Borderline Personality Phone Call

I GOT a phone call from a psychotic nutter friend of mine (with 3 concurrent diagnoses) ~ at first she pretended to be from the kebab shop. I knew it was someone mucking around but couldn't work out who, so I hung up.

She was quite a good friend of Mr Man ~ Mr Mephedrone, who chucked himself in front of the tube train and died early this new year. I told her that even though i didn't know him very well, I think about him every single day. (Which is true.) She said yeah, and she has nightmares of his mangled body every single night.

This woman has the very worst personal history I have ever heard. Abuse, neglect, horror. Psychosis in adulthood. A lifetime of major depressions. Plus a personality disorder to boot. I don't know how she survived. I just don't get it.

Anyway when I told her I hope to get counselling at this psychiatric centre ~ where it's not time-limited to periods of 12 sessions, I mean what can you achieve in 12 sessions?? I only STARTED making any sort of progress last time on two years plus a 6-month extension. This stuff has to be longterm. And I think about Woody Allen and think, does counselling or therapy help anyone at all? Or is it just a tail-chasing exercise..? Or a psychological version of staring at one's own eyes in the mirror and saying "you're so beautiful". I have grave doubts about counselling's effectiveness and what it's used for. And I used to get peeved immensely when my old psychodynamic therapist used to ask me how I felt about her ~ ie of "transference". Something weird happened in our relationship and I confronted this distant (yet close) and clinical (yet warm) woman and got totally under her skin. I know I did. She said one week I turned up, after the 4-week August recess and was crying in the foetal position, yet I can't remember any of it. She kept saying "I think you need more help than I can give you" ~ meaning a psychiatrist. But I had deep distrust of those note-takers who, I believed, would only hold up what I'd told them against me.

Anyway I told her my new nutnut doctor said to me he would have a word with the guy in charge of the Deep Psychiatric Counselling Centre about me becoming a patient there. And she told me "that's where you go when you've got a borderline personality disorder. And I shivered, because that label has risen its ugly head yet again. She also told me she thought I had clinical depression. Of course she isn't a trained mental health professional, but this woman has spent enough years of her life in psychiatric institutions to know a profile when she sees one.

In a way I don't care WHAT name anything I have or am might be. In the past I have tried to avoid any sense of labelling and pretended to be fine when I wasn't fine at all. But this approach never worked, never got me anywhere.

Many nutters wear their diagnosis round their neck like a gold medal ~ and THAT I find disconcerting. So I don't know what to do.

I have another nuttydoctor's appointment in a month's time... so THEN... we might see...!

It's the most wondrous springtime weather and I'm off to get a Mauritian Vanilla cheesecake from the Morrisons best range (£4 if I remember right) ~ I've been craving it all weekend...

The cherries have yet to blossom... I can't wait till they do. They are the Japanese symbol for the passing nature of life and death... our old dog died, fading slowly away under a profusion of pink blossoms. I never wanted her to go. She was grey like a seal and used to open her boze and say "HELLO!" in the squealiest posh accent. You could poke her sides of her mouth and she would "BO" this way on demand...

HAVE A NICE DAY EVERYONE :-)


borderline personality disorder

Paulie the Parrot

PAULIE

I SAW THIS 1998 film (that I would have assumed was by Disney but actually it was Dreamworks) on BBC1 this morning. So entertaining:

A trotterdonkey green parrot flies all the way to Los Angeles looking for his long lost owner, finds self in a parrot donkey derby along the way, then finally comes home (coooooo!!)

Apparently Paulie is a "blue crowned conure" by the way, technically not a parrot, if you look at the lorikeet-like bill...

Paulie Trailer:



Taco Stall Musical Performance



PS: The proper name for a Parrot is POLLY. "Paulie" is pronounced with a long O ~ quite a different sound. How on earth Dreamworks managed to mix this up is beyond me... It caused me a LOT of difficulty Googling, that's all I say...



And talking of entertainers, here's a hyacinth macaw talking... look at that fearsome beak! They can apparently crack coconuts unassisted!

State Visit

MY MUMZY came round this afternoon. By the time she arrived my place looked like a bomb had gone off in an Oxfam shop ~ scattering piles of ragged clothes/etc to the corners. I also put oven cleaner on the enamel hob. And then panicked. And quickly got rid of it, using carrier bags on hands because I'd no rubber gloves and the instructions make it sound like a more noxious version of nitric acid crossed with rycin. I still wasn't sure I'd got it all off after three goes and lots of water. Half expected to find a dirty great smoking hole when I got back ~ with a baby gremlin's eyes peering out from the rust... Anyway it was nice and clean when they got there. Except the floor looked like someone had thrown an illegal rave in a barn. Mopped-up mud everywhere (from where~??!?) And so on...

