My New Home

I AM GOING TO BE LIVING IN A NEW HOUSE. I don't know when. But within not too long. Mentally supported housing, it's called. That is a mentally ill hostel rather than a mentally all over the place (because everybody here is weird) Emergency Accommodation.

It hasn't been sorted yet, but Deshane is working on it.

I spoke to Naomi tonight who was saying I have to go to a Dual Diagnosis club under a psychotic team.

Now nobody knows whether I should actually be treated by the people I go to see tomorrow because I am housed by one borough and live in another. Nobody is sure. But it seems to me I'm meant to stay as i currently am ie not go to the new place. But Naomi said go anyway and sort it out from there.

Everything is a mess. For once it's not one of my own making.

So I get a new home and hamsters are allowed! (First question I asked.) I want to make the Tubby Swine a new house out of glass with separate burrow compartments etc etc partitioned in the glass. You just use Silicone Sealant to hold the glass apart it's really easy to make a hamsterarium, so I'm told. It needn't even be waterproof, provided it IS only hammies you're using it for...

I couldn't sleep last night so tonight I've taken the risperidone early. It doesn't put me under sleepwise but it keeps me under. My head is lit up with the most beautiful imagery tonight but I'm not feeling hyped up. I feel very tired and I've only taken half of that risperidone. I'm hoping to get really good sleep tonight.

I'm not in the best of moods which isn't a problem as regards sleep. I tend to oversleep when I'm down.

Hey I'm getting a new house a new house a new house. Wow!

A Gun to my Head

I'M IN TROUBLE WITH MY LANDLORD for being too scruffy. At least I think I am. Downstairs told me this. Downstairs and I do not get on. This is the trouble I have and I can tell you but it doesn't make anything any clearer or less How It Is.

Last time I was in trouble with my landlord (my old landlord) basically for living in a mess, for not coping. A way worse mess than this one, the day I had to go down the council to sort out my housing I had this weird feeling, as if someone had put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. Instead of feeling pain or stress I just felt unreal. I could not engage with anything. I knew what was happening, but it was not real to me.

That is how I feel now. I should be in a frantic scrabble to clear up, but I'm not. In a way I don't care about anything at all. If I get chucked out I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go on holiday. Or vacation, to you Americans. I will take as much methadone as I can carry. I know where to buy it so I can get a week's supply up front at high doses. This I will cut down drastically on the road. Detoxing makes me hyper. Hyper makes me pace. Pacing is walking. I can get a lot of travelling done by detoxing. If I feel suicidal I'm lucky because there's snow. I need only go to sleep outside and I might be lucky enough to die. But I'm not into dying, as I said I'm going on holiday. I won't say where because people will try and follow me or spy on me. But I'm going.

If I stay here I will turn my home into an operating theatre. But I'm almost hoping to get chucked out. Because I'm fed up of my old life. The problems and non-problems I thought were caused by heroin seemingly aren't. I always knew this was the case. Heroin was only a mask, masking the reality of a person not coping. I don't need heroin to dissociate myself. I don't need heroin as an anaesthetic. I only feel real pain in withdrawal or extreme mood states. My ordinary depression is usually mild enough just to blank me. Most of the time. But I have a nasty tendency to cycle through various mental states and into one when I realize with full weight and intensity What I Have Done. And then I feel very deeply negligent and sorry. Sorry for the hurt I have caused others. And sorry for myself. Usually I don't feel for myself, but sometimes I do, and I hate feeling anything.

So I can live without heroin. Heroin was just a waste of time. I want off these opiates, they're only disabling an already disabled person. The sooner I'm off them the better. If I get made homeless I will have an A1 chance to come off because I will be nowhere near my methadone pharmacy, nowhere near the drug clinic or my "loving mother" who only wants to salve her conscience ~ or the rest of my family who do love me but I pity them for it. I wish I could kill their pain without killing them. (Maybe they would be better off on heroin!)

See I feel sad now because I have written the words of a badly messed up, lost person and I feel that. I can't accept that I am that person. Because if I could I would already be working not to be like that and I cannot do it. I try. I do try, but something invisible and very powerful, like bulletproof glass... something stops me. I wish I had never been born. I hate knowing the World. I don't care what the world knows about me, but I don't want to know the world any more. I never asked to live like this. I never asked to know what I know. I am the sort of idiot who would have bitten that forbidden fruit in Eden. I know. Drugs like Ecstasy, acid, ketamine, mushrooms opened up an understanding of something that is inexplicable to someone who hasn't been there. A kind of knowledge of good. A vision of paradise (on Ecstasy especially). So did heroin: an understanding of Evil. And a desperation you never knew was possible. And feeling it every single day for years on end.

I don't want to know. I don't want to know anything any more. I wish the anaesthesia would come back.

Where's Our Dinner?

MY POOR ROBOS. I've done a practical joke on them and cruelly hidden their food inside a toilet tube taped upright to the back of the tank, dump-bin stylee. In order to access this, they must first climb atop their lightbulb box, where they usually sleep, and, climbing through two further tubes, affixed higher to the back mirror (higher than they can access without said rooftop climb) they eventually come, obstacle course-style to the top of said giant dump-bin of birdseed.

I've seen Bashful doing this already, all shaggy-furred and popping in and out of said obtstacular tubings. She looks ever so funny.

Now I've cleared the floor of ALL tasties, including chicken bones, chicken jelly (from the two-pound roast one I bought the other day)... red peppers and cheese bread bits... old French fries ... and all manner of tasty treats. Everything's balancing by sheer grace of willpower and gravity up high above their heads. And so far, all they've done is wander around looking faintly confused about the entire matter!

What set me off on all that climbing lark was my installation of a broccoli tree with elephant-protector-style toilet tubing round the base trunk. Spherical crouched into this and was next seen perching upon the treetop's canopy looking ever so tubby and round. Then she got bored and simply sprang down (a good 25ft drop in human terms). Went for a wee. Then took to thundering onwards upon her wheel.

Well as you can see there's little other news from my end. Surely this can only be a good thing...?

Oh, we're getting new locks installed early next week... isn't THAT a change from the old landlord, where it was a luxury to have any locking doors at all!

Hope you're having a pleasant weekend, everyone!

Cheerio!!

XX

No Broccoli!

HOW VULGAR! I have traipsed around every likely looking shop on/off/near/not near/etc the high street and FAILED to find any selling fresh broccoli ~ my staple green! I did find two demoralized trees outside one, after querying exact directions from the shopower who insisted said "rare delicacy" (well it is in my new manor!!) was there. And I'm not surprised they kept it in semi-hiding judging by the state of it. I've never seen "fresh" veg in such a wilting state. And on sale to eat tomorrow!! Not likely!!! Then I trundled and trawled and trudged and traipsed and trotted via many other shops until I finally found one selling it frozen at £1.19 for c340g. I said I would come back if I couldn't find any fresh. Well now I'm round the corner from my old house and did cave in and bought the pertest perkiest hardest greenest crunchiest broccoli in town... oh! the things you don't appreciate when they're on your own doorstep 24-7!

Better news: I've found the local Chinese takeaway. And am about to give in to my craving for Chinese chicken curry mix vegetable fried rice... also I BOUGHT a mysterious sachet of Chinese curry powder from the local Chinese supermarket in my new manor... it's ultra mysterious... exactly the right colour... and pretty close in taste to the mysterious oriental curries of the east churned out up and down the country in Chinese curry sauce... yes! That curry sauce NOBODY seems able to replicate (no you do NOT use garam masala or anything like it: it's CHINESE CURRY and totally different... Liz gave me an exclamational link over a month ago but life was in chaos (when is it ever not) so I never CLICKEDONIT ~EEJUT ME!! I am determined to crack the mystery of Chinese curry sauce!!

Even better news MY POWER'S BACK ON! Thanks to a friendly phone call I found out the mysteriousness of the electrical mystery... basically what I'd pictured is NOT a fusebox as such, rather a row of trip-switches... mine are labelled things like "1. lights; 2. sockets; 3. heating; 4. shower" and it would be #2 that had gone down. The advice I was given was to unplug everything. Nearly everything was unplugged but not quite. Disappointingly nothing happened after this... My "sockets" switch was still resolutely DOWN... Then, continuing talking on the phone, I made one more attempt at pushing it up ~ and wow! ~ it stuck!!

