Irish Ebay

HAS EVERYONE SEEN THIS ad doing the rounds on Irish ebay?

FOR SALE: MEDIAEVAL TORTURE INSTRUMENTS ...

... while stocks last ...

!!

Waah-waaah!!!

...

I did have the entire back of an envelope scrawled with poetic postings but left it behind so don't know what I'm going to say.

Well I oughtta describe the state of my house. Laundretta's lying blotto on the entrance hall floor. Had to tell my dealer to wait outside & I'd come to his car. (Didn't add details about the drunken hooker lying there: he thinks my house is ridiculous enough. It was his runner who arrived at 7.30 am one time in the middle of my infamous month-long crack binge to find me barefooted wandering the street thinking I was stuck in a Magic Roundabout episode and people with baseball bats were out to rob me. This guy (the runner, not the dealer) took one look at the chocolate milkshake I was drinking one other morning, sniffing disparagingly: "that's got alcohol in, hasn't it??!?". Yes, I replied to his undisguised disgust. Just as I handed over £40 and he handed back three bags of Afghan brown heroin and Peruvian crack cocaine ... (The ridiculous hypocrisy of this situation did not hit me until much later ...)

My Chinese Mouse went for a massive dartabout this early morning. I was lying awake practically all night. Countdown came on. I got nothing better than a five letter word. I am terrible at spelling games but insist on playing them. I'd love to be a contestant one episode. They still have oldskool prizes: a coffee mug, Oxford dictionary and special Countdown biro pen (the kind you can get 500 pieces for £240+VAT if you trawl the character-merchandise type mousemat printing companies in business yellow pages ... The other game I'd go for is (Who Wants To Be A ...) Millionaire though I doubt I'd ever be "fastest finger first" to ever get through to round one. I do at least grasp the MO of the game. Chris Tarrant (or Dynasty's Blake Carrington if you're watching the American version (was that really him? And hasn't the US version been long ago axed? American telly progs never seem to last as many "seasons" as ours do ...) ... anyway what was I dribbling on about...? Oh yeah, the main job of the host after obviously asking the questions is to panic the contestants into using up lifelines when really they know the answer too early in the game so then once they're past the £35,000 mark (the one you "can't loose" because the losing prize money once you get here gets no lower ... if you know what I mean ...) I've seen this happen so often. Also idiot contestants who Ask the Audience something the audience aren't likely to know (eg who was Henry VIII's fourth wife) then go for 50:50 on something with two likely answers and we all know which two will remain on screen oh don't get me going any more. I'm not genuis enough to feel guaranteed to win really anything on Millionaire, I would hope to make it past £16,000 but even that wouldn't be guaranteed. The history questions are the ones that get me ("Where was the Battle of Bannuckburn??"/etc) Another game topping the ratings here (coming to the mighty US of A very soon according to the Sun newspaper) is Deal or No Deal. Let me explain concisely. It's a betting game. 22 would-be contestants hold 22 sealed boxes. These contain amounts of money varying from 1p, 10p, £1, £100, £1000 etc ... to £3000, £5000, £20,000, £35,000, £50,000, £75,000, £100,000 to £250,000. Nobody except the "independent ajudicator" knows what amount is there, least of all The Banker (an important fact to bear in mind: read on). The contestant, who is chosen at random from this 22 basically spends a TV 45 minutes (ie about a half-hour of actual airtime) opening boxes. Bear in mind he has absolutely no idea and not a clue what's in what box so he might say "Linda, box number ten please" and Linda the glamorous granny holding box ten says "good luck Peter" and with a mighty velcro rip and a flourish opens said box, hopefully to reveal 1p, the lower the number the better. (The number revealed isn't won; it's eliminated from the game. You only money from a box you can win is whatever's left in the box you're holding. Or you win money by accepting the Banker's "Deal".) Say the second box contains £100,000 and the third £20,000 the telephone in the middle of set now rings, all goes hushed as presenter Noel Edmunds (who I've always found a faintly obnoxious man) answers. We never hear the Banker's voice. Ever. Or see him. It's a gimmick of the show. Now the Banker makes an offer of say £14,000. The contestant must say "Deal" or "No Deal" to each offer the Banker makes, which will vary according to how many and what big numbers are left and second but just as importantly, how likely he believes you are to settle for how little. His job is to psyche you out. And the boxes continue being opened, big amounts of money now and then dropping out of play to huge oooooze and aaaarrgh!s of the crowd. When eventually you do accept the Banker's deal you have to play on "honestly" opening whatever boxes you've got left until finally your own box reveals what you'd have won if you played right on to the end (only people in their 50s who've paid off their mortgages and don't really "need" the money as much tend to do this. I've seen £250,000 come up in the last box twice in the past week, so it does happen. Odd as it may sound for "a game show with just one question" and considering how you're watching someone playing on pure chance (no hints or clues or anything of that ilk ever come into it: as I said nobody involved in the game, not the box holders, the host or the Banker have any idea what amount is where) this is bizarrely rivetting. If you want to play a dummy version of this game (or open an account and play for cash, click this Ladbrokes Deal or No Deal link here ...)

Well that's enough babble for today. It's going to take me an age to link up this poasting so I'd better get going now ... see yous all later!!

Gledsxx

PS Just nearly got run over by a middle-aged man driving Laundretta into McDonald's carpark... she doesn't waste any time. A mere 2 hours ago she was bleary-eyed all over the carpet of our hall ... now she's providing a service McDonalds do not in the furthest corner of their carpark!!!

Sundown into Saturday

SUNDOWN, the long spring day is finally ending, darkness takes the land ...

... UGLY BETTY is on later ... (I like that show, Ivy. My favourite character is Wilhelmina: the (speaking) voice is reminiscent of Eartha Kitt's. But I bet that actress can sing her knickers off!! (IF she wanted to ...)

Time's running out. I spent the day recharging my batteries on my giant Iranianesque rug ... I call it a hearth rug as it is full of burns from reprobate rolling mahogany logs ... (or my Dunhill cigarettes ...)

Okay gotta go because time's out. See yers all tomorrow.

Love Gleds xx

Word Games

PRINCE OF THE CITY The Movie starred some other guy because John Travolta pulled out/did Saturday Night Fever instead/whatever he did ...

Coronation Street was not on, it's Thursday night: EastEnders night. Can I ask you Canadians something? I was quite shocked to discover Corrie's so popular over there. Are you totally up to date with us? I mean, has Tracey Barlow been sentenced yet for slaying Charlie Stubbs, the evil builder who made Shelley's life a misery? I'm resisting temptation to give the jury's verdict here in case you are behind and are a serious Corrie fan to boot ... suffice it to say you were right if you thought that girl was capable of getting away with murder .... or WERE you???

Abscess number two, the one on my knee I probably didn't tell you about, the one that has always been topped with a scab, has been oozing pus beautifully all day. Now it's totally gone down as has been all squeezed out. I just resemble a five year old primary school kid with my traditionally scabby knee... Abscess number one, the "traffic light" on the back of my right leg, which at its peak had a pus-mountain the size of a fried egg yolk, is well and truly healing naturally. I'm not going to complain about this (ie the fact it never came enough to a head to burst through), it just went from dark purply red down to light pink, the pus-lake is less than a third of the size of what it used to be, it doesn't even really itch any more and stopped paining me days ago. It's sinking down the way it would vanish if I were on a course of antibiotics. This means, according to the concensus of common sense I get, that I'm obviously in too good a level of general health to be eaten alive by staphyloccocus aureus, which can only be a good thing ... (And I never DID make it to the doctor's I shamefacedly admit...)

There are no repositories of profundity to milk for today's pustular outpouring of a posting, so I'll just go now ... Leaving with a query about WORD GAMES... Does anyone know a word game you can play which does not rely on SPELLING to make any sense? I know this sounds a little odd but think about it. I have always been useless at spelling but good with words. And most of the word games I've come across are actually games of spelling: ie if you translated them to Chinese they would not work. The only exception I can think of is what we used to call The Dictionary Game where a word is selected from the dictionary. All players create a bogus definition for this word. You win points when people mistakenly select your bogus definition as the true meaning. This is similar to "call my bluff" except there is no division into teams, everyone plays every round and turns are taken to select the word to be "defined". The other one I loved playing involves being given a card with a word written upon it plus about five words you are not allowed to use when describing to the other players what this word means. An eggtimer (which in my view was a little short on sand) keeps time. For example I got COSMOPOLITAN. The five no-no words were things like "international" "sophisticated" etc. Everyone got it in two seconds when I declared, "it's a magazine that tells you how to have sex swinging from a chandalier". See what I mean?...?

PS Who is Jesus who left a comment for me the other day? I could not work out whether you were named after the Son of God ... or were just Spanish...! BTW when I clicked your profile it doesn't let me in there! Please get back to me & tell where your blog is, if you do one!!

