Tiny Trotters on Film!

I FOUND A REALLY NICE MOBILE PHONE in the internet shop an hour before closing. So I sat with it and minded it, waiting for it to ring (hoping no-one would). Nobody rang and I wasn't up for handing it in for someone else to "appropriate". And one technical hitch aside, when I turned it on and off only to get demanded some crackpot security code (Googling Nokia instructions manuals told me the default code was 12345 and I got straight in) I am now the proud owner not only of a telephone registered in FRANCE but a two megapixel camera with videotastic features for filming furries! Which is just about all I have done with it since.

So enthusiastic has been my homemoviemaking with Baby Itchy as star that the batteries are so seriously low I'm about to be terminated.

I've got all sorts of furry film of her looking tiny as a ping-pong ball and half-heartedly doing her party trick where she vanishes inside the magic wand only to reappear looking surprised at the other end. Usually she would use this juncture to clamber out, but my having to film one-handedly made things awfully awkward and every time her pink nose appeared at the other end, followed by a kindly sniff-around, she promptly reversed up to re-appear fur brushed backwards looking like a fluffy furball with beady eyes on my hand.

Oh and of course all the background clutter really shows up on camera. A certain sign that I really really need to tidy up!!

If anyone can reveal to me how on earth I get to post these up on Youtube ~ bearing in mind I know NOTHING and have never used a USB cable in my life. In fact don't own them as I "inherited" said telephone... Also how do I post my own photographs on blogger? I've a lovely over-exposed one of Itchy rambling on my hand. She's so washed out by such major flash she looks blue.

And that's all I have to say on an otherwise killer-drab Sunday. I'm missing EastEnders' omnibus to post this so I hope y'all are happy!!

Laters, peeps ~ and take it easy:~~...

The Saturdays ~ Issues
this has been going round and round in my head; it's got a real catchy "hook" this one...

I Wanna Learn How To Fly!

THIS IS SOMETHING I'VE ALWAYS wanted to do. Apart from potholing and caving the reverse pole of my fascination with has long been an obsession with flying. By flying I mean "proper" flying ~ in the open air. Not hang-gliding, which is, of course, merely gliding, but powered flight in a glorified canoe hanging from a human kite with a giant fan behind. Yes! Microlight! I would seriously like to have a go at this.

Nearest I've ever been to true flight (and I don't count being in the confines of an aeroplane: I wanna feel the wind in my hair, man!) is parakiting. This I have done about five times. Two or three times running behind a jeep in a field (which was the best) and twice on a Scottish loch behind a speedboat. Most people who do this do it behind a boat. Running behind a landrover in a field of cut wheat is far rarer. I was only about nine. Just when you'd expect to get knocked off your feet and dragged at 30mph by the knees, suddenly the knees are trailing in the air and you're 20, 30, 50 feet or more up. I can't remember how high I actually went but it wouldn't have been over 100ft. Of course you stay well away from trees, but I think I'd have been able to look down on the canopy of an English oak... This is one of life's experiences I'm so glad to have had. I was only eight or nine when I first did it and wasn't scared a bit, just excited. I had to wear a crash helmet and do emergency drop-and-roll procedures among the haybails...

The latest I heard about exciting "true flight" was an English road team who are taking a vehicle by road, sea and AIR from England or Scotland, cross Channel to France, down Spain and across to Morocco and on to somewhere near Timbuktu. There in the Sahara, where nobody probably much cares about aerial regulations (or there aren't many/any) they get the true capabilities of their vehicle in action. Basically it's a dune-buggy type thing with a giant fan behind and a parascender's chute on string behind. So, providing they can get going properly without the chute dragging in the ground, theory is they take off and fly (for hundreds of miles, I believe the intention was...) They said they were looking forward to surprising African villages. Surprising!!?! You can say that again. Then again there's no limits to the antics of crazy Englishmen in the minds of most foreigners... What I'd be most cautious about would be landing. I mean: have they had much or any practice? They said restrictions were pretty great against operating said "car" in this country and you need a pilot's licence to do it. They made it sound like they were just going to get to the desert and take off...

... I hope they don't crash into a scorpion... (Hey it might stick them with its tail and puncture their tyres...)

What can compare to drugs? They miserably ask. Well I answer you: extreme sports most certainly can and it's my intention on my multimillion pound novels' royalties to launch myself high up in the air... I'll post photographs and youtubes once I'm up there!

Link: Wikipedia's article on microlight aviation ... (also known as ultralight in the United States and former British colonies)...

VIDEOS

1. This is exciting! (To me... !!) Yeah how, geektastic is this! MICROLIGHT FLIGHT...



2. This is from a brilliant documentary I found called MIRACLES IN BIRDS. Here's part 3 of documentary 2, to see the rest on my "random" blog, click here ...



3. IN THE NEWS: JADE'S WEDDING SMILES

Jade Goody, UK television's biggest reality star by far: made famous by Big Brother and OK Magazine, caused an international incident by going back in the "Celebrity Big Brother" house and doing "racism" on Indian actress Shilpa Shetty... went on Big Brother India only to get dramatically pulled out midway through thanks to unexpected medical test results returning a verdict of TERMINAL CERVICAL CANCER. This is really nasty. The girl whose popularity soared then plumetted is now riding, media profile wise at an all-time high with even the Prime Minister offering her best wishes earlier this week and the Justice Minister overriding her fiancee's post-jail curfew for 24 hours so they can spend their wedding night together click here to see those clips. A on tomorrow's "Wedding of the Year"... poor Jade, who doesn't expect to live out this year, reportedly sees tomorrow as her last chance to wed fiance Jack Tweedy. The £1 million +plus++ she's raising via magazine and TV deals will go in trust for her kids... How very sad this all is. I'm not a huge fan of Jade Goody but I'm gutted for her ...

