Things About Me You Probably Guessed Already...

Merle and Janice have given me an award!
Thanks Merle in Melbourne Down Under and Janice in Southern California for the Honest Scrapper Award. I am to reveal a collection of facts about myself so here goes.

~ I have given up smoking crack. Or injecting it. Or "speedballing" it. And have kept to this resolution for three weeks in a row now ~ wahey!

~ I only really got addicted to heroin aged 28!! I had been messing about with it "casually" for a few years before that. And I never took any illegal drugs till I was 19.

~ I made up for lost time by dropping acid within a few days of my first spliff. I didn't realize I was taking 4 at once and blew my head off.

~ 2 of my acquaintances have been murdered. Both with knives.

~ I once spent an entire night tripping stuck in the nasty nursery rhyme:
Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle;
Mix it up and make it nice:
POP! Goes the weasel!
And all the acid-spangled long night through that over-inflated weasel was just about to get it with the needle.

~ This might be the night I had a Strawberry Fields moment all of my own. The man at the 24-hour garage had decided to rearrange the biscuits displays, which were scattered wildly about the floor... so in my brainfrying state it was Custard Creams Forever..!

~ It is impossible to calculate how much heroin I've taken in my time, but in the last 8 years it's 1.2-1.5 kilos at the very least. (Yeah, and I feel so clever and proud...)

~ Roborovski hamsters (pictured) are the smallest, fastest and least amenable to taming of any hamsters. And I have three...

~ I can do typing 60wpm (actually it might be faster; I've not timed myself in years) and shorthand 70 wpm (not bed considering I learnt out of a book) ~ yeah, because I so want to be a secretary. (No journalist actually.)

~ My True Ambition is to be a pop-fictionalist writer of bestselling novels. I have an idea fermenting inside me that Jeffrey Archer would kill for.

~ I don't go in for best friends, or favourite this or that; but, as would-be novelist I do admire Jeffrey Archer. His plot-driven short stories are some of the best of our time. I know from his Prison Diaries that he has an empathy for my ilk of problems and found himself living some of the circumstances they can lead to...

~ I have never been inside and don't ever intend to go.

~ I once got so bored of television I lived without it for about 2 years!

~ I was born in the Chinese year of the "rat or any other cute 'n' furry rodent such as hamster", 1972, hence my obsession with all things beady-eyed, cheek-pouched and wheel-running like robbies and harvest mice among many others. Technically I am a "water hamster".

... and that's about all I could think of as I trawled round Morrisons for cooked chicken thighs and basmati rice...

I hereby pass on this award to: Noah from Oklahomah, USA who blogs frankly about life "using", Lucinda from New Jersey, who's given up opiates already aged 17, Melody Lee from New Mexico who's pulled herself a good deal onto the straight and narrow but will always be cool as strawberry icecream, Bimbimbie who blogs the parrots cackling and cawing wild in her garden in Queensland, Australia and Whitenoise, a real live Canadian commercial airline pilot!

Criteria of the award are to link to the blogger who gave it you, post a collection (ideally of 10) honest things about yourself and to pass on the award to as many folks as you please...

Furry Boiled Egg ...

POOR OLD BABY ITCHY has been "furry boiled egging" galore. Rambling through her ultra narrow magic wand tube. You blow through the front. She panicks inside and scoots out quick in reverse, thereby pushing up all her fur, in "boiled egg with eyes" fashion. Poor Baby Itchy.

My stew came out all the more wonderful for its lack of nonEuropean ingredients. Okra, I've really discovered, just denigrates into a seed-filled slop at the bottom. Nasty business. Why they sell it as "suitable for stews and casseroles" in Sainsbury's I'll never know...

I did add (not in place of courgettes/zucchini but because it was languishing in my fridge and would only have gone off) a cucumber. It actually went very well in the soup. Like the onions, it just turns into background "thickener" and only little bits of peel were left over. It was still rather pleasant though.

I followed Ruth's advice and preboiled my potatoes first (they're always sliced small so the size wasn't stopping them from cooking).... Also I had no option but to do dumplings made iwth marge and not Atora. But they still came out pretty good.

