Och aye! Ye'll never be a stenographer, ye cannae write fast enough! PLUS: Intellectual Chinese Food

WARNING: THIS POST HAS A SAD SPODDY PART, THEN THE INTELLECTUAL CHINESE PART:~
I'VE JUST BEEN READING the most fascinating site about shorthand. The site-writer's biog tells how as a child he was fascinated by secret codes (I was too; invented one I could write nearly as fluently as ordinary writing). He says he learned shorthand from sheer fascination, rather than as a business tool. I found his writing interesting because I also learned shorthand (though I did have a practical reason: I always wanted to be a writer of some sort and knew that for journalists shorthand is essential. You're not allowed recording equipment in British courts. And for music journalists dictaphones are nearly useless in concerts and nightclubs where background noise makes anything you've recorded virtually incomprehensible.

I chose Gregg's, the American shorthand, which is barely used over here. In this country most budding journalists are taught Teeline these days, which is very easy to learn but to my mind simply not fast enough. Pitman's, the main alternative is exceedingly fast but really difficult to pick up. Also you need to use a pencil or special shorthand-nibbed fountain pen and lined paper is essential as the positioning of penstrokes on or through the line varies according to vowel sounds. I really couldn't be bothered with all that: I just wanted something I could scrawl with a pen on the blank paper I've always favoured and so I taught myself Gregg's system. I say "scrawl": strangely, Gregg's shorthand looks just as scrawly as my own longhand. And it's just as hard to read back unless you really put some discipline into jotting the outlines precisely.

I look back on my old straight (and yes geeky) self who taught myself shorthand. Fair enough it's not like conquering Everest but I've never met anyone else who learned shorthand from a book and can actually use it. I had all this determination and some sticktoitiveness and look what my life has come to!

I really have to write that bestselling novel then all my problems shall magically be solved.

O yes and remember to kick drugs first...

PS: if you're wondering what the squiggles mean, they begin:
Dear Mr Dean: It is essential that I have three copies of our mailing... blah blah blah blah.... Shorthand courses have never featured the most rivetting of dictations...

stop press the Chinese food bit has to come in a minute as I gotta run...

Sorry: had to dash up the rd where my dealer did me a massive block of "B" for £19. To be honest it was so big I was wondering whether it was real but it looks right, smells right...

CHINESE FOOD:
My Mum bought me some shopping from Waitrose (homeland of the foodie bourgeoisie) and Tesco (supposedly our best (though less posh than Waitrose, who do quail's eggs next to normal ones) though I shop at Sainsbury's). Now I have everything for a plush Chinese meal including straight-to-wok noodles, toasted sesame oil, proper nondisposable chopsticks (x about 18,000,000 with Chinese writing atop saying "Westerners are berks!" (well that's probably what these things say: who knows? One man got a permanent tat on his upper arm reading "Coca-Cola": it was all over the Sun newspaper... Rice crackers, plum sauce, blackbean sauce, szechuan sauce, chili sauce, a far better soy sauce than the last one I had (even though that had Chinese writing all over it (I'm a sucker for a bit of exotic calligraphy...) that went into my old mattress: remember? like very runny black diarrhoea)... and some other sauce. The upshot being that even though I had no other stir-fry ingredients apart from newborn noodles, parboiled diagonal-chopped carrots (so "authentic"!), some crushed unsalted cashews (must be careful not to eat entire lot direct from packet) and a bit of (non-spring) onion, plus a sprinkling from my half kilo bag of MSG (I'm such a devotee now), tiny bit of dark soy and that toasted sesame oil... it came out amazing! Even better than the local Chinese's efforts, I'd venture to say... That sesame oil certainly is something... Adds a liquid toastiness I had assumed the takeaway achieved by lightly burning everything at one stage... so you can imagine what resulted from my naive attempts to replicate that little effect...

Because I'm wishing to move further from the takeaway and nearer "authenticity" (I use the word advisedly). And I'm not willing to stir-fry dogs, crows, slugs, wasp grubs or anything else of the non-halal variety consumed in China, I'm thining of switching to Malaysian cooking because they're mostly Muslims and I won't even eat pork, let alone anything 6-legged (lobsters have six yuk-spines and they're considered a delicacy even by stupid English people). The best foreign restaurant meals I've ever had were all Malaysian. To me it was a mix of the best of Indian, Chinese and Thai without spicy extremes or yucky sweet-&-sour (I never got the point of that one). Malaysian salads are the best in the world. Anyway I have to go now I've a bag of stir-fry ingredients calling my name.

Cheerio then!

VIDEO
GIRLS ALOUD: I'M NOT THE LOVING KIND
Their new single. This is a masterpiece. The art director's use of a limited palette is rather effective. And I like the way this video moves, like a glossy magazine brought to life... What a catchy tune too!

Mother Hubbard In Hospital

MY V. GOOD FRIEND MOTHER HUBBS has just returned from a trip Down Under a couple of days ago. All went wrong in the last week. Weather was stifling in Melbourne anyhow but she got extremely hot and sweaty. Then terrible bellyache broke in... turned out it was pancreatitis which is really nasty and an inflamed gall bladder. If she'd not got to hospital in a 150-mile ambulance-dash (they were near Melbourne; not in it!) the Aussie doctors say her pancreas would have ruptured and she could have died. MH is not one to make a fuss about health issues (or pain; unless she's in agony). When she did say she was ill in the night her partner just wanted to roll over and leave it till morning. But she insisted and we're all glad she did. Now she's in hospital over here and awaiting an operation. We all hope she will be all right...