Do you like the Queen's picture. Look at those emeralds! Not just round her neck, but on her head..!

Did you know HM the Queen is supposed to have a jewellery safe 14 feet high in her Buckingham Palace bedroom, full of countless pieces belonging to Queen Mary, the Queen Mother... and so on and so on down the line... only a tiny fraction of which she ever wears (what a waste on the ones that never see daylight ~ that's what I say!) When Diana married Charles, her jewellery was only given to her on loan, on the basis that when she became Queen, she'd be custodian of said pieces anyhow... I do like a good bit of jewellery, me ("jewelry" if you're in the United States of America). Never wear it. Jewellery on men, when it's not sharks' teeth or rave beads etc looks distinctly dodgy at the best of times. But it's lovely to look at. I was into doing jewellery design at one time. There's more to it than meets the eye ~ everything must be carefully sized and measured for one thing... It was fascinating. Jade Jagger does it for a living. Not, I am sure, that having an international rock star for a father gave her a bunk up that particular career ladder... I'm sure not!

Anyway, back to today, we had a charming Greek dinner and she bought me some chocolate and museli and I'm going to post up Pingu at the Dentist if I can find it ~ hope y'all had a cheery weekend. My novel's coming on swimmingly... Goodnight all!

"Diana, Princess of Wales" (as she was "supposed" to be titled...) lovely sapphires...

"BANNED PINGU"... Can't find Pingu at the dentist; but "at the hospital" (see under Penguins, yesterday) is similar... whyever this was banned I'm not quite sure... and why the Scandinavian subtitles I've no idea (we never get subtitles in English, do we and they're gabbling BabyFinnish...) this one's trotterdonkey enough...

... o I get it. The jokes here are in the Swedish/Danish... e.g. "get me your strongest whisky" etc. I can just about make some of it out...

... o no they're not.

o how rude! One of them's peeing on the floor now!!...!!!

A Perfect Day...

This BBC short, played between programmes was never intended to be a commercial pop video, but was released (so they say) purely to answer public demand...



MADONNA ~ VERAS
Spanish version of You'll See, which is a really good tune with a really good vocal:
The English lyrics sum up my attitude to relationships:

You think that I can't live without your love ~
You'll see
You think I can't go on another day
You think I am nothing
Without you by my side...
You'll see ~ somehow, someday...



TRAINSPOTTING
I haven't the patience to read a book in Scottish and the film annoys me because it doesn't tell the "truth" about heroin... it leaves so much out!



OVERDOSE
I had a heroin death-wish for such a long time. Eventually I had to confront the reality that I HAVE to live. Don't even know why most of the time. Just have to ....

One Hour Extra Free

THE CLOCKS WENT BACK LAST NIGHT, giving me one hour extra free in bed. An hour, to be honest I could have done without on a dank and stagnant Sunday but there we go. So I stayed up extra late making out intricate Japanese motifs on notepaper to the sounds of NDR North German radio and the all-night interactive casino (how on earth did that ever get allowed?!) on Channel 5. I finally went to bed at 7:30am in the new time and rose at 3pm.

DOES NO-ONE like my axolotls? I'm scrapping Fridays on Saturdays, blobberous, furry, fishy or otherwise if that's how little they're liked: I had just one comment last time I checked!

IT WASN'T RAINING last time I checked ~ but any excuse to bring up my favourite Japanese character. "Ame" ~ it means rain. How poetic!

And now I have to vanish into the wintry night. Cheery-bye all!

Free Drinks Galore!

THE MORNING AFTER lots of other people's night before I went out a-wondering at 6am and what should I find but two full bottles of vodka-lemonade mix plus a pint glass sitting on a bollard. No urine or fag-ash to be detected; the contents proved to be vodka-ated sweet cyder. Yum-yums!

I was half-cut all through Friends and Hollyoaks on Sunday morning.

That's the problem, dwelling far out in the twee suburbs. it's not like Desperate Housewives land (London doesn't really have Wisteria Drive-style suburbs; we do have a lottery winners' equivalent or multimillionaires' row ~ far from the stately squares of Mayfair ~ Belgravia ~ Kensington & Chelsea or the Avenues of Holland Park (Holland Park: double-fronted detached houses, outsized bay windows, high ceilings. Ultra-leafy gardens... is where I'd situate my London residence if I won a multi-rollover on the Euromillions lottery...)... far from these places and round the corner from the media-centric Champagne Socialist heartland of Hampstead ~ famous for its heath, the biggest patch of uncultivated land anywhere near London "proper"... London's tasteless multimillionaires' row, Bishops Avenue is packed with the kind of Hollywood Wives style homes that look like if you stood outside and sneezed the front wall would blow in...