PS Does anyone know what the words mean to that themetune to The Osbournes: "Crazy, that's how it goes; millions of people live in ASBOS...??" An asbo is an AntiSocial Behaviour Order. It is an order summarily imposed by the courts in England and Wales banning an individual from engaging in nuisance behaviour -- and you could not live in one however desperate you were for somewhere to stay ...

Prince of the City

I KEEP SAYING THIS; but I've found a really good book to read:-- Prince of the City by Robert Daley. It's a rivetting expose of organized crime and dishonest cops in 1960s/1970s New York City. Bob Leuci (is this prounounced "Loo-chi"? Surely? He's an Italian American who hobnobs undercover with the godchildren of the stinking underwurlde. Otherwise it'd be "Lucy" which sounds silly for a butch New York cop.) Anyway, what was I saying? Bob Leuci our stolid hero goes "busting" folks' "asses" all over the Narcotics Division and the City. At one most memorable point, taped up with a bodyhugging one-amp "wire" for an evening's hobnobbing with pockmarked broken-nosed gunpacking retired "enforcers" with a soft spot for their two year old neice and a heart of gold who would shoot you dead as readily as they'd pee all over you if you were on fire, his profuse sweating shortcircuits the covert device's batterypack. Imagine a zippo lighter taped to your bulging belly with winds and winds of surgical tape. Taped on so fast that to all intents and purposes, unless clothing is removed, this taped-on appendage feels like nothing more than an extra roll of pasta-yamming flesh. So short-circuiting, the metal box begins to heat. And overheat. And to burn. And sitting through a mafia meal as everyone orders extra drinks and dillydallyingly grazes on more and more courses of desert, after dinner mints and so on. The toilets are no help. There's no way of stopping the door and the lavatory stalls have no door let alone a bolt. If this cop is discovered fiddling with a wire in here he is dead. So there's no choice but to go on wearing this tightly bound on device as it sears into his flesh. The maf boss even stops the car later complaining of the bad smell in here, pulls over and has everyone check his shoes under the sidelight as it smells like somebody's stepped in something ... Pouring with sweat by now and shaking everyone asks what's wrong. It's an hour and a half until he gets to shoot into a (locking) toilet stall and tear the thing off that has literally burnt the full thickness of his skin off. No wonder he hurt! This is the most memorable story from the book. I wonder does anyone else know it? It came out in 1978 and was subsequently made into a film in which John Travolta starred ...

I've gotta go, Coronation Street's on ...

Bubblybabble

HI I'M BACK!!! Have been wallowing in my usual pit of depression entertaining stupid ideas to get out. Watching The Apprentice today I couldn't help but fantasize about going on that show to shake it up! Of course I could not tell the producers I do not actually want to win. And I have no business training. Or real experience of any merit. But, piled in with those odious nonteamplaying characters obsessing in the most unsportsmanlike way about winning I could be the wildcard, the maverick. I most certainly could shake things up, no doubt about that! Another gameshow I'd love to go on is Countdown. It is a wordgame where contestants select nine (random) letters at least three and at most five of which must be vowels. Singularly annoying clockticking music plays for 30 secs, in which time you must come up with the longest word you can. (It doesn't matter how rare or obvious it is, or which particular letters are "employed" in spelling this word out. Your score is basically how many letters long you manage to make this word. It must be listed in the Oxford dictionary so proper names are out. And, as it's a dictionary-based game, one must of course be careful about hyphenated words (not allowed), words beginning with un- (they're only allowed if specifically listed). And you'd be surprised, but the rather staid editors of the (single volume) Oxford dicko simply refuse or omit to include some rather obvious expressions... sorry but I cannot bring to mind an example. You'd think I'd be quite good at this. But, like practically ALL word games, it's not a true game of language so much as spelling, which never has been my strong point. I get loads of 4 letter words (yes, fogey that I am, I've started playing along with pen and paper. Sad I know.) A few fives. The odd six. Whereas the onscreen contestants get endless sevens, while Suzie Dent from dictionary corner (ie the "judge") comes up with loads of eights. Des O'Connor, the main presenter, who is an oldguard star of the British TV firmament, been around for years does surprise me. Suzy comes up with words like ... oh man I can't think of an example: but Des shocks me -- his vocabulary is execrable!!! He lives in childlike lexical wonder. Everything is new to him. I'm best at the numbers game. Choose any six numbers which can be big ones (25, 50, 75 or 100) or little ones (1-9) drawn at random, but you can specify however many of each type. Numbers genius Carol Voderman presses a button; a random target between 100-999 flashes up, eg make 813 from 75, 6, 7, 2,3 and 9. I can get this part spot on almost as good as the contestants. Shame it only makes up about a fifth of the game!!! I know I'd never win with my 4s and 5 letter words but I'd love to go on and win the Countdown goodie bag. Also, I don't own a proper dictionary since my last one got stolen (long story)...

Click here for Wikipedia's no doubt far more succinct description of how the game works.

Is there any news to tell? Our front door has a working lock and has not been broken down for over two weeks, which is quite a record.

Somebody got stabbed, I think, on the street round the corner from my house last night. I was there. I saw nothing, didn't realize anything was happening until Police cordened off the road with me inside the cordens ... What disgusted me was the way crowds of kids went on shouting, whooping and joking around like it was some sort of party as this very sick and injured individual lay in the middle of the cordened-off road, cars and buses piling up for half a mile or more in each direction ... What is this country coming to? Our youth are getting so seriously badly behaved they disgrace this country to the world. I have heard French people, Americans ... & so on complaining they are glad to get back to their own countries because at least they feel safer in the presence of the younger generation there. Nobody would scold or tell off a young person for acting out of order. Not unless they were willing to take their personal safety in their own hands ... After school time, Police turn up at the bus stop (idiot mayor of London Ken Livingstone gave under 16s free transport which causes utter chaos at school chucking-out times, the kids are revolting to be near, honestly ...) Police turn up in a special CCTV van and stand at the stop openly filming with camcorders like they do in riots. But this is schoolkids they're targetting ... What is this country coming to ..?..

Well I've gotta go now; I've got cod & parsley bubbling "in the bag" ... Thanks for the responses to my cry for help "what do I do?" ... They are much appreciated. See how I'm babbling away??

Gledsxx

Between a Hard Place and Another Rock ...

I FEEL THIS BLOG OF MINE IS COMING to a crossroads. Or, to put it more strongly; I feel this blog is going nowhere.

When I started blogging (my old blog) I stuck to simple terms of reference. The blog was my "drug confessions of a heroin addict". Reading the blog was to give an insight into my world. I was writing primarily for nonaddicts. There are a whole bunch of addicts and addicts in recovery on Junkylife.com. I don't feel that I belong in their group, that's all I can say.

Recently I feel my blog has deteriorated from something that, however odious it might have been from some viewpoints, did at least HAVE a point. Now it's degenerating into a kind of personal notebook of passing views and opinions online. That was never what my site was meant to be.

Does anyone have any feedback on this? I don't know where to go on, whether I HAVE gone wrong ... whatever. If anyone has any (useful) views, I promise that if you give them, I will make use of them.

Gleds

About Schmidt

AM DURING the adbreak to a rivetting film -- anything about midlife crisis grabs me now; I am getting so OLD -- About Schmidt starring Jack Nicholson. Fantastic. If you want to know about it click on About Schmidt. But meanwhile I gotta date with the telly. And why the lack of response to Star Trek? Does nobody care? Or was the Lone Grey Squirrel right?. Trekkies are too much wimps even to opine in a commentary box??? I don't know; the youth of today. I honestly don't ...

PS Click on Lone Grey Squirrel to see a picture of a capybara, the world's biggest rodent ...

Less Inflamatory

STAR TREK "views"; "inflamatory"--? Who was I trying to kid? & what a supremely mis-written post! & I agree with my correspondent, by the way, who denounced James C Kirk's acting.

Does anyone know what the C actually stands for? Why do rude words always come to MY mind? In situations like this? Is there something wrong??!? O I'm not worrying about THAT/whatever.

Abscess is going down & fading & not hurting hardly at all ...! Seriously.

I found a lovely stripey jumper in a bin last week, along with a couple of teeshirts/etc. Fished them out. First thing I got was a strong whiff of conditioner...: all was freshly laundered. This is light blue, navy blue, green, white, orange and back to navy blue in varithickness horizontal bands. Looks kinda hippy. Marks & Spencer's own (Marks & Spencer do the best socks in England. If you ever come here and need smalls and basics, go to the Marble Arch branch and do the rounds. If you're lucky you'll see expat Arabs filling trolleys to bring back to the Middle East. It's a famous store. That particular branch stocks experimental lines you won't find elsewhere. I like it. Anyway why am I talking about my jumper. O yes. This is it: my challenge. To wear just one item of clothing that I pour "self respect" over and keep looking wonderful & pristine & not stained or burned. Just my little challenge to myself ...

Slept all evening. Wonderful dreams revolving around 1970s houses and schooldazy type of people in empty rooms and nothing ruling. Nothing connecting with nothing, to echo t.s. eliot's words on Margate Sands ...