And here's my message to my Japanese fans:

良い一日をすべての日本のファンのブログにします。なぜこんなに多くの人が東京から他の地域とここで私を介してきたさまよえるまるで見当がつかないが、楽しんで読んでくれるといいけど私のハムスターやヘロイン"印" ！

Now Debs has tagged me for "7 bizarre things of myself". I'm sure this is a turnaround of the 5- and 6 weird things tags that have been doing the rounds all this year. As I myself did the five weird things about six months ago!

Well anyway here we go:

1. I've been on heroin for 7 years now.

2. The 1st drug I ever took was caffeine in a cup of tea. Cannabis aside: I am living proof that supping tea (especially with sugar!) can and does lead to heroin addiction so all you tea-drinkers BE WARNED!!

3. Part of the long, long process of my addiction involved finding a mysteriously lost or flung out stash of 10g of heroin on the street! (That was about 7 and a half years ago.)

4. When I was 8 years old I once sneaked downstairs in the dead of night in rising panick as an evil burglar vehemently chiselled away at our front door!

It wasn't a burglar at all. Just my bored first hamster (imaginatively named "Hammy") vigorously gnawing at the bars because he was bored out of his head and we didn't realize hamsters need exercise wheels to stop them going stir-crazy!

5. I think the pop singer with the best voice is Barbra Streisand. But some of the material she's chosen to sing is execrable!

6. I have longed to speak (and read and write) Japanese since I was 16 or younger. And yet nearly 20 years later I have still not learned the language that far beyond "konichi-wa"! (My stately Japanese messages have to come courtesy of Google Translate, I'm afraid.)

7. I have never really wanted to be anything in this life but a writer. Hence those painful memoirs!

And I had a horrible nightmare last night about being trapped on a haunted damp-&-derelict runaway train full of baggage thieves. Nasty business!

And I tag:

Merle
Evil Spock
Jim D
Ivy
Bimbimbie
Molson
Vi Vi Voom
Nicole
Puss-in-Boots
Jeanette
Welshcakes Limoncello
Liz
Audrey
Akelamalu
M-filer
Wat
Marty ...
(ooer ~ this is turning into such a comprehensive list I'm starting to quiver and quake lest I leave someone out. I'm expert at doing things like that. So basically I tag everyone ~ har har har!!

Video of the Day:
Ebony Funky Dancer

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Wonderful pike etc photos from bottom of a French lake...
http://waterproof68.blogspot.com

Amazing Canadian Sketches
http://sixforfive.blogspot.com

Eight Random Things About Me ++

JUNKY - FINALLY I ANSWERED YOUR TAGG!!

This took me ages to think up... until I walked about holding pen and paper for an hour or so earlier... (blank computer screen engenders psychic blankness in one like me. As my blog so duly testifies...)

1. I have written two books. Both are novels. One is 200,000 words and crap and about 20 MS pages are missing (thanks to an unnamed person who is not me); the other is totally handwritten, untyped and about addiction. I decided not to go ahead with editing it as will write my own memoirs instead

2. I "speak" four languages (arguably) (including English). These are French, German, Welsh and English. The Welsh is only conversational and because I did my secondary education in Welsh Wales where language classes were compulsory!

3. I used to have pet prawns in a fishtank along with fishes, a giant snail and a frog.

4. I once travelled from Carmarthen in West Wales to Marrakech in Southern Morocco and back entirely by train and boat

5. I can touch type a good 60 wpm ++(why? Because I once wanted to be a journalist and knew that whatever career path I followed, computers were the way of the future.. so why not learn to keyboard "properly"??

6. In my life I have been Christian, Hindu (Siddha Yoga), Buddhist, Pagan and back to Christian. Never have I been agnostic, apart from the early days of my heroin love affair

7. Aparently I have the same voice as Usher. (Isn't Usher a rapper? Wow. Big deal then.)

8. I am going to permanently stop using drugs ...

...AND I TAG...

Akelamalu
Audrey
Bimbimbie
Chipper
Jungle Jane
Kahshe Cottager
Merle
Peed off Patricia (Morning Martini)
Puss-in-Boots
Sadgirl
Wayward (Crystal Clean) Son...
and
Welshcakes Limoncello

Rules are: you write out eight random facts about yourself and tag eight others...

I tagged nine* because I wanted to torture Chipper* as well...

*OK I got carried away. And did more than nine...