Feathery Friday: I Love Lorikeets

I NEVER EVEN KNEW what a "rainbow lorikeet" was till I saw loads of them on Bimbimbie's blog ...

(Bimbimbie means place of the birds in the native Queenslander Aboriginie

This one, called Eric, is mad about this ball...



And here's a huge flock of them, with sulphur-crested cockatoos



Last but not least, here's (wild) lorikeet "courtship" in Sydney, Australia

Fruit Shortcake Biscuits

NOT BECAUSE I'M "NUTTY AS A FRUITCAKE" but because fruit shortcake are my favourite non-"cream" biscuits (I have such babylike taste~ has to be sweet, preferably chocolate, etc...) but these are a grown-up delicacy that go really well with hot, sweet tea. Hot, sweet tea is just about all I've been up to lately because I'm so so ill!

Hmmm... No honestly it's just a "community virus" with exhaustion and depression sequelæ, as over-Latinated physicians like to put. So I believe. And dit-de-dit and dar-de-dar... And so an obsession with Great British Biscuits results.

I know this talk probably annoys you people, but today I am minded yet again to kick off heroin, like an ill-fitting worn-out jackboot into the trailing dust where it belongs. Not to go "cold turkey" mind (I add for those of you not familiar with my meandering, winding go-nowhere life) but merely to bump properly on to the methadone I've been on for years ~ only using still on top. Nowhere near as much as I might use without it, I should add. But still using far too much. Any using at all is too much when heroin is the drug. I am fulsomely bored of it.

Only this afternoon, as I wandered down the high road with my new biscuits, I got to reminiscing about crack and the great whooshing physical rush of the stuff, and the tidal-wave of a high you surf after your brain's recovered from the druggie equivalent of being shut in a microwave on full power for a minute or two. (This being the effect of a big pipe, at least. In the beginning when I used to smoke not realizing most people broke up the rocks into more manageable portions, the sheer intense force of that cocaine rushing my brain all at once used to sweep me utterly away. So as my ears stopped whooshing, my dazzled eyes, no longer snowblind told me I was in a calm, bright place... a place I've been to a lot on drugs. It's like floating in the full power of the sun, serene and not burning... Then I'd come shooting back from this place-non-place back to the "reality" of being 1000ft high and WHHHOOOAAH!!! It's those effects, and the very suddenness of them from unwrapping the crack, to shoving it on the pipe, to slowly burning and breathing steadily in... within half a minute at most I was totally out of it in la-la-land.

So why don't I crave that immense high? Or even miss it? Partially because it's absolutely incompatible with anything resembling an ordinary life.

And yet heroin with its effects so subtle you could easily miss them and feel nothing other than dull and tired. THIS becomes the object of my greatest adoration. Why?

Perhaps there are no answers and I'm not up for wasting the energy to find them. I just want out of this life. At long long last.

Of course this means I will have used within two days (if past form is anything to go by). But I can at least make this affirmation. And at least try...

As NA say, you can only do one day at a time...

Mashed Potatoes Brains

THE SIZZLING'S GONE DOWN on my pre-heated brains, but they are still the texture of mashed potatoes. And the cold went away only for a "secondary infection" to set up home in its place. I am lucky: I have lots of hot, sweet tea. And vanilla creme Hobnobs.

I don't have a lot to say. All the time I feel behind time and needing to catch up on sleep I somehow lost... When I do sleep I dream. One of my last dreams was of rainbow fishes ~ which scuppers that theory that we only dream in black-&-white.

I have been at the drug service trying to put myself together. Or more to the point trying to learn ways of putting myself back together. All leading up to the inevitable day when I take a deep breath and finally take that plunge leaving heroin far behind...

The drug service say I look very "tired". I feel it as well!

I had a good rant and told them how I really feel. Barely treading water a lot of the time, not too much better than drowning. So I'm to go to some dual-diagnosis appointment or meating. I'm not sure when.

I haven't smoked cannabis-spliff in years and yet whenever I get these colds lately my head goes all a-curly, swirly round-round, a-stoned-like. How can this be when I avoid nasty THC like the plague? Well mashed potatoes to the lot of it. I've got to go I'm exhausted!

Fluffy-bozed airedale blog of the day: www.toaireisdivine.com/blog
Bea Bea the white dwarf hamster's blog...

AARGH!!: I really am LOSING IT! My favourite television programme these days is turning into Hollyoaks!

How times have changed. In my day dance music very very rarely had slick videos like this... unless the artists happened to know underground filmmakers who'd knock out imagery on the cheap...

I WOKE UP FEELING NASTY IN THE NIGHT... I had heroin there so it wasn't a "no drugs sulk"... what I didn't have was alcohol, food, tea even and this did throw me in a tizzy. Yes of immature "I want I want I can't handle waiting five entire hours till the state pays me..." ilk. But also real suicidally-laced depression where I wonder how long I will last. If I do ever die, I know it will be 100% at my own hand. Otherwise I will be rescued and fly to heaven...

I did write out a post in those mournful early hours but it was so confused. Every time I ran my fingers through my hair they crackled like electricity. My head was deepsea diving in subconscious zones I'd rather not see. I felt stoned on cannabis/hashish/puff/grass/weed/whatever you like to call it~ but I hate it. But I had not smoked.