When I awoke at only 20 past 1 in the morning I thought Wow I can get back to the computer and type rubbish in. So that is what I'm doing!

See you tomorrow!!!

My Inflamatory Star Trek Views

RIGHTO, having had the pen & paper I labelled indispensable in that questionnaire some days ago, I've had time to ponder, muse, mull over, cogitate, examine, extracate and exhume thoughts of lasting value from my disordered mind. The full result is replicated in the following paragraph.



No, not this one, the one above this one and before the word "paragraph"-- don't you see it??!? There you go then. It's like that book I was going to publish, called The Innermost Thoughts of the Original Gledwood. Said title to be lovingly embossed upon hard covers for generations of readers to look upon and laugh at... This "lovingly" sandwiching about 200 pages of blank paper. The readers can add their own thoughts. And that book by any other title is called "blank notebook; unruled" or "artist's sketch book" but I doubt the publishers would stretch to nice enough paper to warrant the second; not with my name on the front ...

What WAS I going to say here? My mind has been turning over and over thoughts of abscesses:... ore, more to the point, MY abscess. It's getting a lovely soft head. And I have to go see the doctors who let me predict will NOT lance it and will prescribe flucloxacillin caps.

Aye here's the rub: let me say something INFLAMATORY to many people... STAR TREK IS CRAP.!!!

Before y'all rush to attack me in my commentary box, let me explain: as a kid in the 1970s/early 80s I loved the reruns of the original Star Trek with Mr Spock and Uhura and the minimalist Enterprise "boldly going where no man has gone b4". As well as being shot on beautiful film stock (so obviously NOT a cheap "videoey" picture), the whole thing had a delightully minimalist quality: no scenes full of extras, tightly plotted storylines, intriguing, convincing (to my 9 year-old self). I LOVED scifi at that age and my love of REAL Star Trek is one rare carry-over from that time to this ... Contrast with Next Generation Voyager rubbish Mother Hubbard and so many of my friends disappointingly not only tolerate but actually seem to like (they are not "trekkies" either). I cannot abide some of the ridiculous extras with Cornish pasties stuck to their heads. And Cap'n Kirk- sorry Luc Picard/whatever he calls himself walks past these people without cracking up laughing. Do they have a bakery on set to replace the sagging patties come mid-morning fag break? The whole thing has been drastically changed in character from stark/minimalist to over-busy with obviously lushious production values and even a glossy kind of technicolour character to the picture. Sorry but I so much preferred the Original true Star Trek. If I'm going to invest any force of imagination into someone else's fantasy, I'm sorry but it has to be well thought-out and thoroughly conceived, not to mention CONVINCING. As it is, I find the average children's TV puppet show like THE HOOBS more impressive than New Star Trek.

Now you can all rant at me in the comments box. Let's be 'aving yer. Come on!


mull over, ponder, make a pong, muse, consider

PS Click here to see baby Japanese Hornet grubs eating dead honeybees. Gross!!!

Evil Fun for Everyone!!!

THIS IS ACTUALLY a few days' old. It was linked under evil as in "evil Chinese mouse". If you click on it you get a very entertaining questionnaire. First time I did it I got nearly all the way to the good end of the scale as "good". Second time I lied and was "pure evil". Third time I implied I was a lawyer and got "evil". Go on, click here and have evil fun!!

I am making an appointment later to see the doctor because I think a second infection is coming up nr my knee. It feels like I'm five again (ie I just fell over). When I was five I seemed to have scabby knees ALL the time. And this feeling reminds me. If it's following the pattern of last time it will hurt quite a lot locally and gradually go red. Then a bag of pus will form under the skin like giant septic bubble-wrap (what an allusion! But the temptation to burst it is just as strong!!!) then it either:--

1. Erupts through the skin spreading pus everywhere in which case you obviously have to be very careful with hygeine and should spread newspapers down before you try and mop the pus up, wash & change clothes and use either medical or contact lens quality saline or failing this boil the kettle, pour into a CLEAN bowl/jug/whatever & add table salt yourself and allow to cool. When an abscess has burst you squeeze pus out, when the "bag" seems empty you trickle this sterile saline into the empty cavity and "irrigate" -- ie wash it out and squeeze out again. It helps prevent it closing up with infection still in there and the abscess rising again.

2. Fades away beneath the skin without ever bursting through. This happens if your system is in good shape or if you successfully take antibiotics.

I'm only going into all this detail for other people's sake in case you ever need to know what to do. But as you're already online, google more advice, don't just take my word for anything!!!

In Pain

(OK, OK: but hardly dying.) My right leg has a red traffic light on the back of it. It is going purple with what looks like yellowy dots springing out when you really squeeze it. When you kneed it, fingermarks stay in the skin. And there's a beautiful (but that is hardly the word) bit of pus under there. I am meant to make an appointment to see my doctor but that is unlikely to happen unless it gets worse. It is only an abscess. On a scale of 1-4 (4 being biggest) it is a 2. And it doesn't hurt like it used to because the pus has kind of eaten out the bit that was in pain. Man I love medical stuff. Remember I said I even wanted to be a doctor/nurse once? It would have to be nurse as I'm too thick to be a doctor. I do not have a scientific mind. I'm weighing up different offers to burst this thing but to be honest I think I am going to leave it be and put this magnesium stuff on it that is meant to do the same as bread and hot water (the Victorian remedy). Well I'm off now I feel dead tired and it is 1am. But I've been sleeping all evening like an OAP. At least it's got warmer than it was last week. Frigid air was blowing up from Siberia across the arctic, down past Scandinavia to here. How unpleasant. It was absolutely freezing cold. Now it is quite hot. Like a volcano of sepsis, this globally warmed planet is on a countdown to meltdown. I wonder how long this Earth of ours has left before it utterly blows up??

Sundry Passing-on

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

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

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

Tagged! 101

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

H- Hometown? – London

I- Indulgence? – Too much of it!

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

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

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

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

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

O- Oranges or Apples? - Oranges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W- Worst Habit? – My Drug Habit

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

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

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

100 things unsaid ...

MAN! I HAVE ONLY 10 mins till closedown so this will have to be done in bulletpointed stylee... if only I could find the infernal bulletpoint on this keyboard...

- Okay, en-rules instead.

- That evil Chinese Mouse has chewed a HUMUNGOUS GREAT HOLE in my elbow. So much for allowing him to set up home there ever again.

- THE ALL SAINTS. Only girl group I like. Never Ever. Black Coffee. The Beach. Do you know these tunes? They are fantastic. Remind me of 1990something ...

- UGLY BETTY Why does it take so long I was tied to the TV for an hour gagging for nicotine.

- ABSCESS ALERT. I have a humungous (well about 2.5-3"x2.5-3" wide bulletprooof hardened patch on the back of my right shin. Or is that called a calf? Or is that a baby cow. Whatever. It came up last night feeling like a wasp sting. Now it's been edging between giant Japanese wasp and relatively innocuous scorpion. Means I'll have to admit to my dr yet again that I've been "shooting up". Hmmm...

- AND THAT'S ABOUT IT. I have to go will log on again tomorrow if can.

Bye

G

STOP PRESS: ALL THE JUNKIES OUT THERE ... I've just gone back thru this post "linking" it all up with bizarre factoids. Have a click on my abscess link
xx; it's full of fascinating facts with a cotton fever ("dirty hit") infolink I'm clicking right back to (or just click here to go str8 there; or click cotton fever to get another link I discovered ...) ... happy reading folks!!

Post 99

MY 99th POST HERE! I'm meant to be continuing something see below. I'm all spun out thinking what am I doing I'm looking for something to DO. Yet nothing inspires. I don't know. What else should I write about? I don't know. Tomorrow is another day but I'm not letting too many more tomorrows go past else my whole life will be one blank YESTERDAY.

Living with Nutnut

YESTERDAY'S POST was actually half-finished. I failed to explain what being in "treatment" twice in one year meant. First time I applied to a Crisis Detox Centre that takes people on self-referral from all over London. The drugs treated turn out to be invariably heroin and crack as well as alcohol and benzos (sleeping pills/tranquillizers). I met no-one there who wasn't on one of the first two. The vast majority were on both. This was a 21-day blind detox. I left on ... (let me rewind my memory) it must have been day three. That summer I applied through the local drugs service to do a detox+6-month rehab on the South Coast. I got in at exactly the right time of year (June or July) and so would have left early in the next year. I'd say that is the best timing if you can do it. Then the new year would have been taking off hand-in-hand with my journey of discovery -- clean -- in the outside world. I ran out of there as well on something like day three. What I hadn't realized before I got there was just how many of this facility's occupants were on a "jail swerve"; ie undergoing treatment so they could tell the judge this is where they were staying, that they were 100% clean now and on this course of rehab and everything was going so well and why jeapordize this by throwing a newly reformed person back in prison among "peers" who had no real intention of staying clean. In my head, as I said yesterday, I had been hitting crisis point literally every day and telling myself every day "I cannot go on like this"; yet every day when heroin eventually came the crisis was solved only to build up to near-breaking point the next day. I was staying in a madwoman's home. She was very kind but crazy. Whenever I left, as I did a few times, she practically stalked me in the areas she knew I frequented. This side of my life was never properly addressed except once when the counsellor looked at me as if I was in deep trouble, & told me "you HAVE to sort this out". But I didn't. For months on end I didn't. When I eventually moved completely out Nutnut treated this as a crime. I said to her You don't want me around. You are so much happier without me. But she could not or would not see it this way ...

to be continued ...

