Leg Wound Update

IF YOU DON'T WANT to hear about drugs, scabs, oozings and associated pussing; just scroll one post down to yesterday's leaping lambs:~ far more Positive Thinking...

Right: you have been warned!

I WOKE UP into a classic tailspin last night. Have you ever done that?... well surely we've all done it once or twice; but have you done it lately? Y'know when you go "oh my life is ruined boo-hoo-hoooo..." etc etc... Then I slept through deeply until the Vanessa show on BBC London radio at 9am sharp. Vanessa always cheers me up.

MY WOUNDED LEG is healing nicely. It reduced from (at its worst) treble the size of my palm. One palm of blistering ("2nd degree burns") another palm of horrific bright red, dead white, deep purple, orange, pink and every burning psychedelic colour in between... ("1st degree burns")... and one palm more of patchy purple bruising... NONE of this infected; all the result of ONE single injection of literally half a millilitre (ie about a thousanth of a pint or a two thousanth of a litre) of yukky street heroin....

Well anyway (to recap the story) after my trip to casualty, my consultant's review a couple of days later and being properly dressed (not just me: I mean the wound was "dressed" too...) and being put on the strongest horse-pill antibiotics merely as a preventative measure...

I went to the local drugs service where they gave me a "dressing" with no padding. Of course it stuck on the top and pulled the top off all my blisters (how was I to know any better? Instructions said "dressing: put dressing on wound" so I did put it directly on top. So blood and gunge running everywhere, nothing to do but fold up a table napkin and stick that on top. Of course this stuck too and pulled my wound open yet again. (I think I spared y'all these details at the time as I'd stressed enough people out with my medical upheavals by this stage...) In the end, the remaining dead skin, which was lying atop this wound like sluggish, slack clingfilm I just peeled off, knowing the whole thing would just scab over... and sure enough with three hours of exposure to open air it duly did.

The only trouble is (and this happened to the little one on my arm which HAS duly healed)... the scab is loose in parts (and I'm NOT picking it), oozy and wet in others, intensely painful at one end. In short NOT the supersealed natural dressing it's meant to be, probably because the damage occured underneath and is rising up and out... yesterday in frustration I sat and squeezed it all out, all the blood and runny "pus" (blister-juice from under the scab) and saw that it is indeed healing even though not as gracefully as I'd hoped it would. About a week ago it was a large capital i shape with stalk and upper and lower bars two inches long... it is shrinking.

So that's my leg update! No more limping. No more nights of agony (and it really DID hurt: just like a severe blistering burn at worst)... it was more like a tropical spider-bite than an ordinary "wound"... the way the blisters kept spreading and blazing pain at me literally a week and more later. How ridiculous. Whatever Afghan or Turk put whatever rubbish in that "gear" deserves to be shot. Oh and it came back from the test as "benzodiazepines" not "barbiturates" which scuppers the blisters theory (barbiturates cause blistering as a standard symptom of overdose: benzos (Valium/Rohypnol-type drugs) are totally unrelated chemically to the (1950s, 1960s sleeping pills) barbiturates (phenobarbitone/phenobarbital, Seconal, Amytal, Tuinal are famous barbs but the dose is in the 50s, 100s of milligrams); benzodiazepines are less dangerous (unlikely to kill you in overdose) but many times stronger per milligram. E.g. Seconal came in 50 and 100mg capsules; Valium comes in 5 and 10mg... considering how out of it I was on this adulterated heroin I would surely have taken double or treble a "medicinal" dose of whatever adulterant found its way in there. Rohypnol (yes the infamous date rape drug) is willfully abused by junkies when they can get it. It causes memory loss (in a patchy type of way, not a total blackout)... the standard nighttime dose is ONE milligram... so my questions about what on earth this stuff that burned the hell out of my leg, practically had me walking into lamp-posts (Mother Hubbs, incidentally blames that gear on her near-"stroke" type occurance: she stood up and when BANG! down on the floor... but I wasn't there. Next day she did look to me like she'd had a stroke: face fallen, totally doped up (but not in any drugs-type of way I've ever seen...)... a £20 bag of heroin weighs minimum 400mg (ie 0.4g), whatever adulterant found its way in I'd suspect was pa small dose by weight but potent... (sorry is this boring you I'm puzzling aloud what on earth it could have been...)... well I'll stop babbling. If I did have barbs it wasn't within three days of the urine test I asked for... whatever damaged my "soft tissue" is still mystery. If you're young, depressed, lost and thinking heroin is the answer: take note and beware! Maybe one person really will read my tribulations and be put off and that, as the cliche goes, "really will make it all worthwhile"..!

On this note I'd better go. Take care everyone..!

PS Calling New York: I'm trying to get talk radio online from New York City... can anybody local please tell me the names of the local stations... what's 77 WABC like? Further Information Please!¬


PPS This was my message to Rush Limbaugh:

Hi Rush this is London calling. Found you online. Please don't let that faux-Martin Luther King impostor Obama get in... Hillary please. Us rest of the world are fed up of George W Bush and don't trust your Republicans that much. But more to the point I wanna see Bill Clinton as America's first ladyboy and a madam president. We survived Margaret Thatcher. You can ride out 8 years of Hillary! All the best from Gledwood in London Town, UK.

ps go to my blog if you want entertainment: http://gledwood2.blogspot.com "hamsters and heroin"

{I kept a copy in case my transatlantic message gets lots... ? lost? or lost lots. whatever...}

Spring's Sprung (...somewhere!)

I'M NOT SURE what date the first day of spring "officially" falls in this country, but I'm pretty sure it's not yet fallen... despite a bracing freshness in the air... even in urban London. If I remember rightly it's sometime mid-March or early-April even. Nevertheless, spring IS officially here (or there) in several places across the Northern Hemisphere... (chilly old Russia included)... so in the lamb-leaping spirit of things I'm glorifying today with blue skies and daffodils.

Somebody chatting on the radio on Sunday really cheered me up... saying lambs are the only animals who leap for the sheer joy of living. Wow! How that must feel. I remember the wind blowing one time years ago and how this implacable urge toward dancing struck me... I remember waking and feeling those blue skies rayed with gold and thinking what wondrous opportunities would I partake in today...

Feelings that have long gone, of course. But at least I remember having them. At least I've been there. All too many people live in a near-professional state of misery because they've either not been there or doggedly refuse to acknowledge that they have. One professional miseryguts I knew in times past declared me to be naive. Well I think she was naive. It's so easy to reduce life to a tiling of black and white absolutes when actually its saturated in every living colour... even if a lot of it is very dismal and dark!

I don't know what on earth I was wazzling on about yesterday? Did anyone make sense of my post? (Because I barely can. In the clear light of mid-evening.) One person told me to "get a grip"! I have a grip!! It's just sometimes such luxury to let go!

And so back to lambs... I've even seen roborovskis a-leaping (you knew I'd bring this round to hamsters somehow; surely...) Itchy was being fractious with Bashful (which she never used to be. Perhaps spring's in the robbie-air too... or more to the point tiny Baby Itchy's fed up of being tiniest bottom-of-the-pecking-order... (poor swine!)... and while she was pinging about and hurtled straight at Bashful, Bashful literally sprang up directly in the air, allowing the supersonic Itchy to pass safely underneath...

... and how was YOUR day~??

Another World:
Foreign Blog of the Day: the Malay Educational System

Is shyness an illness?
read~ BBC News: Social Phobia
read and "listen again"~ Am I Normal: Social Phobia

ps: as Nicole accurately pointed out, the "lamb" ecstatically sniffing daffodils on the left is actually a baby GOAT (OK, OK, I know: it's called a "kid"...) also, spring begins in Europe officially on 21st of March (whereas Australia's official starting dates for autumn and spring are the 1st of March and September...)

Over-Tired; Locked Out; Brains Frazzled...

TIRED. VERY TIRED. All weekend. ~All day. Listening to the radio. Listening to my inner self. Even when I attmeptedly called Vanessa this morning while giving my leg wound a decent squeeze I was reprimanded by the receptionist: "OK thanks for phoning. We might get back to you."

(In other words, "Your call was FAR too rabbitty and we cannot abide 19~to~the~dozen demi-incomprehsensibles like you. Please don't ring back. If you do your number's blacklisted so don't worry about it"... Surely something like alll that.)

I couldn't BELIEVE that I, Mr glibly blogging articulacy himself was discounted from speaking across the waves because I was too bumbling... such a shocking sign of the times. Such a shocking sign. I'm tired. Had enough. Can't do this nonsense any more. That's what life style has styled me out of...

So I'm finished.

My whizzy new window. My heavy new window. When I tie a tie round the handle; guess no what would occur. I'd tie the ligature round my neck. And crouching from the sill, jump down. My sheery eight would slam my window shut and my tubbiness send the latch clicking closed. Hence I'm locked out, hanging right in full view of my downstairs window's view, legs jigging and all underoing that "danse macabre" (the dance of death") right in his full view. Locked out of my own room by my sheer fatty overweightedness; jigging haplessly. Unless Mr Downstairs had the presence of mind to grab a scimitar to cut me down, I'm gone. Otherwise worst of all worlds: cut down; twenty-foot fall ~ two broken legs and a crushed windpipe with no voice. Horror upon horror. How I had broken...

I'm sorry to be negative, posting bad dreams, rotting imagery of the death-dancing self. No!

Though I've had enough of today and all my views, my life tells to me that a radical haircut and somehalfware across the world can achieve.

I have to go now. Apologies for nonsenickalness. Late. Tired. Frazzled. Depressed. Bear with me ~ if you can ~ ... Most appreciated...
;->...

Furry Sunday

HAVE A CHARMING, FURRY SUNDAY EVERYONE.... that's fur as in little furry animals not as in rotten old mould... the picture to the left shows a pet pika (sitting on the same green spiral "staircase" of the same Habitrail cage my Chinese hammy Pingpong has... it will quickly outgrow that!)... And to the right a wild pika having a squeak outside its rocky abode...

... and top: a tiny roborovski so you can see why I coo into Itchy's ear "you look just like a pika!" among the reams of other rubbish I spout at her. (Well she does look a bit like one!)

Today I caught her trotting on the wheel and picked it up. She clambered about my hand trying not to look disappointed, upset and impatient to just scuttle off and be left alone. I shoved her into the seedery (the "teabox") and within a second her furry face appeared next to the Weetabix. Out she popped and I shoved her back in. There she was again looking all furry by the breakfast cereals. Then Bashful appeared looking all tubby and harvesty (they actually smell of harvest-time too)... she chased my fingers about, seizing her moment to bite when Itchy went pinging across the newspaper so Bashful panicked too and their tubby bums were struggling against the corner entrance to their "secret burrow"... where they ping away in peace...

OK I must admit I posted the above paragraph yesterday, before I spent nearly all day wallowing in bed in a pit of despondency. Then when I did emerge outside the thought hit me powerfully: I've been here too long. Time to move on...

(Give it another five years and perhaps I'll get round to it...)

I wished my Mum happy Mother's Day... she said she has an allergy and is covered in blisters... who does THAT sound like..?

My time now is up; so:~

See yous all tomorrow...

***

PS a personal message/plea to MALLORY
Many thanks for your comment.
I'm pretty sure I managed to reply ONCE at yours but now I'm having great troubles leaving any message at yours...
So I'm having to say HI here... please tell how/where or leave the link for how I DO communicate with you chez toi... your blog is quite something!

Blog pixx of the day:
Guildwood Gardens
Fantastic Alpine-Fresh Airiness...

Laundretta: Who Upset Her?

POOR LAUNDRETTA*. Throwing a massive tantrum on the stairs at around 4:30 am. Oh yeah, and our front door is swinging open 24-7, too. Probably thanks to her.

I found her half-asleep by the bathroom with vodka bottle and orange juice. Unfortunately my presence seemed to perk her up and when I returned from the shop with my mushrooms, peppers and cyder (fry-up ingredients (didn't fry the cyder though)) she took to tirading the purplest of blue language up the stairs at Matran who, she claimed was "having sex with another girl IN MY BED"!

I don't know what else to say except that as Gattina perceptively observed, my robos living on newspapers as they now do, are indeed the best-read hamsters in London.

*ps following a couple of "no comprendo" comments, perhaps I should point out that LAUNDRETTA is my 28 year-old drinking, crack-smoking working-girl neighbour. The toddler illustration is "symbolic"...

BLOG POST OF THE DAY:
Bimbimbie: Baby Aussie Rainbow Parrots + Morning Kangaroo...

Poor Harry~!

POOR PRINCE HARRY! Ten weeks in Afghanistan, the news embargo broken by an American website... closest thing to normality he's had in his life, so he says (what a life, then!)... Now poor Harry has to fly home, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of his comrades who would be put in extra danger if the taliban thought that by blowing them up they might score an international news "victory" by getting him. How very sad, I feel for the poor boy. Born into the most famous family in the world: destined to a life of cossetted boredom that really doesn't suit his character...

ROBO-CHAOS. I cleaned them out this morning. (Changed their newspaper.) This caused a tubby horse-race type event with them scuttling round and round and round. Ever since I got rid of woodchips or shavings litter their fur (surprise surprise) has improved. Imagine if YOU had to live stark naked upto your waist in woodshavings. Sawdust in your hair. How comfortable would YOU be? Yet that's what we inflict on our small pets as per standard...

When I had Russian hamsters, which have the softest fur of any rodent (like chinchilla fur: and just like chinchillas they bathe in dust which means you'll see them inexplicably rolling around on the floor as if they have itchy backs.) I soon realized the wood-dust was doing them no good at all and changed their litter to cat litter. They improved immesurably in record time.

That is pretty much the only thing I did today. The day is cold. And dull. And rainy. And nasty. And thoroughly unpleasant. I went to bed in despair at about 10am and didn't get up till nearly three...

Outside it is raining. Lights are on everywhere despite it being mid-afternoon (no wonder we have such galopping "carbon footprints" our shops and offices are so poorly designed! Why not make USE of this flooding natural daylight? Instead of blanketing it out and then running the entire country on electricity 24/7?

I must go; I am cold. May the weekend come and go quickly or slowly. Whichever is best for you...

Research News: Heroin for Hamsters: Hamsters Tested With Self-Administering Steroid Patches To Test Addictive Potential of Drugs Commonly Abused in Sports

Blog of the Day:
Diary from Laos

(Laos along with Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam the ONE area of the world I've most wanted to visit... I wouldn't even dare go there without a massive supply of the opiate-blocker naltrexone ... imagine the consequences if I did not...?)

Run Down

VERY RUN DOWN and exhausted today. No idea why. Went to bed spectacularly early (about 8pm) and slept through. How glad I was not to be disturbed. It's a nasty day and empty. I just want to go back to bed. Outside it's chilly. I would like a plast of intellectual chicken-mushroom-peppers fried rice (slice the mushrooms realy thin) and Lea & Perrins these and the chicken towards the commencement of frying...

Not a lot else to say. STILL no sign of my phone's owner and it's been switched on all this time...

... I agree with the person who suggested requesting they post up my tubby trotters' video as a reward for their phone's safe return. But they have to call me first! Surely the very first thing you DO upon losing a mobile phone is to call it straight back to find out where on earth it's got to..? Or maybe this person's stinking rich, has another five to spare in different sock drawers and just does not care..? Who knows?

Better go now. O, what a dismal day..!!...

Drugs News:
Weak Heroin Badly Manufactured More Often Than Deliberately Adulterated

Daily Blog Choice:
Glacier Photo Blog

British Earthquake! And Personal Roborovski Burrow Film...

EARTHQUAKE has hit the United Kingdom! All 5.2 on the Richter scale "hit" at just after 1am last night... wow! for all of eight entire seconds! The media have not ceased prattling about it since...

... I must admit I DID feel something. The house took to shaking and yet no noise of heavy vehicles passing... (Wow, I was in a real live earthquake: I might die of the sheer excitement.)

The epicentre was over 200 miles (300km) away "oop north" in Lincolnshire. And this is the worst earth tremor to hit the British Isles in over 20 years.

I might be able to put my scurrying trotters on Youtube! Already I have filmed them on a mobile phone I found this morning (waited all day for someone to call back: no result...) if they DO call I decided I would just give the phone back. I don't even need one. And the owner gets a free film of three tiny tubby furries scurrying around behind a newspaper. (Newspapers are not very photogenic when it comes to burrowing pets. The crazy print confuses the eye... but beggars can't be choosers. And I did get Baby Itchy at her excitable best. The last shot shows all three in a row looking... well, very tiny and furry (wow!!)

Does anyone know HOW I put this on Youtube? Do I need a USB cable? Then what do I do once the Youtube account's initiated and the cable plugged in? Do I just press play? Or is it more complicated than that? What's the function called? The phone is a Samsung (SGH D600 far as I know...) ...

Hot News from The Sun:
Quake Rocks Britain...
My Man-Boobs Made Me Suicidal...

And not from The Sun: Roborovskis in Singapore...

Great Blog of the Day:
Bringing up NINE kids in the US of A...

Vulgar Tea

I WAS ALL SET on stocking up on the prime ingredients of a lower-class tea for supper:~ all potato waffles, Heinz baked beans (value are poorly sugared and full of water; I heartily advise against them) and several litres of frying oil. Heck, I even had the Benson & Hedges ciggie for afterwards!

But what attack of prissiness has struck the modern "supermarketing community"... NO frying instructions upon ANY of their industrial foods' packagings... am I really going to GRILL my greasies? I think not... especially as I live in a fleapit so ill-equipped we don't even HAVE a grill ...

And what is it with CHICKEN. CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN cluck-cluck-clucker!~?? Chicken chicken EVERYWHERE and yet no pleasantly battered simple sqauares of fish. How dreadfully vulgar. ALL I wanted was battered fried fish with potato waffle in baked beans and a fag on:~ what's wrong with that? And yet my attempts at purchase were thwarted by a supermarket that stocks ALL chicken (e.g. chicken fingers) where it should be fish... and no frying (shallow or deep) cookery instructions. New Labour is like that short story we did at school where someone trod on a butterfly in time travel... then the world was ever so subtly, sinisterly different.

Not only do they erode our human rights. E.g. they're going blue in the face for the right to lock someone up without charge for 42 days (of course they would do this in the name of anti-terror)... they INSIST on ID cards as a cure for... guess what? yeah, TERROR. even though Spain - surely a tie with Britain for most-bombed country in Europe HAS identity cards and ID cards would NOT have prevented the 7:7 attacks. They keep 4,000,000 people's DNA profiles WITHOUT their permission... the only thing they do well with data is to frequently LOSE it. Oh and they assume they already HAVE the right to SPY on our CARS with some Orwellian device that MEASURES THE VOLUME OF BLOOD IN THE VEHICLE. Nobody even remarked how intrusive or sinister this was: the issue at stake was "should we have number of person in car lane charging things?" answer no and stop snooping. They EVEN want to instal a gizmo in each and every motor vehicle in the UK that would record by satellite tracking literally EVERY journey - no matter how short - taken by every vehicle in this country. Cross-referenced and checked against the 4,000,000 security cameras we already have snooping on us.... TONY BLAIR: a big fat thank you for setting up ALL THAT IS REQUIRED for when a TRUE DICTATOR DOES COMMANDEER THIS COUNTRY ...!

Right I have to go it's late and there were squeaks from my trottery earlier! Yes, that would-be Napoleon Bonaparte of the Roborovskis, Baby Itchy was probably asserting her ever-higher rungs and echelons on the hamster-peckery... and pink nose to pink nose knocked her housemate over and all manner of squarking ensues! (Well anything to change the subject off the state failures of Tony Blair...) righto better go ~ as they used to say each evening at Welwyn Stores:~~ GOODNIGHT EVERYONE; GOODNIGHT!

The Antidepressants Don't Work!

I COULD HAVE TOLD THOSE RESEARCHERS THAT YEARS AGO! "Scientists" have found that Prozac and three similar commonly prescribed antidepressants work no better than a placebo and are only worth prescribing for the very most serious cases of "clinical" depression...

Yahoo News reported: "'The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication,' the researchers wrote."

How very depressing!

Wah-waah!!

I never got on that well with antidepressants in the past.

I vividly recall picking up my first ever script in the tiredness of the late evening. The pharmacist handed me a blank white box containing two strips... I walked away into the night, pushing one out of the strip as I went.

I vividly remember staring down at the big red sugary pill and despairing because it had come to popping this every day for a month. And then, I might, if the drug happened to be effective in me and there was no guarantee that it would be, begin to pick up feeling happy.

I look back to that time... you might think I post a load of miseries up here but let me tell you my misery then was in an alltogether different league. I wouldn't have been able to explain any of my feelings on a blog, for one thing... Couldn't explain anything to anyone.

Anyway I did soldier on with that pill. I think the psychiatrist had chosen it because I'd complained of not sleeping. Well you took this one and initially nothing happened. I say "initially" advisedly, for it merely took a while to kick in. About two hours later the most incredibly potent knock-out effect came on... and this was only a side-effect... not even the major effect of the drug. Of all the drowsy-making tablets I've ever come across I must say that one (Prothiaden/dothiepin) was the most potent by a long way. Far stronger than Rohypnol or anything like that... And I was supposed to get up for university seminars the next day! Gimme a break!!

Next one was a smaller pill that gave me constipation. And made me hallucinate tigers walking down the street. Only for split-second gleams. But enough to disorientate me. Only thing I did seriously use it for was to try and kill myself and it didn't even work for that. Lofepramine ~ trade name Gamanil (can you get much more Franensteinian-sinister-sounding than that?)Altogether useless!

Oh I can't reel through everything in chronological order that is even more dullardly than scribbling my dratted memoirs (which I'm still very slowly and unenthusiastically doing).

Suffice it to say that with antidepressants I've tended to have either 1. no discernable effect whatsoever or 2. just side effects or 3. an over-enthusiastic lovely enhanced feeling (probably the pills kicking in more excitedly than they're meant to... but at least the pills are doing something...)

So that's my life in antidepressants for ya!

*

Do you like vintage, second-hand items?... with other people's stories to tell? If so go to this blog: shabbyinthecity.blogspot ~ fantastic stuff!

Ice Covered... this has some of the most wonderfully atmospheric snow-at-evening shots I've ever seen...

Attic Full of Clutter keeps a marvellous blog... reminds me of my own mental state most of the time...

STOP PRESS: here's some 0.5-baked thoughts I cobbled together on the role of cognition in the aetiology of affective disorders ... in other words whether you THINK yourself into depression or FEEL depressed and utterly despairing, loathesome etc and the dreadful thoughts consequently follow?

I remember STOPPING antidepressants; a weird intriguing thing happened whereby I felt my old negative ways spring back behind every thought...

... which is why I have some doubt in that cognitive therapy. because they say thought CAUSES emotion whereas when I pulled myself up I had thought something pretty neutral "I will go up the rd to the shops~" in POSITIVE mental state = a good secure feeling comes over... in NEGATIVE mental state a feeling of defeat and dread creeps over following such a thought... I caught myself out feeling this one time when I was on antidepressants but stopped taking them not sure quite why I ceased taking them (what with all else I'd been popping/hitting/etc-etc.ing!) but hey!!

Self-Aspirated Blisters/etc

I'M INCLUDING A PIC of that beautiful giant mountainside trotter the PIKA, who collects poisonous flowers for the winter, that, as they slowly break down over the cold season, become nontoxic and edible before they rot... and that is how the tubby little pika feeds himself... and did you know this...= 100% true? In the wild, roborovskis use the established rambling paths of and sometimes live inside the burrows of pikas!... that is 100% true and correct! Imagine what the giant pikas think as my tiny robbies quickly scuttle on past into their personal deeper levels... "grrr! Bloody vermin! Tweetie-Pie meeces in my house again! We shall HAVE to put down more poison!!" (Robos are too intelligent to nibble the pika's poisonous flowers...)

I'm very sluggish and slow and miserable today... not entirely sure why... leg a little less painful by the day. Pain seems to be caused by the blisters re-forming/filling (where of course underneath it's red raw...) On Friday the A&E nurse "aspirated" these for me (basically means she burst 'em with a whacking great horse-needle and sucked the gunge into a gigantic syringe... surely something we've all wanted to do? ... Or am I totally barking up the wrong tree? To pop a zit by sucking it into a syringe... or to do likewise with a boil or pussing abscess... or even plain old "brandy"-filled blisters...

Anyhow, seeing as it's now mostly dried out and scabberous by now, and going all itchy inside I felt I wanted to change my dressings myself... cleaned it up and "aspirated" my own blisters (barely anything to drain they're sinking down into soon-to-be-scabs now...)...

Even Mother Hubbard, whose last abscess was so spectacular, the doctors asked if they could photograph it for their records, (it required surgical intervention literally on the FIFTH day since first appearing... and was so deep it required "fingers" of tampon-like interior packing... she was lucky to have sorted herself hospital-wise so soon as these "fingers" (which I saw myself: empty, I could literally have inserted my own fingers into them... this was the infection's jamboree of drilling not one but TWO attempts right down into the bone and it very nearly had reached there... abscess is VERY difficult to get out of bone... that requires the highest antibiotic doses of all... that is what loses people their legs...

Anyway, Mother Hubbs said my wound was pretty spectacular considering it was just a "miss"/partial "miss" caused by bad drugs and not even an infection... that's NASTY business.

And the sneery look on "nurse aspirator's" face at me the "barbiturate injector"... I TOLD them it was unwittingly and inadvertently done... I SAID I haven't actually "seen" a barbiturate capsule in my life. (All I "saw" prior to that injection was scummy brown heroin!)

I am going to have to get my dressings changed properly and professionally tomorrow... the GP's surgery will supposedly do this for me... if not the drugs service...

Hmmm I am TIRED. I slept for a LONG long time last night... from a miserable 6pm turn in to a 9am "gotta run!" I sorted myself out gloriously...

... gotta get my chicken pieces and peppers and all... y'know. I found some Arabic Coca-Cola on the street (in date! Just because it was covered in unusual writing and obviously some kind of special edition it had been judged inedible/undrinkbble and so chucked outside...) this had me peeing all night... When I awoke in the early hours, full-on robo-tainment was happening...

Hey best of news: my robbies seem to have stopped excessively washing and itching... seems they've left their "mites" far behind themselves... and their harvesty-coloured coats smell all fresh and harvesty now, too... not that they ever smelt nasty but they're fresher than ever living on and behind newspaper now... excellent stuff... Even pingy Baby Itchy seems well... too well almost... she was squabbling with Bashful this morning. Which made me wonder where that power-struggle will end up... with Queen Itchy I ruling over them all, do you wonder?...

... I dunno! Well I better had go. Hope all is well with y'all my friends... take care...


g
xx

I am behind with my Videos, so here's a whole list of all the most recent. If they aren't upscreen then click on anything you like the sound of and you'll go straight there on whatever other blog it's to be found on...

Staxx: Joy
Liza Minelli: Losing My Mind
Talking Cat
Madonna: The Power of Goodbye
Two Cats Chatting: Translation
Michael Jackson: Stranger In Moscow
Madonna: Hung Up
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
Kraftwerk: The Model
Right Said Fred ~ Too Sexy ~ Daz Commercial

I love doctors' medical memoirs: this is a good one you can "listen again" to from Radio 4: Trust Me, I'm a Junior Doctor by Max Pemberton. If you want to hear it all from the beginning you'll need to clickonit today as (last) Monday's (the first) instalment vanishes as of midnight London time tonight...

Sunday Oven Shelf Hamster

HAVE AN ENTERTAINING SUNDAY EVERYONE... no talk of d***s today... I am just thinking Sunday lunch... and how I must wash my clothes they STINK of tobacco smoke like I'm the Ashman of London. Dreadful stuff. Righto what else was I going to say: hey do you like that hammy apparently hanging upside down from an oven shelf? (Looks like an oven shelf to me...) Take care everyone... have a nice weekend what remains...

The Feeling Vial <:-o

I USE THE ABOVE PUN ADVISEDLY as today I've been feeling vile. Only some people I used to know broke open (prescribed) pharmaceutical vials several times daily to shoot up in their groins... what is called an "injectable script". One, who a decade ago and before this drugs stuff totally got to me in my own infection injection habituated way, had me calling the (then) "National Drugs Helpline" (0800 77 66 00) (now it's called Frank; "talk to Frank"... and on the same number...) (Frank's online "A-Z of drugs"; click here...) and saying "my friend is prescribed
Dexedrine (pharmaceutical speed whence the "rock" group "Dexys Midnight Runners"...) and this doctor must KNOW she is injecting it in her groin... is it not possible to get injectable dexedrine on private prescription?" And the lady (they think they know everything about drugs after a month's training but don't. One confidently declared Valium to be an opiate. Another had not heard of injecting crack (the other aspect of my friend's behaviour that drove me to distraction. Why take such a massive risk to your health injecting that stuff when it's been specially washed to smoke on a pipe..?)... the lady said there was nothing anyone could do. Inectable speed is not available on prescription; only those pills. And though they are well aware their patients are "banging them up" and killing themselves the doctors carry on with these presciptions... I was utterly scandalized and despaired ever more... What can you do? And then I realized you cannot "save" an addict, no matter what or how bizarre or ridiculous their behaviour. There is nothing you can do except be there for them when finally they are ready to stop. She never stopped until finally the day came when Dexedrine pills, crack injections and methadone amps (plus ketamine at weekends) all injected into the crook (very top: bikini-line) of her thighs where the vein is finger-thick... but not thick enough, so it seems, to so continuously take all those chalky Dexedrines... and so she lost her leg. I was utterly gutted for her: but by that time I myself had plunged down the toilet too... there was nothing I could do for her.

So she now lives alone, using a wheelchair, no longer on methadone, (injectable or otherwise) nor dexedrine nor ketamine but still smoking the odd pipe on the crack. I know this as our oldest crack dealer accosted me with his new number a couple of years ago saying this woman had been asking after me. She used to be my best friend for a short time but in the end I just could not handle hearing her pain. And she literally was screaming in pain sometimes, at the abuse and ill-treatment she'd received in the past... it was not my job to save her and I got badly hurt.

Yes I have been feeling nasty all day. I went to the drug service drop-in, where they know me, and described my skirmishes with barbiturates that, further research has confirmed have to all intents and purposes left me with second-degree chemical burns on my back thigh. No wonder it hurts. Those drugs are, so I discovered so strongly alkaline they can destroy the flesh... which is nearly what they did to me... Never in all my years have I seen damage so extreme (a "local soft tissue 'reaction'" so I was diagnosed. "Reaction"~?? You can say that again! Not from a single botched injection (though I'm not even sure it WAS botched: it went straight in: just really hurt at the time... and of course more so afterwards...) Most abscesses I've seen are far smaller than that. It's horrible. Ukky. And has put me off a lot of things.

I'm living life in "senior review"...

Though I am glad to have my tiny tubbies trotting away on their wheel like fat old gremlins... they bring sunlight to my shadowy life... never had such enduring entertainment for the tiny sum of £23!

Have a great weekend, everyone... take care!

G
xx

ps who sent me the hamster dance on youtube? the url?? there's several hamster dances as it's the name of that squeaky song (I think) but I would really like to see the one you pointed out to me... having viewed back and back and sought it out over and over again through my comments I CANNOT FIND the url you posted me... could you please post me again in a comment under this post here? I'd be ever so grateful. Many thanks!

Link: Methadone Amps vs Diamorphine Amps comparison... (on grounds of cost)

Link II: Peter McDermott (probably Britain's top drugs counsellor)'s basic heroin/methadone/opiates/-oids factsheet...

Consultant

THE RECEPTIONIST FROM LAST TIME was having a fag outside when I arrived at casualty 20 minutes early for my appointment. She smiled ruefully but directed me to the right part.

Bang on time a nurse called my name. Went through the fairly needless procedure of asking why I was there... "senior review" it is apparently called...

A very friendly Indian doctor had a look at my marbled chemical burn and blisters thing... confirmed again: no infection (even though it is bright red and hurts all the time a bit and intermittently quite a lot as if the burn is spreading... looks far worse than the illustration (about six times as many and probably bigger) but the pictures I yahoo'd were either far less serious or much worse than mine so I thought I'd veer on the side of not grossing people out today: "if it was infection it would have spread all over by now" he declared. But transferred me to an even stronger antibiotic Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanic acid tablets 500mg and 125mg one three times a day). He said keep the flucloxacillin in case you ever do get an abscess. I don't know about "getting abscesses" any more; had enough.

I didn't want to sound all junkie but remembered to ask about these suspected barbiturates in the gear. Yes! Barbiturates cause blistering all over the place, he said and we have our diagnosis. Barbiturated heroin. No wonder I was weaving all over the place last week...

The nurse (only black woman I've ever met with an Aussie accent) rather grudgingly drained about 10-20mls of yellow water (not pus) out of the blisters with a huge needle and syringe. "Sharp scratch," she said. But I felt nothing. Even when she said it "might sting" and I dreaded I would hit the roof I barely felt anything: this sticky brown stuff like cuprinol... Now I have transparent patches all over it (are these for burns patients? They looked highly professional: never seen anything like them before...) All posh packing and bandages on top. One bandage even came on a crown-like fixture I put my foot through then pyoing! ~ It's on my leg... From now on the GP's surgery have to rebandage twice a week so no staving me off from now on else I'll start talking about... actually you probably don't wanna hear.

On the way home I passed a shop selling tiny trotters of the winter white variety (they're twice as big as robbies and have the softest fur I have ever felt on a domestic pet... just like chinchillas they take dust baths... beautiful animals (but roborovskis are more pingy and panicky and exceedingly inquisitive and copy one another more which is hilarious to watch...) I found a beautiful "cage"... it was a glass tank not much bigger than what they're in now; only this has two layers of caging on top fixed with ladders... it's beautiful. But they want £55 for it. Is that too much? Can I afford it? (Not really...) Maybe it will give me more reason to steer clear of that nasty brown rubbish.

I feel wounded and depressed and cannot sleep properly. Lost my appetite too.

Do you want to hear Vanessa? She is the most fluently articulate speaker of English I have ever heard ~ bar no-one ~ can let slip any word in the language past her lips without ever sounding pretentious...

Navigate past the red list on the right to "listen now/listen again": choose listen again Friday 22/2/8. She starts on banned atheletes. But I think her "should cheap alcohol be banned" speech is hilarious... "do you stay at home because you can smoke and get plastered for tuppence ha'penny?..." she piques us... and so on. Blah. Clickonthis if you do...

I just looked up some barbiturates on wikipedia: aparently Judy Garland died on only ten 1.5 grain (approx 100mg) Seconals... they must've been powerful pills!!

Thanks everyone for your messages of support I'm sorry not to have been back to anyone for several days... I think I am getting better. I am trying to be good. Too depressed to bother racing about anywhere...

A few of my favourite things...

I AM SO SORRY about the post below... all blood and pus gung-ho... I was on a bit of a roll about abscesses I'm afraid and started wandering round the subject of drugs (yet again)... so in an attempt to counteract it here are some pictures of "nice" things I like...

ps I also took down that horrible back abscess video: if you still want to see it it's on my other blog and the link is at the bottom of the post below...

(and btw Vanessa (Feltz) is my favourite radio talkshow host... does a daily show 9am to midday Monday to Saturday on BBC London...)

Uh? Ukk.

WHAT? UH? O! Whatever: I have to remember this vital appointment is tomorrow morning. Doesn't feel that close... On close and distant and reflexion I've realized the guy I saw yesterday, whatever class of doctor he was, basically did not know precisely what was wrong with me or why it was blistering (which is unusual) or what was going on. So I am particularly thankful for tomorrow's consultation with a Consultant Dermatologist.

Illustrated is Google images reply to "necrotic" that is NOT the appearance I conjured or the guy seemed to be saying yesterday. From my experience necrotized flesh tends to look white, dead. It's open, like an open sore and may be weepy or wet but isn't pussy to any great degree. It looks and more to the point smells like what it is: dead flesh. My exhousemate had what he claimed to be a shotgun wound on his leg the third time he told me. The first time: it was an injecting "miss" ~ and that's precisely what I thought it was... The other person I knew with "necrosis" or chronic ulceration was a guy who'd already lost one leg (OK: technically half of one) he was a beggar on crutches... I remember walking past him one day and nearly puking... he smelled so bad. The worst smell ~ no exaggeration ~ I have ever smelt in my life. I've never smelt a dead body but would infer that they smell the same. Necrotic number one actually volunteered to inject me (he was a raving crackhead who'd lost his own veins, so he said through injecting speed)... something in his cavaleer attitude made me draw back... when two of the local prostitutes stayed in his room for a few weeks (and he would have me believe they'd left him "exhausted" through their indomitable bixexual lesbian threesome "services" they moaningly "bestowed on him"... as if! :~you haven't seen the guy) I asked one of the girls whether he had injected her (yes) and whether he butchered her (yes) so my instincts as per normal were bang on. In fact nearly everyone who I've let near me has butchered me up: missed, blown the vein by pushing in too quickly, partially missed (because when skin is rimpled up and the needle fully in-vein, the pressure of skin may eventually lapse, pushing the needle out, even though the needle hasn't moved a nanometre) and so on and so on. So whatever these problems of mine are caused by, bad injection technique is not it. As the man said yesterday it is bad (more to the point heavily "stamped on" ("cut") drugs that cause the trouble as well as the low-grade "number three" brown heroin: it never has been meant for injection. It's more popular with dealers than the higher grade "number four" white because it can be "smoked" (off of tinfoil: through a rolled up tinfoil tube:~ the socalled "chasing (the "dragon": though I've never in my life heard an actual user say "chasing the dragon": that is a press and media phrase...) Of course a smokeable drug is more saleable than one effective by snorting or injection only (heroin smoking isn't quite like smoking crack: unlike crack which vapourizes all at once the moment a flame touches anywhere near it ~ allowing considerable doses to flow straight to the brainbox; heroin (which also vapourizes rather than "burns") takes ages to "chase" along tinfoil line after line after line... I only used to smoke at the very beginning of my habit... then I realized "skinpopping" that is injecting subcut (subcutaneously) or IM (intramuscularly) had a double-strength effect and took about as much time (about ten minutes) as my then-tiny smoking habit to affect body and brains...

I only STARTED to inject myself because I was by this stage in a relationship with a 10-year junkie who had left works, citric acid (for breaking down the crappy brown heroin), swabs... all I needed to make up a hit. And because when I had been hit up before the junkies doing it had almost perversely made me cook up my own gear: I had no problems judging how much water/heat/citric/timing were required (well it's hardly rocket science)... anyway...

... so I find myself (many years ago) alone: fully-made-up "hit" in hand. I made some half-hearted attempts to plunge it into the crook of my arm but was basically too scared to hit up intravenously... and so I took up injecting but by skinpopping.

Skinpopping compares to IV injection as trickling warm water into a bath over ten minutes or so... over plunging straight from a cold pool into hot at an Icelandic sauna... skinpopping (at the time this meant an SC/subcut/subcutaneous injection which means pronging the needle just under the skin at a 45 degree angle...) with acidified brown heroin what happens is that within about five minutes (if not straight away: it is dreadfully low quality gear ~ almost as bad as that West Coast American Mexican crap)... a welt starts to appear: like a giant mosquito bite... walking around will move the drug faster through the system... within ten minutes I felt like I was fully immersed in a hot bath; totally relaxed... and free enough to contemplate what a "terrible habit I had and how I needed so desperately to come off"... in the one compelling heroin memoir I have read the author states the same point in different words:

I was never so determined to get clean as when I was dirty...

If this sounds counterintuitive or contradictory then bear this in mind: in withdrawal ALL ANYONE: that is YOU or ME will think about is HEROIN: how to get it. As quickly as possible. Into the body. To stop feeling this bad.

BTW: the above procedure only worked for me with pracically NO tolerance... at my very worst I could take heroin even in quite big amounts and literally feel next to NOTHING... an utterly despairing predicament...

Of course NOBODY in withdrawal will want to get clean... if this were so the AVERAGE length of a heroin habit would not be 14 years! No! You only WANT to get clean (at least anywhere but the very end of a habit) once you are HIGH... and have the luxury of jazzing about in a mindwandering space where you can judge life rosetintedly from afar "my problem is so bad... I really must stop. I HAVE to stop... tomorrow..." (cannot stop now you are stoked up and high!)

The IV injection takes about 30 seconds to come on (unless administered ultra-slowly into an exceedingly narrow vein); peaks in about two minutes... within 6 minutes (so I hear) the heroin has transferred into morpine... but not before the superior (and more addictive) heroin buzz has (in the not over-tolerant individual) suffused body and brain...

Which: yes. Around and about and by the houses, I hope has told any miscomprehenders or doubters or people who just don't get it out there precisely what this habit is ABOUT...

PS Following my own intuitions I googled "barbiturates" and "blister" and, eg here, found out that... seemingly (among the near-impenetrable medicinal language...) barbiturate injection CAN cause skin-blistering... which is why I wanted to get treated by a specialist and not someone who did lots of straw clutching... you want to know how I KNOW he was clutching at straws: he pointed out a bit of "inflamed" (just buised) vein and said "knowledgeably" "this might turn into phlebitis" (which is inflamation OF the vein itself... I've already HAD this: it was like a red hot poker stiking up the side of my thigh... and which, all in all along with his "not infected" (then why as well as feeling literally like a hot oil burn at worst of times did it the night before my hospital appearance go red hot and raging with heat?)... I really think this guy didn't know what the hell was going down and just spouted his reflex "scare the junkie" with not-spot on approximations talk... THIS talk is what leads junkies NOT to believe doctors (because they are being lied to: or the facts are surmised rather than 100% surely KNOWN)... likewise doctors don't believe junkies (specially when drugs come into the equation: "I'm in agony dr!"/etc... because junkies, being so used to being fobbed off and dismissed ~ or if given medication, under-prescribed to ~ become accustomed to exaggerating or lying merely to get the meds they genuinely feel they need.

Valium is for anxiety. Zopiclone is for sleep. Morphine and diamorphine are for severe pain. No dr, far as I'm concerned has any reason to withold any of these just because someone is an addict... when to most old ladies the same drugs are dished out like sweets!!

***

RIGHT: I've found some abscess pus youtubes... only nothing as hardcore as I was hoping for... and the bestlooking one some twat had categorized as "login/adults only" how prissy can you get??

Really I was hoping for some general anaesthesia ~ arse-scooping brown fulminating bloody pus multilitre pusbags but only got these... the first one (on some poor guy's back: my video of the day) is the best how it swooshes out! Hold your breath, prepare not to puke and have a beautiful pus-indulgence (ugh what a phrase) everyone!

1. Draining a Massive Abscess (on the back)...

2. Brotherly Love: Lancing a Boil...

3. Infected Abscess Removal

4. Burst My Abscess (in the mouth)...

FREEDOM! AND GOOD HEALTH!! (Not mine: he said it did NOT look infected; but prescribed 2x250mg flucloxacillin x4 a day anyway to stop this...) What he did say is it was the consequences of injecting bad drugs "heroin does not do this" he said pointing at the blisters, which have been packed under special drainage pads. "If this does get infected or you continue injecting in that leg it could go necrotic." Which means dead flesh and I've seen and smelt it it's absolutely vile. It's like an ulcer that never heals. So that told me!! (I have to say for "not infected" it looks remarkably colourful. Bright red patches, purple bits, dead-looking white bits (not "necrotic" open sores) all warbled and marbled. Ukk. I'm not saying anything more. This happened at casualty/A&E/ER by the way and I have an appointment for a consultant to see it on Friday... I'm so glad I'm not stuck in there I had visions of carting a drip stand downstairs twenty times daily for cigarettes (found it hard enough going without in casualty)... I have to go I am exhausted. Whoopee!!!

Fobbed Off

I GOT TO THE DOCTOR'S on time... asked for an appointment with a nurse or a doctor. Said it was urgent. Nothing available till FRIDAY and a room full of "sick" people (ever noticed how nobody in the doctors' surgery actually LOOKS unwell most of the time... maybe that means they're a good doctor with a really high cure rate... whatever... I was directed to a 24-7 walk-in centre which is MILES away and allied to the biggest casualty department (ER) I have ever experienced. Let the fact that the British government have decreed to all NHS trusts that ALL "customers" MUST be seen WITHIN FOUR HOURS tell you how long the waits in these places can be... and of course you have the dregs and drunks of society haranguing, arguing (or in the best circumstances performing) in front of you... NO WAY did I wanna go up there. I got the phone number of another walk-in or drop-in at a hospital that is nearer and better (why not automatically referred there then? Literally it has to do with being on the "wrong side of the tracks"... or to put it another way, having the wrong postcode...) I am glad I had the presence of mind to telephone this place first. The young man who answered took an immediate interest in my complaint... "an ABSCESS?" he queried excitedly, (I wasn't even going to go down the "cellulitis" route: too exotic for most people)... he lowered his voice to intimate tones: "is it a peri-ANAL one?" "No. It's on the back of my leg." And then to throw an instant explicatory light upon the matter added (and I know I didn't have to) "I'm a heroin addict" oh I see. Then I DID get some good advice. Do NOT leave it. Come into casualty tomorrow morning or go to the drug service. They never HAD a walk-in (I'd been misinformed)... Once I was told to go to the drugs people I was relieved... they were the only place I wanted to go anyway. No lecturing Nigerian doctors; no four hour weights. They know me and I know I can come at 9am and get seen within half an hour. They are not meant to be a first-line treatment setting for stuff the family doctor's supposed to see to unless you don't have another doctor or (as in my case) the doctors have in essence refused you... Injecting infections are obviously a speciality and so I'll get a proper set of advice and treatment. I really did NOT want to go to casualty tonight... though my leg is dipping into chip fryer mode again... it does feel like a huge chip-fat burn sizzling away sometimes; then it gets a bit better and I think maybe it's not so bad after all... y'know how it goes...

I spoke to Mother Hubbs on the phone because she called her Dodgy (he is anything but dodgy actually) when we were down the pub round the corner from the doctors'... she is with her grandchildren across the country. She sounds normal now. When I spoke to her before seeing her and how her face had literally fallen: eyes barely open... after a "fit" she said she had... she sounded smashed out of her brains. I think she had a stroke but I know what she's like she will put off and put off seeing any medical professional... hmmm... who does THAT sound like?...

Well I am definitely going tomorrow my leg is only getting worse and worse. Weeping wet blisters and purple mottling with bits going white around it... doesn't look good...

So it's 9am at the druggery for me... and my hamsters are hiding in their huge tartan bag... maybe for several days...

RIGHT I HAD BETTER REPEAT HERE FOR REITERATION: IF FOR SOME REASON I AM NOT ONLINE FOR A FEW DAYS IT MEANS I AM IN HOSPITAL. THEY WOULD ONLY PUT ME IN HOSPITAL IF THEY THOUGHT I NEEDED IV ANTIBIOTICS. AT LEAST NOW I'M GOING TO THE DRUGS SERVICE DR AND NOT JUST A GENERAL ONE I GET A SEASONED APPRAISAL OF HOW BAD THIS THING REALLY IS AND IF THEY THINK I WANT TO BE EATING SHEPHERD'S PIE FOR A WEEK THEN SHEPHERD'S PIE IT IS (AND JELLY AND ICE-CREAM FOR PUDS: YUMM!) ;->...

PS I am now listening to Billy Bunter's Birthday Bash... it is so entertaining... do you know Billy Bunter? That 1950s nasty tubby schoolboy... like a humanized evil version of Spherical

Off to the Doctor's...

RIGHT I AM OFF TO MY LOCAL DOCTOR'S surgery... where I have been very reluctant to go... especially having been lectured by an ignorant Nigerian locum last time "why don't you just stop?"... (if I could it would not be called "addiction" ~ duh!)... if I am offline for days and days it means I am in hospital I am avoiding there like the flying plague though I know Evilstein will only use it as an excuse to throw out my robbies/make me homeless/etc. I am just about to leave for the "surgery" now... assuming I got the details right they don't shut till six... And I will only ask for an appointment with the nurse. Why? Because assuming this is really as dreadfully terrible as everyone says she will be utterly horrified and get the doctor right away and I will have someone on-side backing me up against the probably barely-English-speaking doctor... If I opt straight for the doctor I will be assumed to be a timewaster (as most patients are: coming in with common coughs and colds that no medication can really treat anyway...)... blah blah and so on right I'd better go

Secret Passage

...Secret passageway!... during my recent robo-re-removals, out-cleaning, lightbulb-box-filling etc etc when I changed their newspaper I left the new paper (one of the free London commuter papers; not The Sun any more so maybe that's why it didn't fit... where it was too big I just let it flap up one side... and to add entertainment to "injury" I hid a standard toilet tube, plus Baby Itchy's "Magic Wand"... ie her personal half inch/2cm diameter clingfilm tube that only she can ping along on through...
... None of the robbies knew anything of this secretive area as I basically made things like that and left them...
... Only early this morning to be puzzled by Spherical determinedly scratting against the glass in attempted burrowing... alternately grabbing the piled up newspaper in her mouth and furiously nibbling at it...
Clever girl! I thought. Despite no food, no treats... nothing more exciting than two of their familiar old toilet rolls being hidden behind there she had detected the "sectret passageway" I'd hidden in their home!
... Eventually I got frustrated and wished to pingingly hurry things on a little... so I dropped Baby Itchy behind the newspaper fold right into the secret passageway where she very amusingly smelt it out and cautiously explored. Of course I could see right through the glass so there was nothing "secret" or even obscure about it to me... though Itchy, by her supreme caution, appeared to feel very differently...
... and Spherical grabbed at the paper and heatedly gnawed on and on... which terrified Itchy, to see the walls shaking and bowing out and being so viciously nibbled upon.
... And then she realized another robo was on the other side and highly amusingly made contact whisker to whisker and paw to paw through the tiny gap...
... Then Spherical desisted her furious scrabbling and scratting... at which point Itchy chose to squeeze through, from the secret side, the hole Spherical had been so dedicatedly chewing... o! the look of sheer astonishment on her face as her dear old housemate suddenly emerged from that secret compartment! It was so hilarious I had seriously to restrain myself from cackling aloud at them both...
... Now realizing there was indeed something worthwhile hidden behind there, Spherical bit open, scratted apart and burrowed through to the secret passageway in record time.
And of course where one robbie ventures, the other two rapidly follow. it was so entertaining witnessing them exploring their new secret burrow together. And once I'd taken the narrow length of tubing only Itchy could fit inside away; the three of them had the run of the place...
... Every now and then some scrabbling noise (ie one of their own kind) would cause terror from the main side of the divide to the new secret burrow... then the burrow's occupant would panick and spring out like a furry jack-in-the-box...
...And presently, at past three thirty pm all three are stashed behind the excess newspaper in this secret tiny burrow... even Evilstein, glancing in, would assume the tank was empty with just waterbottle, wheel, seedbox ~ and nothing else... do I didn't cover them up... just being able to see their naturalistic behaviour in such a confined space is hilarious... how they scramble over one another... suddenly their pink nose to pink nose robo-greeting makes sense... they have to do this in the burrow to ensure the whiskery bedmate is friend not foe!... One time yesterday Itchy was rambling the wheel on and on while Spherical sat idly by... Itchy stopped about five times in three minutes to pink nose to pink nose do confirmational greeting... poor swine! She is bottom peck and so has to be subservient. Bashful and Spherical do a weird borderlilne-squabble greeting where one wrestles the other backwards so the "loser" is lying on her back with Daz-white undercarriage on vivid display... then she gets her private parts forcibly groomed for her...
... And if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I would not believe it...!

PS... this is a bit of a major thing to leave for a "ps"; I know... but I didn't know what/how to say it... I will say it tomorrow... Mother Hubbard's had a stroke! She looked utterly done in yesterday, her face all fallen, everything... dreadful...

PPS My leg I've been told is cellulitis... true enough it hurt so bad I was close to screaming point on Saturday night... seriously bad, like a burn from hot oil still sizzling away under the skin. All I wanted was to cut it out... and this, of course, I could not do... I've been told contradictory things about whether or not I ought to go to hospital. It doesn't hurt anywhere nearly as much (it's about 4 days old now)... since it blistered up... it seems to be that the nasties gnaw out the human flesh which can be excruciatingly painful (my one is nearly behind my knee; the main bit's palm-sized... (which means 1% body area)... and it goes on all mottled and bruised for another palm-sized area... the main bit which was excruciatingly painful at one point has blistered up, just like the bit on my arm did... now it hurts far less. It feels like the flesh-eating bug has at least eaten-out some of the flesh... which kills some pain in the process... I don't know... or something like that. I've been told to go straight to casualty by Mother Hubbs' friend who says they may keep me in. I will have to go to the laundrette before that as all my clothes are dirty. I really can't go in as I am I would rather die. OK I shouldn't say things like that but you know what I mean... or I could just go to my GP (family Dr) and get flucloxacillin/something like that... surely that will work... there is no point being in hospital except for the free shepherd's pie (which I love... you know that mafia expression "do you like hospital food?" well I love hospital food... all mushy and squelchy... really yummy and not challenging at all... beautiful food. Well I won't need that as I'm making a dr's appointment for 1st thing tomorrow morning right as soon as I've logged off this... and am purchasing chicken fried rice ingredients forthwith... which is essential for my mental wellbeing!

And how are you?


Video: 2 Cats Chattin'...

Music: Madonna: The Power of Goodbye (specially for Audrey)...

... Come to the House of Lime for some excellent winter pictures...

... right I really am going to have to get in touch with my dr's forthwith as I found out how serious this cellulitis can be I honestly didn't realize... no wonder I was in such agony!

... ps: and this is a fantastic birds blog...

...Leslie's blog has some especially atmospheric snapshots of the winter weekend...