Dr Ruth is Driving Me Mad

DR RUTH ON CASUALTY IS GOING CRACKERS. I saw her last night on BBC1. I watched the entire long long thing it was longer than comfortable. It drove me mad too.

I don't know what was eating me last night, I got really upset in an odd mentalist way (not the way I used to feel upset before). Which doesn't make me feel good. I feel whatever went wrong is still going wrong but medication is blocking some of it out. That if I wasn't on those meds I'd be totally crazy.

I'm not sure that's true but that's how I felt. I was really going into one. I had drunk 2 or 3 cups of tea and the caffeine seemed to disagree with me. I think I'm going to have to switch to decaffeinated. Tea is my way of avoiding alcohol, so it doesn't feel good to be avoiding it. Also I like tea more than cigarettes and THAT is saying something!

I didn't use heroin last night. I didn't even look for a needle. I don't need heroin.

What I felt last night was a desperation I do not like to feel. I wasn't "depressed" if I was anything I was going too fast and hyper. But my body was exhausted, so I slept eventually and slept for hours. Zopiclone (sleeper) and risperidone (antipsychotic) helped.

I woke up feeling calm and clear but this is the issue. I keep telling myself I'm OK then I realize I am not.

I don't know what I'm going to do.





*******

I am definitely going to AA; I want their Big Book.

*******

PS: £200 in free bets? I was talking about this yesterday. I think I was getting wires crossed. It was £10. I played a £200 game in Fantasy Money. Dur!

A Busy Day: Odds and Sods

THIS IS WHY YESTERDAY WAS LAZY. It's all happening today. Too much to do!

AKH I'VE GOT TO GO OUT IN A SEC. Got an appointment with a woman down a disused mine or somewhere. She's sorting out my paperwork re the council..? Something. If I'd been "all vague" like that a few years ago I'd have just not wanted you to know. Now I just do not know. Haven't a clue about any of it. Fed up of being an adult baby (not in the fetish sense though ~ you ever seen that one? I saw it on telly. Grown woman putting a man in nappies (diapers). Most hilarious.) Now what was I saying?

O yeah I've got to run out. Gotta go chemist. Gotta see this lady down a disused dripping mine shaft to sort out my paperwork. I can't remember where I actually see her. Somewhere I have a map, but it's gone... I can get their phone number. From somewhere.

By the way I must complain about the voices in the German version of ghost. Now either I was hallucinating floridly through the auditory "faculty" or these really were the voices coming from my telly. They all sound like TV presenters! With that Standard German Accent, which is like standard English from Britain or the USA. Whichever you think of, it's pretty characterless. I expected Whoopi Goldberg at least to sound like a True Berliner, but no! Sounds like she's just knocked off a shift reading the 6 o'clock news on ARD. Plus they didn't sound anything like the original actors. Whatever dubbed film you watch the actors always sound the same.

At least British dubbing has some character. Greatest dubbed drama of all time is the NHK-produced Monkey（aka Monkey Magic), a Japanese rendition of Chinese traditional Buddhist folk tales. It was on childrens' TV in the 1970s. It was on nighttime telly, where I was again glued to it, in the late 90s or early 2000s. My favourite characters where Trippy-something or other [Tripitaka] (young woman playing a little boy) and Pigsy who's more interested in eating magic dumplings than actually saving the day...(!)



PIGSY'S 10,000 LADIES 1/4 you can view the rest on my random blog here.




LYNN: i made a real hash of my answer to you last night. I meant to say:
~ sorry I don't know about GPs
~ supervised is not a good way of getting control over your dose
~ you shouldn't feel ill mornings
~ then again they want you not to do gear; you crave it; they're giving an inflexible dose, so what are you going to do except use on top...?

hey that's better!



AGE OF LOVE: AGE OF LOVE (SVEN VATH MIX)
this is beautiful, that tune that goes "come on dance with me, move your body..."
better mix than that long jam & spoon one, or the official video

Dr Ruth is cracking up

DR RUTH ON CASUALTY ON BBC TV IS CRACKING UP. I saw her last week [last night]. Casualty is Accident and Emergency (ER means Elizabeth Regina, the Queen over here when you're not watching American telly).

She looks like she's having a manic bipolar episode. Into this mingles a girl in an attick. The girl scrapes free onto the roof. Her parents think she can fly. Or she does. She ends up in hospital. Supposed to be schizophrenic. Treated by manic dr Ruth. This was a major headfucker to watch.

Dr Ruth was "hearing voices" but the voices were very vague. Not clear "hello hello hello darlin I've got some lovely peaches down me stall!" not like that ha ha!

Also she does what I do. Reads something, 2 words, zigzags down the page. Gotta get it quick. I got that one the second it happened. A letter. A blank page saying "HELP ME". What she's done is open a letter that says something else. Help and Me are where her eyes fall. So she thinks Schizogirl is asking for help.