And what a horrible end to a holiday, but! (As they might say down in Victoria...)

(That is not her in the picture: I'm reliant on stock images...!)

I told her about my moving and my Mum and Ikea and she said I'm glowing... (cool!!)

My only problem in the new place is the continuing invasion of cockroaches. My Mum says they are a metropolis-wide problem in London. Out of town, where she is, infestations are barely heard of. But here, nearly all professional kitchens have chronic low-level infestation. And rented accommodation is rife with it.

Having already used an entire can of Raid Crawling Insect Spray (33% Extra Free: 0.2% pyrethrum; 0.2% permethrin) it sends the poor things into jigs and jitters and unless you get them full-on drowned in spray death takes over an hour to "embrace" them... I used the entire thing in a week. And that was being sparing. So today for a bargainacious £1.29 I got a 400g 0.5% permethrin powder to dust right along all skirting and cupboard tops/etc: already half done with half my place and a new red Raid spray, writing in French and Arabic. I checked the active chemicals and they were different and at far lower concentrations. So I was just about to put it back on the shelf in despair, thinking "this is health and safety gone mad: now the product's even weaker" when I realized it was the West African version where they have mega-bugs. And sure enough I got it home and it knocks 'em dead within 10 seconds. Amazing!

*

The late Pandable's looky-likey's Pet of the Day in The London Paper...

Have you got Sky TV? If so watch Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict tonight at 10pm. It gets a really good write up in the London paper (have a clickonit and read...)

The Negative Post

I HELD BACK FROM POSTING THIS. BUT IT'S WRITTEN (2 DAYS AGO on the back of an envelope)... so here goes.

But just to make it a bit more cheerful, here's the first 11th of the BBC's 1992 documentary on the Queen: Elizabeth R.




click here to see the rest...

"Too Much Too Soon"

I'VE ALWAYS SAID (perhaps more to myself than to the world) that what I want when I do ever get a "normal" life together (which could only ever be post-drugs) is to be rich ~ preferably super-rich and live in grand style. Then I realized what I actually want is a place of my own with proper locking doors (unlike my last house but one), separate rooms (unlike my last place which only had separate loo), cooker and fridge-freezer, own (definitely preferably unshared so you don't have to worry about washed garms disappearing) washing machine and preferably bare, uncarpeted floors. Oh: and not ground floor (security).

And all this just fell into my lap!

I will never get a mortgage. The only way I will ever acquire property is by buying it outright ~ and to do that I really will have to write an international bestseller.

But I've always known deep down that possession, being as they say 9/10 of the law, is everything: to put it another way ~ having the use of something is little different from actually owning it.

So now I have possession of my dream home (credit-crunch dream). (Bigger than the 1-bed flats in Ontario Tower I used to rave about...) (have a clickonthat and see what a wonderful building (full concierge service) that is...) and I wonder: is this really for real? Will it last? With all this beautiful fresh bedlinen and matching pots, pans, coffee table and all manner of accoutrements, this feels at last like a proper home. And it's in the place that I love.

I'm terrified it will all get taken away from me, that I'll end up back in one stinking room with no Hoover for the foul carpets. I can't help fearing this is a game and my paranoia's coming back: a big mindgame where every move's bound to goil me into check. And threat is everywhere. Change will only make worse.

I thank God for all the good that has happened. I just want it to be real. When I lost my mind I couldn't tell what was real or a lie. I don't want to lose my mind again; or my home...

Depressed All The Time

I DON'T WANT TO SOUND TOO NEGATIVE or especially ungrateful. Because I am certainly not the latter. I think it is amazing that finally I get to move into a pukka flat. With ~~S P A C E~~. I have been dutifully brushing and cleaning the floors and trying to be domesticated. Also I'm tossing things in the bin as I go instead of letting them fester on the floor and only clearing up once a fortnight. And washing up with every used plate. And I have loads of plates now. All matching. Woo.

No: it's just I realized that pleased and glad as I am I still feel this depression inside me all the time. And can't sleep properly because I feel so negative.

Also this move feels too good to be true and I'm wondering what the catch is. I've still yet to sign anything at the council housing office (the landlords took it on themselves to transfer me and I signed their papers only... I'm wondering how long this is going to last. I want it to last until something better comes along and not something worse. I keep expecting them to play a trick on me, like saying "so! you packed up and moved out. Sorry that place is too good for you, especially with your massive arrears (long story). We're transferring you back to your old place where you never really liked the area and couldn't even find an internet cafe that worked properly for you... hahaHAAR!!!

MUSIC
BLACK: WONDERFUL LIFE


Black Wonderful Life Remix - The most popular videos are a click away

VIDEO
HUBBLE TELESCOPE: DEEPFIELD OUTER SPACE
the universe is V A S T !

Like a Log

ALL THAT HASSLE AND WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT: a bus runs from as close to my old road as a bus can get right to the end, a few houses away from my new one. All that five-minute traipsing and changing bus was in vain!

Last night I returned to the old dump to remove the last of my papers and socks. (Little bits of stuff and rubbish everywhere.)

I fully cleaned and excavated. (As fully as I could do by a 40watt equivalent energy bulb and with one Cillit Bang spray and two sponges.)