This is a consequence of breaking the mind. Rubbish continually flows into the cracks and fissures formed... Not nice.

My life is out of control and I am living it. I repeatedly have the experience of linking now to 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 years back and I'm aghast: HOW DID I GET HERE??!?

Ultravox: Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
I wanted to post something "nuclear" for a while. The premise of this vid is actually bunkum for there was nuclear meltdown at Tschernobyl and no vast explosion. So more accurately this would be about nuclear WAR~ which is coming

Sludge!

A YURKSOME yukky slumbersome, sticky, intractably drab Sunday. Do you know: either I am going crazy or the same Cinderella film has been on for over 3 hours and STILL the Royal couple have yet to tie the knot? Honestly. I have very little to say apart from this. I hope your weekend went better...

Flippers!*

Turtles are some of my favourite marine, critters. Their graceful "flight" through water, flippers on full-blast...

Camera-pecking, winking giant sea-turtle:



Cat vs TERRAPIN not tortoise, not turtle, dur!

But does the "inevitable" happen... Watch and see:



And for all yous who want a longer one, see how tiny this "giant" sea-turtle seems dwarfed by the humungous eagle ray...



*today being the day for my "Furry Fridays on Saturdays" "meme"...

Brrr!

OK I HAVE BEEN IN HIBERNATION. Every time I wake up I feel like I'm on day 2 of a skiing or adventure holiday. How inconvenient. Acheing all over, like I've fallen off a horse, I hobble about making cups of tea or gassing the place out with (fried) quarter lb-er beefburger sandwiches... I got a really chavtastic cheapo, thin, sugary-vinegary tomato ketchup ~ just the way it should be ~ from Iceland. It's fantastic. Only my bread is bourgeois: Warburton's Seeded Batch: £1 for a tiny loaf. But exactly the right size toasted for one 1/4-lb-er or 3 fishfingers drowning in said "red sauce"...

Hey do y'all remember back in the 1970s-to-early 80s when colour television was still something of a novelty or at least luxury. In this country we never had those whizzy colour tellies with turny-dials (I've looked all my life for one, only ever seen colour ones on American films), just four or five channel selectors, sticking out like giant silver cigarettes from a teak effect box with a screen like a giant goldfish bowl. The older ones used to ping! back into a quickly vanishing white dot that lingered in the end....

... sometimes I think that white dot tells the story of my life...

... even older tellies (even colour ones) worked via valves not transistors, which meant when you knew you wanted to see something you had to ensure the box was switched on a good 10 minutes ahead of time. Sound came almost immediately, frustratingly... from deep underwater greenish figures emerged, clothing themselves in layer upon layer of sparkly pixxels until (hopefully) at the set time you had Coronation Street or Opportunity Knocks! Aww, the 1970s. I do feel some privileged sense of nostalgia for having lived through these brown-swirly times.

Me and my brother used to nudge each other and laugh when we went to more vulgar people's houses who always had the colour turned up way too high! ~ do you remember that one? That was a chavtastic form of budget psychedelia for those unwilling actually to drop LSD...

What on earth I was going to say here has escaped me...

O, except my robos look like their nest has been hit by a cat-5 hurricane! Some cleaning bug has seized them and all empty toothpaste boxes (etc) are piled wigwam stylee in a corner. When I shove my head in the tank and say "oi you swines: come out!" three mini-gremlin faces emerge from said bundle of sticks looking surprised (hamsters nearly always look surprised, it's the look they do best...)

And that's about it. I don't know what I was gonna say but I'm going back to bed?

VIDEO:

#1 the candy selection featuring Leo DiCaprio and the All Saints: Pure Shores (music from The Beach)...



#2 Now this is something rarer: 2001 A Space Odyssey to the tune of Orbital's Halcyon:

I always thought Halcyon was a nasty banned sleeping pill from the United States... or >Halcion Days... some old novel..?
No! Halcion Days was a "text based multi-user adventure game" ... being I've never PLAYED a text-based multi-user adventure game but have only heard of ONE: ie British Telecom's "MUD" "multi-user dungeon" how on earth the phrase got so deeply embedded in my subconscious I've not a clue...
No it isn't. "Halcyon days" is a piece of cultural coinage, ie a expression, a cliche, if you will. The Halcyon game which I knew I'd not have heard of till just now, is some geektastic thing from times past...

Sick!

I AM ILL, RUN-DOWN, DEPRESSED... my head spinning, I can hardly face getting out of bed. And there I was yesterday ranting about the greatness of Maggie Thatcher. Perhaps I have finally cracked. May I say in mitigation: I only fessed up to having thought HER marvellous. Not her policies. I am that entity political parties value the most: the floating voter (or non-voter ~ I don't bother any more). My beliefs occupy a centre-ground covered by all three major parties: Liberal, Labour, Conservative ~ so I could vote for any one of them. When I did vote I tended to cast protest votes for the Greens because I think it would be nice if we still had trees etc in the future. Most of their policies, in actual fact, I disagree with... If we'd only had Monster Raving Loony or Whiplash candidates in my bourgeois boroughs I'd have cast my Xs there.

Well as I said I am temporarily indisposed. It is not even a common cold, just a cobwebby smoker's throat. And I feel ill all the time. Depressed all the time. Despair has crashed all over me in a breaking tsunami.