Is a bit overhyped enough to think she's a brain surgeon, which she's not. She's an emergency dr. Calms schizogirl down. Tells schizogirl I hear your voices too. The voices are caused by an auditory nerve disturbance I will sort this out with XYand Z. Before we know it, schizogirl is asleep on ketamine (anaesthetic, ketamine is a HUMAN ANAESTHETIC NOT A TRANQUILLIZER FOR HORSES, it could whack a horse out cold if you needed to remove its hoof THAT is what ketamine is for THAT is why I never abused it too much. KETAMINE HAS A VALID MEDICAL USE if you abuse that so badly it doesn't work for you... it could be nasty. Nasty situation where ketamine, used to cut people out of cars etc doesnt work ~ you don't want that).

Meanwhile the Voided ECT mother, reason for parents' refusal of psychiatry, because ECT messed this lady, the mother so badly up. Casualty always involves a lot of interpersonal revelation (more than ER) so the failure of communication in their marriage came up. Sudenly Void Woman isn't a Void and is saying "I never told you because you never asked" and the intricacies of medicating somebody's personality are ins and outed.

Meanwhile Dr Ruth has Ketamine Girl on a slab with head holdy-together metal stuff around it ready for surgery. Senior Doc Doc knocks on door. Verbal fight through locked door. Very senior colleague is taken out of heart surgery to come upstairs and persuade Manic Girl to open the door. She is instantly jumped upon by non-nasty but insistent police which in that state would set you off like nothing else ultra ultra hyper fast confusion high.

What did my head in was watching this and seeing 2 nutters and neither is going fast enough to be vroom-vrooms in the head. Ultra fast whirling cyclone whirlwind centrifuge up into a dimension of pure energy that fast that high why am I so Special?

O I don't know I'm trying to put this in a nutshell. I don't usually watch Casualty i watch Holby City which is set in the same hospital but upstairs and easier to follow that one's on Tuesdays

This is dr Ruth apparently post-suicidal. Never in my life seen this: the only relevant clip of her I can find because she... she's a dr in A&E and I'm me and i don't let Casualty in my house it's boring

OK gotta go. Sleep diary 2130 hrs sleeping pill. Didn't sleep till past midnight 30 distraction ate a pie. Woke up several times in the night my head vo-vo-vo bobibbibingbonganging which I mention to make a point: yeah I can play with anything that happens to me, but this IS me. It's me asleep and awake. I need to remember this for later when I start questioning myself.

O yeah woke up it was dark sometime after 6am got up after half an hour i'm deliberately sleeping as long as i can otherwise i would have got up at 2 or 3. i'm most hyper in the morning, as a very general rule. stress makes me more hyped up into a swoosh swoosh yesterday i couldn't understand what they were saying in that car. Talking about me. Who? My name. Which person? Why me? Are we going to a rave? I said none of this i managed to behave but still said a few things considered rude which to be frank i don't even recall i remember just saying as little as i could unless we were conversing bat and ball really quickly i really liked it when Irish guy next to me said bi-bibb-bibbibop cant rememberwhat or why he was playing i thought yeah cool keeping the vibe alive. it's a real stress trying to behave. i AM responsible I keep my clothes on, i don't hurt anyone, i don't kill myself, i try and be considerate yeah its got this extreme. keys phone. not always money. those are together. she told me a way of keeping myself clean bc other person we know fell apart these methods work. i gotta wash my hair, i gotta wash using a footbowl hot water flannel legs in front of tv for hours easier than shower power hour y'know ok gotta go

11:40 I actually watched that clip. All touching and all that. But what the hell is he doing reading her diary? This is a blog, that is a diary, read someone's personal shit and you get what you deserve. Which is why mine was filled with deliberate lies by the end. I knew who was reading it. Give 'em what they need, the bastards!



10:25 me on tv: i love this this is obviously too QUIET but it's buzzzzzzzzzyy buzzy busy as a bee it's me yumm yumm yummee: have a watch and see:~
THE SOUND NOT THE OLD LADY YOU IDIOT!!

10:43 sorry i'm a bit shouty this morning. i'm seeing a nut dr wednesday. holding out till then. he's like my mind dealer. i have to tell frankness. can't do mindgames. can't do what does he think need want to see believe disbelieve i can only be me me me that's why mental illness isn't illness. not like the people limping you see at Social Security Doctor offices, people pretending to be crazy (looked like he was pretending to be stupid in my view) etc etc there is no need for exaggeration information i tried to tell him when i say a little i mean a little when i say very i mean very i say what i mean what you think i mean otherwise we're on different wavelengths here it's very confusing. i think he's a good doctor. some psychiatrists are shit. now they take me seriously, i can tell. for once in my life. once drugs are out of the way, once i gave clean screens drugs screens once all that heroin was passed i became myself again and i told them every time i try and live without it i fall apart and they think i'm being a neurotic junkie as i say i say what i mean falling apart is falling apart, not being a little bit upset for a couple of days this is what does my head in about doctors assuming i maximise when i can only cope by minimizing, whacking things AWAY, they're not important they don't matter they're not real if they were i would not could not cope thats too much to cope with i can only do one thing at a time i ask him what the thing is then i do it, then he can't say "butyou're not doing it" then i can work myself and change myself i'm not doing counselling i've tried it for years i am pissed off and fed up with that knee jerk idea i already keep a blog which is a photo collection of where i am where i was i am not picking picking picking at scabs, when you have a wound you leave it alone let it heal i'm not into reliving past nastiness that is unhealthy "least said soonest mended" became my motto. not let it all hang out. what hangs out here and now is my own thought pattern, not my life, not the life i don't want to live that's the bad stuff that's what i got taken away from, that's why i call this my Higher Power because it's more Powerful than Heroin and THAT my friends is Power