That's Bishops Avenue for you... Anyway: how did I get on this subject? Oh yeah you hardly ever make decent finds by way of food ~ alcohol ~ drugs on the streets where I am now ...

Where I used to live it was kebab-city. I'm very partial to a decently chargrilled shish. On Saturday nights the local rubbish bins used to be brimming with them. Newly discarded. Barely touched. And vomit-free too for the most part. Noshing down these, you could eat like a king! (Well, a homeless drug-addict King ...)

I cut my hair again, while I was still half-cut. It was looking like an unpleasant cloud of horribleness thundering round my head. Two thirds of it has come off. There it lays next to the television set, glistening in its slick chestnutness, shimmering with streaks of gold. You might think some expensive shampoos and hair products achieved this. But no! It was value frequent-wash with-conditioner (or more to the point Nature) that achieved it. Shampoo adverts are a load of Bullenscheiße, as the Germans would put it.

Glancing in the mirror this morning I was confronted by the image of an escaped mental patient staring back. But I'm keeping it this way, at least till tomorrow afternoon. Because I need to go to the council and make a good excuse why some benefits forms weren't returned a month-and-a-half ago... Wish me luck!

Cheers everyone! (Ching-ching!!) I hope yous all had a cheery weekend too!!

BIG BROTHER Classic Tasks ~ Electric Shocks!
THIS clip is hilarious.
1} The shockers you see going off here are apparently used in high-tech S&M games...
2} You'd think Rex (in gold) would have troubled to wear underwear on national television...
3} I've heard feminists telling me loads of times that women have higher pain thresholds than men. So how come two women ~ and one a lesbian at that ~ gave up totally!! "I'm not having that on my arse for two hours," said Lisa.
Noreen, the pretty one, was up for eviction this weekend but stayed in ~ huraah! Lots of people don't like her because she had two men and a lesbian after her at different times over the seven weeks and handled it badly. But I like Noreen. I don't think she has done anything else except be herself...



DUR!: AND I was wondering what made me feel sick on Saturday morning... of course... it was CELINE DION~!!

Piri Piri Explosion!

I NEVER GOT A CHANCE TO DUMPLINGIZE the last stew because I ate the entire lot while it was mulling overnight (y'know to let spices settle in). Anyway I've done a repeat performance today only without baby potatoes, which you don't need, carbs-wise when you're intending to saturate the pan with humungous puffing dumplings. They're so nice you end up eating more and more dumplings and barely bothering with the stew (well I do).

Anyway here's my recipe as performed this morning:

Serves one because I gobbled up so much of the ingredients last time. And speaking of ingredients they are:

About 1/3 lb cubed beef. I always cut the butcher's cubes into thirds when I get home. It makes the chunkiness go further.
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large spring onions, chopped right up till the leaves start getting too manky for human consumption. Dice through the onionier white sections
About 5 large field mushrooms, alternately quartered and sliced
Small selection of frozen carrots, broccoli, cauliflour selection
Cooking oil
Spices: curry powders, jerk seasoning, cajun seasoning, paprika. If you don't have such an exotic mix you can use just paprika and chili. Go easy on the chili though

Oil saucepan, put on med-hi heat, add beef cubes and fry till "sealed in" (ie grey all over), then add onion, fry a further 2 mins now reduce heat a bit, add mushrooms, fry a further 2 mins. Get all your piri piri spices and add in the following proportion: one spoon mixed total of curry/jerk/cajun spices to one spoon paprika. If using just paprika and chili then make the balance at least 90-10 with 90 on paprika's side.
Now chuck in chopped spring onion, fry up a bit.
I had to transfer to a larger pan a third way through the following and had to add more oil.
Once you've got these ingredients sizzling merrily add about a coffee mug full of freshly boiled water then add the frozen veg and put a lid on the pan. I always verge towards too much water as too little will get horrible burnt bits at the bottom. You can always boil off any excess simply by returning heat to max and removing lid for a few mins.
Cook for at least an hour and a half on as low a heat as you can muster.
In last half hour add frozen peas if desired.
Make up dumpling mix (self-raising flour, Atora vegetable suet and water with a tad salt and pepper). Check there's at least an inch of water depth. Chuck in 10 or so pingpong ball sized dumplings. (They swell massively).
My top tip: every time I do this I fret that I've delivered a spices overdose. And I never have yet. Although massively too much paprika is too much and frankly unnecessary.

Now I have to rush and get back to much bubbling piri piris.
Piri piri means some sort of African chili. I use the expression rather loosely, as you might have guessed.

I got the obsession from a certain Domino's Pizza advert:



OT Quartet: Hold That Sucker Down
This was once voted the bestest dance track of all time: