It Only Hurts When I Cough

MY THROAT has been colonized by alien spawn I have been sleeping half the time. Why my throat should affect the man in the moon I've no idea but it does. I'm really tired.

The bug killers came by today. We still have cockroaches in our house. The extermination man came at about 10:45 when I had just woken up. He puts this gel down that kills nearly all of them.

I don't feel as depressed as I did before. I've seen some light.

Tonight I have a stop smoking appointment at 5, so I should come out of it with a free prescription for nicotine gum. You have to choose what kind of NRT you would like and I decided the gums would be best: you use it only when you feel you need it; and chewing gives you something to do which might substitute for the action of smoking.

I'm kind of dreading giving up but I don't want to be an old smoker. I'm scared of hospitals more because of the thought of being forced to give up than anything else. I need a new life and I don't envisage cigarettes in that life.

I have to go now and buy a cream tart from Morrissons.

Sick

MY COMPUTER AND I are both sick. The computer has some cable disconnection and says no disk drive is found. Even though it's right where it's always been. I have caught a common cold and I feel mentally ill. I spent literally all day asleep. When I went outside I couldn't remember why I was there. So I bought some fags and went back home.

That awful X Factor TV programme is back on. It's got worse and worse. Horrible new judges with "attitude". And lots of "exciting" quick cuts back and forth on the "VT". The British X Factor is just second place to the proper American one now, with Simon Cowell over there to do that and not ours because ours isn't important enough. Cheryl Cole's over there too. Does anyone in America know who Cheryl Cole is? She's a really good judge, and I don't think Tulisa from N Dubz or Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child could ever take her place.

Dubz always meant "crack cocaine" in my neighbourhood. It's short for W, meaning "white", as opposed to B which is "brown" (heroin). The Dubz in N Dubz actually refers to NW1, the Camden Town postcode where the band is from. I think they did best in Dubplate Drama, this late night "urban" soap. They made better actors than musicians.

O it's boiling hot. O yeah I've got my coat on. I'm going to bed early tonight. I hope my computer will work in the morning. Otherwise I have to write this book on paper. Actually I was going to write the first draft on paper to focus my mind. I don't even own a printer and I need some way of shifting my words round, keeping what I'd previously put for comparison. I often find if you remember a sentence the way you'd written it before, the words remembered are better than the version you kept officially. Just as with lines of misquoted poetry: they're actually better than the poets' versions.

There's not much else to say. Mrs Li is still teaching me to tell the time in Chinese. The CD got stuck at 5 in the morning, blaring Mandarin sounds around the place like a psychedelic tangerine.

I've got to go; my cheerfulness is running out. I'm really exhausted.

Oriental Style Chicken Curry £1 etc

ICELAND "ORIENTAL STYLE CHICKEN CURRY" tonight. Boil int' bag (but of course). And only £1. Much nicer than yesterday's noodles, which were a bit "school dinners". Very pleasant indeed.

The me-shaped hole yesterday means not only that I felt I had a place on the shelves, but (and this really surprised me) I could find nobody else writing like me. Most extraordinary.

I deleted a big rant about the state of modern publishing, but I deleted so much of it, I deleted my main point too, ha-har!

Well the Goods Train of Entertainment trundles on, I can't go on about it. Writing's for writing. Not writing about..!

Well this is a nonpost. Tomorrow I'll tell you a true furry story about Pandable my old hammy, which is really entertaining.

The mysterious illness I have had for over a fortnight is still diarrhoeaing out, intermittently and unpredictably (as I'm sure you wanted to know). I'm so tired. I'm not in my sick bed but a sick armchair. I slept in the sick armchair, like a pensioner, all day. Ukh.



MUSICAL INTERLUDE

In the VIP. It's not called "clubbing" for nothing. A club really is a club. Like any other social group you have inner and outer circles. Nightlife is hierarchical and full of snobbery. Do you stand in the endless line, or swan right in? Do you pay? Get a comp? Or best of all, are you on the Guest List?

Then once you get in, are you just one of the common, vulgar herd, or in the "proper" room ~ the VIP room.

I avoided such clubs like the plague!

In the VIP:
WIDEBOYS & MAJESTIC (IN THE VIP REMIX) FEAT B-LIVE and BOY BETTER KNOW



The Streets: Fit (But You Know It)
He wrote an entire album about Ibiza party isle memories. Kicking off with this track ~

Me-Shaped Hole

I HAD a £1 Chinese chicken and noodles from Iceland. Boil int' bag. Hubble-bubbled away for 40 mins. Considering even a lunchtime combination box, a cheapie, is £3 minimum, for £1 this was amazing.

I checked out my nearest bookshop and found a glaring me-shaped hole where my books should be. Books plural, because I have a wealth of ideas.

Yes the project is moving at last! Like a creaky old goods train, it has shuddered to a start. The hoary old locomotive is belching diesel smoke and trundling wearily onwards ~ bringing cartloads of entertainment to the world!

Sorry I've not been visiting any of you very much at all. Nothing personal. But I must focus. I'm still not feeling too fantastic. My energy reserves are low and must be wisely invested. Talent ~ as I was banging on the other day ~ is not to be wasted!

Got to run. I hope you're all keeping well. Take care of yourselves. Just for a change, I'm trying to take care of me!

Who knows? One day this Me-Shaped Hole might be overflowing with amazing tales!

Sickness...

MY MUM IS ILL. I think it is serious. I can't go too far into it as she doesn't know I'm posting and it's not fair.
I am very unhappy. I don't want her to die.

STOP PRESS: IT IS CANCER (CONFIRMED) ~ RE-EMERGENCE FROM A FEW YEARS AGO.
I POSTED THAT TODAY (SAT). BUT THE POST ISN'T ABOUT THAT BECAUSE I WOULD RATHER THINK ABOUT GERMAN SOAP OPERA THAN CANCER %;-/...

Not Seeing My Mum

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

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





LAUGHING BABY:
I find this advert so entertaining!

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




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



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

Shortest Ever Hair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

PS Gledwood Volume 2 got 355 hits yesterday!

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

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

Better Already

HURRAH! As Bridget Jones would say. It's going away. No more razorblade coughs. No more ashcans. My snot is clear (as I'm sure you wanted to know). My ears are clear.

O man that was the sorest sore throat I've had in a long time. All my fault for smoking cigarettes I suppose. (One reason I never go to doctors about these things; I know what they'll say ~ Give up smoking ...

Hey did you know the British Government's Pandemic Flu Service are said to have given priority the nation's junkies in the ongoing Tamiflu-handout. Anyone can get the tabs just by phoning a helpline, claiming to have various flu symptoms ~ and of course symptoms of piggie flu are no different to any other type; they're not even more severe, in fact some doctors were saying swine flu tends if anything to be milder than the bog-standard type...

The operator gives a reference number and your registered "flu friend" who could be a work colleague, neighbour (or just you in disguise) trots or hobbles along to the local "flue centre" (these are already in operation) to receive a full course of Tamiflu tabs absolutely free.

Three cheers for Britain's "socialist National Health Service" ~ hurrah!!

Yes, as I was saying, anyone on methadone will be classed as a "vulnerable person" if the pandemic really does kick off, which is nice for me to know, but I'm sure the "scientific thinking" behind it (if any) is flawed. I read in the newspaper that junkies have supposedly weaker immune systems than the general population. But ask any heroin addict and they'll tell you that generally speaking you stop getting colds and flu for years at a time for as long as you use. (But when you do get them they hit harder.) I'm sure most addicts' immune systems are actually stronger ~ by a long shot ~ not weaker at all ...

Before I got sucked into the abyss of addiction I used regularly to get two or three colds or more, every year. I must have gone three years or more without catching any at all. And now I'm sure the average is less than one per year ... Which isn't necessarily good. I never used to complain about colds (not flu: I do mean common colds, as illustrated) because I always felt they cleaned the system out. There is, apparently, some truth to this, with the common cold virus causing a massive surge in interferon levels. Interferon battles and can conquer many viruses... indeed the only known cure for hepatitis C is interferon combination treatment, which reportedly makes you feel so ill you can barely get out of bed for half the week; but when it works it works completely, clearing the virus absolutely out from the body.

A small number of people are lucky enough to be able to fight off hepatitis C and even hep B without becoming "symptomatic" (ie sick)... and that makes them very lucky people indeed.

Anyway I have to go I'm still exhausted. Bye!

British Pandemic Flu Service Freefone Helpline: 0800 1 513 513

World Pandemic Flu-Watch

Stomach Cramps

I AM GOING TO BUY one of those inverted cone-shaped coctail glasses, marachino cherries and little umbrellas. I changed chemists and the new methadone tastes so good it has to be worth celebrating. Also at 100mg at 1mg/1ml I get to knock back loads and loads of it...

Apart from that I feel ILL. Maybe it was the conversation next to me as the pharmacist messed about not getting the methadone quick enough ~ about birthing pools etc. But I was convinced if it didn't come fast enough I would have to rush out in the street and be sick. Not from withdrawals (and if it were withdrawals methadone isn't the quickest fix anyhow; it takes well over an hour to have any real effect). But from ... I don't know ... some inner stomach cramp thing. Well it's not as if I could be pregnant too. By the way the new chemist does pregnancy tests in packs of FOUR. What kind of a .... ??

Well I'll hold my peace.

I woke up with this music swirling out of the radio.

... by the way I made a home-made bread roll last night (didn't have enough flour to make any more than one). Do you think that's what made me ill? I used value white self-raising, put it in for 20 mins at 200C. It came out a bit stodgy in the middle...



PS Methadone (here) is green not red.

PPS Have a look at my giant hornets (yesterday)...