For months now I have had the itch to put pen to paper and scribble out a pageturning record-breaking international bestselling novel. I had the theme (nothing at all to do with drugs) and a sketchy outline of a story but hadn't resolved how to tell it (nor indeed how exactly it ended). As I did say before (convincing myself more than preaching to you) I know what works for me as a writer: that is I like to know where I'm going. I plan out the entire plot as a sketchy list in my head. If I do write it down, it would occupy one or two sides of A4. I always know where I'm going at least three chapters in advance in some detail. The one I'm working on I plan out shopping-list style almost paragraph by paragraph. This is my "mould". I pour in the words ~ these come usually fairly easy. It's not knowing what to say that gets me stuck. And page by page a book is born...

The opening I sketched out last year (and it was a rushed sketch ~ it never engaged me, my heart was never in it) I have dumped and started again. I've only done maybe three printed pages (at most) but it's a start. This time I feel the magic. I know how the story should be told. This at least gives some hope for the future.

Now they do they "feed a cold; starve a fever" and being as my malady is more like a common cold I've indulged in this advice enthusiastically nibbling my way through the chavtastic new ranges at Iceland. "Chav" is a relatively new word in this country and means something like "white trash". Yesterday I had roast beef dinner for £1.75. The kind of platter you might expect from a pretty bargainacious pub with industrially crisped roast potatoes and thin-sliced meat. Not bad: though a rugby-player could easily have eaten two.

Now I'd better go. I'm too exhausted from my literary efforts. Last night I did 2 entire paragraphs! Yes! More than enough to fill the back of a fag packet. Talking of fags I've only had one today so my body's still in semi nicotine depletion. Plus hot sweet tea is calling me, along with the vulgar delights of morning TV. Righty-ho I must dash. Take care everyone.

While I'm on a fond nostalgia tip, here's two "songs" from my formative years I still find entertaining.

THE SHAMEN: EBENEEZER GOODE
This shameful drug song topped the charts in 1991 and believe it or not this is the best quality video I could get...



THE KLF FT TAMMY WYNETTE: JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT
... "all bound for mu-mu-land..." ~ think that's where I'm going

Two Ladies in my Life

YESTERDAY I was catching up on lost sleep and, when the time came to post it was already too late. So here I am tomorrow morning!

What I did start to doodle on a piece of paper was some of the story of my life which began, as far as my public consciousness was concerned, with the Queen's Silver Jubilee in the summer of 1977 when I was 5.

I don't remember the street parties (though surely we had them) but I do remember the silver commemorative double decker bus I kept in near-mint condition. My brother (younger by 2 years) bashed his one up!

But I remember as a 5 year-old seizing on this anniversary year and wondering what and where I would be when the next royal jubilee came round ~ this being the Golden Jubilee in 2002 when I would be 30 years old. That 21st century date coupled to such a milestone age seemed impossibly futuristic.

When the biggest day came six years ago I was on the street begging money for my gear. It passed me by in such a haze I could barely remark on it, for it made almost no impression on my inner consciousness.

Had I been able to feel anything I suppose I would have wept for all the opportunities missed, the promise lost ... but I was far too lost then to indulge in tears.

The next woman to dent my public consciousness was Margaret Thatcher. She came into power in 1979 when I was 7 and was thus the first Prime Minister I remember. And she stayed so very long, till I was 19 that when she was eventually shoved out of office by snakes in her own Conservative ("Tory") party, I felt vaguely frightened. She was the only Prime Minister I had ever known.

How I loved Mrs Thatcher as she reigned over us! Before her appearance Britain had been a dusty, sluggish grey place marked by terminal decline (hey I'm nearly quoting her memoirs...) What Britain needed, so she believed, was a good kick up the backside. Get rid of the unions' stranglehold over British industry by eliminating practices like public ballots by show of hands. In the future only "proper" secret ballots into the box or by post would be allowed. Thatcher struck a crushing blow against union dominance when she smashed the longstanding miners' strike over pit closures. Unprofitable mines ought to be dispensed with. And so they were.

For all her faults, Mrs Thatcher did "get Britain working" again. And she made this country a businesslike place to be.

She started an international trend by privatizing national utilities: telephones, oil and gas, water, electricity and railways. Looking back I see this as national theft. Of course it's one of the most classic cons in the book to steal something off somebody and hoodwink him into buying it back and that's what she did with all her share offers. With the possible exception of telecommunications, there isn't real competition and choice in any of these businesses. Privatized electricity does not mean competing companies offering to wire your house. It just means they buy huge bulk blocks of the national supply and offer to sell dribs of electricity on to you cheaper (hopefully) than the competitors. This is a nonsense. Why not sell straight to US the public at the discount wholesale rate ~ THAT would be true democracy.

The great flaw in Thatcher's policy, which DID get a revived, modernized Britain moving again was that she seemed to view everything in the model of a business. Make a profit out of something and it's inherently worthwhile. But anything that just costs money is a "loss" and should be eliminated.

If she'd had her way, Thatcher would have got rid of the BBC ~ one of the jewels in our cultural crown. I think she was at heart a republican. The talk was always of how insufferable the Queen found her and "who does she think she is?"!

Now before Gledwood gets too boringly political here's some video entertainment from the magic era when my political sensibilities burst into life:



THATCHER UND DIE DEUTSCHEN

THIS IS TYPICAL entertainment from the best policial TV show of the 1980s: SPITTING IMAGE. See how lifelike those dummies are...