O! And Roborovski news: I caught Itchy attemptedly raping Spherical again last night... thankfully he is getting very tame (unlike the other two) which is good as he's going to have to live in solitary if too many babies appear. Poor swine. I wonder if he would get on with Chinese? Probably not and I don't want to risk blood and hamster guts on the wood shavings ...

I'm not sure Spherical and Bashful (who is rapidly becoming spherical) are pregnant yet. But they surely will be once Itchy's balls drop (which they haven't yet.) But I know for a fact he is a boy because he has a pink dot and a pink patch. Girls never have any proof positive for being female... just two tiny holes you can bearly see...

So let's "see" what happens ...

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Hey my Google word verification (bc I used to post too much) is "pigorsy"... what a word... Maybe I will pass that name to one of my baby robbies if and when they arrive ...

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TUNE OF THE DAY: Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman - Somethin' Stupid

entertainment clip: Finding Amy Winehouse... short film by Leeds Uni students ... I've not seen this through myself I have to admit so I'm unsure whether they do find her ..!

Pregnant?

NOW I AM CONFUSED... is the hamster preggers or not? "She" is definitely bigger and rounder than the other two. If she gets on the wheel when another one's on it, the other one is forced to loop the loop by her very weightiness... Because these animals are so very wild and flighty (it is an achievement just to get them to walk on you, let alone stand still - and even then they're only looking for a chance to jump off) it's been almost impossible to sex them and very hard to establish whether Spherical really is with children or just bigger ... or (this only struck me today) from another litter and thus older. I have no idea and only time will tell. If she really is pregnant surely she will get bigger and bigger as days pass? Then again I once caught a pregnant mouse... had no idea that she was till she actually gave birth. (This was when our house was utterly overrun with mice. I thought if I keep the babies and somehow tame them I can have free pets. (The mice they sell in pet shops, and for that matter the ones they use in labs are only domesticated wild house mice.) But it didn't work that way: all the babies (the size and colour of baked beans) died within about five hours.)

I tried to answer a tag earlier (8 random things about me) but had to stop after two. Firstly I was hungry, but to be honest I couldn't think of any random things. Surely I have posted all? I suppose I could cheat and use my wild mouse breeding thing as point three....

By the way: am I a philistine or has Mariah Carey NOT got an amazing voice? I was quite shocked to hear she had won some MTV poll as "greatest voice of all time" - please no! That horrible breathy fluttery sound... applied to "trendy" R&B "roots" that she doesn't have... plus high notes with all the magical timbre of a dog whistle. Please! No no no!!

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Vids of the day were
1. Bryan Adams - Heaven
2. African Dwarf Aquarium-dwelling Frog

Sundry Passing-on

OKAY I'VE RANDOMLY TAGGED the questionnaire to the eight people listed below ...

They are:
kruimels
k996-103
thoughts-tears-cheers-morecheers
feelaphoto
squawkster
musadecaminhoneiro
omalleyfamily
stagiairetoulouse

If you are on that list congratulations! You know what to do ...

Tagged! 101

Hey! I got tagged by Debs. It is an A-Z questionnaire, so here goes.

A- Available or Single? – Unavailable to most people.

B- Best Friends? – I'm a great believer in friendship but DISbelieve in "best friends" for that very reason ...

C- Cake or Pie? – Pie bc I prefer savouries to sweets (generally). But it has to be home-made and not some awful 80% air industrial supermarket's version. Strangely I have never seen "air pie" marketed. How odd.