At the lesbian konditorei

I HAVE BEEN "improving" my command of German by viewing soap opera: Lindenstraße and Marienhof. They all seem to be full of lesbians and cake shops. Everything looks like it was shot in the same place. I also tried Verbotene Liebe ~ forbidden love ~ which airs at 6pm weeknights and is chock full of lesbians from start to finish ~ oo! those permissive Germans! ~ with little discernible plot. Exceedingly boring. Verbotene Liebe is said to have a cult following among gays and lesbians across the world. All I can say is they must have an astonishing boredom tolerance...

Apart from that I am depressed. Sleep afflicts me like a disease. I don't know what to do.

But my German's coming in in leaps and bounds. I know words for "protest at the pig farm" "libel" "barrister" (a legal advocate) and "please don't flush that cocaine, I'm not dealing, I promise you..!"

A random clip from Lindenstraße



Photos from Verbotene Liebe

Olga, Paul O'Grady's stoic Cairn Terrier

THIS clip is so hilarious I laughed out loud for the first time in ages... it's not the dog who's funny, it's Paul O'Grady reading out viewers' letters...
Paul O'Grady, used to do the best teatime show on TV... until Channel 4 inexplicably axed it... now we have to put up with ITV1's dreadful Alan Titmarch Show on ITV1, which Alan Titmarch seems to think is amazing.... The best thing about Paul O'Grady's show was his dogs, Buster the shitzu cross (too posh for me) and Olga the cairn terrier, who sat on the desk like weary balls of fur, oblivious to most goings-on... Here we see Olga sniffing a knitted poo as Mr O'Grady reads out letters from the viewers to the audience's uproarious giggles and guffaws...




MARIANNE FAITHFULL, interviewed in 1978 when she was still bang-on drugs of many descriptions, talks to a British TV interviewer about her wayward existence, "low boredom threshold and dilettanteism" and admits her life had been (to that point at least) a disaster:



MARIANNE FAITHFULL, ANITA PALLENBERG ON ROBERT FRASER
Famous art dealer to the "smart set"who lived in the fast lane and died when "only" 49..!
And doesn't former 1960s "actress-model" Anita Pallenberg (whose career highlight was a longrunning affair with Keith Richards) look rough!?!..

Sopranos Dairy-Mouse Tune ...

NOT A HUGE AMOUNT to say today... my actual post is trapped somewhere cyberlike half-done until tomorrow... I was writing about the future of the English language so you can either sigh with relief at being spared THAT one a day longer, or piss your pants in anticipation. Ooer!!

Here's a video from Marianne Faithfull ~ I really like this tune, it is from the "ovular" (non-un-a-politically-differently-incorrect (is that arcane enough? surely I'm PC now!!) contemporary way of saying "seminal"... it's from Faithfull's seminal 1979 LP BROKEN ENGLISH...

TAKE A WALK AROUND TIMES SQUARE...

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: TINES SQUARE
Set to videomontage...





I WAS SHOCKED, in a 4am rerun of Sopranos on Channel 4 (why did no-one tell me how good it was ~ I thought that show was daft comedy which is why I never bothered watching 1st time round, I mean what else can a man be, whose name is "Mr Soprano"..? Not a father, for one thing... I mean, surely, a male soprano is by rights a EUNUCH!!...

Anyway I was watching the episode where Tony Soprano's associate gets married and can only attend his own daughter's wedding on bail if he pays $400,000 for US Marshals to be at the reception with metal detectors and all...

... when I heard strains of one of my OWN SONGS being sung to the cutting of the wedding cake!
I don't think Andrew Lloyd Webber will be shaking in his boots, but this IS one of my most famous Hamster Songs ~

This is the song I used to sing Baby Itchy Roborovski when she was pinging up the clingfilm tube, popping out the other side looking "surprised" ~ as hamsters are so wont to do ...


Itchy's covred in fur
Itchy's covered in fur
She's a tubby dairy mouse ~
and she's covered in fur..!

How on earth did Hollywood TV producers get hold of my work?!?







IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG
rhyming slang: "it's all gone wrong"...
Pete Tong was a BBC Radio 1 DJ, famous for his Friday Night dance-music round-up...
I've seen the film ~ the story is too true ~ set on the "British" party isle of Ibiza, it tells what happens when it really does all go "Pete Tong"....



GREGORIAN: VOYAGE VOYAGE
Here is a Gregorian chants version of yesterday's top tune by Desireless...
... ever so French!!



A no-nonsense video-edit of the same:



DJ YAHEL: VOYAGE (TIESTO REMIX)
This is a bit chilled out for my taste... and it's another tune entirely... but it's quite nice





What a charming little ro-ro!


Stop Press: $1800 for a baby Norwich terrier?... What planet are these people on?...
The United States of America!

PS: No Norwich terriers to be found this side of the Pond, but Norfolks are about £400, which would be $600. Look at this tiny trotter! Is it because American breeders are trying it on..? Or are the tiny terriers cheaper here because they're indigenous to this island and thus more widely available..? What do you think..?




THE HUNGARIAN MUDI
A rare Central European herding dog...
Anyone ever seen one of these? They seem even rarer than the elusive Norwich terrier!

Here's a blue-eyed huskie named Thunder having a little bay on his 4th birthday... and even doing some tricks!

Sleeping... Eating...

THE WEATHER'S extremely chilly. Fallen leaves everywhere in a brown mush. A "nip" in the air, if I can say that without being racist about the Japanese (according to the Official Politically Correct Handbook, not ...)

All I want to do is eat and sleep. Eat stodge, that is and go to bed in the day. And sleep all night into the bargain. And then when I'm awake all I think about most of the time is doom and gloom. This is depression (again).

I saw a documentary on Japan last night. Japan and Japanese things barely ever come on British telly. Well, nowhere near as frequently as I'd like. Of course there are people from all over the world in London and the UK, but no great community of Japanese expats, so Japan and Japanese things are pretty exotic here.

But there was this British man, who motorcycled (and ferryboated) from Sydney Australia to Tokyo Japan. He was on telly last night. Id' seen some of it before, but this was was the last episode, the Japanese instalment. I sat glued to the screen and nearly fell over when a couple of street signs appeared and I could read them!

京都駅: 京 kyō means "capital city" ... this is the same character used in Tōkyō 東京 ("East Capital"). The second character 都 can be read to or miyako, meaning "the seat of Imperial palace" or "capital".) (Kyōto, by the way, was capital of Japan before Tōkyō took on the title in the modern era.) Railway station eki = a horse 馬 (lefthandside) coming to a halt on the right, 駅 where they say the R should be used as a mnemonic for Railwaystation ...


THIS IS IT: Charlie Boorman ~ Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means ...

A Big Day Out

INSTEAD OF DOING THE USUAL thing I inevitably find myself doing on Monday morning, I got up late and ventured to Central London in a hunt for German magazines.

I got off the tube at St Pancras International, where you get the Eurostar train to Paris and Brussels. St Pancras is surely the most beautiful station building in London if not Britain:



I found Der Spiegel and Stern on a newsstand outside. The hubbub of French voices drew me into the hi-tech inner hall where screens displaying 13:28 Paris Nord set off a frisson of excitement and longing inside me. It's been such a long time since I travelled anywhere at all except just down the road...



The last time I saw a newsstand with a half-decent selection was near Baker Street tube. Baker Street of course being famous for Sherlock Holmes... Madame Tussuad's museum is right by the tube station so the place is thronging with tourists (unlike in this snap!)...



Madame Tussauds is next to the Planetarium:



I picked up a weekly Take-a-Break -style magazine called Freizeit Revue. It is an old woman's magazine but I bought it for the endless crossword puzzles sandwiched next to advertisements for piles ointments and surgical support stockings ...

Then I meandered down to Regents' Park which is a Royal Park and so extremely well manicured.



The houses overlooking the vast greens are pretty impressive too ...



... then it was nearly rush hour so I had to fly home before the trains were too crammed to breathe.

And there we are! My first day out in London-London in over a year!

*******

Have a look at the arrogant French woman in the bottom clip ~ this is absolute classic telly!!

THE LATE, GREAT KEITH FLOYD was one of the most classic TV cooks of all time. There was a retrospective on his life and work on TV last night and these were the best clips shown:

Here from his best series Floyd On France, is his attempt at a mushroom omelette ~ with "angry dragon lady" "simmering" behind ...



And here's the most classic clip of all. This wasn't a set-up ~ the French-Basque lady was for real! "FLOYD CAN'T COOK!"

Tales of the Riverbank

THIS was my favourite children's TV prog. (I wonder why?) It only aired when I was already in my 20s but who cares..?

This episode is called Hammy the Flying Postman.

Don't you just love the hamster-submarine?

Paperweight Suicide

AS Y'ALL MAY HAVE NOTICED I've been posting picture-stories for the past few days. I was feeling too bitter and depressed for many words.