THE POLITICAL ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER

Frank In-scented Itchy

I HAD A ROBOROVSKI DONKEY-DERBY last night... Round and round they ran, around 2-storeys (that is robo storeys ~ 5 inches high the lot) of wandering tubes from toilet-rolls, clingfilms, tunnels from toothpaste boxes and secret underground bases fashioned from Italian Grated Cheese containers... all this concealed within their gigantic (to human-scale) house-sized nest which is 6 robo-feet deep (no wonder they like nothing better than lazing in there seemingly 18 hours a day...)... replete with multiple food-stashes in bizarre places. Everywhere I looked was a Disneyfied perky-eared "mouse" nibbling seeds, emerging from a tunnel looking surprised or trotting 21 to the dozen on the wheel. They looked so cute I really wanted to give them a good poke them with their chopstick.

All the robbies do to that chopstick is nibble at it in a vaguely interested way: when I had Russian or Siberian hamsters, one Campbells, one "winter-white", my Campbells seized upon it with such alacrity you could pick up said stick and have him dangling 50 Campbells-feet in the air... If he was a dog he'd have been growling and slavering away... It's such a shame that was before the days of Youtube as I could have got hilarious film out of Naughty's antics...

BABY ITCHY ROBOROVSKI smells of frankincense... Robbies are so cute and furry and tiny and I always bring them to my face when I hold them... they've always had a perfumey smell (not a rank mousey stale smell like... well: mice...) Itchy does indeed smell of frankincense. You might think you don't know it but you do: it's in "church incense", a sweet, calming aroma... Their we-wee is again full of perfumey "notes" (as perfumiers like to say) and nowhere near as rank as ordinary rodent pee-pee... My old Russian hamsters used to smell a bit mousey, but then they were boys and boys' urine's always yukkier than girls as girls of all species will tell you in various barks, yelps, chirrups and squeaks of their own... Or plain English, when they're not getting their nails done... Ordinary Syrian or golden hamsters don't smell at all, except when they need cleaning, and then their wee smells quite horrid and sour.

I don't know why, because they'are hardly underfed, but Itchy and Bashful, seem tiny even as roborovskis go. Only Spherical is truly as tubby eg. as the furry porn-stars of my video Roborovski Luurve..!

A lot of my blog-readers seem to lose scale of how very tiny my roborovski hamsters are. Robbies are the tiniest of all dwarf hamsters so I'll try and give you an illustration: an ordinary Syrian hamster curled up is about the size of a tennis-ball; a Russian dwarf hamster would be about satsuma-size ~ but robos, the tiniest of the lot are barely any bigger than pingpong balls!

And with that thought I'll love you and leave you. I have to fly and get a roast beef dinner in giant Yorkshire pudding £1 meal from "chavtastic" Iceland... the feeding the "white trash" frozen superstore...

Illustrations: to the right ~ a tiny furry dur roborovskis; to the left no not some dodgy smoker's middle-eastern drugs ~ that's frankincense being used as incense...

Poem of the Day: Read Experience, Strength & Hope at Storm Before the Calm...

EFTERKLANG MIRADOR

Now we're walking up strange-street...

Visually very funky and musically a little bit: what oddness! I purloined this from Let Nature Be blog...



THE PRICE IS RIGHT 1ST EVER SHOW 1984
Hosted by the original Alan Partridge ~ yes Leslie Crowther, this is the classic opening British show of that gold-plated American gameshow THE PRICE IS RIGHT: starring NORMA STUPID

The woman made such an impression on all of us that years later "Norma Stupid" is still a family catchphrase at home...

This you have to watch: you couldn't mock-up something this retro if you tried all year...

Another Yukky Siberian Sunday

I HATE SUNDAYS. I never have any money. They feel dragged-out and boring; all I want to do is use.

While I'm on that topic let me state clearly: I still don't think I'm ready to stop. The best I can hope for is to do what the old age pensioners I know still using do: to keep it to a bare minimum.

Once I was addicted to the heroin (and remember I was in my late 20s by the time it turned round and got me), I gravitated in general to people who were older than me. All of these had given up "grafting" (kiting (that is: cheque and card fraud) or bombing round shops "relieving" them of vast quantities of alcohol and other desirables... One of them, my now dead friend Lucky was dealing when I met her. I had phoned a massive Jamaican who had driven twice past me. So when I phoned him again he said "me friend comin' out for ya" and a tiny grey-haired woman appeared cooing "yoo-hoo!" That was Lucky and the beginning of a 10-year friendship. Though I was careful not to get too close. I noticed that over these years I was just about the ONLY person there at the beginning still there at the end. I don't know what it was: it certainly was nothing sexual, but she filled her flat with younger men who I suppose looked up to her. One actually called her "Ma" and she loved that. He died of a heart attack in her lift after running from a security guard. Of course the fact that he was high on crack didn't help save him...

Anyway the point I was making was, people who only told me crime "wasn't worth it" saved me from getting in far out of my depth.

I don't know I'd ever have made a good enough criminal anyway. I'd always be thinking fingerprints, DNA, cameras, focusing on what could go wrong. I'd never be able to relax into it...

I'm not trying to claim I have not been drawn into various indiscretions over the years because I have. But I hated stealing. I don't even like lying. I made my money by begging and when I wasn't begging (and am not begging) I find myself still a raging junkie but in semi-retirement...

Re: the illustrations: top L is probably from a "safer injecting room" bottom L shows a Middle-Eastern man "chasing" his gear. Our gear in Europe comes as (smokable) middle-eastern heroin base and this is how you smoke it... Top R appears to be a pretty good batch of "B" (Afghan brown heroin base)... Bottom R: no it's not Christmas cake mixture, that would be "Mexican black tar", a product every bit as bad for injection as our "B" and similarly smokable...