PS (21:12 hrs) There's a fantastic drama about Van Gough on Channel 4. Get back 2u after that ...

Have a Break?

HI I KNOW I'VE NOT BEEN ABOUT FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS... was so overwhelmed by my National Gallery experience... what am I saying? In actuality I've been lost in thought, making a plan. I'm good at making plans -- and I do actually do them sometimes ... this one involves other people's co-operation. I was going to say "help" but that isn't it at all. But I need other people's co-operation. So I'm looking into what precisely I have to do to put this plan into operation. Then I'll get back to you. I won't bother saying what it is till I'm actually some way to doing it as so much of this blog has been hot air, I feel. I know most of my readers are nonaddicts: but the addict among you will know only too well the dreadful prevaracation of which we're all guilty. Being addicted to hard drugs puts your will in a balance, so however much you say (and mean it) that you might want to give it a rest or a break or stop doing it or come off or quit; the brain and body's instinctive urge to use (and this is how the drugs have hijacked one's system) out-pulls any rational "reasoning" we might do and the drugs win (yet again ...) Which is why stopping opiates or heavy drugs like crystal meth or cocaine, especially when one has been hooked for several years, is very often something that benefits from professional help ... or else supremely good planning and extraordinary willpower plus ideally (if not essentially) huge amounts of support from those around you. Which is why, though I have got very tired of my situation, I'm loath to say "I want to quit" because I got into "treatment" twice in one year a few years back, for all what I believed to be the right reason (to cease tormenting my family, as much as anything ...) and I daily was hitting the so-called "rock bottom" at one point, telling myself "I can't go on, I can't go on like this" ... and every day, between my morning hit and the afternoon dose I always took, however hopeless things looked by mid-evening that I was never going to make enough money to get any more to solve the crisis to hold me throughout the night and into the next morning I always somehow did (and I always had a hopeless attitude to it all. Nothing ever seemed easy, straightforward, all systems go. Even when I did have the money I went through a mental routine ... "the dealer's never going to come" (that IS how most of them make you feel, driving round delivering all over the place, lying constantly about how long they're going to be and where they actually are. Anyone who's ridden round in a car with a London dealer can vouch that this is true. (Though I hear in the United States it's not so bad.)) ... then the dealer DID come and it wasn't as if I didn't know a half dozen others I'd met that week plus ten more who for various reasons I kept only for emergencies; but it always seemed to be getting late or I was out of my normal area and would have to travel miles to meet the other guy ... which brings me to the next point, my "gear" has always been sacred to me; I WILL NOT accept tiny bags or rubbish. Nearly every time I've allowed someone else to talk me into using their "man" I've been disappointed ... once the gear had actually came my mind flipped into a new stew: "it's gonna be small, it's gonna be weak" something had to be wrong. The journey home to Nutnut's house where I was staying during the most intense period of all this, when I couldn't get up, eat, sleep or function really without having a "hit" first seemed to take forever. I'd ride the bus up to near her beautiful home (no bus ever went direct) mentally cursing the driver not to bother stopping for anybody else, ignore the traffic lights, step on it, come ON drive full-on ... finally to get there, straight to the bathroom, cursing the water now for not filling the works quickly enough, the lighter for not heating my spoon fast enough, the hit for not cooling quick enough, my veins for misbehaving ... then finally ... at long last as dark blood rushed into brown gear then brown gear was plugged back into veins ... finally, a thirty-second wait and at last, at long, long last everything was okay and I'd think to myself:--

WHAT NOW??!?

I Saw Momma Gleddie She Was Fine Except for her Bad Knee ...

I REPRIMANDED OUR URINE-(AND WORSE)-STINKING toilets with a double-eggcup full of Fairy Liquid in each this morning. Seriously the ordeal of taking a bath next to this porcelain fixture that smelt like the knobbly constipation logs that forever seem to float in it freaked me out so much I finally snapped and took action with washing up liquid. It frothed the lavatory-pan nearly out and to the floor the first couple of flushes but it was worth it. The smell has finally gone. And the lingering unflushable unmentionable in the second (solitary) toilet became utterly disguised by enough bubbles to plenish every tart's bathing boudoir this side of New Orleans my fiends. So top tip for today; if you're cheapskate like me or simply cannot find the device to blue-en your lavatory waters, simply add a shotglass full of (undiluted) washing-up liquidn to the toilet cistern. Just quietly pour it in: no need to froth it up there, the flushing mechanism does that automatically in the pan ... and presto!!! ... all odiferous odouriferous problemos solved!!

ANYWAY more to the point, how did my encounter with Momma Gledwood (and evil stepfather) go? It was very good. First thing she did was rush up to me with a hug and a kiss and shove a couple of notes in my hand saying "Take this quick before he comes," (because he cynically thinks I'm going to spend anything they give me just on drugs). Well think what you like Branston. (Yeah that's his name because he's always creating a pickle.) My Mum really liked the hyacinths/other thing arrangement. She said it could indeed probably go outside. I believed the daisies were wilting slightly despite my having kept them out of direct sunlight beside an open window; get the feeling that despite packaging's advice they would prefer to be outside in the relative cool; whereas the other plant with blobberous clusters of tiny square-almost pinky-white blooms springing out from rampantly enthusiasitc growths of succulent-like rubbery thick leaves ... these surely come from Mediterranean countries if not further afield. The leaves are like a money plant's, not in shape but in texture, appearance and "that's what they're like"-ness.

We went round a Renoir, Pissaro, Monet, Van Gough, Picasso etc special exhibition. There were some fantastic works dedicated for the duration. French fin de siecle/turn of the (20th) century pointilliste pixx of bathers and iconographous French ladies in hats. You've seen them all before I know you have. And a Van Gough sunflowers and a Van Gough crabs (which was crap) and a Van Gough stirred up field and stirring cloudy sky that I loved. I love Van Gough, love the spirit of his works. Love the one with the halo'd absynthine stars and lamps ...

Huge St Patrick's Day music stage celebration in middle of Trafalgar Square ...

Lovely dinner ...

Cannot indulge in any detail as have to go now ...

L8Rs...

... Gleds

Meeting Momma Gledwood

WISH ME LUCK: I'm about to treck down to Trafalgar Square to meet Momma Gledwood with a Mother's Day card and a basketed "indoor arrangement" (margaritas (not the Los Angeles desperate bourgeois housewife's drink; I'm talking florists' daisies here) plus some pinky-white tiny square-like flowers with moneyplant-reminiscent leaves. These in separate pots in a little basket that she can keep in her conservatory (I don't believe in cut flowers; I think they're a waste of flowers if you know what I mean. Why not spend a little more on something that's still growing??) I shaved, changed into an entire outfit devoid of the dreaded bloodstains and fag-holes (woo!!) and put on deodorant especially. Also I washed my hair as I said. It looks silky-soft and lovely, even though it is my hair. Perhaps the drugs have finally warped my mind completely or maybe my hair really is getting more acceptable as time rushes me towards pensionerhood. Well I've got to go now and collect some dog-ends to dismember into the Golden Vaginia pouch I skankilly brought with me for the purpose. My Mother is vigorously antismoking (I don't know why as both her parents smoked. I grew up with an abiding love of tobacco thanks to my grandparents' heavy smoking. I've always loved the smell of a freshly lit John Player Special ... the aroma will forever remind me of my maternal grandmother in her butter-coloured kitchen (I think the walls were actually painted white but that's what the smoke did to the walls) ... she puffed away, buttered her white bread (we always had to have bourgeois brown at home) still on the loaf and then sliced it. And she had a real live coal burner in the kitchen with glowing embers that fascinated my five year old self endlessly. I still remember having a bath in her butler sink or whatever they call it (a big deep kitchen sink//..whatever ..) standing up naked characteristically not caring. You ought to see my childhood snaps; they're a paedophile's dream. I always seemed to be walking about nude as a toddler/young baby. But point being I remember being little enough to not merely bathe but BATH in a sink. Wow, that is little. Well I've got to go now and slick my unconscionable hair back and get ready to present said flowers. ByEE!

Down But Not Yet Out

WOKE UP SO DEATHLY-DULL THIS AFTERNOON (yes, that late) that I could not get my head around three of the simplest chores. Eventually I got round to the first of them: hair-washing, which I did in one of the two sinks in my room. The water went a gratifying shade of black; that's all I can say. The second chore involved gorcery shopping. Being broke didn't matter as I had vouchers. I did remember the chocolate Nesquik and deodorant.

