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!!

Je Suis Un Rosbif

OUI oui, ou la la as they say in France I'm a real rosbif (as the Frogs call us).

I was wondering why the steak hardly went anywhere last time (I put in half what I'd bought)... until I checked the fridge this morning only to find about two thirds of the original purchase left.

This I cooked in traditional rosbif style, or rather the style of my own, which is to fry it up, add onions and mushrooms, turf into a more permanent lidded pot with a bit of water, chuck spices on top (fewer than last time for a more stately dinner), allowed it to bubble on setting #1 for about three hours until it was tender enough to cut with the side of a teaspoon.

This I had with baby potatoes (boiled freshly and separately) and heaps of petits pois. The gravy came out particularly nice. Hey I'm learning (slowly). The onion mushroom gravy was pretty fabulous.

Still no keys!

Haven't got round to contacting the landord yet. I can't face stuff like that.

Really I feel pretty depressed all the time. That is why I fixate on these petty things I blog about; they are my only claim to sanity(!)

Sorry I have not been good at keeping in touch anywhere near as well as I'd like with anyone. I need a proper computer account. Fell out with the last cafe owner as his nonfirewalled nonprotected computers were apt to crash what with my fishing things in and out of youtube and jumping in and out of blogs. He assumed I was doing something peculiar and said basically I couldn't buy time there anymore, so...

Anyway, I know hardly anything about classical music. Like most people, I just know what I like from TV and films. I've had to make a great effort to learn who any of the tunes I know are by let alone what they're actually called. I'd say this is my favourite tune of all time:~

Mozart: Lacrimosa/Requiem
This is what I call sublime...



And this the Tekno'd up "mix". Volume LOUD, please...



PS Do you like my illustration? In case you're foreign the cup-shaped battery object is Yorkshire pudding and no Sunday lunch is complete without it!

Roast Result

THE POT ROAST CAME OUT LOVELY. Only problem was the thin aluminium pan burnt too much at the bottom. Even though I knew this from last time I attempted stewing in it, I still did it again and worse! The meat came out really good. It was just like the serving suggestion, actually.

I'm going to have to save up for a slow cooker like I had in my last house (but broke). They only cost £10 (price of a bag of drugs) but do I ever have £10 to spare..??

Also. Dur. Because the only proper saucepan I have is about half the size of that slowcooker I learnt to cook in the spices came out twice as strong. That was only 4xflat teaspoons of 4 various curry powders (so dull to use just the one!) + ginger + loads of paprika. Only after mulling in the fridge did it calm down, then it was OK.

I'm feeling very circumspect today and trying to envision a way out of my predicament I can actually do. Which is not easy.

Pot Roast Roborovskis

TWO OF MY ROBOROVSKIS were squabbling on a slice of burnt toast last night. Honking and squealing away. O, the bizarre life of the dwarf Mongolian hammy!

I have three stewing "steaks" upon my person as I speak. These shall be chucked in a pot with baby potatoes (if I can find them), carrots, onions, petits pois and stringbeans (if I remember to get them) plus the seasoning of 1 desertspoon mixed curry and jerk seasoning powders; 1 desert spoon paprika; 1 teaspoon ginger; 1 teaspoon mixed herbs; up to 10 desert spoons Lea & Perrins. O yeah: and mushrooms as per the illustration...

...I am hoping to make a yummy pot roast so wish me luck!

I've never done "pot roast" before... that being (as I understand it) basically a casserole with big chunks of meat in it rather than my ordinary cubed steak. Problem with cubed steak is I tend to fish too much of it out just to "check the taste" so half of it's gone before said dish has even finished cooking!

As for Sunday ~ o the drugs drugs drugs. I was in such a bad mood without them. Which is why I still wanted gear when the methadone finally kicked in (at about 9 at night!) All day I'd had to eake the doses out, trying not to take too much too early, in fear of wakening sweating coldly with a gasp of terror in the middle of the night with nothing left.

But I'm OK now. An end is in sight. (It has to be...)

OK and now for some music:~
ELGAR: ENIGMA VARIATIONS; NIMROD
Conducted by Daniel Baremboyne
This most famous "variation" was dedicated to Elgar's best friend, a German chap by the name Jaeger which means "hunter" hence Nimrod the "mighty hunter before the LORD" of Genesis. This most "English" of pieces is beautiful and stately in equal measure.

Lousy Weekend

NO I HAVEN'T LITERALLY GOT NITS OR ANYTHING... (not this year. Though I did catch them REPEATEDLY several years ago from the local bedredlocked, caravan-dwelling tattooed and pierced "new age travelling" "crusties".... They might even have been body lice then, only I washed my clothes far to frequently (like every single DAY!! ever to find out...)