At the weekend I had hideous ghoulish nightmares that culminated in a bizarre situation where I was deliberately drowning myself in thousands of litres of clear-casting resin. If the suicide had been successful I would have been preserved for ever as a man-sized psychedelic paperweight.

(But Why~??!?)

But of course, just as the suffocating gloop overwhelmed my lungs I woke up gasping ~ drowning in my own perspiration.

I HAVE A NEW favourite TV programme ~ THE RAT PACK! ~ about pest control.

Star of the show is Charlie, the rat-catching jack russell:



Betty la fea

Here's some telehilarity. The original Columbian telenovela upon which Ugly Betty is based!

Big Brother Bea: Sound As a Pound

FIVE NEW HOUSEMATES came into the British Big Brother house last Friday.

British Big Brother is the last one going. Even here people are losing interest. Viewing figures are down a million on last year.

Since last Friday the rather stale house has been mightily pepped up.

First off blonde bitch Karly nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw the first new housemate was none other than her self-proclaimed multimillionaire Chinese "boyfriend" Kenny.

They were together for all of five minutes, for the public vote quickly had her booted out of the house.

Never have I seen a bigger Billy Liar come into that house. Sounding off about his own status, judging the "strength" of others. Yet when his ego hit a wall in the shape of fellow newcomer hippy housemate Bea it was he who came off worst.

But not after seemingly threatening that if their confrontation had happened outside he would have solved it by means of his "friends".

He claimed to have "sat across the table from the most dangerous man in the world". One thing I've learned about dangerous people: they keep quiet about that side of their lives.

I think Bea dealt with the situation admirably. After confessing how repellent she found the man, she accepted his apology (you can easily get kicked out for threatening behaviour in there) and then decided rather than ignoring him she should show him what he's missing and "hippify him up". Even offered to take him out afterwards...

Halfwit and Bea meanwhile seem to have found love with each other... coo

¡España Por Favor!

THIS MORNING I copied my Mother, who does the washing up listening to The Archers, a soap opera featuring a village divided by class: posh country people and the yokel turnips. Except I was HABLAR-ing away en español at the top of my voice as the dishes (eventually) got cleaner. Some of those stubborn stains were so hard to shift we'd got from hiring a car to calling the emergency plumber by the time they had gone!

The depression I was moaning on about last week finally went ~ as you may have noticed by my daily mentions of Spanish vacaciones (or whatever they're called), rainbow donkies etc. And along with it my ridiculously extended sleep pattern. I'm now back to sleeping 7 or 8 hours.

Last night ITV showed the 2nd of 2 parts of Paradise Lost the TV prog on the nightmare facing an estimated million Brits in Spain alone as the credit crunch plus flagging pound hits the costas.

You hear all about a place called "Benidorm" and I always wondered why I've never met a single person who's been there. The mystery came a little clearer last night with a couple who bought a bar called The Rusty Nail. Takings were so poor, on a bad day they might make 3 euros! Soon as the narator mentioned "Benidorm" I thought I bet they're Northern ~ and sure enough they were. For some reason that particular area, which is just south of Barcelona, attracts holiday makers from Birmingham up (or to put in American-friendly terms, Brits who speak "with an accent").



One particular couple ~ I wanted to scream it at the television set ~ you could see exactly why their bar attracted nobody. 1. as they admitted they hadn't a word of the local lingo and so were utterly unable to serve locals, even though locals came in 2. the very plainness of the place was unbelievable. TART IT UP! I wanted to yell. Even if that means festooning the bar with sombrero-sporting donkey souvenirs (which must always be on sale ~ merchandising is the key!!). Anything! However tacky. But not just bare walls, bare bar: bare bare bare!

And that was another thing: EVERY single Brit interviewed was laughing or even half-PROUD about barely speaking a word of Spanish, which is one of the EASIEST languages to learn. Far easier than French, which can take an age to learn how to read aloud (so many silent letters). Plus the "gender" of nouns ~ masculine or feminine ~ is almost always immediately apparent in Spanish; that's why you say los maños and las palmas. In French, whether a word is male or female is often purely a matter of memory-work. I don't know. I just don't understand how you can splosh out £350,000 or more on a house and yet resent paying £50 on a few books and CDs!

Apart from Barcelona, the bit I would naturally gravitate to would be the Costa del Sol. This is the most easterly mooring point for yachts and cruisers of the Mediterranean and so attracts super-rich as well as more ordinary citizens. Not surprisingly the credit crunch isn't biting quite as hard here. They featured an East European lady who employs nearly 130 staff selling high-end properties, some in the multi-millions of Euros. I carefully took down her name. I actually dream at night of wandering the corridors of palatial mansions. I love architecture. If I were rich I would collect homes (nothing as vulgar as cars). So the idea of being an estate agent or "realtor" (as they don't call them here or in Spain) still appeals. Though they do have a shockingly bad reputation.

So you see my Spanish dream is still alive. I'm sure that where you have a million Brits seemingly drowning ~ for want of an interpreter as much as anything else ~ there must be a living to be made SOMEWHERE... Plus, incidentally after British the most common nationality living in Spain is GERMAN ~ so you see where this sudden language-study is going...

... and I've barely even mentioned las Islas Canarias yet ...

WHILE we're on kitch music from my childhood...

RENEE AND RENATO: SAVE YOUR LOVE
A huge hit, Christmas 1982
Yeah yeah I know this is all "Italiano" but it's all white buildings and old ladies drest in black... PS one Brit I do know who is mistress of the Italian language is Welshcakes Limoncello ~ à la Sicily Scene blog ...
Renee's "Pavarotti light" style voice was a huge hit. In my opinion he's far better than Paul Potts:



JUST ONE CORNETTO ~ CLASSIC TV COMMERCIAL ~ SUNG BY RENATO
Cornetto was at the time the most premium quality ice-cream available from ordinary shops. The tune is "O Sole Mio".
This, featuring a Cornetto-snatching singer (voiced by "Renato") is one of the most classic British telly ads of the early 1980s:



Pictures~ top: Spanish beach-donkey; a typical sight at Benidorm, note the transfixed local little boy; Fuertaventura, Canary Isles (somewhere I'd really like to go) inside the Rusty Nail bar, Benidorm from se vende site; foam party, Club Amnesia, Ibiza (Balearic Isles); Marbella, Costa del Sol

In the Twee Suburbs

I AM ALL MOVED IN. Apart from bucket, mop and sundry papers strewn all over the last place's floor, all has come with me. I have yet to spot a single cockroach in my new house.

My Mum and Brian turned up yesterday morning to what resembled a bomb explosion in an Oxfam shop. Stuff was everywhere, and where I'd tried to pile it up it looked worse than ever. How on earth this would fit in the new house I dared not imagine. Where on earth it had come from I could not compute. The kitchen cupboards were bare. About five boxes full of stuff just from those. Bathroom emptied out. A whole pharmacy of drug paraphernalia chucked in the front bin.

It took us three carloads to do it, Ikea tables, clothes racks and all. My patience was wearing thin at the end as I was over-tired. I had been feeling semi-ill all weekend. On Friday night I honestly felt it would never get done, as I lay in bed, nauseated, hoping not to vomit (which I did not) and staring out forlornly at my conglomerated stuff.

The new place is luxuriously cold, with no double glazing. Radiators firmly off and a natural climate rather than the double-glazing-intensified sweaty midsummer furnace two of my last three places have turned out to be ...

I fell into deepest slumber at eleven o'clock on my new unmade bed. My Mum says it's a kingsize mattress. She had to rush out to buy new undersheets from BHS because the old ones were far too tiny. I've not fitted the replacements. I've done nothing except survey how clean, tidy and neat my new place looks.

Trotters are pride of place on a low table next to the television. Every now and then a pink nose appears from a tube end, followed by a furry face. Then if you're lucky you might get Spherical scurrying scurrulously from tube to gnawed-out Atora-box outhouse. The neighbours probably already think I'm mad for cooing in a silly voice: "Hello little Trotter! Hello! Have you got perky little ones!?" I'm talking about her ears. Only afterwards did I realize this might be open to interpretation.

Talking about perky little ones, I went for a midnight walk and apart from the local off-licence-cum-vegetable shops (bottle shops) the only place left open appeared to be a 24-hour knocking shop. It was called a "sports club and sauna" but looked decidedly seedy to me...

So welcome to Avenue Life... I'm now at the furthest extreme of my old stomping ground, not quite on alien territory. My old friend Valium Marilyn, who looks like Marilyn Monroe with a 30-year gear habit lives just a couple of streets away and two of my old dealers used to do business round here: one from the road off the one end of my street, one from an alleyway at the other! So it's old ground really. Those dealers have long gone. One, who I liked, got flushed down the toilet thanks to his own habit on crack. The other is doing massively long prison time by all accounts after police caught him well and truly, digging up a massive money and drugs stash in his Mum's back garden.

As for me I'm reading John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey with the radio on (as the TV aerial appears defunct), procrastinating unpacking and considering starting up a mini herb garden in my bedroom bay window, that could double as a pretentious bougeois reading seat ...

It's Mayday bank holiday (that is, a public holiday). So life's as busy as ever. The sun is shining, cars are out. I'd better ping off before this internet caff terminates me. Have a nice day, y'all ..!

PS I'm not one for TV theme tunes of the 1980s obsessions, but I did wake up with this, the music from Juliet Bravo going around and around in my head. As TV themes go I think it's quite OK (do you?) It reminds me of having Findus piri piri beef crispy pancakes with Birdseye potato waffles and Heinz baked beans for tea "of" an evening after coming home from school ...

PS Juliet Bravo ran on the BBC till 1985. How old does that make me feel..??!?




In the news: British woman Samantha Orobator faces firing squad for allegedly trying to smuggle heroin out of Laos. The South Londoner, who was allegedly hoping to study medicine, was caught with a 680g package of heroin "in her suitcase" at Wattay airport in the Lao capital.

Most mysteriously of all, however, she is now 5 months pregnant, having been in an all-women's prison for NINE months..!

PPS I am a big fan of the actress Rachel Griffiths

Rip Van Gledwood

I FEEL LIKE RIP VAN WINKLE. (Why does Magnus Pyke keep coming to my mind?) Yes I certainly could sleep for 20 years. I slept most of today, after getting up at 8:30 sharp I went to the chemist, etc.... Went back to bed... Missed everything. Didn't bother phoning in. (Appointments.) I am sick~ boo-hoo. I'll say I was ill. I have a disease called tiredness.

Run-down-ness./Terminal slothful junkiedom./Whatever....

I've been doing a bit of writing. But more to the point, inspiration's been pouring in re future projects. Gledwood cart-before-the-horse is determined not to get into Dan Brown or Bridget Jones syndrome where a highly successful book terrifies you so much of not being able to repeat such success that a massive writer's block ensues and nothing at all is published for years and years.

I broke my usual taboo and did some reading about book publishing. What I read was faintly depressing (don't expect too much, blah blah) ~ hence the taboo. They say you'll hardly make enough from your first novel to wallpaper the back bedroom, let alone retire to a 10-storey palace in the vicinity of Harrods (well you have to dream). These facts just shoved deeper into my head the maxim that books are like sausages. As soon as one's popped out the next one's coming. I've an entire lifetime of writings-not-written with which to torture the world...

WOW! This is a blast from the past. I wasn't expecting to get comments back on beloved stationery items, but here's two of mine. To the left we have the only fountain pen ink I know of that doesn't run when champagne is poured across the manuscript; to the right a Lamy fountain pen. These are the best I've ever come across. Far better than anything in silver and gold costing several times more. You can get one plus ink converter (who uses cartridges? ugh!!) for less than £20 and it writes as if it's been worn to your hand for over 20 years. No word of a lie! These are by far the best fountain pens I've ever come across ~ and I went through a phase (right up till I got on the heroin actually, and then I didn't care about anything any more) where I used fountain all the time. There's something about a nice pen that just makes you wanna write... (even shopping lists)...

The icing machine's gone berzerk at the Hobnobs Creams factory, filling them right to the edge. Which is well yummy for dunking into deep caramel-colour British Rail-style tea...

Last night on Channel 4's Shameless, as well as seeing a DSS Fraud Investigator get dragged down the pub and plied with ecstasy-laced drink so, in love with the world, he ended up (eventually) in the local brothel puking over the madam's shoes: as well as this I saw an evil Irish heroin dealer called Paddy (do they have white heroin dealers in Manchester?) get tied to a bed and forcibly injected with his own wares! I was cheering at the TV!! At the episode's end he'd still not been released. I just hope they keep him there long enough to get addicted. Oh that would be such poetic justice..!

Fish Fingers Sandwiches, A Clean Wok and a Novel New Turn ...

THANKS TO MY NEW OBSESSION with fish fingers sandwiches, my wok, which was already resembling a Hiroshima artifact, became burnt so deep, carbon on carbon, you'd half expect, on excavation to find Viking or Roman jewellery buried underneath.

I followed your advice and smeared on neat sodium bicarb and this, scrubbed, soaked, left and smeared on again etc produced within an hour a wok which, if not exactly new looking, is at least respectable. The old version was so dirty it looked like if you'd only added seeds and fertilizer you could have grown tomatoes out of it...

Talking about archaeological digs, I did some online excavations to find out who had given to who from who from who from who and so on that Honest Scrappin' Award before it came to me via Janice and Merle (and it's now come back to me again so watch out: none of y'all are safe!)

I had been put onto this quest by seeing again at the weekend the Will Smith film Six Degrees of Separation. If you've ever tried bloghopping sideways blog to blog to blog (start with a friend who receives lots of comments from people you don't know and negotiate your way via each new blog's comments. I leave a Hansel & Gretel style sugar-trail of hellos as I go, at least in the interesting ones but if you can't be bothered with this you can hop via their blogrolls... If you've never done this, I'd heartily advise you give it a try someday it's fascinating the new territory you can discover. E.g. the Honest Scrapper Award came to me via a succession of general witty text funny photographs type blogs ~ then all of a sudden I'm in recovering alcoholic land for many blogs in a row till all of a sudden we round a sunny corner into an endless slew of young family with baby blogs... and here I got lost (and I'd love someone to explain how a ward received on 2 December last year was given by someone who only got it a week later...??!? The trail became so nonsensical I gave in... however if anyone does know where the honest scrapper award came from and who originated it, I'd be fascinated to hear the full details from you!!