Whatever task #3 was I never shall know; it never got done (or else my memory is even worse than I thought).

Now,as midnight approaches or has passed I ponder the imponderable ... Okay this is what I'm wondering: how am I going to feel better when I give up heroin, the only joy in life I have?

No wonder I feel down. My life is rack and ruin. I'm seeing my Mum on Sunday and stressing already about coming up with an entire outfit free of ciggie-burns and bloodstains.

Well I have a good book to read. As I said ysterday, it surprised me that I found it so engaging especially on the face of it with four such lacklustre characters with such dull lives. If you want to know what grabbed me, there you have it. They all somehow remind me of myself!!!

Finally Found a Book to Read

SPENT SO LONG LOOKING for a good book to read ... the one I finally found might surprise you. It's the sort of slim volume that might go unborrowed in it's tatty plastic-bound hard covers for years at a time. It's a 60,000 word novel about four old people on the verge of retirement. I've only read the first couple of chapters and loved the way the author characterized these individuals by their hair and what they ate for lunch. The book is called Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym. (New York, 1977, Harper & Row/Perennial.) I was quite surprised to find an American edition retaining all the British spellings, expressions and references. Nowadays you hear Brit authors (usually talking to the Guardian newspaper or BBC Radio 4) complaining bitterly about how saccharined-out the American editions of their works become. Like comparing Heinz tomato soup to the real thing. (I bought a tin a few months ago in the vane hope that it might taste of tomatoes. No. "Salty watery sugar-flavour gruel" is what the labelling should have proclaimed. Anyway ...

What have I to tell about today? I hibernated until 5pm when I had to see Valium Marilyn to return £5 she'd lent me. An arduous rush-hour bus journey ensued. Got there and watched Animal Planet on her cable TV ... staff petting lions in Alabama zoo. Marilyn agreed with me: that's a really foolish thing to do. And what happened to zoos' treasured (supposed) belief in keeping wildlife "wild"-?? I heard a shocking story about a giant tortoise and a baby hippo who'd formed a bond in Kenya only to be separated because their relationship somehow went against nature. What rot! I'm quite sure such things do happen in the natural world when mankind isn't about to interfere. And what can be more unnatural than keeping a poor baby hippopotamus in animal prison to be gawped at by the paying bourgeoisie? I'm all for keeping animals but I hate hypocrisy, especially when cruelty is being excused. Give the poor hippo it's surrogate mummy back! So what if she has a hard shell and her head disappears when she's frightened? Are they going to take her back to the Galapagos islands? I think not.

Well I have to go as there's something good coming on telly. (Comic Relief does The Apprentice. Our Apprentice stars Sir Alan Sugar who's 100 times a scarier boss than the bouffonted Donald Trump will ever be. Donald Trump's prestige is all tied up with his money. Sir A has a force of personality that would still shine through if he were living on a park bench. (I somehow don't see that he'd stay there for long ...) See you later.

Internet Nonanonymity

19:16 hrs. PASCAL IS ON HIS WAY to avail himself of a man on a bike two streets away. I cannot pinpoint whrefore, what or why but I feel a chapter dragging to its uneasy end as regards blogging. I no longer feel I've anything to say. And thinking back to hornets and most annoyingly Hoobs I feel distraughtly embarrassed. I have described this as a "secret diary online" but when you know you're going online you make the effort, even with your "journal intime" to keep certain standards. These are standards I have thrown, as so much else in life, to the four walls. As for my suicide attempt mentioned yesterday ... well if I knew you all in a day-by-day scenario (you know what I mean) I might feel gutted/shamed/exposed at having pretty blithely told of my sordid attempt alone at Christmas in a bath. As it is I don't mind you knowing. Please don't take this the wrong way and let me speak. We're all familiar with the syndrome: sometimes the stranger on a park bench seems somehow precisely the right person to offload on even (or most especially) than one's closest friend. As much as anything else, the stranger (assuming life's paths never again cross) won't remind you of your confessions at inopportune moments, won't blab them to your wider social circle ("Don't tell anyone this but:--...") and worst of all won't turn them into ammo against you in fights or fall-outs. Anonymity can be far more beautiful than it ever is alienating.

Perhaps the internet isn't truly anonymous. Perhaps (what am I saying: no perhaps about it):-- my every move in public is filmed on somebody's CCTV camera or other ... I was going to go into a rant here about modern Britain being all set up to become a totalitarian state but I shan't bother. Boiled frog syndrome is what it's called. The gradual erosion of our civil liberties by the Blairist government in the name of antiterror legislation ... &c, &c, &c ...

And I was going to rant about how awful British TV dramas compared to American but some other day, okay? Nighty-night my friends ... I don't know you at all and yet I feel I know you so well ...

LITERARY MOODS

JUST SAW A TV PROGRAMME ON BIPOLAR DISORDER presented by Stephen Fry, who is, I should think, just about thee most successful English actor not to be particularly wellknown by Hollywood. Several years ago ... it must be over a decade ago now ... he received some critical reviews re a West End play he was appearing in. Amid tabloid hyperbole and hysteria he vanished, took a ferry across the water and was last seen wandering the desolate North Sea shores somewhere outside Ghent in Belgium ... at least that's my potted history of his story.

What had actually happened was, he had a depressive breakdown. Since that he's been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (that's manic depression to me and possibly you) and has been riding the highs and lows, lithium-free and medication-free ever since. (Not that his problems started with his absconding from the play, they merely reached a head and when he "turned himself in" at a London hospital the dreaded diagnosis followed. It was quite an informative documentary as TV-hours go.

Usually in these things, if you have any prior knowledge of the subject at all, you learn nothing new bar perhaps a few trifling facts and merely hear old knowledge regurgitated in a novel way. This documentary was different because it scratched the surface of an interesting area: the pros and cons of mood-stabilizing medication. If you go on lithium and disconinue it the moodswings can become more frequent and worse. So what has any of this to do with me? I was just ten or eleven years of age when I first became depressed enough to want to die.

Throughout my teens I had intermittent periods of being so lethargic, so slowed up, I was being compared to a dinosaur. Then, having done my A Levels and got grades I found disappointing, yet which were still good enough to get accepted on the literature course to which I had applied, I eventually left home (after a gap-year in which I did nothing of any note at all ...) went to uni at the other end of the country, rapidly became tired and down, got introduced to drugs via a joint and an LSD trip where I unwittingly swallowed 4 tabs at once (well I didn't know how small they were and this was "white blotters") I spiralled rapidly into a depressive tailspin and stayed down and very low for over two years. Looking back I don't know how I managed to achieve what little I did during the time that I endured university ... for a year and two terms (semesters were just coming into British universities back then).

The psychiatrist to whom I was referred was of little help. He prescribed one medication that put me straight in Accident and Emergency with Parkinsonian symptoms. His colleague took one look at me (I turned up stoned on cannabis) and struck me off his books. I since found out psychiatrists are most apt to do this if you fail to conform to the right profile of ticked boxes. I saw a counsellor who I later surmised despised me because my lifestory was too similar to her's.

For several long and trying months my only source of solace and support was my GP ("family doctor") who made for me a rolling appointment same time every week and in his own subtle way ensured that as I listed and dipped my way through life I didn't completely capsize and sink altogether. It was only at the end of this two year timeframe, walking across a vast expanse of grass into a great pink sunset that a rushing feeling filled me that I had only ever felt on drugs. This was genuine happiness returning at last, and all I could compare it to was the sensation of the drug ecstasy. Because the nights on E were the only happy nights I'd had for as long as I could remember. I cannot tell you how low I was back then.

I subsequently got a job, worked literally every waking hour. Didn't have enough hours in the week to work, eat, sleep, keep clean and get back to work. So when I got laid off, after weeks on end of this, I was so lost I tried to kill myself. My first thought on awakening was a happy one, because for a lovely moment I thought I'd actually done it, crossed over and this was the afterlife. "This" was actually a chilly bath full of weighty debris where I'd lain, knocked out cold on drugs and wearing five layers of clothes. Looking back -- a hopelessly inept attempt, but serious all the same.

Whether I'm "bipolar" I have no idea as I've shrewdly (or stupidly) kept my highs to myself, knowing precisely what doctors think of depressed people who get a bit happy and OTT. So I'm presently diagnosed as simply a junkie. Which suits me fine right now. Because at present that is about all I am ...

PS Does anyone actually click on these purple links I pepper my postings with? They are all highly helpful by the way if you want to go on a tangential journey of newness. So come on ...

Chewsday: Wot I Ate

ANSWER: LOADS AND LOADS OF fried Chicken Nuggets & tomato ketchup in wholemeal pitta ...