NO I AM MISERABLE. Because I HATE METHADONE. Spent all day experiencing flashes of fever. It was a horribly clammy day but most of the time I felt like I was outside in thickest fog in shirtsleeves. When actually I was indoors with the heater on full blast. Then suddenly I'd break into the most perverse overheated sweats, so bad I had to strip off nearly naked. Then I was freezing again...

I'd done well over 100mg of methadone which is supposedly more than enough. Until I found an extra 20mg in the back of my fridge I thought I was going to go nuts...

Now suddenly the weather, from being so unbearably horrible I couldn't face going outside, feels remarkably clement. And all because of this magic methadone inside me...

My keys are NOWHERE to be found. Yes I've checked fridge, freezer, toilet, shower, behind, inside everything including shoes, clothes everything (as I said they were deliberately bulked out to MAKE THEM EASY TO FIND... yet to no avail...) I don't have spares as the landlord insists on frequently changing the locks. Which is a good thing really. But not in a situation like this.

No I am NOT IN A GOOD MOOD TODAY. The junkie life is one coated in Teflon. There's so little to hang on to, the drugs become everything.

Being on heroin is like being a poor man shut out in the rain gazing longingly in to a posh restaurant. All that separates you is one thin plate glass. And yet that glass is everything. As soon as you take the heroin you're on the other side of that window and so smug you feel you'll never be rained on again (though you know it you can barely ever feel it)... and so it goes on.

Oh roll on tomorrow. I really want to get some gear.

THESE ARE MY 2 FAVOURITE BOND THEMES

~ From Russia with Love (film intro without vocal)



~ From Russia with Love (stills montage with vocal)



~ Goldfinger (film intro with vocal)

Lost Keys!

HOW ON EARTH THIS CAN HAPPEN I've no idea: I lost my keys IN MY ROOM while I was asleep. The door was locked (but not the window!~ aha!!) Surely they can only have slipped down the side of the bed. They had an NA "one day clean" fob and lots of tinkly jangly things like a revolving coin-head thing from Cancun, Mexico (where I've never been) in other words having lost them too many times I weighed them down a lot and made them as jangly as possible...

... two days later and having thrown the entire room up in the air there's STILL NO SIGN OF THEM!!

What on earth am I going to do? I'm reduced to just leaving my room unlocked when I go out.

The front door isn't as much hassle. Basically you just let it click behind you, then when you want to come in again, gently press on the door (or just sneeze when the wind's right) and wahey!! Door comes barging in!!

ABBA: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
This song has royal heritage. It's what King Hussein of Jordan sang when he was wooing Queen Noor... (true!)

Useless Urine Screen

TALK ABOUT saving money and chucking the baby out with the bathwater: the drug service has new state-of-the-art creditcard-style urine tests. You pee into a cup, remove the end of the card and dip five little litmus-like dippers into the cup. Within a minute a "result" is recorded for cocaine, opiates, methadone, benzodiazepines and buprenorphine (Subutex).

Today's test had me down as a major coke fiend, borderline methadone drinker (even though I'd had it all that morning), negligable heroin user, benzo-fiend (benzos are things like Valium/sleeping pills and I've not touched them for ages). As for the buprenorphine I had again borderline used that would have put me in horrible withdrawals on top of methadone.

NB it was not the same test illustrated to top left, but along those "lines"...

So I walked out of there scratching my head until I realized I'd drunk so much tea before I came in that my urine was dilute enough to score "negligable" on everything. Where on earth the high coke reading came from I don't know. I did the test twice and both readings were identical.

I've invented a genius "Chinese" stirfry. I know none of my cooking really is authentic Chinese, especially the curry. My aim is for TAKEAWAY cooking: not food as actually eaten in China (with dead dogs/crows/etc etc)....

Anyway, for this you boil up long grain rice and store in fridge.
Stirfry one medium mushroom chopped extra-thin.
Stirfry two or three baby corn per medium portion per person again chopped extra thin.
Add about a desertspoon tinned sweetcorn per person. Fry all this. Add the magic ingredients (salt and MSG) and a bit of pepper. Voila: A MASTERPIECE!!!

Abba's Agnetha: Sometimes When I'm Dreaming
Thanks Mizpeh

Woke Up Screaming

I HATE SLEEPING sometimes. It hits me like a disease and I get too much of it. Times and commitments go out the window as unconsciousness takes over for hour after hour after hour.

The night before last I finally got into bed properly and lay down. Almost right away I was dreaming. Blazingly vivid stuff.

As the night went on so my dreaming got more and more disturbing until I literally did wake up screaming ~ LOUDLY. And woke up the person in the room next door.

What on earth they thought was the matter I shall never know (I'm not going to ask!)

From the Sun newspaper: swimming with tigers ...