A downside of cooking in one's bedroom was that when I had cause to move out I used the bed as a packing area. The mattress has now taken an entire leaking bottle of soy sauce. It looks like I've diarrhoea'd it and stinks. (Of soy sauce, thankfully ~ not diarrhoea.)

O man! The effort of trundling the last of my stuff at 1am last night right along my own road and up... missed the one night bus that would have got me directly there by a "so near yet so far" 30 seconds (impossible, of course, to run). So had to wait on a deserted highroad with humungous suitcase and outsize tartan washing bag bursting with odd socks and trailing scarves along the pavement...

Still I found myself leaving a few books and sundry things. These are piled by the door with a note to the landlords promising to return by midday today to remove them and "finish cleaning". (As if that job will ever be finished in there!!)

Of course I get back (after half an hour nervously smoking with said trailing possessions by the main road). Cannot sleep and so have endless chocolate milkshake and Turkish pide with jajeek (cacik) dip. Which is my way of saying tsatsiki: the yoghurt-garlic-mint-&-cucumber dip I can never pronounce.

When I finally did get to sleep I slept like a fallen tree. For hours. And hours. And hours. Right round the clock. Long past midday. (Well my landlord could phone me if those books are such a problem.) To 6pm. And woke up feeling like the second day of a skiing holiday ~ ie acheing all over.

I did Sainsbury's tonight (far better choice of stuffed pasta than Tescos). Am looking forward to dinner of Basics Mushroom Tortelloni (£1.59 for 600g) and broccoli sprinkled with Sage Derby gratings: yumm!

MUSIC:
ENYA'S "HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING"

This tune, as featured in this year's Xmas campaign for posh nosh supermarket Waitrose.

Here's the Waitrose ad (1 min)
I love this ad. I think it's really well done. Enchanting...



Here's Enya's official (rarely seen) promo video for the track. The Ireland here looks almost identical to rural Wales. Wales tends not to have churches though, it has some rather Eastern-looking "chapels"...

But what is meant to be going on at 0:54 secs: through the car window (woman reading paper "Kuwait is free" but something very little and easily palmed is passed through.) Is this my dirty mind, or was that meant to be a drugs deal?



Here are shots from the Hubble Space Telescope set to the same tune:~

Sleep Wrapped In Rainbows

I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. Mum and Brian came yesterday and not only moved everything (all I've to do is return tonight to pick up scraps of this and that and clean the old place up then ~ ta-daa! all done and gone!! I can't believe it!¬

~They took me to Ikea and bought me literally a cartload and more of housewares. Slate grey plates, mugs, bowls (the funky style: without brims)... an amazing clothes airer/dryer that can do at least three washloads at a time (see it here).

I'm not smoking in bed any more because they bought me a new double quilt with pillows and two sets of the most amazing covers... as I say, the most beautiful one is in blue, green, red orange and purple strips... it's like sleeping wrapped in rainbows.

And my own washing machine works. So well in fact that I've already put through five washloads. (Turning into a right little housewife. I'll declare myself lesbian next..(!)

And I'm tapping this at the old internet cafe. The same one I used to sit at for hours in the good old days when I actually had facilities to keep up internet friendships instead of getting constantly logged out just as I'm about to say something as seems to have happened ever since I went to the last place. And couldn't find anywhere with half decent broadband. Or a proper accounts system. Or fair charging.

I'm back! I'm back home. It's all good. Pray God all goes well and I get to stay at this new place as long as I please...

SEE WHETHER YOU agree with Mother Hubbard, who says I have terrible bad taste and have a look at the two styles of quilt covers I got.

This was my favourite (though my stripes went longways not sideways)
This one looks more "bedlike" and homely (in the Brit sense of cosy and nice) when it's on.

... You might need to "enlarge" in order to see the colours from the stripes...
... OK, OK it's more "multicolour" than "rainbow"... yeah...
... & I agree with Brian now, the main one is indeed even labelled "purple/multicolour". When he said it was purple earlier I affected not to know what he meant. The original purple one I went for yesterday was such an intense swathe of purpleness, Brian said it looked royal. I said it looked like Cadbury's chocolate wrappers. My Mum just tried not to laugh...

Because Mumzy bought me a new one, I now have two double quilts, my beddy-byes is currently sporting both designs... like an enormous rainbow-stripey nest...

...Baby Itchy has Christened it aready by doing droppings on my pillow...

Hey I've just realized I'm 36 years old and relying on my parents still to sort me out. Take heed kids! This is what heroin does to you!!

ANYWAY, BACK TO THE PUBLIC VOTE:

AS THE SAYING GOES, THERE'S NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE. BUT TELL ME: DO YOU LIKE MY "GOOD TASTE" OR NOT?

MUSIC:
ON A GREGORIAN CHANTS "TIP" here's one I really liked from 1991
ENIGMA ~ SADENESS


MY RAINBOW NEST IS THE TEMPLE OF MY DREAMS.
WHICH REMINDS ME OF THIS ONE...
MESSIAH ~ TEMPLE OF DREAMS...
... featuring footage of Arnold Schwarzennegger in the movie The Running Man...


MADONNA ~ VOGUE LIVE ~ RE-INVENTION TOUR 2004
I love the psychedelic interiors. Remind me of my new pad... (if only!)


CYGNUS X: ORANGE THEME, FERRY CORSTEN "MOONMAN" ORANGE JUICE REMIX

Moving In

I SPENT ALL DAY YESTERDAY fussing about how to move in to this new place. Did three runs there and back with hamsters etc on the bus. The whole thing feels so impossible what with televisions etc. I could barely cope with an empty hammy-filled aquarium what with 2 buses and endless traipsing from stops to houses at each end. Last night I slept like a log in my new bed with the radiators blasting ... couldn't force myself to move till past two in the afternoon, which is seriously late for me. I'm often up by 6 or 7am.

This morning, over a cup of tea and methadone I reluctantly looked inside myself and found some inner strength. The type of moral "fibre" and mettle I hate grasping hold of and harnessing. But I had to.

Because I don't even have bus fare till Monday, I'd decided the best way of emptying the old premises in the mean time would be by doing endless mini journeys. I reckoned 18 or 24 would do it, which I divided into 6-8 per day over three days. I've only done one today. Then I felt exhausted and rang my Mum on my last tiny bit of call credit. (Yes of course in an emergency I'm out of practically EVERYTHING.) Thank God she was there. They're coming tomorrow to move me properly by car! Hurrah!!!

PS: As you can see illustrated ~ my gracious drawing room and entrance hall...

And in celebration this is my favourite "song"

Top one for sound, bottom for visuals...

Cygnus X: Orange Theme (Bervoets and De Goiej Mix)



If it's dance music it has to be really tranced-out, really uplifting or really hard...

If you've ever wondered why people drop the "mindblowing" drug LSD, it's because you can walk down the park and all is glittering with fractals like this...

(Push Remix)



On a more "festive" theme, here's an American ad for Walmart (which I have heard of) featuring some "famous" lad called Jesse (who I've not heard of). Have you?

(2005)

Moving On (Again!)

THIS MIGHT SOUND WEIRD but I was back in my old manor the other day, walking along the buzzing endless row of shops, thinking vaguely "I'd rather be here". Of course I did not dare wish. (Why wish for something you'll never get?) Anyway, yesterday I got a note "ring the landlord: urgent" so I did. Found out I've got to move.

Man! You should see the new place. Upstairs (I hate ground floor) at front (so you can nose at who's on the street: v important) proper cooker with oven. Shower room, toilet and best of all Separate Bedroom with not one but two closets. Plus my own personal washing machine. And central heating that works...

And it's right near where I used to live. Which is Happenin' Central. Not nowhereseville like the last Sleepy Hollow they installed me in...

Years ago I would have thought of this as the most basic normality. Now, after falling down from the world into the outcaste this seems amazing.

Yipee!!!

+ I can post every day now. There's proper internet connexions here...

VIDEOS:

MY FAVOURITE XMAS ADVERTS 2008

1. JOHN LEWIS the famous nationwide department stores "never knowingly undersold"... this tune was (aparently) the Beatles' first number 1 hit. And it's going round and round and round my poor lil head...



2. WAITROSE. This is the posh nosh supermarket for the middle-middle classes who'd rather think themselves aristocrats ("on the servant's day off (that's why I'm doing my own shopping..."). I know this tune. It's by Enya, who sings it far better. This is also circulating my brains...

... the dark-skies destinations shown are in the northern Scottish Highlands and Islands...

(the train journey portrayed is v. similar to my trip to my folks in Wales...)



... AND MOST HATED

... MARKS & SPENCER

Best for undies and socks and camel coloured coats. This is the housewife's first destination for basics.

Don't mind the tune. But all that mugging, kiss-blowing, arm-throwing is seriously annoying. To explain: most of the boys are from the "not famous in America" group Take That. The annoying charade girl in red dress is probably model Erin O'Connor. Chinless girl twirling in the snow is probably fellow-model Lilly Cole... The older eye-rolling blonde is 1960s attagirl TWIGGY.

Itchy's in Custardy

FINALLY I CAUGHT ITCHY around 10 last night after 48 hours awol. Threw an old teeshirt over her (she's so quick she was only half under that with a mini pair of eyes looking like they were about to pop out under the pressure) then I grabbed her and threw her in her old tank where she hobbled about in shock (panicked but not injured). Bashful and Spherical immediately took to licking her fur and saying in their own way "Itchy where on earth have you been?? What was it like out there..??" etc etc.

Hurrah!!

Illustrated top left you'll see the famous picture "Itchy in a spoon". Where they got that measurement 0.75" from I'll never know because she is about 2" or 5cm in length...

Itchy Come Home!

ITCHY IS STILL ON THE RUN! Of course I have seen split second flashes of her dashing across the carpet and I did get near to throwing a teeshirt on her last night. But she is far too quick to scoop with bare hands. Other hamsters, including Russian hamsters and Chinese you can just pick up when they come too close but these robos are like wild woodmice from the garden. Not a hope in hell of catching them without serious recourse to purpose-built robo-dead-ends, traps and the extensive use of sheeting to chuck over the little swine.

I have yet to make any serious efforts to get her back because I know the room has been mouse-proofed with polyfilla so she shouldn't be able to get anywhere. My problem is suitcases (half-unpacked) piled beside the door, legions of carrier bags under the sink (but gaps by the pipes filled in) and so on. I have put out fall-in traps full of used robo-bedding and food but these have failed to attract her enough...

Hopefully by this time tomorrow she shall be in close custardy... But: we shall
see!

Itchy on the Run!

ITCHY has escaped yet again; though it's the first time she's done so in my new place. I'm just hoping there's no holes or cracks in the skirting or under the kitchen units big enough for a tiny robo-hamster to ping down...

She's "only" been missing around 12 hours as I write (Spherical once went awol for 2 or 3 days and I only caught her when she made a nest in a pair of jeans that had fallen down the side of my bed. I picked up the jeans and wrapped them up with Spherical inside and plunked her back on her proper nest. She looked really put out to be back...

Today's photograph ("2 left!") is meant to show Bashful and Spherical begging: "Itchy come home!" though I have to say the robo on the right looks more like Itchy than Bashful.

Anyhow, I am praying to God... Catching missing robbies takes a sheer miracle...

As for my alcohol consumption, what I had meant to post but forgot to do so until time had cut me off, was that 21 units is the old recommended weekly maximum for a man. It used to be 14 per week for a woman. The present limits are 28 male and 21 female per week. A unit is 10mls or 8g neat alcohol. So a 500ml can of white cyder at 7.5% ABV contains 3.75 units. Which means when I drank seven of those in a day, as I tried not to but often did, I was doing 26 units, which is very nearly a weekly maximum every single day.

I don't even drink every day now. Which means I know I am not physically addicted to alcohol, which is very good. And when I do, I very seldom have more than one can in 24 hours. Which all in all I think ~ if I say so myself ~ is very good indeed.

... And yes: drugs are next!!...

MUSIC:~

This is one of the most amusing "festive" videos I've seen in a long while

Nicole Kidman and Robbie Williams: Somethin' Stupid (2001)



PS Am I the only one who really does not like NICOLA from I'm A Celebrity GET ME OUT OF HERE. She says she's "hard" yet goes seriously pathetic in a cave full of creepies (which is what the show's about. Getting covered in bugs, putting your head in a plastic bubble full of venomous spiders etc whilst camping in the jungles of Australia's Northern Territory. These trials win food for your fellow campers but you can get out of any trial by yelling "I'm a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here!!"
Nicola is the type of person who makes you feel you're fussing all the time, when actually it's HER who interferes, spreads bad attitude all over the place and is basically a complete pain (to live with and to watch)...

Fewer than 21 units... and 40 below

THAT IS 40 DEGREES BELOW ZERO. IT IS ABSOLUTELY PERISHING COLD with even lower temperatures forecast. In fact when they said "it's going to get colder" and it was already deathly enough for me to sleep next to a permanently on maximum fan heater (the landlord pays electricity!!!) they said it was 10 degrees out (felt more like minus 10 to me)... the low to which we're due to sink should be "no worse than minus 2 or 3". Whoopee.

In fact I was so depressed yesterday ~ kept having urges to throw self off balconies etc. Hey the wonders of drugs; this is what they do to you. How I ever let myself become like this I'll never understand.

I gave up writing my memoirs (for now) partly because the story was too painful to tell. Also it was very hard to re-evoke past events in any true and meaningful balance. Because mine was always supposed to be a memoir of drug addiction, the straggling roots of this were of course what I chose to highlight as I told my tale. But this gave the impression I had done nothing except take drugs since my first introduction age 19 (I made up for lost time). But I didn't use all the time, by any means. In fact I was known as someone who never got drunk. And when I took up weekly going to techno-trance parties, though I did indulge in club candy I didn't all the time and again I was known as someone who didn't have to take drugs just to do a night out. So many other people just wanted to get drugged up and felt they had to go out to provide a set and setting for it.

Anyway on to better news. From my peak of drinking more than the recommended meximum every day, I have (I am pleased to announce) reduced my alcoholic intake to so little I'm now within the weekly advised limits! And so can no longer be classed a problem drinker. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!

I omitted the street urchin link for Baby P last time. Look closely and you can see (remains of) "injuries the professionals did not spot"...

Re child abuse, I just heard of a case in New Zealand where a child was "spun in a tumble dryer"... I mean..(!??!!) this boggles my mind! The world has gone crazy...

From the papers:
Foetal attraction: amazing shots of baby wolf, cat, etc still in the womb...

The Horrific Life (and Death) of "Baby P"

THIS HAS BEEN an ongoing story for weeks since his mother, her live-in boyfriend and their lodger were convicted of killing (or allowing to be killed) this 2 year old. Due to arcane English law his identity is "protected" (even though he had no siblings and is dead), hence the legalistic monika "Baby P". There's been an outpouring of outrage (and not just in the media) at how on earth this was allowed to happen. When he died the little boy had been tortured for weeks and had injuries so bad they included a broken spine. The police were involved, social services were involved (but it was the London borough of Haringey, the nation's worst). The child's social worker failed to spot the extreme danger he was in and even his family doctor, who examined him 2 days before he finally died failed to spot his broken spine.

How on earth such an extreme string of bungling officialdom could have been allowed to practise and how, even after a joint murder conviction the family doctor has not been disciplined and bobody from Haringey Council has been sacked is simply beyond comprehension.

This case has shaken up the entire country. This very morning the Prime Minister was discussing the matter in Parliament.

You would think that a shocking case like this would provoke a shake-up of all the defective systems that failed this poor little boy. But remember: this is modern Britain ~ change for the better is not inevitable, so we'll just have to wait and see.

From the Sun newspaper: Baby P dressed as turn of the (20th) century street urchin. I'm going to have to go now this stuff is too upsetting.