WELL THAT'S A BETTER TITLE THAN "Tuesday not very much news day" which I was going to put up. That's another thing that spurred me on to write was listening to the radio and some two-bit novelist (must have been 2-bit else I'd recall his name) was yarning with the interviewer saying titles were really hard to come by (not at all true, I start with a title and the imagery it evokes and begin with that) he also said creating believable characters was a challenge (absolutely not so they are the lifeblood of my stories). I'm outing myself here aren't I? Because I have actually written before it's just that none is published (and a lot lost/unfinished/etc) I don't care for my juvenillia because that's what it is, very immature works that might perhaps show promise but I feel no yearning whatsoever to go back over them all. I'm after pastures new ...

So you all loved my Killer Wasps vid!??! Good!!...

Had a painfully long drug counselling session with a replacement worker today: she was a nurse and said I seemed depressed and asked me a lot of questions that only made me feel worse. I just wanted to get out of there and time was dragging by. I absolutely loathe being in such situations. Thankfully I don't have to come back for another fortnight.

My friend Ivy is worried about her breasts not looking very nice. Ivy if you can give the precise url to the photo I'll link it up but the photograph has gone from your blog so I don't know what to do and the "my clonipin hallucination" link you gave doesn't get me to them either ...

Not like me to have said nothing yesterday. Inspiration is draining from me as far as blogging goes ... so typical of me, so typical I won't say another word about it. (Okay, let me qualify that. I'll not say another word today ...)

Thanks for all the comments on the hornets vid. It's lovely to be loved. Did y'all notice how armour-plated these killer insects actually are? Whereas a normal yellowjacket wasp's abdomen works on a telescopic principle, each segment kind of fitting inside the last (how do I know this? I survived all last summer with a nest somewhere in the eves near my room and regular four a.m. attracted-to-the-light divebombing onslaught... And the black and yellow aren't actually in alternate bands though of course that's how we'd depict a cartoon wasp. Actually the two colours are mixed in a waspy peach-melba kind of way (click here to see what I mean) ... But these actually are black-yellow-black-yellow fully bulletproofed in their bulging armour-plating way (click here to see one on somebody's hand)... how they ever curve their body to sting a honeybee which is five times shorter than themselves is a mystery of physiology to me ... no wonder they merely resorted to biting their heads off!! Anyone who still hasn't seen it must click here for the insect-wars experience of your life!!

I'm off now to make sure I've linked up Ivy's breasts properly. See you later ...

PS Click here to see a genuine iron maiden "cabinet" device ... (clue for the squeamish: it's not a rock-n-roll band ...)

Wot Eye Did 2Day + Japanese Hornets

TIME AND LIFE ARE SLIPPING BY ME: I feel them draining through my fingers even as I try to keep just some kind of track. I'm racking my brains for some kind of ideas as I want a project. Already have one idea, pretty much fully-formed, but that can be done any time. I want to write about my present situation while it still lasts, which entails constructing either a solid plot or, at the very least, a tale with a strong moral point. Just "what the junkies did" isn't going to light any publisher's fire, I can see that now. (Though having said that I've not come across a single novel that actually tells drug addiction as it is. At least nothing that's sold well enough to register on my radar (and I'm not interested in writing for junkies, they don't buy books (they mostly shoplift them or just pick them off collections left at charity shops' doorsteps...) I want my story to be read by anyone who speaks English and feels inclined to pick a good book up. That's who I'm writing for. Not other addicts and not people who want something selfconsciously "literary" and possibly prize-nominated to display on the sideboard impressing passing middleclass houseguests.)

William Burrows wrote some interesting stuff back in the 1950s ... but I have to say I found his introductions and appendices far more interesting than the actual "work" itself. Don't worry I'm not shillyshallying around registering more excuses for my inactivity. When I do pick up pen to write I do so with "alacrity". I think that's the expression.

Saw a fantastic film last night called The House of Mirth with X-Files star Gillian Andersen playing a headstrong society girl from turn of the (20th) century New York. Her reputation gets ruined (although gambling money at bridge aside, she does nothing (so far as I can see) to warrant that ...) and in the end all goes "breasts up" to Bowdlerize a local expression. (By the way, googling just now the title to make a purple link I found out it did indeed come from a novel (by Edith Warton). I thought while I was watching it that the concept was a little complicated for an original screenplay ...

Do you know one of my problems is I am too obsessive. Case in point would be I watched The Hoobs two mornings in a row and now my brain is hoobaciously hoobledoobleDOOing at every opportunity. So people belive I'm madder even than I usually am. When I was younger (last year of primary school, actually) I had so-called OCD badly enough to be washing my hands until they chapped and literally bled. And even though this has ostensibly gone away I'm left with remnants of that manner of behaviour. For one thing I cannot do anything by halves. I believe this has worked against me as an addict. Once I'd broken down various barriers, crossed bridges, burned bridges perhaps I really felt there was no going back. And my sheer willfullness has worked against my wellbeing. Will equals desire. And my desire has been to "use". Which is precisely what I have done again and again and again, day after day for year after year.

Right I'm going to go now but just thought I'd leave that little "titbit" (I'm not being rude that is the Brit dictionary spelling, with a t not a d) with you...

PS What do you think of this? Have a click on my Beefight: Hornets from Hell telecast!! (Don't be too impatient: let the IBM commercial/etc run first ...) This is the best Youtube-type video I have ever seen and I thought it had been deleted from National Geographic's site. So sit back, have a nice cup of coffee with sweetened with honey? perhaps??, watch the carnage & get ready to tell your friends... Aren't those the most disgusting wasps you've ever seen??

PPS Isn't this a cute lil snap of a Roborovski hamster??

Chatterday Saturday

STANLEY THE O.A.P. SHOPLIFTER and Miles his Public Skool partner have dropped round a few times this week. They sit about for an hour or so smoking their wares, give me a bit (I can't usually do it in front of them as would have to strip nearly naked to find a site) but it's the thought that counts. Miles came by today. Stanley is funny. He tells the tallest stories I've ever heard, eg about whacking a wasps' nest down out of an oak tree and the yellowjackets (that's what us Brits mean when we say a "wasp") going mental up the entire street. Old 1920s fishwives (well that's what it was like when Stanley was a little boy) running up in arms from their homes with black and yellow swarms buzzing them out ... etc etc. The other day when they came and I had somewhere to go I avoided them, met up with them later on a park bench with another shoplifter called Sarah. And sat there as the three of them talked "shop" about what store five miles away you can't take so much as a stick of chewing gum out of "because yous lot have done it to death"... Sarah speaks such heavy London slang she even says "moons" instead of months. I mean honestly she sounds to me like a Mediaeval serving wench. "I bain't been outta these ere parts for seven moons" what does she think she sounds like. I had an animated conversation about "getting clean" not that I'm telling anyone I want to, for over an hour. And in the end told the nasty truth. Well what is this existence about? Except a tightrope walk between survival and death. I don't know.

Hooby Saturday

I STILL HAVE THAT INFERNAL MUSIC from The Hoobs whizzing round in my head ... I have asked myself how on earth such a show got commissioned. Full of baby language. It makes sense once you know it but still, I can envision a telly exec cackling at the screenplay and tossing its confetti over his left shoulder. The Hoobs are the aliens. Peeps are people. Tiddlypeeps are the little peeps, the children. Wrinklypeeps are old pensioners like Ruth... okay; sorry Ruth, more like 107 year-old Aussie Olive then. And the peeps are just normal people like me and you. The Hoobopaedia is the great book Hubba-Hubba is working upon. Hoobnet is their internet. Roma, the upperclass one, invades the galaxy on her roving motorbike to interview gentlemen stiltwalkers etcetera... Tula, the pink hippo, looks like the gay one on Rainbow, is the bossy girl. The other Hoobs are Groove, the green one and Ivor (purple). And the Motorettes, who sing songs about "Who? What? Where? Why? Etc?" resemble something you might encounter nibbling mercilessly upon your soul in a terrifying mad LSD-trip ...!! Not to mention the rest of their vocabulary: hubacious=groovy ... hoobledoobleDOO!!=goodbye /&c/&c/&c ...

And trust me to wake up this morning in the mournful dark, shivering and freezing, to turn on the telly and who should show immediately upon my screen but Hubba-Hubba singing songs from Hoobland... honestly...! I'm not talking about the Hoobs from now on... Honestly I'm not ...

Hoob News

MY HAMSTER ESCAPED during The Hoobs (do be sure to click the purple link) my favourite nighttime television prog. The Motorettes put in a particularly funky performance of "Why??" this morning... Also Hammy is very stealthy and two-faced. He pretends to be almost immobile with laziness and boredom and sleep and then the first moment of freedom and the swine is practically uncatchable. He always looks at me with black poppy eyes like: "What? What's got you so het up?? As if I was really actually going to honestly run away? Me??" Yeah man YOU.

Yesterday I started writing out an intellectual posting on paper but I've only lost it again. Saw a horrible TV prog on bailiffs this morning. Actually I have nothing to fear from these because I own nothing at all that they could seize. Literally nothing. But I do want to sort my debts out. They only got so out of hand because I was literally suicidal and couldn't see the point of paying off money when I was going to be dead. Childish but true.