D- Drink of Choice? – Alcohol for the effect. Otherwise milk as long as it's in chocolate shake (good for the teeth (the milk, that is; not the chocolate or sugar)). Red wine. Fizzy freezing cold white wine or perry for summer. Pina colada. Single malt. Dutch/German/Czech beer ("lager"). Alcopops eg Berries flavour Reef. Limeade made with lime juice. Pomegranate juice as of today; it's like melon juice but strong enough to dilute into cyder and still dominate the flavour....
... for completeness I ought to include the drink I imbibe the most: White Star cyder 7.5% ABV. Flavour: occasional hint of apple. Effect: liquid alcoholic brillo pad. ...
... O man ... HOW could I leave THIS out? There is NOTHING like a GOOD cup of PROPERLY-MADE tea. White. Strong (not stewed). And sweet. But not too sweet. English breakfast blend is best. Never ever scrimp on tea. It's not like expensive tea is "expensive" in the scheme of things. So get the best you can. Always. Especially if you live outside the UK or Ireland as I have grave reservations about the quality of foreign teas. Sometimes, in cafes, they even bring you a mug full of fairly hot water, the teabag BESIDE it ... as if that is going to brew properly. Boil water THOROUGHLY (you cannot OVERboil it, not for tea). Heat the pot or mug you are going to use by swilling with boiling water. If using teabag in the mug do not allow a spoon (especially a metal one) to stand in the mug. Infusion must be as hot as possible. Squeeze bag and stir after about 2 mins. Stand another 2 mins. Repeat bag squeezing/stirring. Tea not brewed for four mins minimum just ain't tea. I'm sorry. And don't drown it in too much milk.
That is how to make the perfect cuppa!!!

E- Essential Item? – Pen and Paper. Never let you down, unlike electronic would-be "replacements"--!!

F- Favourite Colour? – Blue. What else??!

G- Gummi Bears or Worms? – Can you eat these? I thought Gummi Bears was a cartoon on retarded morning TV, probably clashes with the Hoobs so I wouldn't watch it even if I WERE paying attention ... well it has to be worms then.

H- Hometown? – London

I- Indulgence? – Too much of it!

J- January or February? - February bc post-Xmas hangover has dissipated, it's more full-on winter (usually) & is closer to spring

K- Kids and Names? – Don't have none but I love the name Nabila /Nabeela for a girl. But I'm not an Arab or a Muslim.

L- Life is incomplete without? - Breathing. OK am I meant 2b more circumspect/etc? OK then: dreaming. There you go, bc sleep is the nearest thing to death and dreaming obviously distinguishes the "final two" most certifiably.

M- Marriage Date? – Late August 1982. Both parents REmarried OTHER PEOPLE the SAME bankholiday weekend in 1982 and torn between offers to live with both I went a little CRAZY.

N- Number of Siblings? – ONE blood brother ONE step brother

O- Oranges or Apples? - Oranges

P- Phobias/Fears? – Wasps, Spiders, Scorpions, Crabs, Lobsters, Octopods/pusses/pi/whatever they're meant 2b called, Centepedes, Millipedes/etc ... I could go on, but get the theme? I love bumblebees tho...

Q- Favourite Quote? - "And the lamb shall lie down with the lion and the little child shall lead them." Isaiah something (Bible).

R- Reasons to smile? - When things are funny!

S- Season? – Spring. How original! Yeah, I know.

T- Tag 3 People? Here is 4:--– Nicole, Ruth, Wayward "Crystal Clean" Son, & Chipper....c'mon get answering quicker than I did!

U- Unknown Fact About Me? – Is anything about me not known to SOMEone? I honestly doubt it. One thing I learnt long ago, not to let secrets have power over me. But to know when to keep one. (I hate people who can't keep secrets they are truly pathetic.)

V- Vegetable You Hate? – Parsnips; they are GROSS

W- Worst Habit? – My Drug Habit

X- X-rays You've Had? – Can't remember. Loads of dental ones for my forever-rotting teeth. Probably my shoulder when I got hit by a lorry but I don't remember it. Was told I had a broken something there. Idiot doctors let me go and yet I couldn't tell where I was for half the next week. Went to the doctors but couldn't tell her what I'd forgotten. Ie had REAL concussion not the theatrical type and the medical profession let me down as badly as they always have done when I've needed them. At least the driver was courteous enough to stop otherwise I'd have wandered off somewhere and would still be traumatized to this day as I STILL cannot remember getting hit.

Y- Your Favourite Foods? – Fish, (tinned) sardines in brine are pretty nice (a new discovery). Of course fresh ones in Spain =nicer. Cod in parsley sauce. Sild and skippers. Sprats and whitebait deepfried. (I lurve fish, one great reason to live by the coast.) Also they're the only animal I can observe swimming: silvery, torpedo-shaped and very much alive and STILL they make me hungry!!! I'm a thorough carnivore... pyskivore? piscivore..??/whatever.

Z- Zodiac? – Pisces/Water Rat (Chinese)/Ash(I think/ else willow (Celtic tree calendar))