And the cooker comes on! And the radio's playing! And the heater works now (even though it was listed separately it somehow managed to purloin power from the sockets ringmain/ hey ja like my electricianal language there? Ringmain?? As if I would know one of them if it tied me up in a knot at 4am in the morning....

Righto!¬ I'm back by my old house. One more case really to GO. Then I'm NOT COMING BACK AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO IT ALL. SUCH RUBBISH!!!!

... {:->...

OH, AND ONE LAST THING... Friends, Romans, countrymenandwomen... I'm awfully sorry... for having kept in touch with some of you intermittently, others not at all... as you can see:~ my life has been chaos... I'm resolving it like silver resolve. A beautiful mirror. Then our friendships shall shine once more in wondrous reflexions...

This is a beautiful photoblog. And as I told Samantha, I can't believe nobody else is reading it...
Samantha's Blog:~ http://drpepperqueen86.blogspot.com

Romanian Castles and Churches:~
http://casteleromania.blogspot.com

Beauteous Spanish Kitten Pixx:~... including one of tabby legs akimbo I posted up here sometime back ... as some will no doubt remember... have a gander! at:~
http://georginaedominguez.blogspot.com

Squeaky Trotters/Fuse Still Gone

RIGHT VINCENT, this is the nearest fusebox I can find to my own... to the right two mains switches that would turn the entire room off (each room has its own box and meter)... the row to the left of this has, on mine, about five what appear to be slide out box fuses with up and down on/off switches. You cannot turn the fuse ON at all, something's blown it automatically falls to off all the time, so... any advice, Vincent? Anyone? Please? I'm actually probably going to have to ring the landlord and not admit it was me turning the cooker on and falling asleep (which shouldn't blow a fuse anyhow)~ I used to sleep with the cooker on ALL NIGHT in my old place~ just to keep the room warm.

Yes and the trotters: I desperately have to buy some new cooking oil as their wheel, which they seem to be rambling night and day these days and nights is SQUEAKING THE HELL OUT OF ME: AAARGH!!

Why are so many far eastern young females into this kinda candy-coloured kitch style?
Click here: http://unrequittedloveisapainthatwontsubside.blogspot.com to see it!

VIDEO OF THE DAY:
And in keeping with my previous Dangerous Liaisons theme; here's French and Saunders' takeoff on that film:~

New Home, New Weariness

I HAD TO STAY at my old house last night, having had to give up trundling back and forth ~ along two bus rides and with ten minutes further trundle along innercity streets at the other end ~ as it was past midnight. I was exhausted. Still had a good two further trundles to go.

The mad Liverpudlian girlfriend of the windowcleaner downstairs insisted on coming up and helping. Oh no ~ this is going to be a great time-waste, I thought. Well-intentioned, but still a timewaste, with her chucking things out and my having to go through and still check them all anyway for things that shouldn't have gone. In the event, she cleared half the room wonderfully. I went through an enormous white bag (the kind of bag that holds half a ton of builders' sand) full of lastminute clearance from my old room upstairs. Sorted rapidly through and realized the entire lot could go.

I slept like a baby. Absolutely exhausted, and slept in till past ten, which had me very surprised: no Surlystein hammering on the door insisting "I'm taking the ceiling down NOW!..!" Surlystein, the Jamaican workman DID show up however and disrupt my final packing with his comments. Rather than riposte savage comments with harsher ones I explained to him that the grotesquely scruffy state of my old room had nothing to do with my drug addiction. I know loads of drug addicts and no-one lives like that. Pointed out that the other two (Matran and Laundretta) were on FAR MORE drugs than me: heroin-crack-alcohol binges nightly. And though he never climbed down he did listen to me and visibly soften. (Slightly.)

Surlystein was still insisting he had to "make a hole in the floor". So I had to move my stuff "now". Just before my final pack I showed up looking for Evilstein to tell him I still needed time to pack. Ended up in a conference with him and Butterstein (the actual landlord) plus Surlystein. "Isn't there anywhere I can put my stuff?" I queried. "Yes yes of course you can put it in the passage," said Butterstein as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "Yeah mon dat's what eye tell 'im," instisted Surlystein and I said loudly, "NO YOU DIDN'T: you told me to shove it in the front garden!" Surlystein looked a bit shifty after that but his boss didn't seem to care.

Well I got the last important lot out. So very much stuff it would barely trundle the street and I went in fear of a wheel breaking. There would have been nothing to do in that case but leave it there and cart what I could then come back to what was left after the plundering natives had been at it. Think of that film Coming To America with Eddie Murphy as the African prince who choses Queens, New York, as his place to find a real-life queen to marry. Arrives clad in furs and gold. Sets down luggage outside the bording house and we see the entire local populace run off with it over the course of 60 seconds. It's a bit like that where I live now. Very "inner city". Less salubrious even than where I am now (which is apparently the domestic burglary capital of the borough). But funkier shops and far more bargainacious.

In cultural terms I have shifted from Turkey to Jamaica. Jamaica suits me just fine. The aroma of jerk chicken billows out from shops and takeaways... signs declaring "fresh goat here~ every Thursday"... a great Chinese supermarket right near me... the ordinary highstreet superstore supermarket sells curry powder in five varieties in kilo bags... it all feels very exotic.

I came home with my last trundlery and realized I still have left behind two bags at least of clothing (including most of my socks and smalls. Great move I know and I've no idea whether any of it's left. No bus fare (borrow £3 tomorrow). So had to walk it tonight. Haven't dared spy out my old house to see what if any of my possessions might be left. I noted two Sky dishes on the side of my new place and so have returned to get the satellite box someone gave me two years ago if it's still there.) I slept deeply all afternoon in exhaustion. Acheing all over. Well I'm round the corner and shall purloin my socks back in a second (if I can).

Unlike the old place, which was just a door to slam on the world, I actually feel centred in this new one. Also I tested out the shower for half an hour and am very clean.

On a down note, I have managed to blow my sockets fuse already (checked the big box downstairs and sure enough the pushy-pully-out thing's switched permanently to OFF and requires my installing some complexicated "don't know which one" fuse. So no cookery for ME tonight... (grrr!!)
Have a great weekend, folks!

TUNE OF THE DAY (No video, so use this as a backingtrack...)

URBAN SHAKEDOWN: SOME JUSTICE

This is a classic tune from 1991ish. The sample "wooo-eeeeeee-ooo-aah: we live as one family" (that doesn't appear till 2mins55 into this mix) is actually sung by a man (but speeded up) from the old garage track: "war and drugs are everywhere ~ and it's getting so hard to breathe the air... now-eeee-aaarr-oooaaah-yeah-wooo-eeee-ooo-roooar-oorooar-yeah, we live as one famileee..." I tried Googling the lyric but got no satisfactory answer... it is not M People's Someday, it far predates that... if anybody has an answer, please leave a comment



Last Angel: Everyone is Beautiful ~ Malaysian prom blog
http://lastangel2411.blogspot.com/2008/04/everyone-is-beautiful.html

Jen Wolf: Model's blog from LA
http://whosjenwolf.blogspot.com

New Home

IT'S LATE AND I'M UTTERLY EXHAUSTED. But I did manage to get more than 50% moved out. Evilstein's threatening to chuck out my stuff on the street if I'm not out by first thing tomorrow; but what could I do? It takes more than TWO HOURS to get from old place to new and back again...

What is my new place like? Well it's a "studio flat"; meaning it's a room glorified into a kitchen corner with GRILL thing (woo what a novelty! Now I can cook pizza; if indeed it will go under a grill...) Yeah and I have a SHOWER INSIDE MY HOME: what a novelty THAT shall be. I was going to celebrate by getting dripping wet in positive life-force "ons", as they say...

Man! I am so exhausted I am going to have to go. I got the help of the lady from downstairs who did girlie things like cleaning my surfaces down.

Now I had better go I am literally asleep on my feet. Take care everyone. I have to go before I expire...


For Sofia:
DANGEROUS LIAISONS DOUBLE-BILL:~

1. Extracts from the John Malkovich/Glenn Close film



I really like Glenn Close's teacup...

2. Madonna: Dangerous Liaisons Vogue

Moving On

A HORRENDOUS BANGING accompanied by insults from Surlystein the Jamaican workman (lots of "rass") awoke me from an ill-feeling coma at half past mid-day. Szechuanstein handed me a letter saying my accommodation is "cancelled" (except it can't be as I don't get somewhere else until tomorrow morning). Meanwhile I've an appointment this afternoon to come in and sign documents relating to an empty new place "with a different agent" (thank the Lord). Hopefully, once I get my stuff out of the old dump I shall never ever have to have any dealings with Evilstein/Betterstein (aka Butterstein) or any of their henchmen ever again...

I even managed to summon a faint enthusiasm about the matter while ambling up the road in sleepdrunken misery (bc I really did not have enthusiasm for getting out of bed, no matter what the reason)... but like a Disprin plopping in a glass, it fizzed and faintly suffused me.

MOVING ON!

MUSIC VIDEOS:

1. David Bowie and Marianne Faithfull: I've Got You Babe
What a rare classic this one is! PS I don't know what Marianne Faithfull was wearing. It WAS the 1970s...



2. Madonna ft Timberlake and Timbaland: Four Minutes
From the übermistress of pop, this is one of her best tunes (yet again; how does she do it?)



Are Airedales and wire fox terriers the same? Clickonthis for info, including a picture of Baby Itchy's looky-likey sitting on the kitchen floor...
Baby Itchy as an Airedale
Three Tiny Trotters as doggies...

Sunlight Saint George

SUNNY HOT, HOT WEATHER has descended: blue skies, entire days a-sparkle, and so on. So of course miseryguts me is feeling depressed (yet again). This might have something to do with my being evicted (yet again). Or more to the point, Butterstein the slippery landlord and Evilstein his henchman say they are doing up the entire house (they have turned my old room into a dustbath of demolition with bricks lying everywhere from the knocked-out chimneybreast... now they require that I vacate the new room I'm presently in so that can be tarted up too. "You must telephone council NOW. Do not go anywhere. Do not do anything else! Telephone the council NOW!!" Evilstein insisted. And made it sound like it was all down to me to sort my chaotic housing situation.

The council say the landlord KNOWS what to do (he is infamous with them), the ball is in his court. It is not my responsibility to phone them or provide paperwork. I need not and indeed cannot do anything. Butterstein knows who to email. It is up to him to inform the council that my room is no longer available; then the council should provide me with a new one.

So I'm quite happy about moving out. In an entirely distant and nonexistent way...

... on a happier note, today is Saint George's day. Saint George who slew the satanic dragon is patron saint of England, so a movement is underway to turn this into another drinking day in league with Saint Patrick of Ireland and Saint Whassisname of Scotland.

St George is also (strangely but truly) the patron saint of the Spanish city of Barcelona... where the tradition goes for young lovers to buy their sweethearts roses; the sweetheart traditionally returns the favour with the gift of a book. You can click this Catalan blog I found totally by accident to see...

BOOKS AND ROSES: Barcelona and Saint George

WILD AND POPPY EYED:

You can see this isn't a domesticated pet. And that enclosure is far too small, otherwise it wouldn't be running up and down and jumping at the sides...

This is the famous Australian dunnart the female rambles a good 5 miles a night in search of a mate... at the end of the annual 2 week breeding season the males are so exhausted they all DIE... they are quite unafraid of battling with funnel webs, and frequently crackle a crunchy scorpion for breakfast!



EXTRAORDINARILY TAME GRANDFATHER ROBOROVSKI

Here's an incredibly cute and old (a good 65+ in roboyears) pensioner hamster:



ROBOROVSKI CIRCUS:

This is far more typical of robbie behaviour... I don't know whether Grandfather Robo above is just naturally calm or on drugs but I've never seen a roborovski act quite so laid-back!



ARE YOU INTERESTED in being a "direct sales representative"? Do you remember those Tupperware parties from the 1970s? My Mum used to throw them. All local ladies from the area come by and purchase dishes, bowls, jugs etc with excellently airtight self-sealing lids... but if you clickonthis you'll see all manner of housewares etc you can directly sales represent..!

GIGANTIC NORWEGIAN HORSE BLOG...!

Ransacked! & Blue Imperial Leather Soap

LAST NIGHT I helped poor distraught Laundretta move the last of her things OUT of her old room. I say "last of her things"; I mean a couple of tartan washbags' worth... out of about 25 tartan washbags full of Laundretta's copious possessions (indeed t'was mostly laundry, 't'as t'be said..!

Matran being otherwise engaged (and sometimes thoroughly selfish, it has to be said) Laundretta said I was the ONLY person who had helped her move OUT of this double room full of bad memories... and into a SINGLE room where she can at least put some distance between them. They shall not be living as a couple any more. That is the theory, at least...

Because with nary a couple of days' notice, Evilstein has minded himself to knock my room and hers together into one generic supergarret (TWO superbly-double-glazed windows with GENUINE uPVC white frames! And two doors that have been so repeatedly ran at, squashed, bashed in, forced, wheedled, kicked at, carded and otherwise tampered with plus, in Laundretta's case about 25 copies of her keys (front door key included) are floating about the supposedly "lost" property of mysterious London... that in her stupors she has mislaid then had to beg the office for reinstatements... in the end she and Matran thought "get lost" and took to barging the front door open themselves so there it's been, swinging open all hours of night and day. Stingy Evilstein even (and this is monumentally SUPID if you consider the implications) REMOVED the latch from said front door so having lived with said door perpetually "on the latch" so to speak for weeks on end we now had an automatic "slam locked" front door that was more likely lock us out than ever before! And hence more likely yet again to get kicked in! Because that's what happens in vulgar houses with cupboard lock front doors. Evilstein and Butterstein, the two landlords, are in a lot of trouble, apparently for taking literally thousands of pounds off the local council's EMERGENCY HOUSING SECTION in weekly rent yet giving execrable service in return...

Dur! Hey this is what I wanted to tell you.... have you ever wanted to ransack and trash a room? Come on! We surely ALL have... well LAST NIGHT I got my chance. Drawers were pulled out, clothing strewn, cushions flung up high and trainers (that is "sneakers" to all ye Americans) clonking down with them. Chairs upended, table collapsed. Wow. Yeah!

The surly man who turned up this morning to complete the emptying of her room (and I mean emptying down to stripped-of-all-cupboards and wardrobes type of empty... totally stripped... he accused ME of interfering! Whatever gave him that idea!! I said hang on I WAS HERE LAST NIGHT with Laundretta, the ONLY person she had to help her (Matran's flown back away to family situations that's why she's in such a quandry loose canon last straw not knowing what on earth to do...) Yeah this man thought I HAD ransacked the room! I said hang on I WAS HERE HELPING last night and Laundretta was very upset. Eventually she just had to leave most of her stuff and stormed out going utterly BERZERK on the street (that's what she wanted me to tell them. She hates them for being so 2-faced with her...) so I told henchman this how I'd helped and we'd been searching out Matran's middle-aged reading glasses. He gazed at me in baleful disbelief. Then I pointed out that I'd fallen into the profoundest slumber and, because Evilstein has YET AGAIN failed to fix our door, or poor Laundretta's door LITERALLY ANYBODY FROM THE STREET was well able to sneak up, infiltrate her room and do anything there. So all flinging, streaming, strewing and upending ahoy ~ I got away with it!!

Butterstein the ueberlandlord was talking to me all jokey (which made Surly even more so: jealous that I appeared to get on fluently with the boss. Indeed I do in a 0.1 millimetre deep kind of a way. Surlystein doesn't realize how little love is lost between Butterstein (so-named because just like a blob of butter if you slip on this you can do yourself a yukky injury) when I requested I might have until tomorrow morning to clear my old room. This was agreed. And I've spend the day diligently filling the new room with specially selected best stuff. And littering the old room with pooily deselected old stuff. I'm ridding it myself as I could not bear some Evilsteinian henchman a-poking so-on through...

Now I simply MUST go this post has taken an hour longer than it ever meant to (according to their timer I've been on one hour precisely and it feels an hour too long I'm utterly exhausted and literally sleeping on my feet. I have to go but not before thanking you all profusely for the conglomeration of advice yous all gave me... I honestly did feel the need of a 2nd, 3rd... and 26th, 27th, 28th... opinion yesterday... as the Bible declares (in the book of proverbs take a multitude of counsel when in a quandry and you'll be fine)... and fine I am so thank you all very much indeed!

*

The Blue Imperial Leather is something Laundretta'd left behind, still wrapped, on her sink. I broke it open today and it smells of lavvy cleaner, quite obnoxious... toilet-ducky, I spose you could rate it... least it's not as bad as that public swimming baths aroma using warmed up bleach tends to give...

*

PS No more fighting robos! Why? Because I removed their teabox and every bit of furniture but the wheel. Now they're forced to live together and do so in furrily amusing harmony... three furry gremlin pompoms asleep and licking themselves in a row all day in the corner...

New Room: Laundretta's out!

I'VE GOT A NEW ROOM DOWNSTAIRS! I wish it was up but no such luck; it's down. Never mind. New room ahoy!!

EVILSTEIN, THE OILY LANDLORD'S EVIL HENCHMAN banged on my door when I was faster than lightspeed asleep this morning. He yelled at me, getting my name wrong as ever, "YOU and ALL YOUR THINGS must be OUT by MONDAY. ANYTHING LEFT OVER will be INCINERATE!! It SHALL BE DESTROY!! MONDAY you move to downstairs. We knock your room Laundretta's room together by then. Do not go anywhere before then. Plus you open window evil smell in here." (It was his unwarranted, unasked for, unneeded, totally useless, over charged-for, hated, smelly, floor-cracking and dripping over eggy breakfast. THAT's what made revolting smells all over his yukky carpets...)

So I returned my yellow bucket of old works at the chief exchangery this morning and was heartened to see my own drugs worker on duty there. The one I have now is the best one I think I've ever had EVER. I'm serious. It's not just to do with willing to go the proverbial "extra mile" but to do with a psychical connexion. That kind of thing. That we have. And my former workers never had with me. Female workers, I might add, outnumber male workers 4:1 at the moment, which, I would expect, makes the emotionally constipated male junkieheartdom even more difficulted, complexicated and loath to communicate than ever before...

I told my worker everything that's been going on, bothering me, bothering others and so-n-so, which is a lot. Laundretta's finally had enough with, as she alleges, Tubbystein from downstairs interfering with himself over her sleeping body in the night (well she did insist upon rowing with Matran then slooming on the stairs...)

The council's given her a small new room a couple of miles away in one of my former old Manors. Is it true I have a soft spot for Laundretta and it shows? I thought I came across as mocking her. I DO like Laundretta. Poor girl. She's one of the most emotionally damaged individuals I think I've EVER met in my own short life...

Now I have to quickly finish this post. Bottom line is, I have to get my old stuff out of my old room by Monday a.m., have things polished a-cleared out and all a-new by then... implication being (and I want to ask your advice upon this, please:) do yous all agree with me that I should do what I've always fantasized about yet never had the courage? That is, to take with me only what I really, truly need. To maybe bag up some more things safe and take with. But to leave a good half of my things behind me upstairs...

Please: if you've any feedback, please feed it back ASAP as I need it SOON. I've had a really difficult couple of years. Psycho'd out of my head at start. Staring at walls, rocking. Then THAT COUPLE's appearance and little to my distress they still surely added to it... I had an amazing dream about that last night...

I need to know what to do. I need the courage of your convictions, so if you ARE convinced I should just chuck and go; please tell me. I will gladly do it and move on...

New Song:
Mamas and Papas: Creeque Alley (technicolour tv performance)
Mamas and Papas: "Matt Mix" ~ sound only modernized version...

First Day of Tomorrow!

2008. Here we are. Fourteen hours into the new year already and it's all change..!!.. NOT!¬

ACTUALLY I FEEL QUITE INVIGORATED AND INSPIRED today... to rise, like the cream or scum that I am right up to that top where I belong... onwards and upwards!!

My Mum rang me at 00:04 hrs from intellectual France wishing me a happy one. She said she and Brian (her husband) had done it with champagne and massive stacks of oysters. (Well there is an R in the month.) I told her I'd done it with a cheese roll and a can of cyder and she laughed.

Yesterday's Thai babycorn green leaves chicken from the Chinese takeaway was far from inspiring. I couldn't believe they had the cheek to do what they actually did... What I basically got was one container normal fry rice - no prob. The other container even before I opened it... couldn't help but remark to myself how very bright pink it was... exceedingly so. It was not Thai at all. What they had done is take a standard industrial, over-coloured Chinese sweet and sour sauce (which I loathe. I can't stand sweet and sour; as well as being the most cliche'd westernized shorthand for oriental food, the taste of boiled sweets really does not go with fried chicken... anyway... in this psychedelically bright pink sweet and sour they'd tipped another sauce. This one was pretty spicy and nice. So spicy in fact that it drowned out sweet and sour enough that I didn't take the whole thing straight back and complain. But there were literally 3 tiny green spinach leaves. And the baby corn were limp and wilty and so obviously long past their best it was horrible. I really am going to have to have a word with them about that it was well substandard...

Anyway: all this talk of Eastern food has got me pondering: and I present!:~

The Fantasy Chopstick Chinese and Thai Takeaway!!

Sample menu:
Try the Squatting Dragon set meal!:~~

Shi Tibum Chicken with Faast Pu Sauce
Big Pong Pork with Run Toy Let Dressings
with complimentary Ae Ki Be Li pancake rolls
Optional recommended:
(Northern Thai) Ru Ni Spla Ta Yuk Yuk curry (warning: extra hot!)
or an equivalent "dish" from the south (actually only a large tureen will hold it:)
King Prawn and Squid Special Go Khrap Cuiq
or perhaps try the even hotter:
King Prawns Fiil Laik Dai (it's what the prawns died of: comes up even quicker than it went down...)

I hope that amused y'all...

EVILSTEIN's "fixed" the front door (yet again) and done it so badly that the inner mechanism fails to engage with the outer keyturny chamber or latchyflick knob. Meaning that I spent ten minutes confronted last night by a heavy thunky front door that had locked me in... and only judicious excavations with a pea-fork would finally dislodge the Yale bolt from its bolthole... even then it proved to have jammed. I unjammed it by forcing it and then something went click inside and the lock was totally disengaged. Meaning the handle just turned fatuously round and round without unlocking anything. And the key turned round and round and even worse got stuck! Thankfully bashing the (open-doored) lock-part sideways released this. But imagine coming back at 2am on the street. Locked out! With your keys! And to add insult to injury: the door grabs hold of said keys and will not let them go! Hopefully this will happen to Gnomenstein..!! (haha!!)

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"Charmed I'm sure" as my grandmother's generation used to say...

Now I must go and compose to great literary themes (ie the tale of my life - what could be grander than that..?!? (lots of things actually: but hey!))

and if I get stuck I'll just have poor Gwendolina, locked in the kitchen for her misbehaviour, baying sorrowfully at the pale striplight and fruitlessly trying to nudge her giant snout between the sink unit and cooker to retrieve a dropt piece of bacon...

righty-ho!
hope the new one's going good Everyone

did anyone actually get a hangover? if so please do tell how/wherefore/etc etc in my comments: c'mon!!

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I've found two magnificent "videos of the day"~~~
1: Mr Putin: Why Can't All Men Be Like You (Russian girlgroup political promo for the revered Dictator)
2: Shock News: Cigarettes are Good For You!

Heat Is Back!

I HAVE HEAT! All for the sake of a busted 13A fuse... now refrigeration is back... heat is back (from cooker-power)... TEA is back too. I've bought 250g of McVite's digestives ("70% wholemeal wheat and goodness!") in celebration.

Whooh! To be honest I thought after last night's sounding off nobody would ever want to talk to me again.

Mixed sex hospital wards (especially for the over 50s) in this country nobody wants them. And I really feel sorry for old ladies trapped with old men going "rampant" upon them. Not (usually) literally... but who knows.... How on earth is that condusive to getting better. Yes it probably is a cultural thing, but it's not part of the culture here. Surely (as I said) someone can simply re-divvy up the floorspace M~F~M~F again... what's so difficult about that?

Kids: I don't hate kids at all but if you've seen how badly they let rip (here in London, I'm not trying to speak for anywhere else) they seriously are little devils-in-the-making... Even Americans, people from the very home of guncrime and disorder say our kids are something else which must surely make you think...

Now it's not so to-the-bone chilly I might be able to tempt Itchy out for a heavily supervised ramble. Before this morning I don't blame them all for hiding in teaboxes, nests of cotton ... etc...

Hey! Now I've got heat back I can also wash clothes... which was temporarily pretty impossible (well, unless you were willing to give them 2 days per item to dry)... and then risk it smelling of a summer camping holiday. Eurgh.

I've dredged up some extra-special pagan Xmas things on video. The sacramento "flower crowns" people go on for 20 mins but are fairly entertaining. If you don't like that go for the Two Ronnies "Worm That Turned"... an "Apocalyptal" View of the World ruled by women in leather hot-pants.

Videos:
True Meaning of Xmas
Two Ronnies Worm That Turned I and II

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PS (11:40pm) Poor Baby Itchy went out for a highly supervised nonjumpy-down ramble tonight. She was awfully subdued and circumspect. I think she's got bored of her enclosed life of toilet tubes, a wheel and an old Parmesan cheese tub as a toilet!!

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Rudolph the red-nose rain-DOG ... from Lamplight's blog ...

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Hey I got visitors from all 6 continents again!

My stats are no more voluminous than anyone else's, but my visitors do seem to come from especially far and wide, which I find enormously flattering... as well as mysterious as I don't know who the vast majority of these people are!

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Look at this amazing front lawn parrotry pecking about the grass... rainbow lorrikeets etc etc...

(from Bimbimbie's, which means "place of the birdies" in mysterious Aboriginal...)

No Tea Idiot (Идиот )

NO TEA FOR ME! My stove or "hob" as we call it here is kaput. Which means the room is plunging from chilly to colder. (I had to keep one ring on as a roomheater most nights, so I don't know whether that knackered it out or what...) And no more cooking. (Stew's still on the menu as that comes from a Marubishi Japanese pot.) Tea is off as I was using a saucepan to boil water; not a jug. If the fridge is down too there's hope it's just the fuse. Otherwise Evilstein's going to have to sort me a portable cooker!

My new reading book is Идиот by Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский. Sorry! Brief attack of pretentiousness there. I mean Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. I'm quite offended that he took the title before me. Otherwise I'd have used it for my memoirs ... wah-waaaah!!

The memoirs are back on track again. I'm up to my first fulltime job and so the monotony of student - depression blah is broken. Heroin is still years away. I think I'd experimented with just about everything else until I came to that. And had my warning early: most drugs and me do not really agree. That is the thing about heroin. Far from frazzling you out the way most party drugs eventually do, it agrees so very much it becomes a kind of cure-all. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere it makes life more bearable. But I must say, by the time it's doing that for you, you're already an addict.

I won't go on except to say I found a new dealer - from Jamaica. I've only seen him twice and had such trouble with his accent on the phone I don't see how this is going to work. Loads of dealers come from Jamaica but this one's utterly incomprehensible!

Bashful is pinging about "beneath the tartan"... looking just like a cartoon character.

James Bond "Die Another Day" is on telly. V watchable. I specially like the tweetling noises from all that high tech...

Right! Have a cheery weekend everyone!
Video of the Day
Leona Lewis: Footprints in the Sand

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Here's two other videos I couldn't dredge out of the archives. Clickonthem you will get to the vid again once it's gone from this page:

Sonique: I Put A Spell On You
Zucchero: Senza Una Donna

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PS I just looked up "puppies" on that English mastiff website link above and got the story of one called "Jasmine" from 4 weeks to 16 months... wow! At 4 weeks she's a hamster... by 16 months a real moon-bayer!

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An ultra-funky Danish blog

SEE! An army truck parachuted from the sky~!!

Window Refugee

YES I'M DEPORTED FROM MY ROOM WHILE a Jamaican and a Polish workman rip out my old windy window (felt like it was open on cold days even when was shut; that's how insulating it was!)... and I've removed everything from within five feet of said about-to-be-gaping-hole-in-wall! I'm hoping that by midafternoon it shall all be done and wondrous uPVC framed double glazed glass windows shall be mine... (I hope they are glass and not those dreadful plastic windows but beggars can't be choosers... ahem!)

Mother Hubbard told me it probably is happening as the result of a special council grant for a less carbon emissions house. Which perfectly makes sense. A sudden streak of generosity on Butterstein (the uber-evil uberlandlord)'s part does not...

I wish I hadn't gone quite so OTT yesterday saying I felt covered in diarrhoea in that restaurant. It sounds really ungrateful. I did have a nice time, but as I say really did feel out of place, especially in the beginning. I felt obligated to take my hat off for one thing... freeing still-damp recently shampoo'd hair. I felt wrong wrong wrong and would have gone to the loo to paranoidly stare into the mirror trying to fix it if that hadn't entailed having to walk past the maitre D who would intensely scrutinize me on my way back in .... ooer.

I never explained the significance of those two Queen of the Night arias I posted up... bit of a private joke. When I was in my teens we used to have the famously dreadful Florence Foster Jenkins version of that song on record. My brothers did not seem to realize the joke was the singer could not sing... Anyway when I did get to go to the opera many moons ago I selected The Magic flute to hear it properly sung. It's quite a famous song as it has the highest note (an F6) in all the standard repertoire of opera...

Well I must go as I'm hungry. My robos are stashed next to the sink, wrapped in a laundry bag and piled up with about 100 records on their roof to prevent nosey pokers poking them out. They pinged around all over the place when they realized something was up and they were moving. Highly entertaining beady-eyed furballs that they are. Even Yangyang came out when I dropped in birdseed and broccoli this morning. His eyes are enormous and poppy. Dark, inky hemispheres. And boy is he long! ... Like a furry freight train trundling out of his nest ... a furry eel more like ... or whatever.

I'll let you know how the windows turn out. Hopefully they don't fix them in with paper glue. O sorry I forgot it's not Evilstein and his personal dolts installing these but professional window guys. You get so used to hundredth best sometimes it's all you ever expect ...

New video of the Day:
Florence Foster Jenkins tribute (including her own famous hahahahahahahahahaargh bits of the Mozart aria) Queen of the Night!!

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Do you know beautyberries? Clickonthis and tell me whether you knew what they were before... or whether you merely thought they were just blackberries airbrushed to glamourize. Or fully Apple Macked!!!

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Nearly 2pm and ...
Man! Still windows not done!
I sneaked upstairs and found Laundretta reading a book whilst smoking a fag on her bed (only respectable thing SHE ever does on a bed... har-har... sorry I should not be vulgar...)... my room the ripping sound of tape....
I snuck downstairs and had a look of my window out the bathroom window and saw I have indeed got a luxury new bright white plastic frame!...
... unfortunately no glass in it just yet! How on earth they slide in the glass after the frame's fitted is quite beyond me ... but hey..!

***

Man! I can't believe this. 3pm and windows still glassless. At least Matran and Laundretta's is too so I hope they're shivering. Man all I want to do is go home slam door have whacking great hit and fall asleep with face in chicken curry egg fly lice what's wrong with that and these dolty pompom plonkas are preventing me from crashing out I've been up since about midnight. (Was so exhausted from art gallery exploits I spent literally most of the weekend from then on sleeping. Been feeling very run down lately.) ... They'd better not be interfering with my hamsters either. Else I hope Bashful bites them. O come on man! It's cold! Even in this cybercaffe. And I just wanna go home. How long does it take to slide glass into a doubleglazing frame? There's nothing IN it yet so surely nothing's waiting to dry... come on come on come on!!

I'm too tired to deal with any of this. Just ventured up road. Saw Polish one puffing on fake Marlboro by front door. He had a desperate look on his face. What has gone wrong? This is not good ...

*

While I wait I'm going to have a look at Japanorama from my Nippon blog ...

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Ten minutes to four.
Just walked up road. Irritatedly craned neck to Laundretta's window. Wow! Viridescence reflecting from the sky! Upon closer look it was indeed a PVCu window but not as bad as the worst I've seen (you know, windows so bowed out and warped they're like the window version of the fairground hall-of-freaky-mirrirs...
I crept upstairs as silently as Itchy when she's escaped... a workman was there. So I hid in the toilet and craned my neck out. Wow! A brand new teletubby window was in place of my drafty old one. It looks so tiny and small and cute! Then one of the men started coming downstairs so I bolted out the front door.
Q: Are you a man or a mouse?
A: A hamster!
Not in the mood for making bright workman chat today, know what I mean. Anyway I'm sure Laundretta's "accidentally" falling open dressing gown's kept them more than "amused"...

***

6:20pm I wasn't in too much of a good mood earlier. Very tired. I've been sleeping excessively; exhausted excessively. Don't know quite why ...

Anyway a while after four I went back to the house and spoke to the Polish fitter: "have you finished?" I said. "O yeah; have a look." I did and it's wonderful. NOT PVCu - I take that back! These are real glass and I get such a good view. (Probably the old view was so bad because those old windows were so exceedingly dirty!!) I did eat chicken curry egg fried rice. Sat in the shop looking up "chicken" and "curry" and "egg" and "fry/fried" and "rice" in my Japanese dictionary. Some fantastic characters came up. Egg was particularly entertaining - 卵 - because you can see two ovular things in it ... you need an overactive imagination for Chinese-derived characters but you get to learn the little motifs that make them up! An oblong, for example, represents a mouth (口) and so appears in language (言語), talk (を話す), word (単語), shouting (を叫ぶ) etc ... (in shouting the mouth goes sideways: 叫, see). What an entertaining language the Japanese have.

***

10:21pm and I've just had a massive fix!... of Her Majesty the Queen!! In the latest instalment of the BBC1 docu Monarchy: The Royal Family At Work... (Same programme I was ranting on about this time last week although it was a disappointing half hour shorter this week...) Buckingham Palace looks lovely from the inside... like a particularly plush hotel. Though I'd have to say if I lived there I wouldn't go running around those long corridors like everybody else. I'd go about on scooters or rollerskates. Ma'am seemed particularly irritable at times this week. Perhaps the BBC consider it more fittingly "modern" to have an exasperated Queen with a bit of attitude. Maybe she was really getting rather miffed at having all those cameras following her about every day for nearly a year!

I'm still enchanted by my marvellous new window. I've been gazing out of it and opening and closing it. It even has a lock with a key. How posh is that. I bet Her Majesty the Queen doesn't have double glazing at Buck House!

In a minute I have to go out and disinterr my robos (poor man's corgis (the Queen's favourite dogs)) - they do have a couple of things in common with corgis 1. they're all very mischievious and 2. all being a light sandy colour with identical markings they're exactly the "same" in appearance. I can only tell the three apart by degrees of tubbiness. And Spherical might have a slightly lighter coat than Bashful... They're hidden behind a chest of drawers, layers of bedsheets, and a tartan washing bag under a stack of 100 oldfashioned huge vinyl records!

Well I had better say goodnight now.

***{And I'm giving a little royal wave...}***

***

PS:
The BBC World Service have been doing a radioplaywriting competition for people from all over the world, open to all ... they've been playing the six or ten best ones ... anyway a play came on the other night ... I was asleep when it first came on so it kind of melded into my dreams at first, then I came to clear consciousness and realized how fantastically good this piece of drama really was. Surely a new talent of world standing had been discovered. They'd even persuaded Clive Swift (best known as Hyacinth Bucket's longsuffering husband in Keeping Up Appearances) and Prunella Scales (best known as Basil Fawlty's longsuffering/tormenting wife in Fawlty Towers but likely seen nowadays playing posh old widows in Jane Austenny costume drama... to take starring roles. Something I'm sure they'd not have done for any old bit of tripe ...
Well anyway, turns out the play is called The Rocking Horse and it's NOT by some young struggling playwrite but by Arnold Wesker who's 75 and along with Harrold Pinter a leading light of modern British drama. And it's brand new and was specially written for radio. If you're lacking some entertainment do clickonit and you can play it through the computer. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

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Great pictures from Slavonic Central Europe!
http://trunko.blogspot.com

Still No Baby Itchy

重度の下痢！そして私のハムスターを再表示されていない！

Still no sign of the missing Itchy. I've no idea where she might have gone... if she's been kidnapped and sold into slavery by the wild mice behind my wardrobe or what... I am most concerned. But I refuse to give up hope.

I was really ill this morning. Severe diarrhoea so bad it left almost no mark in the loo because it was so exceedingly watery. And gut cramps. And vomiting. I sicked up my methadone as well. Then, as I nearly always do when I'm ill like that, I fell asleep all afternoon only getting up just in time to go to the drugs clinic where I gave a zero reading on the breathalyser. Ha-ha! So there!!

Nobody can tell what caused me to get sick like that (I was far too ill to leave the house in the morning plus exhausted from vomiting...) It cannot have been my stew as that's constantly boiling with the lid on and hence just about as sterile as cooked food can get. The only other thing I'd eaten in the previous several days was some pasta and broccoli with grated cheddar and parmesan. But that was cooked in the same pan I'd used the day before to sterilize all my old cutlery. Boiling and boiling and topping up and boiling again for over an hour. So how that could have given me food poisoning I've no idea. It's a mystery...

Did anyone in this country see the Queen documentary on Monday? It's one of a five-parter. I don't think it's been shown anywhere abroad yet though I'd have thought most civilized countries love watching that sort of thing. In Germany, for example, she's known simply as "die Queen" or even "the Queen" - and everyone knows which Queen they're talking about!

The cameras followed last year's State Visit to the United States of America. Mrs Bush was well enamoured with the British style of State Banquets and remarked how small and plain and pokey the White House is compared to Buckingham Palace. And quite right, too. Nothing but the best for Ma'am!

I don't want one of those bicycle-riding monarchs like they have in Northern Europe. It's only due to the shillyshallying farts in power at the time that Ma'am didn't get a replacement for the decommissioned Royal Yacht Britannia. The people would object to our spending one hundred million pounds on a royal boat, I can hear them blustering. And yet they pour billions into the Iraq war and other utter white elephants. I for one do not want a rowing boat Queen. When I'm Prime Minister I'm getting her a proper boat. Plus ten-storey high turrets on all four corners and a huge extension to the back of Buckingham Palace to mark my time in office! (Why should everything marking "Great" Britain always be from the past? Why no additions from today?? If the Houses of Parliament had been built in "Modern Britain" they'd resemble a multistorey carpark! Do click for the image!)

Here's today's message to Japan!
My today's message to Japan:
ここに私が日本のファンにメッセージを私します。最初に、お聞きしたい、自分のブログをどうやって見つけますか？今ではそれが本当に汚れを入浴後にする必要があります。その場合、私はもっときれいにしようとする！ぜひご自分のすべての日本の俳句を楽しんだ。かれらは、オンラインで私が見つかりましたのでよく分かりませんブログを書いている。最良の健康をお祈りします。私のブログを読んで続行してください！愛を込めてから Gledwood

Now I'm going to go home and pine for poor Baby Itchy. Hopefully she has not disappeared down a hole to get lost under the floorboards. O I don't know what to say...

My videos of the Day:
1. Hayley Westenra/Katherine Jenkins: Ave Maria Ready Steady Cook duet. I think Katherine Jenkins in particular has an amazing voice&
2. Hayley Westenra: O Mio Babbino Caro
3. Katherine Jenkins: My Heart Will Go On

And last but not least, today's haiku:

かんこ鳥鳴や蟇どのの弔いに

kankodori naku ya hiki dono no tomurai ni

the mountain cuckoo sings
at Mr. Toad’s
funeral

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9:52pm NO SIGN YET OF POOR MISSING ITCHY (boo-hoo)

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I've revised my opinions of my ideal home from Buckingham Palace (rather pokey by international standards) to the Winter Palace at St Petersburg - what a house! Imagine how much room Baby Itchy would have to ping about in there...!!

