Ideas

I SLEPT AND SLEPT and slept and slept and slept in really lake, till past 3pm. My phone was chirping and chirrupping like crazy, but I turned it down so I could dream some more. I dreamt I was on a long train journey, where I accidentally dropped my methadone bottle down the side where it smashed; then I was up in the woods with exotic birds hopping towards me; then I woke up and supped cup-a-soup in front of the telly, wondering how I was ever going to engage with the day.

I made such a hash of trying to explain why I wanted to write my memoir didn't I? All I was trying to say was the idea came to me when I was feeling really negative; but I still wanted to go for it. Making lemons into lemonade type of thing.

I need to keep my story as short and sweet as I possibly can. Apart from Anna Grace's, the only drug memoir I know is Kate Holden's In My Skin. The tale of a middle class girl, very similar to me, who gets drawn into the seedy world of heroin, eventually takes to prostitution to fund her habit. Rather than feeling exploited, she talks about prostitution as a process of self-realization. I never went that route; I begged money off strangers. Heroin was a lot cheaper in London than Sydney so you could fund a habit of over a gram a day on £30 or £40. That's $48 to $64 a day in American money.

I've decided to continue with the NA. They talk about the same issues that bugged me: resentment at life not being set up to cater for the needs of the opiate addict. Which makes me want to throw in the towel all together. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking heroin, but I'm fed up of going against the flow. Something's making me want to stop. I cannot put my finger one what it is, but whatever it is, it niggles and niggles away and now I want out.

If I did get any money from my memoirs, I want to use it to clean myself up and leave the country. Burma, the most fascinating foreign land on earth for their mysterious beautifully scripted language, fried hornet cuisine and opium farming tradition is of course completely out of the window. Burma is the world's foremost supplier of high grade 97% purity white heroin. So I can't go there. Fortunately I've had a fascination for all things Japanese for about as long as I can remember, so I would go there instead. Japan is really expensive travel-wise, so I'd need an international bestseller to afford a trip there.

The other country I can see myself visiting is Morocco, where I've been before. It's like an African India. Very exotic. Very cheap. Yes they do happen to be one of the world's foremost producers of hashish, but I loathe cannabis more than any other psychotropic substance, so that's no temptation. I'd use Morocco as my personal alternative to rehab. Instead of talk talk talking about drugs I'm no longer taking, I'd take the opposite tack and let my wounds heal by leaving alone. I do think excessive counselling can be a psychological equivalent of scab-picking. Not good for you. There's research that shows that disaster victims who go in for talk therapies are more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and to suffer worse than people who are allowed to heal in quiet. "Least said, soonest mended." This is why I want to write my story BEFORE I leave the drugs behind. And to me, methadone is every bit as much a drug as heroin. It might be legal, but it's more addictive and less effectual. And I just want away from it. If they're going to insist on giving that to addicts they should at least give injectable amps. But you need a private doctor to get those. So a private doctor is what I intend to get. I'd need to write a book to pay for one.

My head has gone resonant yet again. That means I'm hearing words in the air. Not voices as such, but psychic emanations. This gives me a fear of going mad abroad. I need to make my own money so I can get away from mental health services. No travel insurance I know of covers mental health. If I had to pay doctors' bills myself I just wouldn't see any doctors. So that's nice and straightforward.

Hey this naturalist on the telly has picked up a tubby little vole. It's rambling about on his hand. Fully wild, yet strangely tame. Tamer than a roborovski hamster, that's for sure. Now some naughty baby short-eared owls are gobbling dead voles. They're on the island of Skomer in Wales.

Well I'd better go; it's nearly half past nine already...

TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

THE RIVERBANK CLOCK
"What can Hammy and Roderick possibly be doing?" asks Johnny Morris, the narrator. As Hammy patently obviously sits there washing his ears (again...!)



HAMMY THE FLYING POSTMAN
A terrible thing has happened; the post-boat has sunk. And now Hammy is trying to get the letters back... in the diving bell.
Then Hammy goes flying. And looks really entertaining doing it...

Weird Dreams*

MY BODY CRAVES SLEEP DESPERATELY, yet in bed I spent half the night seemingly in a semi-twilight state. That was last night. The night before was full of recurrent nightmares about losing things, being cornered, falsely accused (a constant nightmare theme of mine) and accosted by foes.

I probably slept so badly last night because I was afraid of going back to the same nightmare that haunted two great blocks of sleep all night between Monday and Tuesday. I don't know.

I had loads of things buzzing in my head that I could have posted. But as soon as the computer's on the old blank page is glaring at me ~ white with rage!

I'm no stranger to writer's block. It's a very real thing. But nowadays I feel all aglow, because I have a story peopled by vivid characters I'm burning to tell. It doesn't pain me to plot it, scrawl notes about it. I can't stop. My previous block was how to get round a ridiculous and major plot flaw that invalidated maybe 40,000 words of my first draft. I puzzled and puzzled about how to retell my tale and at last it came to me on Sunday. And now, though I'm still depressed, I'm at least happy to have something constructive to do... Know what I mean? And I must dash now. Computer's about to terminate me!

Dalí self portrait (title unknown); Ryman's own copier paper the type I use except not glary high white; Dalí Nude, in Contemplation Before the Five Regular Bodies
Metamorphized into Corpuscles, in Which Suddenly Appears the
Leda of Leonardo Chromosomatized by the Visage of Gala, 1954

The New Literary Agents: If Danielle Steel gets published why can't I? (Big question. Have you read any of her works? I once tried, as I knew she'd sold over 400,000,000 books and wanted to know her secret. Three pages later I gave up. I still cannot fathom it....

* is there any other type~??!?

My Halloween Nightmare

EVERY SINGLE DAY last week I had to get up extra-early for some reason or other. Which means feeling sleep-deprived for hours. Then not being able to sleep. Sleeping deeply. Then getting woken up too early and feeling sleep-deprived again. You know the pattern.

So come the weekend and no need to get up, of course I slept in, dreaming for hours. And because I ever so intelligently watched a Halloween horror film on Friday night my night was full of ghouls and demonic terrors.

What makes this a hundred times worse is that somehow, when I was younger, I learned not only to speak in my sleep but to yell and scream. Which means one single nightmare can wake the entire house. Yes, lovely business. I'm only posting this because I've nothing else to say. O yeah: and it's raining...