Incidentally if you're wondering about heroin smoking: brown or white powdery or solid with a bitter, musty "opium" smell that melts into a transparent blob and runs along tinfoil: that is smokable heroin. Heroin hydrochloride smells of vinegar. This is more readily water-soluble (without citric acid or vit C) and not good to smoke... The exception to this is Mexican tar, which, so I'm told does smell of vinegar and yet ~due perhaps to its high content of opium residues ~ can still be smoked...

I'm posting this here in the name of harm-reduction, kids. Smoking equals no needles equals reduced threat of catching anything...

PS Following yesterday, here's the best link on that most mysterious drug, ketamine...

I don't know what else I was going to say here ~ but here's three videos of note:

SPARKY THE SWEARING PARROT

The full-blown Scottish accent's subtitled for those Americans who might be otherwise confounded...



THE GRAVE

THIS is my second-favourite Don McLean song, here montaged to WW1 footage... Very depressing... look at the state of all those trees ...



EVERYTIME ~ BRITNEY SUICIDE VERSION

I WONDER WHAT POSSESSED her to make a video marking her own death like this?... And several years before all that drugs-and-coot-head trauma...

By A Thread

I SAW A FILM just now called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Jim Carrey meets an American Kate Winslett who far too pushily ensconces herself into his life ~ I'm thinking aren't alarm bells supposed to be ringing? For him they are not. Then all too drastically she rips herself away. Rips him off. Rips him apart.

He goes to a Memory Erasure Clinic ~ and here all goes blinko. Like a k-dream the insanity of real people and a fantasy of memory become twined in a psychotic-like paranoia. He's unconscious in bed, at home, undergoing "treatment". At the same time, one "therapist" is leaving, with Carrey's memories of Winslett's Clementine character in a box ~ photos, journal entries, all those things. To bring them round and use them to give her gifts ungiven; and spin lines she's already heard. Creepo!

Strange how one film, not a joint, nor a line of ketamine, nor too many pipes on crack (things I've given up) ~ just a crazy movie ~ can slice in, flip out so I'm questioning whether I'm losing it again.

Most odd...

Furry Friday on Saturday (#2)

MONKEYS: not my favourite furries by any means, but take a look at this apparently 100% true and not faked-up footage of a mini monkey riding his mini-motor-bike down the street in Jakarta, Indonesia...




Monkey Motorcycles! - Funny videos are here

Funky Indoor Flap-about Feathery Swines

I MET MY MUM in Town yesterday and we ended up in a patisserie having what my stepdad Brian declared "the worst latte I've been assaulted by in my life" (actually the second half of that quote's my own but I couldn't resist) plus some nibbles that I delighted in labelling "Thatcherite food". Brian really hates Mrs Thatcher. I love her. I just think nearly all her policies were wrong. But her sturdy influence did bring to this country ciabatta, fresh pastas sprinkled in fresh herbs ~ oh! and her biggest triumph: bottled springwater. I always go for "mineral" because at least then you're getting some free minerals. Springwater is almost the same thing as tap water left to chill 24 hours in an open bowl-type container, then filtered. No chlorine will be left...

Anyway the highlight of the night came (apart from when I got carried away with myself and confessed to trashing Laundretta's room (after she and Matran (the RatMan) had moved out) and Brian looked like he was about to fall off his chair in shock)... came when pigeons came blithely wandering into our upstairs, indoor cafe. The sort of ultra-hard pigeons who don't flinch when you put the crumbs out which I did in abundance. I suppose you could say Paddington Station is a giant semi-open "concourse" in that you could drive a truck in the front and 15 or more platforms of trains are constantly rolling in and out the back... but it did feel bizarre, having strolled into a glassed off area with sushibars, pub grub, all sorts of grub actually, and WH Smiths etc suddenly to have pigeons at our feet. They even had the cheek to strut behind the counter where the foreign girl (it's always a foreigner in central London) was diddling with the latte/espresso/cappuccino machine.

She kicked her foot and they sauntered huffily off...


LADY GAGA: POKERFACE

I had to get in on this Gaga thing... they luuurve her over here. I think it has to do with the techno-centric music (which we think of as British or European) and the out-there fash-sense, which again could get her mistaken for a native Brit.




MADONNA: JUSTIFY MY LOVE
"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another"...
OK: so legalize gear and crack ...

A Blast from (our Grandparents') Past

I THOUGHT THIS might entertain y'all... a business letter from my 1929 shorthand manual I decyphered when I could not sleep...

I don't consider myself right-on politically correct but this really made me laugh. By the way you can click here and see the original squiggles under "89: Reading and Dictation Practice" and see how clever I am~ har-har.

Dear Sir:
I have an opening immediately for a man with a
thorough knowledge of French and Spanish to go abroad
with a committee representing the officials of this company. If
present plans are completed the party will leave next
week on the Ile de France and remain overseas
between six and eight months. The officials already
have expressed their opinion that it will be necessary to employ a
college man not over thirty-five of good family.
It will be of special value if he has some knowledge
of finance.

You will readily agree that getting such a
man is no easy task. I feel that since
you know so many college men, as well as your
own fellow classmates you may be able to send one
of them for this job that really has a future in it.

May I ask you to phone my office soon. Yours truly,

Man? Man? Man? Good family? I make no further comment...

