Gledwoods Vogelein

HIER ist mein besonderer deutschsprachiger Artikel über den kleinen Vogel in meiner Straße.
Dieses Jahr, scheint es mehr Vogelarten als je zuvor zu geben, die von den Bäume und Dachern zwitschern.
Vor zwei wochen zeigte sich eine Ringeltaube, die auf der Fernsehantenne meines Nachbars sitzt.
Ringeltauben sind eher flatterhaft und schüchtern.
Sie gurrt und gurrt praktisch der ganzer Tag. Ich ahnte, dass sie in mir verknallte sich. Jedesmal wenn ich die Haustür öfnete, oder die Straße entlang trabte ~ da war sie! Hinter der Mülltonne meines Nachbars, hinter dem Kirschenbaum... immer hinter etwas. Sie tat, als ob sie im Gras pickte; dann sah sie ganz erschüttert aus. Sie klappte die Flügeln und auf dem Dach verschwand. Deshalb nannte ich sie "Flapper".
Letzte Woche fand Flapper noch einandere Ringeltaube. Sie sitzen einander gegenüber und girren den ganzen Tag lang.
Mein anderer Lieblingsvogel ist eine Nachtigall, die Chogstable oder Chogga heißt.
Ich nannte sie Chogga nach ihrem Lied, das geht:
twit twit twit
jug jug
mit vielen komplizierten Triller darin.
Als ich das Thema googlete, fand ich, dass die Nachtigall in England überwintert, und dann im Sommer nach West- und Zentralafrika fliegt.
Sie seht sehr unwichtig aus ~ ganz klein und braun. Aber ihr Lied ist eine der schönster aller Vogellieder.
Chogga lebt oben im Kirschenbaum neben meinem Haus, darin Flapper auch saß, bevor sie ihren Partner fand.
Im Winter sah ich Chogga im Gebüsch meines Nachbars. Heutzutage sehe ich sie nicht. Aber ich höre sie laut und klar!
Die ganze Nacht, und fast den ganzen Tag lang zirpt sie ihr tranzendent melodische Lied, und ich fühle, als ob ich von einem romantischen Gedicht träume!


J W VON GOETHE

WANDRERS NACHTLIED II

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;

Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.



LINKS ÜBER ZWEISPRACHIGKEIT
Bilingual myths: http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/myth.html
Bilingual Confusion blog: http://bilingualconfusion.blogspot.com/
Multilingualism (Wikipedia; English): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism
Bilingualismus (Wikipedia; Deutsch): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingualismus
Languages of Belgium (Wikipedia; English): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Belgium
Situation linguistique de la Belgique (Wikipedia; French): http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_linguistique_de_la_Belgique
Languages of Switzerland (Wikipedia; English): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland
Sprachen in der Schweiz (Wikipedia; German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachen_in_der_Schweiz
Langues en Suisse (Wikipedia; Francais): http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_en_Suisse
Code-switching (Wikipedia; English): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching
Code-Switching (Wikipedia; Deutsch): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-Switching

Money Monday

This is in response to Gattina's shout for Fun Monday Money participants. We are to show our wallets and money (if any) inside.
Since I never use a wallet I cannot show that, but here's our newest banknote, the Purple Twenty. Reversing the trend for a decline in aesthetic standards, this, the Bank of England's latest effort is quite classy in my view.
TODAY IS THE DAY most of the layabouts, the sick, depraved, work-&-claiming and desperately-seeking-employment brigades get paid by British Social Security.

Our country's benefits bill is so enormous that all revenue from Income Tax covers this and this alone. All other government expenditure derives from the VAT sales tax, (which is levied not only on goods but professional services ~ when my book finally comes out I will have to pay VAT as a writer, once I go over about £45,000 ~ which I hope, of course, that I will... and the multitude of levies raised principally from smokers, drinkers and motorists (no wonder our country's in a mess!)

If and when I do ever get out of the nasty Benefits Trap, and truly am well enough to work and have a life (not going straight to bed suicidally exhausted and barely able to get out when the time rolls round for work again) ~ if I ever manage this, I will be so overjoyed I plan on leaving the country!

Then I'll have a whole new set of banknotes to play with...

... hopefully piles and piles of 'em!!