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See this Amazing Country Cottage Slideshow of Snowy Conifers from Canada...

They have baby Xmas trees for £5 each in pots at our local supermarket. Made me long so much for a garden in which to plant one...

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PS I hope the Japanese isn't too annoying to most people. It's meant to attract over more visitors from Japan. So if you're Japanese come ON!!

Bangers and a Mashed Up Day

SOMETHING IS UP.

I can feel it in my cyder... I don't know what, but I'm sure it is.

Laundretta asked me if I'd seen Evilstein the landlord's Manager.

"No," I said. "Should I have?"

She stared blankly for a while then said, "O, no... doesn't matter..."

Shortly afterwards after my two minute bath (trust me if you'd seen our bath you wouldn't want to spend more than two minutes in there either(!) No plug even. You have to stuff it up with toilet paper (Laundretta's method that gets pink, porridgey bits everywhere) or dirty old socks (my method: kills two birds with one stone; sock comes out cleaner too (well after a bit of brownwater squishing etc.etc.)

As I said yesterday I cleaned my robbies. As I didn't say: I somehow got half a bagful of their dirty sawdust all over my floor. Honestly it's getting so scruffy in there it's almost like living in a barn.

With which point in mind I troubled to clear everything out with 20 new heavy duty refuse sacks at about midday.

At some point there was a giant commotion. I heard Evilstein taking my name repeatedly in vain. I dared not venture downstairs to find out what it was all about.

Turned out later one of my dealers had decided to call "on spec" and run into the evilness of the fierce Cypriot! (Yes, Evilstein stomps around shouting in Greek... I once had to ask Valium Marilyn "why does he keep yelling 'taxi'?" "O! Darlin' that's not taxi that's endaksi - it means OK in Greek!"

I had gorgeous bangers and mash for "tea" last night.

Just in case you can't cook here's the recipe:

BANGERS AND MASH.

Ingredients:
Beef sausages (pork if you really can countenance chewing dead swines' flesh - ugkh!)
New potatoes
Red onion
Butter
Gravy granules.

Peel and chop potatoes. Not everyone seems to do the second stage; but chopping significantly speeds up cooking time plus reduces your snotty middle-class "carbon footprint" (well only the snotty bourgeoisie seem to prattle on about such "issues" on the radio so I assume only middleclass people have such snotty "footprints" ... well whatever back to the cooking.

Potatoes take about 20 minutes to boil. Test with a fork: if it goes in easily, they're ready to mash.

When the potatoes are about 5 minutes to go, smear butter in a frying pan and fry up sausages for about 8 minutes on a fairly high heat, turning frequently.

When they're nearly done, add about half a medium size chopped red onion per person (red looks better but otherwise it really makes no difference). Traditionally you would fry till really tender (not crisp) and add to the gravy. I prefer to add it to my mash, I think it goes better; but it's up to you... Adding paprika to the oil will make your onion mix yummily red and piquant. Adding a tiny pinch of extra-hot chili spices it up yet more. Woo!

Then drain the potatoes. Mash. Add a bit of butter and black pepper. Adding more butter plus a little splash of milk will make them creamier, but frankly I prefer them "au naturel". They are, after all gonna get doused in gravy. Mash in the fried onions plus some of their oil (if desired) with fork.

(STOP PRESS: I advised to fry onions in with the sausages. Actually, unless you positively enjoy the slightly cloying taste of beef fat in your onions (or worse, snotty runny gyuckinous lard from pork sausages) don't do it that way round. Fry the onions first in a bit of butter (and spices if desired). Turf them out into a plate. Keep warm, but don't worry if they cool too much: the hot saussies + gravy will heat 'em up again. Then fry sausages in the pan.)

Boil up a small amount of the potato water if you still have it (think of global resources!) or just fresh water. Read gravy instructions. Make it with about half as much granules more than instructions say: then you'll get a really thick mixture as shown on the "serving suggestion". There's nothing worse than over-watery gravy! If you want to be pretentious you can add a small pinch of mixed herbs to your gravy, but frankly I don't bother. It jarrs against the cheap industrial-ness of the sausages and mash.

Now slap mashed potatoes in boat shape on plate. Pyoing sausages on top. Scoop out a kind of hollow with fork. Fill this into a lake of gravy.... yum yum yummee!

I'm going to start making my mega stews again. I did post the recipe some months ago. Merle, Liz and Ruth in particular will remember my home-made dumplings escapades....

Righty ho I have to go I'm hungry now..!

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Tune of the Day:
Suzanne Vega Medley: Cracking - Ironbound - Fancy Poultry etc...

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Blogs of the Day
Creative Thinking Class http://creativethinkingclass.blogspot.com
Actually, the text is in Chinese, but it's the pictures I've nominated it for. Amazing surreal moonshots... plus did you know 意見 is "comment" in Chinese?

Proctor Family Blog http://proctorfamily4.blogspot.com
Amazingly clear family photos from golden American shores...

Furniture and Luxury Design
http://sumpit-home-design.blogspot.com
Includes free design ebooks!

Joel Pilcher Art and Design
http://joelpilcher.blogspot.com
Amazing atmospheric stag "sketch" (though "sketch" is hardly the word...)

Some folks have taken the humble craft of pumpkin-carving into the realms of high art....
Have a look at this!
The Koenigs' Home Blog: http://cindykoenig.blogspot.com

Have you ever wanted to learn to draw? Yet just wished someone who really knew how had the patience to explain the procedure step-by-step?
Try this blog then:
MCSM Studio of Art http://mcsmstudioart.blogspot.com

Genaro
http://genaro484.blogspot.com
The "ickle boy" pixx are really entertaining and cute...

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How's this for an amazing caterpillar picture?
Originates from Khairilfa http://khairilfa.blogspot.com

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Hey! Just bought intellectual mint hot chocolate from Iceland - highly extravagant: £1.50 for eight 1oz sachets; that's about twice as expensive as vulgar non-minty but it's getting dark by 5pm now so hey...

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Another British thing with sausages is Toad in the Hole (click for Delia Smith's uber-recipe). Basically the sausages are embedded in this yummy spongey stuff that is always called "batter" though it's not how I'd think of batter. Surely batter is ordinarily fried? This is raised up in the oven... and unlike the over-stodgy fish and chips, say, it's quite a nice recipe, if you wanted to make something British but a bit unusual...

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Sad news: Guardian newspaper columnist Dina Rabinovitch has lost her fight against breast cancer.
You can click for her obituary
Click for her blog.

My Mum had stage 2 breast cancer last year. (Stage 4 is the worst.) Thank God she was OK...

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And lastly: hear this for some of the entertainingest radio comedy I've heard in a long time. It's a spoof phone-in Down the Line. Click the "listen again" option and the entire show shall be piped luxuriously through your personal computer...

PS If you want a way of piping BBC Radio through your computer yet their website not getting in the way of anything else you might want to look at (and it really doesn't this way, it vanishes all together; only the sound remains faithful). This is how you do it.

Bring up a page you want to read - like this one.

Scroll down the right sidebar for my personal Google search box. You need to bring up the radio after whatever else you want to look at; otherwise it doesn't work... Into that search box type in "down line radio 4" - you'll get straight to the link. Click on "listen again"; adjust volume. Then go to the top righthandside of that window and click "minimize" - the window shall vanish; the sound does not.

You can get the full range of Radio 4 or World Service spoken-word programming by Googling "radio 4 listen again" or "world service listen again" and pick and chose as you please.

Another thing you can do is Google "radio 4" or "bbc world service" (or bbc anything else you might want) - then you can select "listen live" and do as above... and have the positive luxury of quality BBC sounds direct to your PC wherever you may be....

Once you've got the BBC up and running and minimized you can just browse as normal wherever you please: blogs, websites, wherever and it just runs on regardless. Wahey!!