Where "six degrees of separation" (if you don't know the theory, it says that nearly all of us, in the industrialized world at least, are connected by no more than six degrees of friend-of-a-friendship)... a theory that I've found to be true in blogland at least because if you do hop at random via the unlikeliest blogs collections you can find I guarantee you ~ it might not happen within six, but you're almost certain to find this within twelve ~ glance down each new friend of a friend's and-so-on's comments and I guarantee you, very soon ~ it's happened to me every time I've tried this ~ you'll find a familiar cheery avatar face within 6 shakes of a roborovski's tail, I promise you..!

You can read about the origins of the urban myth/academic theory behind "six degrees of separation" here.

Last but not least my life's rounding a turning point. I cannot explain how or why or any wherefores but I know. If I don't make a move now I seriously will lose out.

I know what I have to do. I've to take up the project that's been festering inside me, longing to burst out ~ my intellectual novel! Forget "clean". "Clean" is meaningless in a vacuum. I'm into filling the void: then I might have something to launch into if/when/however/(somehow) I do finally at last manage to leave ALL these drugs behind...

... Anyway, to this end I purchased 1xA4 refill pad 200 sheets ruled feint and margin; 1xA4 refill pad 100 sheets totally plain; 1xartist quality 0.5mm fineline pen, carbon black, waterfast/lightfast (I need waterproof ~ you would not believe how many litres I've spilled over my intellectual manuscripts in the past...

... now I've no excuse not to get scribbling ~ hurrah!! The novelist in me rejoices!

The novelist in me quakes in fear at having been cornered, exposed and put on the literary "spot", but hey: life's about challenge...

Bitter Cold

IT IS THE MOST ABOMINABLY COLD WEATHER you can get without at least frost everywhere, if not snow... In fact by the ice-stick feel of my fingers Jack Frost may well be out and about tonight...

All I have done today is sleep till past 4pm (maybe a midmorning dose of methadone helped... not that it has any proper "sleeping pill" effect on me. But if I'm already a-drowse, or on the verge of sleep it does knock me off. All the effect it really has is to make me feel stone-cold normal. (Stone cold being an operative phrase as I feel chills far more on that than stoked up on gear...)

Anyway on waking I found myself glued (for want of anything better to watch) to Mary Poppins (the chimney & rooftop scenes) and The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe Or Narnia or whatever it's called (latest Hollywoodized version...) It's all a highly symbolic struggle between good and evil; that's what I got out of it. Anyway look I gotta go it is so very cold.... Laters...

PS RE Illustrations: top one is best I could get under Jack Frost (though it looks like the sort of storybook illustration I might have treasured had I had a childhood in rural Spain)... bottom is the beautiful, gorgeous, wondrous, etc Tara PT as mentioned in yesterday's dream

Crazy in LA

I SAW AN AMAZING TV PROGRAMME ABOUT AMERICA LAST NIGHT. Louis Theroux (son of travel writer Paul) was trawling the LA market for the most lurid life-improvements he could find. And boy did he find them!

Image, the body beautiful. Plastic surgery. "If I see it" (if I see something askance with my body) "that's enough" (then I get it "fixed"). Said the receptionist at one top clinic (who got free "procedures" as a perk of the job).

Talking of "perky", her breasts had been "enhanced" to the point they appeared ready to break free and float just like helium balloons to the ceiling...

The worst character of all was the botoxic image consultant life coach who, for $2000 a day will tell you what changes she sees fit for you to make. The changes might be surgical or practical but every one is for your "happiness".

"Butt", breasts, eyebrows... All can be nipped and tucked to oblivion. This poor lost sheep of a woman with $2000 a day to spare was being shipped from pillar to plastic surgical post by her surgically enhanced mekon of a "guide". She must have spent $10,000 on that set of procedures alone.

I cringed the very most when Lost Sheep came to the subject of her boyfriend of 8 years. Life Coach was studiedly quiet as soon as he was mentioned and I knew what was coming. Lost Sheep Girl had "empowered" herself by dumping him. Life Coach gave her a big hug and dabbed at tears that weren't there. When men can't see the inner wonderfulness that is you "we have a four letter word, don't we? Next! Next!"

I wanted to throw a brick at the TV.

What I found most depressing of all was the knowledge that underneath these glossy smiley LA people were the same twisted knots of hatred, frustration and anxiety that curl within us all.

When will they invent plastic surgery on the brain, I wonder? So bad feelings can be isolated then permanently cut out.

Surely when it happens it will come first to LA!

PS Illustrated Jocelyn "Bride of" Wildenstein... rich surgery-obsessed American divorcee who exceeded even Michael Jackson's "perfectionist" extremes...

Click here to watch the show.

STOP PRESS: HERE'S SOME AMAZING CLOSE-UPS of an Australian mouse from near Brisbane...

MUSIC:
SEAL: MAN'S WORLD
This is a masterpiece



SEAL: CRAZY
He has that rare type of voice... "primal"...