Oh I remember what I wrote now. Some crap about how much I'd love to live abroad. Can't even live in this country so how will I do abroad?? Truthful answer: probably far better due to severing several ties of associations ... not least among them being drugs ...

Well I'm off to see the TiddlyPeeps on my way I go ...
I'm off to see the Tiddleypeppes they're sad they're bad I KNOW!!!! (private joke: watch the Hoobs). Right I'm off. See yer.

PS Click here to find out why cats have whiskers.

Surveillance Society

HAVE YOU EVER GOOGLED your own name? Try it. I'm not talking blognames here. I mean full-on birth-cert appellations. You shall be shocked at 1. how you share your name (if it is unusual) with more people than you ever realized possible and 2. how very much information on these people and their careers Google and the worldwideweb between them have succeeded in amassing. Try your entire name, middle names and all and prepare to be shocked. Far more details than you ever thought it fair for others to know might well be sitting there just waiting to be tapped ...

Harlan Coben, in his thriller Just One Look, has his characters googling their own phone numbers. I tried this several times this morning with several acquaintances' digits. Honestly, my friends, you need to try this for yourself if you've not done it before, the results will make you wonder ...

All I can say is, I admit it. Until recently I seriously did not grasp just how microsmall this diminishing global village of ours has actually become. I honestly had no idea. I always knew, of course, that all manner of what we rightly consider personal data was available to those with the connexions, the hacking ability and the sheer bloodyminded persistence to access it. What I didn't realize was how very much Google and its competitors carry for all to poke their noses into freely and without any special knowledge, passes, people you need to know or special techniques to access. I've just tapped in details of some of the old friends I want to get back in touch with. One (and I'm not at all surprised) is still as computer-illiterate as ever. Her query, something like "how do I print out an email" is there on Google for all to ridicule and cackle at...

Food for thought, don't you think? But is it nourishment or poison??

PS for a fascinating blog go to http://www.allaboutolive.com.au/ -- lifestory of a 107 year old Aussie lady!! (Thanxx to Ruth who told me the url.)

Have a Look at This ...

Hamster Spin Cycle the hamsters in the vid are Roborovski dwarf hamsters that's why they look funny.

Robbies on Wheel

More Spinning

Thinking of "Careers" ...

WELL IT'S LATE Tuesday morning: I slept for ages and ages last night. Have been wondering what careers I could do. Do you know I've always been attracted to the idea of medicine. I don't know that I'm bright enough to be a doctor but I'd be up for training to do nursing. I'm not qualified to do any career at all you see, so I want to learn a "trade" ... Of course the one problem that arises with nursing and being a former addict (I wouldn't do the course if I was still using, I'd HAVE to be a former addict) is the issue of handling painkillers. But I've met a doctor at NA who got high on his own supply of drugs, cleaned up and was still practising into his sixties. My drugs are street drugs, so the associations with medication are weaker anyhow (addiction works by associations, it turns life into one big vicious circle). I was pondering this possible career like a teenager all weekend and only at the end of it realized my addiction might affect it. But I don't know that I should let that put me off training at all. I don't know, well it's an idea ...

Miserable on Monday

IT'S BEEN ONE HELL of a miserable weekend, waiting, waiting on one thing to make it feel better. Today was kept waiting for four hours at Mother Hubbard's house. All manner of dreadful thoughts had been going through my mind ... little positive for me to say. I'm going to give the two best Youtube links below. Have a click and see whether you like them...

1. Nora the Piano-Playing Cat

2. Michael Jackson's Thriller Wedding Video

Do tell what you think~!!

Bleak Saturday

THIS WAS ONE OF MY DARK DAYS, today. Just like the bad old days when I lived day to day close to rock bottom, laid out (metaphorically) on the street and bashing my head on the pavement. Knowing that living like this, I simply could not go on.

I'd taken my methadone in good time. And yet still, when I awoke, was shivering with chills. I felt ill all day. When my dealer called at 9.30 and I hit him for tick, I knew he wasn't coming though he kept claiming all through the day that he was just going to be another "hour". I drank more meth and went back to bed. Woke after midday still unwell.

This was a hopelessly bleak day. Even when I did make £10 and rang another dealer all I got was an earful of attitude. For a measly £10 (well it was a lot of money to me!) he wasn't going out of his way. I would have to go out of mine.

No buses were running except ones so hopelessly packed you'd imagine a call ahd gone out to evacuate this rotten town. I didn't have my Oyster (swipe) card on me. Walked home which took over an hour. Too exhausted almost to climb the stairs.

Did ride the bus which was furnace-hot from home to this garage he demanded I meet him at. When I got there and found a callbox (eventually) in working order the dealer was all thanks that I'd made the effort. (Strange creature.) Literally on putting down the receiver his runner cycled past. So I got sorted. A torturously packed bus appeared nearly straight away. Home and nearly tearful. Plugged gear into vein. And the whole charade was ended.

All I tell myself is: this cannot go on.

I can't live like this ANY MORE.

In Between

I BOUGHT A BOOK THIS MORNING. It is a thriller called Just One Look by my favourite writer of thrillers: Harlan Coben. Somehow because it's by him (or just becaus it's good) I genuinely can sit down and concentrate upon it and read on and be fascinated and involved. And it taught me one other thing regarding my own bestselling novel. I have been walking around you see feeling constipated. That feeling a bird must feel when it has an entire clutch of eggs inside it and just wants to expel them in the feathered nest ... that's how I feel about my own project (which I am not mentioning here from now on until it is finished (or never done at all)). Here's the Harlan Coben blurb condensed: Grace Lawson is living a happy life in the suburbs with her husband Jack and two young children ... within 12 hours Jack has disappeared and a brutal hitman is stalking his family. All Grace can see is that the past is coming back to haunt the present -- and the safe world she knows has been turned upside down ... Intriguing perhaps but hardly groundbreakingly original. And that's just how mine feels. So I'm more minded to go ahead and write it now. Because it's not the tale that counts (you can write that on the back of a cigarette packet) ... it's all in the telling ...

Nicole said I worry too much about what people think. This is most definitely true. However conversely I do not care at all what people think about me. The distinction is this: I care what others feel far more than I care what they feel about me. Because at the end of the day people are going to dislike me whatever I do so why worry? Am I making sense here?

I'm glad Debs is feeling better. She was really ill for a while.

And I got a hit from New Caledonia the other day. Who was that? Come back to me New Caledonian one and tell me who you are ..!

Exasperating ... Me-??

OKAY I CONFESS, my life is going nowhere and I know it and I have no career plans apart from jokey ones that make everybody laugh.

I know I exasperate people by not changing. This blog never has been a cry for help, nor is it meant to be even a document of change (though if and when I do change, that's what the blog will become also). All it was ever meant to give was an insight into my life as an addict of hard drugs. And to draw attention to the fact that addiction can happen to anybody. There's nothing special about being an addict. If I'm "special" in any way it's most definitely despite my addiction -- not because of it.

All I have done today with any enthusiasm is sleep. That's because I could not sleep properly at night. And reluctantly did the bare minimum chores or tasks I had to. And made it to 7pm without major incident.

So much stuff I haven't told you. I'm working on at least making a list of it all. Then I can get round to organizing day-by-day letting you know.

My House

MY FRIEND PASCAL wanted to score today so I came with him to a house where we waited for nearly an hour as the inhabitants piped their breakfast. "It wasn't a proper crackhouse," Pascal knowledgeably declared at one point afterwards. Well it wasn't that pleasant a house. In reply to Vincent: what IS my own house like ... I am tempted (daydreamer that I am) to give a description of my ideal home. Just saw on television a documentary about this guy (an architect) who is attempting to renovate a 14th century castle to live in again as a fully-fledged 7-bedroom home. I had to switch off in the end as just couldn't handle the stress of watching that. Anyhow my house is a council hostel so you enter a dark hall that smells of old dog-blankets. Up flights of grubby stairs to the bathroom etc. Depending upon my fellow occupants the atmosphere of this place has changed dramatically at different times. I don't really know what to say, it's not the most salubrious of homes. We have no plugs in any communal sink or the bath at present. And we never did have a shower. The radiators were on most of last summer until I eventually turned them off using a piece of boltcutter like equipment borrowed from a friend. Now they will barely come on again and to be honest I do not want radiator heating in my room. I would far rather use my own heater as and when required which is what I do.

Funny... I am severely running short of inspiration to talk about the place any more.

Basically it's just a place I want to get out of as soon as I possibly can. So I'm going to write a bestselling novel. That is my only hope of escape..!

My Dreamtime Wednesday

DREAMING, RECOVERING , WAKING, REDREAMING, REAWAKENING ... what is when when this is now?