Washing Machine Crisis: Clothes Held Hostage

IT HAD TO HAPPEN. Had to happen to me as well: our washing machine has broken down, impounding a whole load of my clothes, including irreplacable £13-from-Covent-Garden-market rainbow-stripey Indian trews that I use as pajamas... and nearly my entire towel collection. When I came back yesterday I was surprised to hear it still grumbling away more than two hours after the number four programme had supposedly kicked off... now I'm periodically turning it off, clicking the dial forward and hoping I might eventually get my garms back before time and an Aerial Ultra overdose turn them to shreds...

Anna Karenina really has got into my subconscious... somehow I keep having Merchant-Ivory-style costume drama dreams. Merchant Ivory never made an Anna K (as much as anything else it's too long to do justice in 90 mins) and I've never seen it on TV. Which is unusual for me. Usually I have to see a classic novel on screen first; then I'm empowered to bluster past the worst of the Victorian guff and the pages freely turn...

"Baby" Itchy (OK not exactly her but her precise lookey-likey) has a starring role in 2009's Guiness Book of Records, posing in a desert spoon as World's Smallest Hamster!

By the way can anyone tell me why, when she does her pinging up the sleeve trick and spends any time in the vicinity of my armpit she appears to go pale, nauseated and dizzy? What do you think this could be? Is it because armpits are so hot, or somthing...??...:(!!!)

MUSIC:
I am not normally into girl groups. Though I have to say they're nowhere near as bad as those smarmy boybands ~ specially when they pull that "mature and serious: I'd be a really good father to your baby" number. Ukh! Anyway these two tunes are rather good:

SUGABABES: (HERE COME THE) GIRLS
Isn't Heidi Range (the blonde) a stunna? And what a rockchick roar she's got on her; straight from the Choir of Cigarettes and Alcohol..(!)



SUGABABES: SHAPE (OF MY HEART...)
A haunting tune. This version being far superior to Sting's original...



Hey I found some Anna K online... here's Princess Kitty Scherbatsky dancing the quadrille or walz at the ball (before she rejects Levin for Vronsky (who subsequently goes off with the (married) Anna K of the title...)

Do you know what I'm frequently told I have pretty bad taste and I do lurve the aristocratic country house style. But I have to say that even I found these rooms over-guilded and garish and, dare I say it?~ rather vulgar(!!)


And here's a trailer for the Sean Bean version...

Mince Pie Manure Trotters

THE CRAZIEST DREAMS EVER kept me sleepwaking for 14 hours all afternoon and through the night. First I was demonically possessed in my sleep (lovely!) then I had what kicked off as a marvellous reverie. In this fantasy I was clean of drugs (obviously, else I'd not have been out travelling) and travel I did. The world was my oyster. So to start off with, me and unnamed faceless (yet nonsinister) companion agreed to visit "the toe of Italy". I was so excited to be going somewhere so boastworthy; also I've always longed to explore the length of Italy and the classical cities of Rome, Bologna and Venice aside (plus Milano) Italy's foot is somewhere I'd particularly love to go... so we're all raring. It was a bit like Ewan McGregor and wild guy's overland-by-(motor)-bike John-O'Groats to Capetown televisual jaunt. O! The joy of the open road. First we stopped overnight at a large secondary school that resembled an outsized garden centre. I put my excessively humungous baggage down in the swimming pool changing rooms. Came back for it ~ then ~ bang! ~ gone. And an entire class full of nasty kiddies who obviously had all to do with its disappearance swore blind they knew nothing about my baggage which was enough to fill a small portakabin going missing... this garden centre full of orangeries and fern-filled hothouses (lovely post-Victorian greenhousery... and not a teacher in sight. So there I am devoid of a single possession and the trip's over before it's begun. Lovely. So that's my dreams. Sorry about that: had to get them off my chest...

Now as for the Roborovski Trotters they do indeed smell of a barnyard because they've shredded an entire copy of The Sun into luxury bedding that I don't have the heart to remove. Also all my hammies have been feasting on Mr Kipling's exceedingly yummy winter mince pies. They had nearly an entire pie between the four of them (the robos plus Pingpong my reclusive Chinese hammy)... of course most of these pies have been stashed and I haven't the heart to remove this either... So they shall go on ponging for a while as they thorougly enjoy scuttling in and between a pile of kitchen roll, tinfoil and clingfilm tubes so extensively piled up they are three tube-storeys deep. It's a mince pie laden, Sun newspaper chomping snigglywiggle winter wonderland of "exceedingly" vast proportions... as old Mr Kipling would drone...

Now my "Baby" Itchy has learnt a new trick: to ping down my sleeve, scurry behind my shoulder blades and emerge astonished-looking at the other sleeve, ready to pop out and ping all round again.

But woe betide me should I dare squeak something like "hello you tiny little swine! Are you looking surprised?! Are you tiny?! You ARE..." and then place venturesome fingers at said sleeve-opening as she emerges. Back she'll rear, taking extreme umbrage and terror at my horrible human-smelling hand, diving back into the human-smelling tunnel of my elbow-sleeve where she's convinced she's secure. (But woe betide I but a hand up the sleeve from up the inside. This provokes panick of such pinging proportions she literally comes flying out underneath my hand like a roborovski cannon ball... shooting across the blur of my duvet... landing pillow-wise, dazed and wondering how on earth she got there. The silly swine!

Righty-ho, it's taken approaching half an hour to post this: my 50p is up! So I'd better go. I hope you had a cheery weekend, y'all and no nightmares!