Laundretta Chaos II

CHAOS IN MY HOUSE. Not only is the front door smashed in yet again (Laundretta got locked out drunk), but for the past couple of days she has been staggering up and down the hallways at night in the dark (a little like a drunken human prostitute minotaur) wailing and hollering and yelling accusations at her boyf, Matran.

It all came to a head yesterday when she smashed the back stairs window with a sink plunger... leaving the kind of plunger-shaped hole that you couldn't do if you tried a million times...

Yes chaos rules again.

Evilstein went slightly mad about that and Mat and L's television being left outside their room for two months and claimed we all have to clear up because the council are coming round today. Frankly I don't believe that but hid my robbies and made everything look a bit smart.

I actually went out and purchased some memoirs to use as an inspirational template for mine... and reading through came to the unsurprising conclusion that yes I will have to novelize the entire thing. Ukk.

This means telling your life story as if it was a novel ie with dialogue and descriptions laid out in the traditional format... which is kind of hard to do when it's your own truth... and such dialogue, though it pulls in the focus crystal sharp and close... is inherently untruthful because as we all know it is NOT the exact dialogue from the time.... ho-hum. But you gotta live to convention. Otherwise you end up in prison.

I'm going to mess about on the internet and then will have another go at memoiring later on tonight so wish me luck again... I shall aim to complete two whole pages today! Woo!

***

I think I picked out two TOP tunes today!
1. Sinitta - Cross My Broken Heart... you poor Americans on the far side of the pond... you don't know what you're missing not having charts full of Europop... (And Sinitta IS American by the way!!)

2. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood. I've no idea whatsoever WHAT Clint Eastwood has to do with this song. But that's the title. Hmmmmmmm......

And my 2 other vids:

3. Paris Hilton and Madonna munching sandwiches in the park...

4. Britney Bitch Revisited...***

Blog recommendation of the day:

The Captain's Blog. From HMS Somerset Royal Navy warship. Or frigate. Or whatever they call it. But it's a big grey metallic ship full of weapons. Designed for going out in times of conflict and kicking "arse"...
(http://www.hms-somerset-co.blogspot.com)

Evilstein. Robos. Childhood Poo Pain.

HEY THIS IS THURSDAY'S POST... I MISSED MIDNIGHT BY three seconds ... not thanks to my own dallying but thanks to Googles up-****ing. Thanxx a log Google...

EVILSTEIN, MY OBJECTIONABLE LANLORD'S AGENT came bursting in this afternoon, knocking my drink over, telling me the place is too untidy (he thinks I should dispose of all I own and subsist in an operating theatre. Even then, like the legendary military tent-inspection, I know he'd find fault enough with whatever I did to label the surgical blankness "dirty".

Evilstein's useless henchmen had to measure up in order to fit/order/install replacement windows~(??!) I cannot help but wonder what extremes they will be pushed to in the bodge-job stakes with this particular assignment ... What will go wrong?... Windows that don't fit? Ones that don't open (that's more Evilstein's style). PVCu monstrosities that go cloudy in the sun..?? Something's bound to go dramatically wrong!

I had horrible dreams all night last night. Some recurring nightmare of being under arrest in a giant hi-tech police station. Can't even remember the alleged "crime" but I've never done it. What I recall was that it was all symbolic of my giving up drugs. Seeing that no escape was possible I turned to plotting methods of suicide. Eventually settling on an undeclared hunger strike to weaken the body then to take a piece of metal, a shard of glass, plastic even or a paperclip or anything that is sharp or could be sharpened, anything that I could muster in desperation and lunge at, tear into my flesh deep enough to gash open a major blood vessel open in the dead of night and lie there quietly bleeding in rivers of my own blood wrapped in sheets trying not to sob or scream out, just to get through it right to the bitter end... and then... Sunrise.

Not to perpetrate Natural Justice upon myself for I had done nothing wrong (not, at least the major crime of which I was accused). But just to Go Home... finally. At long last. Just to Get Out of there and Go Home... Where I belong.

Woke up in a sweat and feeling sick for drugs. The methadone I'd taken had not been enough.

I've always been useless at detoxification. A big crying baby whose dummy has been taken away. (Only by my own choice!) Of course I've managed these past 33 years without a dummy but o! At the time, aged 2, I bet: the horrors! The pains I went through!!

Imagine if you can that we could all recall in detail the protracted agonies of our own babyhoods? The hot nights crying ill with childhood fevers, the horrors of teething, the constant upsets. All those hours on end we have spent lying abandoned and bawling our eyes out with curried nappies and nobody is running here fast enough (Mum is probably fast asleep and I don't blame her. Looking after me must have been so exhausting.) At 4am nobody hears your screams. And time, of course, passes ten, twenty, perhaps thirty times more slowly through the infant mind... only multiplying one's discomforts... What an agony life would be if we all grew up remembering all of that... And we'd all think we had the excuse to grow up into heroin addicts - addled by the sheer trauma of not having been coddled ...

Not much in the way of robo-news today. Last night I gave them Red Label 40 teabags box with tiny windows sniped into each of six sides. Itchy, once he got fed up of being loop-the-looped by the 2 heavier wheel-marathon-ing hammies, spent hours in there, washing his wet fur even wetter and attacking alien-fingered millet sprays...

Wow I'm knock-knack-knackered. I'm sure I've still got dregs of that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from eleven years past. As every time I physically push myself I end up oversleeping... hours and hours on end... for days and days at a time...


2-day's vids:
Sly and the Family Stone: Family Affair
Sinead: Sacrifice
"Moonfall": Making a Record... (original link was to "take ii")

Sly Stone's Website! http://slystonemusic.com

Sly stone

Monday Bloody Monday

THANKFULLY THE DAY IS NEAR OVER. I once bought a hamster when I was depressed to try and cheer me up. It was a female tubby golden Syrian mesocricetus auratus. I called her Tubbemer. She did not cheer me up. In fact I don't think she ever really liked me. We never got on as well as me and Pandable (who looked just like Tubbemer but was a boy.) Pandable was a wonderhammy. Slept solidly all day. Woke like clockwork at evening time. Got up. Washed ears. Did weez and pooze in corner. (Golden hamsters always use the same corner as toilet. Dwarf ones are more scruffy and just wee and poo anywhere.) Once Pandable was solidly awake he hit the wheel. I had to buy him a special enormous free-standing rat wheel as all hamster-"sized" ones were too small. He could not stretch out and run full-pelt. He used to run this rat wheel literally from dusk until dawn and woe betide you if it got blocked with sawdust or toppled over. He went nuts charging back and forth amongst the tank until you got up and fixed it. I read somewhere that the "average" hamster runs five miles a night. Well Pandable was a superhammy in that case as he did eight miles every night! I know this because we attached a yellow label to one end of the wheel so we could count rpms. These we multiplied, an average distance per minute timesed by the eight hours or whatever it was he spent rambling on this bloody thing. He barely ever got off it. Except sometimes to run a circuit of the tank and swiftly get back on again. Even if you let him out on the floor and put the wheel in the corner of the room, he'd just run straight up to it and take up rambling on that ... bizarre creature. When I took him to my Dad's house in a mouse cage with a smaller hamster wheel he spent the entire week in a foul mood, angrily gnawing at the mouse-bars and doing pooze on the new wheel in protest ... sorry I am rabblitting on and on about hamsters I know I should not. I am so depressed and down and exhausted though. I am planning to stop all drugs all together in the near future and want to cut down the methadone and come off. I know this will make me feel mentally dreadful. But the time has come to feel dreadful without heroin-methadone in the mix. You know that saying by The Verve? The Drugs Don't Work ..? See? They really don't. I don't know. My friend Ivy (from the internet) keeps saying she is going to be an escort. I don't know what to say to her. I just told her be careful of warts and don't let the punters wheedle you into dispensing with a condom ... I don't know what else to say. Everyone in my house hates me because they thought I was leaving. I want to go. But you know the saying "better the devil you know" ... that is really hanging me up. Also I don't want to move too far from this area. I would have to bus down every day to the methadone chemist's for one thing ... what can I do? What shall I do? I don't know. Monday! Bad mood bloody Monday!!

***

Go to http://pinguindude.blogspot.com for a bullying story