After a seemingly incredibly long night during which my loud thinking repeatedly awakened me I sit here at close to 6pm wondering what to make of it all. Famous faces, vacuous spaces all spinning through my mind. What can I give voice to in the darkness? It is sunset now. The sun is vanishing and all of us here must survive throughout the long night.

Thank God for electric lighting!!

Laundretta did a little more tantrum-giving. One time when I opened the front door to her when she had lost Matran's key for the zillionth time she (& why on earth did she do this?!?) "offered me out" for a fight!! Something to do with her drunken gurglings ... she thought I somehow took issue with her ... or cared about her sozzled brain's shortcircuited connexions. I stepped over her and told her not to mistake me for someone who gave a sh--.

Mother Hubbard was going ape this morning because she couldn't score. Pascal saved the day, offering to purchase a weighed amount with her money. So I came with him to a vulgar house. Crackhouse might be the word the newspapers would use for it. Three black early twentysomethings sitting round a breakfast table having their breakfast. Only food did not come into it. Breakfast for them came in white smokey form: crack cocaine. And one of them, perhaps the biggest one in there, with particularly rampant afro hair outgrowings and the pastiest pallid face turned out upon our leaving actually to be a woman!!

I'm glad I brought a newspaper with me to that place. Not only did it kill the boredom of sitting in someone else's "crack"house nonrentpaid virtual squat (and I'm sure that's what it was, somewhere the landlord was being strung out for as long as he possibly could be for no rent at all...) but avoided my making eyecontact with any of these people who thought they were so ... well, not cool but so whatever they thought they were ... and basically gave me a mental teleport outta that situation. I'm getting old now. Too old for situations like that.

At long last, nearly an hour later, Pascal's friend's friend eventually showed up with this heroin and we made good our escape. I couldn't help but wonder, as we walked out, who those young people were, how they made their money, what they thought they were doing and where they were all going in life. Sometimes it's so much easier to focus those questions on somebody else.

Am I making any sense in an otherwise nonsensical day? O what am I saying? The day has gone past. Evening is come. Tomorrow shall arise as predicted.

I have nothing to latch on to. Nothing IS as predicted. Does that make any sense to you. Does that make any sense?

I want to lie down. And then unconsciousness takes away the time. And dreams knit together what remains of reality into fables. Simple as. Simple.

If only life was that straightforward!

Tuesday TV Views Day

WEARILY I CLETTERED ALONG last night, half-sleeping and half-not. Waking to television shows to teach schoolchildren to pass science examinations. Waking to Friends but too tired to stay awake anyway through it. Waking to Frasier eventually. I love Frasier. After Friends it probably is my favourite American sitcom. (Might I just interject here: American sitcoms were viewed over here for decades as rubbish. The Cosby Show being a really good example. Riproariously popular on your side of the pond. And yet lacking any wit or bite or point of view except that of the slightly right wing Reader's Digest-reading Montel Williams viewing homeowning parent:... know what I mean by that?? It wasn't until Friends came along that any American sitcom became popular over here. And suddenly an invasion of American TV happened. Not so much on our screens (because we've always had American imports (though we make more of our own shows than any other country in the English-speaking world)) but in our hearts. Before the 1990s most of those imports were regarded as candifloss TV. Barely there. Rarely missed. (A few exceptions, of course.) But in the 1990s American telly really seemed to grow up. And now I can say and mean it that ER is better than Casualty (British ER). And Friends and Frasier are better than ... well ... anything else. What a long posting about nothing. Do you see now why I lived for so long without TV? Am I making sense? It was all to do with loving it too much. Not hating it. I just marvel that I did about a year and a half without it!!!

Laundretta hasn't woken since her last bender. Matran has been dead quiet. The house is in drab misery:-== What's new there? But I'm not sleeping as long as before. I'm off to finish the last of my Sainsbury's marge-fried veggie fingers in wholemeal pitta breads & a dash of tomato ketchup. Sorry I know those ingredients were ever so slightly offputting but I love 'em when they're crispy!!! All the Best now. Gleds.

PS If y'all would like to view some fabulous fotografs, (horsey, doggie, flowers and wildlife) have a click on this.

The Seductive Process of Addiction

LIVING A DREAM HALF AWAKE: my favourite sort of day. When I can sit alone and, not having slept so well at night, and having drugged up I drowse and wake and drift between wakefulness and dreaming. It's in these states that I wonder whether dreams or wakefulness are really the more real... Not that I even needed drugs ever to drift out, disengage, dissociate. I do that so easily anyway... I question why heroin ever needed to come into the picture.

But drug-taking doesn't necessarily have the deep, dark roots that people so frequently ascribe to it. ("You must have been dreadfully hurt to be taking such hard, hard drugs")... isn't necessarily true at all. As the one perceptive psychiatrist I have ever met once told me: people take drugs because they make them feel good>> simple as. And I'm inclined to agree-- but only on one level. On another: many addicts do have all manner of pain and darkness and horrific things in their pasts. Some do. But there are as many reasons for using as there are people who use. In fact there are many many MORE reasons. Nobody does anything for just one reason, not in normality. Everything in life is multifaceted. Drug addiction, dull, depressing and overridingly BORING as it is in actuality, is no different.

How I got hooked on heroin is a long, long tale of caution intermittently thrown to the winds, of sadness, U-turns, resolutions broken and bad friendships. I willfully went out looking for heroin. I was very depressed and knowing the stuff might kill me the first time I took it only heightened its glamour. For two or three years I managed to keep my using to a one weekend a month type of basis (my tolerance was so small that in the beginning and when the drugs were good, I could get high four times by smoking £10 worth). Even so, there were times, looking back, having used the stuff every day for over a week that I was putting on layers of clothes, taking them off, never able quite to get the temperature right... I now know, with bitter hindsight that I was suffering very light withdrawal and not even knowing it. I'm glad I didn't know either, for that would have pushed me towards using. Another thing that put me off was the unpleasantness of scoring. Right from the beginning I was getting introductions directly to the dealers themselves, not going through a "middleman" junkie friend the way I subsequently found out (years too late!) that most casual users did. No, I had to do it different. And how I hated dealing with these people. The bad vibes I felt emanating from them like radiant shadows. (Contradiction, but I once saw that in an hallucination. A shadow-man walked towards me when I was alone, at night, in a huge industrial squat. Nobody to hear me scream. A shadow man effulging a light that literally engulfed me crept up to the cupboard where I was sleeping, opened the door, flooded me with light and bzzzz-PING! He vanished again. Leaving me in pitch darkness... In my early heroin days I knew somebody who would sell me small bits of methadone. Now for all the complaints junkies will make about methadone (mostly because it takes so very long to take effect, often two hours or more, when you really need it to). If you are nontolerant, methadone can make you pretty high. Only it takes, as I say, at least two hours to do this. Which I do not advise. For it is even MORE dangerous in overdose (being longer-acting) than heroin. So do not mess with the meth. OK? Anyhow, I gradually got into the habit of recreationally drinking this stuff until I was knocking back a small bottle every other day... Went away to stay with a friend out of town only to be hit by a mystery virus that made me hot and cold and sweaty and restless, gave me diarrhoea and had me waking absolutely drenched in sweat in the middle of the night ... I knew some naughty friends. They told me I was "sick" (ie in withdrawal). I didn't believe them but was more than willing to go along with an excuse to use heroin. Strangely, every dose of heroin I took mysteriously relieved this strange condition. It was only nearly two years later with much contemplation and hindsight that I looked back and realized: yes the seeds of my addiction were sown all the way back then. That was the first time in my life that someone gave me a "chill pill" (chloral betaine -- a kind of tranquillizer or sleeping pill) that I felt the "mellow" effects of, but it singularly failed to hit the right spot. That spot being the opiate spot. Only methadone and heroin hit that.

The sloping down of my addiction was a long and gradual and drawn-out process, so gradual in fact that to this day I cannot isolate a specific time or line I crossed from not being an addict to suddenly becoming one. So many little events occurred. From me willfully going out and scoring, experimenting in secret (I never had a bunch of heroin friends in the beginning. I knew the local junkies, but I used alone. And I kept the heroin part of my life very strictly separate from the rest of it.) I got more and more used to the drug. I tore myself repeatedly away. One afternoon having been in great internal conflict, meandering down the street I picked up what I had at first assumed to be a bag of sweets. This was no sweets. It was several grams of bagged up heroin. Enough to keep me high every afternoon for five weeks. That got me round my dislike of scoring and broke down a hugely important barrier: that of using every day. Of course I got a little habit. Came off it with strictly reducing methadone. That summer, the official version was that I was clean. I was not clean. I was using about once a week. What really did it for me was striking up a relationship with someone who had a ten year habit. She wanted to use at every opportunity that arose. How I loved that ride! ...

And so it went on.

And here I am now. Just remember this: how slowly or how gradually something happens means nothing in the end. Because -- whether you get there slowly or quick -- the destination is exactly the same.

Do not use heroin!

I'm knackered now, it is a quarter to two a.m. and I'm going to have to sign out. Will tell more tomorrow ...