I'm off to attack 300g of four cheeses stuffed pasta (tortelloni) ~ Morrisons special offer at 99p a pack. So I got 4...

L8Rs!¬ ;->...

Eartha Kitt "+ friends": Santa Baby

Better Sight Without Glasses

I KNOW I REALLY OUGHT TO GET NEW SPECS and all... but I'm taking the opportunity of too-weak prescription lenses to try out Mr Bates' method as outlined in his tome (first published 1920) : Better Sight Without Glasses.

I had a friend from uni from years ago who had particularly bad vision purchased the special blacked out pinhole glasses as illustrated. As you may know, looking through a pinhole focuses light to the correct length so the short (or long) sighted can see without lenses of any kind. It's on this basis that pinhole cameras work. The idea is not to wear spod-spex all the time, but to use them gently to reset the eyes to where they're supposed to be...

Now the Wikipedia article rubbishes the Bates method about as much as is possible, (hijacked by opticians, I suspect) but I know from my friend's example that within months her presciption had shrunk back three "dioptres" towards normal.

So that, my friends, is what I'm going to try...

What's Up Doc: As Time Goes By
Wish I looked this good in glasses...

My Broken Spectacles Anna Karenina Rehab Dream

ONE OF THE WEIRDEST DREAMS OF MY LIFE the night before last. I would have posted last night if only the internet caff didn't shut by 10:30. I dreamt vividly that I was in a drug rehabilitation centre which was half oligarchal luxury yacht, half swanky St Petersberg townhouse. I was surrounded by aristocratic druggies with the same sloaney voices I associated with drugs from my university days, only these guys had titles like "Count" and "Princess" as in the novel. No bonnets and meringue dresses on the ladies unfortunately: this was modern hi-soc.

So I woke from that feeling bemused. Perhaps nighttime TV had inspired me with a Learning Zone feature on fairytales. This children's writer said Cinderella was the all-time classic as far as she was concerned, but I thought no no it's Hansel and Gretel. Lost children, wicked witch, gingerbread house. What do you think that house symbolizes to me..?

Je n'ai plus des lunettes!
Meine Brille sind kaput!
I'm totally sans specs. My glasses are no more! I'm feeling my way through a blur like Daphne or Velma in Scooby Doo... Totally lost in the haze, man. (What does that stand for?)

Yes my old percentage-sign glasses that were too done in for anything other than TV have finally fallen apart. I'm surviving on someone else's luxury bendy frames I found on the streets over a year ago. The prescription's barely half as strong as I actually need and so the world's still half a blur. But we've come down from JMW Turner watercolours to Claude Monet's Poplars on the Epte. Walking around in a 24-7 impressionist painting of London is pretty cool anyhow...

I do apologize I have not posted, neither have I been in touch with anyone since I've been so depressed I've felt like I was stabbed through the brains by a psychiatric knife. I need to go doctors' for some pills, I think... (But of course I've been far too down to be bothered...)

BTW I know I've barely mentioned them but my hammies, all 4, are alive and well ~ but there's another point of contention: I have a really nasty feeling that Spherical, who's adopted Bashful's bizarrely exaggerated pantomime peering into space has gone blind as well. What am I going to do? The vets won't be able to help even if they could diagnose. So I suppose I'll have to do nothing...

VIDEO

Angela Lansbury: Tale as Old as Time (Beauty and the Beast)

Do you know I'd never heard this till a couple of days ago? Now it's running round and round in my head. Brings out the inner child in me:

Euphoria

NOW I MUST ASK: is America in a state of euphoria? Or does it depend what polar extreme you're on (if either)?
I didn't mean to be overly cynnical in my comments of 2 posts ago. I don't want to pee on Ammerican strawberries. A US President with African ancestry really is quiet a phenomenon. Such a shame he has to get in with a worldwide "downturn" sweeping international markets and financial waters perilously choppy. If only he could have got the job during happier times, e.g. instead of JFK (and not been a foetus) then the post-election celebratorium and political honeymoon might sustain just a little bit longer...

I'll never forget the day after Tony Blair's breath of fresh air (as it seemed at the time) "New" Labour got in after 18 years of Tory misrule. No 11-week transition period here. The outgoing PM has the humiliation of having to load removal vans on Downing Street in full view of the world's press! And the new administation is in office the next working day!

I switched on the television; it was a bright spring morning ~ May 1997 ~ we were treated to a helicopter's vew of he new PM's motorcade ~ chering throngs lined the streets from Buckingham Palace to Parliament Square. The Rolls Royce gleamed joyfully in the sun. Tony ("just call me Tony") had just requested permission (ceremonially: it's not as if she's ever going to squeak "oh no! I don't like YOU!!" to start a new government from her Majesty.

Euphoria was palpably shimmering in the air that cheery day. It felt like years of misery culminating in the increasingly miry shades of grey of John Major's reign had come to a thankful end. Former Tory voters in their droves had switched to the former "tax the rich out of existence" leftist party that now promised a "nation of millionaires"! A national unity unknown since World War II swept the land, peaking three months later at Princess Diana's tragic death.

The New Labour honeymoon period lasted a protracted period of time unprecedented in modern British politics. In fact with a Liberal Democrat party looking more useless than ever (for Labour had totally usurped their centre ground) and a Conservative party in utter disarray it felt like no significant public opposition welled up against them until years later when we went to war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Then Blair seemed intent on turning into Bush's lapdog and his popularity plummeted through the floor.

