did cooking. I'm trying to learn to make Italian bolognaise sauce, y'know the type manufactured industrially by Dolmio-Buitoni-Ragu, from scratch. I heard you're supposed to take tinned tomatoes, chop them if they're not already chopped, and boil them over a low heat frequently stirring for a couple of hours or so... Am I right? You just cannot replicate the taste of these industrial sauces with tomatoes or puree just as they come. I believe they're massively boiled down and thus concentrated up. I only had one tin and the patience of half an hour, but I have to say in that time I did appear to be getting somewhere... IF ANYONE KNOWS THE RECIPE PLEASE HELP ME OUT!

PS DELIA SMITH says oven-cook for 3 hours in an open casserole dish... Bacon-schmacon: I'm not adding swineflesh to mine though!

PPS DELIA'S first "media" gig (though she was already food writer at the Daily Mail) was creating that fabulously fancy chinzy iced cake for the Rolling Stones' 1969Let It Bleed LP...