Re: yesterday's NA rant, as I said and I must reiterate because I'm not NA-bashing just making an observation on certain (always uncommented on) features that have really niggled: NA does work for those who "work it" (as they say). It has saved countless lives in the most literal sense and in the widest possible sense because nobody was born to be a crackhead or junkie. In the depths of the addiction I lost sight totally of this. I saw my body as nothing but a receptacle for drugs and more drugs (heroin, alcohol, crack in descending order) and began to cuss my disappearing veins. Why else did I have veins, except to spear hypodermics full of gear into them?

Thanks for yesterday's Answers. I wanted to reply to three points:~

Why couldn't I just ask the man who "drug of choice drug of choice drug of choiced"? Well you're allowed no cross-talk which means people talk in turn and if you want to ask a question like that you'd normally do it afterwards in private. And the reason I didn't do that was this bloke was famously curmudgeonly and might well have snapped "mind your own business: if I wanted you to know I'd have shared it"!

Why 12 steps?
Best way I can put it is, they're like the 12 base camp stations on the way up Everest... it's by far too big a thing to take on in one.
I don't know how they came about, but someone somewhere had ever so cleverly picked up every excuse-making, backsliding self-deceptive tendency of the addict (though I believe these 12 steps originated with Alcoholics Anonymous) and constructed a life-encompassing programme of recovery with no excuses, no unfinished business. Hence Step 9 involves making amends to those we've damaged, wherever possible, except when to do so might cause harm (I've puzzled over what type of "amend" might cause harm and what type but drew a blank). Through the Steps you can achieve closure with the past, gain a renewed almost "reborn"-type perspective on life and far from going on just not taking drugs ~ RECOVERY is gradually achieved ~ a state of newness, unity and health I have seen in the spirit of others who have done the programme... and finally learned to live. That, to my understanding, is what Recovery's about.

If the phrases work for some people isn't that OK?
Yes it's fine but they can put off the newcomer and cause confusion and irritation and people first come into NA in extremely vulnerable states. Anything that doesn't help should if possible be avoided.


MUSIC ~ VINCENT
THIS is my favourite Don McLean song. I've heard it sung by Julio Iglesias who may claim to have bedded 2000 (or is it 3000? women) yet so obviously hasn't a clue about the passion this song speaks of...



RIGHT I've got to go I've gone all paranoid about whether I left the cooker on with boil int bag fish... YUUURKS!!

*** "WHERE DID THE 12 STEPS COME FROM?" QUERY ANSWERED ...

Why I Tread Carefully Around NA...

I BOUGHT A CHEESECAKE FROM ICELAND that I don't want to eat till later in the week ~ so I was thinking of stashing it in our front garden under all that snow. Wah-waaah!!

Hey did you know we got supposedly the deepest one-day snowfall in two decades? According to the Metro London newspaper the average depth was eight inches across the capital (no wonder the nasty bendy buses weren't running. The only good thing about them is, the very first time you get on one, riding stood dead central with one foot placed in the front section, the other in the back ~ and ~ woo! ~ feel those corners swing! (little things; little minds..!) Anyway, perhaps I live somewhere unusually warm or weird, because our snowfall was little over four inches (10cm) but hey ~ that's deep enough to bury a roborovski (all manner of bizarre snowy hamster games pop pingingly into my head now: Don't do it! They'll freeze!!)

The following is from a comment I left at L's blog last night... She was talking about having had a drink after two months clean of a heroin/oxy habit:


You're talking about breaking your sobriety 60 days and I get where you're coming from: but ask yourself this, was alcohol a part of your using when you were on the heroin and oxycondom (whatever the stuff's called)~?

I've been to enough NA meetings over the years to get a fair idea of what the Fellowship is about. I have the big Blue Book (their "Basic Text" in hardback ~ got it on tick and still haven't paid the "literature man" from my old "home" meeting back... By the way, in this country hardback and paperback both cost £8.75 so you might as well get the more durable version, because if you ARE going to do NA, you might find yourself turning to it a lot...) I even got myself a sponsor once ~ though THAT all fell through. He kept hammering at me to come off methadone when I'd barely been able to stop taking heroin and crack let alone start reducing the meth to zero. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

I've noticed NA can attract people who take on it's deliberately simplified, rituatlized, repetitious sayings and customs basically not grasping at all what's behind them. Just parroting all this stuff out. I'm sure you've met folks like that yourself. I find the more catchphrases a person comes out with "God= Group of Druggies; Give up or Die" etc etc the more careful you gotta be of them.

Also this "all using is the same" is SO DANGEROUS. I've seen one guy relapse back to heroin and crack because he'd taken a sleeping pill. Of course 2 years clean was thrown to the wall, he had to hand in his service commitments at NA etc etc, felt he'd lost all he'd gained and BANG!... seriously I think that's such a potentially dangerous viewpoint

Also I get rather peeved by some of the silly phrases people come out with. I don't know if you get the same ones but "in the rooms" is one I hear a lot instead of just "at a meeting". Then they take the anonymity thing so far they can't even bring themselves to say CA or AA they have to say "at another fellowship" ~ I mean come ON! Then there's another guy who gives shares and chairs and goes on and on "drug of choice"... "my drug of choice this... that" without ever naming it. If he's a raving smackhead why can't he just say? So instead of hearing him I spend the entire time trying to figure out what precise drug of choice this might be. The whole meeting through I'm twisting and turning "this sounds like heroin... no he's talking about cocaine... I wonder if he was just snorting it"... etc and the point becomes lost under a welter of wonderings.