The sole reason Gordon Brown's immediate future appears assured is that he's demonstrated a financial savvy no-one in the shadow cabinet can match. Granted some of our banks have gone to the wall and the credit crunch scatters increasingly itchy crumbs under the smelly quilt of his aegis... but I am sure, as most voters seem to be sure, that the competition, useless as they are, would only make a bigger hash of this nation's wellbeing and more quickly. Which is why Gordon Brown's ratings have soared as this country falls around us...

OK politics are over. I promise a hamster post next time ;->...

All Together Now

IT'S ALL OVER BY THE SHOUTING as my friend Janice said. (She wanted Hillary too.) O what a shame but hey 4 more years and the economy will be even more ****'d (as will Britain's I make no claim to superiority here) THEN they might draught in Hillary to sort it out. Not that she'd be any good. I just think her best qualified to sort out America's insoluble problems... Hey it will be fun having a mixed race president though.

Akelamalu implied I was on shaky ground yesterday. Who was I insulting? I was only saying I like my adopted hometown more than the hometown I WOULD have adopted had I had a chance. It goes back to early childhood Saturday evenings as the homeward train pulled out of Kings Cross station I'd glance wistfully every time at the tennament blocks of the back of York Way (irony of ironies not realizing that was the centre of London's heroin trade!) and telling myself one day I would live in London and never have to bid the great metropolis goodbye...

Only 11 weeks till the Greatest Nation on earth kicks out its most pathetic president in history. 1 question: why oh why must it be so very long..??

The Farm ~ All Together Now



Binary Finary 1998
1998 was the Year of the Mitsubishi. O wow this gave me a big EEEEEEEE rush. Makes me want to wave my hands in the air etc etc

America the Beautiful

O WHAT A WONDROUS LAND yous people reside in! (Some 40% of my readers, according to the widget.) How mighty is the Great Ole US of A. New York City is the only place on the planet to vye with London in my affections as Town of Most Attractions. Both cities have a valid claim to being Centre of the Universe as regards eating, drinking, shopping, theatre and nightlife of all descriptions.

The local populace might claim to "heart NY"; London, of course, being British, proclaims its charms in a far more delicate and understated fashion. We sell many a Union Flag coffe mug to the overseas tourists, perhaps picturing HM the Queen or a face-pierced punk with scarlet steggasaurus (hairdo) in the middle.

If immigration and visas weren't an issue I'm sure I'd have ensconced myself in New York City at the first opportunity. But there was no opportunity. And besides, New York's metropolitan wonders are parallelled, if not exceeded by London's. The shopping is every bit as good (though pricier with a 17.5% "value added" sales tax that non-EU residents are entitled to claim back). West End theatres actually outgross Broadway's and are considered by cognoscenti to have the edge. English cuisine, long the laughing stock of the international smart set, can now hold its head up among the gastronomic pillars of the world (not just the elephant-leg pillars of doner kebabs). Our museums and galleries are world-class, showcasing, as they do, the booty of a former world empire upon which the sun never set... Even New Yorkers grudgingly admit that the London contemporary art scene's where it's "at". And in my partying days New York City could barely hold a candle to London's glowstickin' strobe-befuddled swingin' extravaganzas...

So all in all I'm glad I came.

But I would still love to live in Manhattan for a time. As soon as I've got well, got drugs out of my system and taken up the mantle of romancier extraordinaire! Every night I shall hobnob among the most exaulted literary circles, just like a character in a Woody Allen movie all of my own. But I'll skip the psychotherapy. Woody Allen is a walking, talking billboard of why "therapy" is a waste of time...

AND NOW ON TO THE ELECTION. Has Obama won yet? Polling is rolling as we speak...

Oh, if only you'd gone for Hillary! And not a 50% white man, strong on the Martin Luther King impersonations, weak on policies, who calls himself black. On the radio this morning a little feature dug into his mixed racedness and how can he claim to be black when he's equally white and a hardline PC feminist type said "well he calls himself black so that's what he is" oh can I be Chinese then? I've just decided that's what I am...

AS FOR SARAH PALIN couldn't Hillary just wipe the floor with her? Especially in a lesbian mud-wrestling brawl. Or failing that a televised political debate. But beware, Hillary! Sarah Palin does have international experience as she herself pointed out she is governor of a state sandwiched between Russia and Canada! (Well what about me then? Quadrated between Ireland, Norway, Flanders and France...?)

What's the great glory of a "black" president? If all races truly are the same he will bring nothing new whatsoever to the job.

Women, however are a truly separate species and I speak as the subject of a reigning queen and former subject of Margaret Thatcher who outshone the Queen even if she did have the falsest posh voice this side of Rotherham multistorey car park. America you don't know the chances you've lost chucking Hillary into political wilderness for yet four more years. All I can hope for is Obama being such a failure, perhaps to unforseen circumstance, that Hillary can trundle in like a steam roller to sort him out.

If McCain does get in, by the way, I stand to win £15. Couldn't resist plonking some cash on that "eventuality"...

OK cheerio folks. Don't commit suicide when everything goes wrong politically tonight. faced with a choice like that (not to mention a ridiculous "electoral college" system that makes even the British first past the post constituency system look just, I'd want to slit my wrists too...

Hey that was a bit strong.
Put another way. BRING IN HILLARY. Let Obama be VP... Ya know it makes sense, come on!!