Don't get me wrong: I've been to NA enough times and over enough years to see that for those who do the programme ("it works if you work it") and keep coming back those 12 steps can produce wonders. I just believe a step backwards and a dash of circumspection is required at times. And though terminal druggies find it immensely difficult to do anything in moderation (now THAT is definitely part of the illness...) one would be wise to try and keep some sense of perspective, if one can, as one hurtles down the amazing waterslide (well that's how I see it) that is CLEAN and RECOVERING.

Yeah and it's something I ain't done yet that's for certain. C'mon folks: gimme some feedback, please~

Snowball Mondays Again!

BUT NOT THE DRUGGIE (HEROIN-CRACK INJECTION) TYPE: overnight it snowed transforming London Town into a winter wonderland... three to four inches deep (though it appears deeper, that's what was atop our wheelie-bins, making them look like a row of giant wedding-cakes)... traffic hushed, shusshing through the slush. Tescos (major supermarket chain) was closed till past eleven; my methadone chemist has only just opened with a line of desperate shivering junkies silhouetted in the still-falling, flurrying snow. Some other chemists, apparently, haven't opened at all and so their clients have had to come into an emergency methadone dispensing "surgery" at the drug service in the next borough along from me (I don't know what my borough's doing, though I'd hope it's the same...) London is divided into more than 30 boroughs... It's such a sprawling town in fact that even the locals take pride in being unable to locate or never having heard of areas where hundreds of thousands of people reside... Redbridge, Barnes, Forest Hill and Forest Gate are some that get me. Those last two are nowhere near one another and locals get really offended if you mix them up. (I've been to one to see a fluoro-haired trance-granny from my clubbing days. Even in Goa the travelling locals knew all about her when I asked after her to a much younger, prettier Kensington-posh looky-likey. "Oh her??!? She's a K-head and besides she doesn't have planets in her hair". (And this from a 26-year-old (acid) triphead who was forever ranting at the top of her croaky voice, her every anecdote commencing with "I'd been tripping for 3 days when..."...

Anyway back to MY drugs of the present-day. Yesterday I crossed another bridge. Clearing out my packed-to-bursting with vit c sachets, fresh "works", old "works", empty "works" packets, swabs, supposedly single-use druggie cooking up spoons (I'm the only person I know who uses them. I'm not blackening and bending my new Ikea spoons, no way...)

... Anyway I threw out loads of trash, and, when the drawer was done, had my three old crack bottles lined in a row. They were all miniature Martell brandy bottles with the bottoms knocked through (you can do this in a second with a screwdriver, and though it would seem this might shatter the entire thing, a neat pipe-worthy hole is popped out of the bottom). Then you shove squiggly washing-up wire in the top and ~ bang! ~ you're ready to "rock"!

So I gazed at these rather pinefully for a while. No chance of even the tiniest bit of recycle from any one of them: they've been obsessively scraped, poked and "chugga'd" out a million times while I was high... And taking one in each hand, I smashed them together, reducing both to smithereens and dashed the last one on my tiled kitchen floor.

I did feel faintly sad at having burned this bridge, though I've barely a single happy memory of crack, or any manner of cocaine ~ except I did love banging it up concocted with heroin, the famous speedball or snowball. I loved those; used to think they were yummy...

... But no more. And now we've real snow outside.

Waking up, shivering and a bit sweaty, thinly held by a late night dose of methadone, I've never been so displeased to see snow. I tramped outside cussing myself for oversleeping, cussing the weather and generally acting like a grouchy old man (if/when I actually do get old at this rate I'm going to be insufferable..!)

Yes I did give in to the temptation of heroin, I'm afraid. Money Mondays are so difficult for me. But coke ~ the druggie "snow" ~ is and always shall remain a mixed-up dimming remnant of my past...

Fascinating documentary on Channel 4 last night: THE MADNESS OF BOY GEORGE ~ all about the New York community service episode, and his past life, including the heroin addiction but not the rent boy scandal that's got him serving 15 months for "false imprisonment" (with handcuffs)... excellent stuff.

MADONNA: OH FATHER
Continuing the snowy theme... Whatever you say about her, Madge does do great videos...
Hey can anybody stateside confirm for me whether this actually does play out there? It's the only embeddable version I could find but for copyright reasons only plays supposedly in the USA. It certainly doesn't play here... but for you Americans I thought you might like a "treat" (or something to make you puke, depending how you view the "Queen of Pop")...

Madonna - New Music - More Music Videos

BRITNEY SPEARS EVERYTIME
I'm not into Britney at all, but this is the only one that made any impression on me...

It's Snowing!

THE AIR IS CRISP, the hum of traffic hushed. And all around, spiralling, flurrying ~ the tiniest snowflakes you ever did see!

None of it's settling on the grey pavements of London ~ that would be far too romantic for this clapped-out town. But hey it is nice to have some noteworthy weather for a change.

Other good news: I only slept about eight hours last night! Perhaps the fact I was curled foetal-wise in a whirlpool of a nest didn't help prolong unconsciousness; but then again I felt quite comfortable.

Tomorrow, Monday, is a test day and I make no bones about succeeding because I never have before. Despite all the best intentions and resolutions a week ago tomorrow I found myself in a room full of junkies waiting for the best dealer to switch on. And though I protest I don't want this life, unless I actually do something by myself, I'm like a prisoner rattling his chains as if that makes him more free...

O well. Tomorrow as they say is another day...