More about Chogstable the Nightingale

SOME GOOGLING into the subject, has revealed that Chogstable, my nightingale, is probably a boy. And that there might well be two or three of him. Or else he has severe insomnia, because he's frequently to be heard singing at all times throughout the day. Nightingale is said to mean "songstress of the night". But the two assumptions ~ that it is the female who sings and at night are wrong. It is, so I read, the male nightingale who does most of the singing. In the early hours of course his song becomes far more distinctive for lack of warbling, tweetling competition. But nightingales are to be heard chirruping away at all and any times during the 24 hours.

If you ever go on holiday to Togo or Chad and think you hear Chogstable twittering his head off at 4:30am ~ you're not going crazy. It might actually be Chogstable himself! Nightingales winter in Western and Central Africa, returning here by mid-April (so how come I first spotted Chogstable in January? Looking like a small thrush without the speckles (ie just like a nightingale), hanging out around dense vegetation ie behaving just like a nightingale. Every night I spotted him around the same tree he sings in today.) How could Chogstable be here, when he ought to have been having a chirp in some mango-grove in Gabon?

The little nightingales are said to cross the Sahara Desert in one fell swoop (so to speak) sleeping as they fly (which some birds can do), thrumming their tiny wings nonstop. On they flutter, across the Straits of Gibraltar or wider Mediterranean Sea, finally touching down for a long-overdue roost in Southern Spain or Italy.

May is said to be the best month to hear nightingale song, when the birds are breeding. In June, they are tending their nests of babies as couples. By July they take to the skies once more, thrum-thrum-thrumming away, off to their second homes and luxury gîtes along the Gold Coast, the Côte d'Ivoire or the Congo or Volta rivers...

Actually having read their supposed migration-timetable, which implies they ping too and from Africa not once a year, but twice. I'm confused. If anyone has better information, please let me know...

LINKS:
Wikipedia nightingale
Wikipedia nachtigall
Springerlink: First arrival dates of nightingale to Central Croatia

Any good videos (if I can find 'em) und Deutsche Übersetzung kommen später/coming later.

SPEAKING OF SINGERS
This is pretty remarkable:
ROSLYN KIND: CAN YOU READ MY MIND
What do you think of her voice? Whose does her singing remind you of?



An old clip:

Strange flashes of life ...

I KEEP HAVING THEM. Strange flashes, where I feel, or I imagine, that I'm actually living. Flash-backs or flash-forwards? I don't know. I smell things. I feel things. I feel anticipation. Not the anxious-tinged waiting for a dealer... Unless I know them really well I cannot trust them. I mean, in the most basic way. I've only been properly ripped off a couple of times. But every time I score, the reality is there: it might happen. Then I would be doomed. Not that I'm not doomed already, I can hear you say.
Doesn't it happen to us all? The magical feeling we only get on awakening after a vivid dream? When present situations are bathed in a new light. When new things seem possible.
I dream of France. Repeatedly. Paris.
In my head I wind backwards to Morocco. My blogospherical friend Gattina was posting from Morocco last week. This was the first place I went to on my own, off my own back, for no particular reason except that I had the chance to go. I went by train (and boat) all the way from Wales. Through London, down to Dover, crossed the Channel. Calais to Paris Nord. Metro. Gare d'Austerlitz to Hendaye. Hendaya (as it's known on the Spanish side) to Madrid. Madrid to Malaga. In a little urbanización called Mijas Costa I spent a week over Xmas with my Mum. Then I took the train to Algeciras, a boat to Tangiers ~ where I saw an old man smoking hashish on the street, who looked like a wizard from a Rupert Bear story. I got out of Tangiers as soon as I could, on the night train to Marrakesh. Waking up first thing in the desert, an oasis went floating past our windows. It was an old-fashioned compartmentalized train with tourists lined up along the corridor, just gazing at the views.
The sights and sounds and smells of Morocco constantly come back to me. Arabic cigarettes and black coffee first thing in the morning. Tangerine juice and hot flat bread for 15p. Courtyard hotel rooms for less than £3 a night. The view from the window was like a scene from Arabian Nights.
Sunrise in Rabat. The burnt colours of earth: umber, sienna, ochre were flooded in gold. I wandered the entire perimeter of the palace walls, gazing at tangerine trees in the first light, thinking over and over: Wow I'm in Africa! Later that morning I found the Royal Gardens, which were open to the public. There were storks' nests up the palm trees. I wandered down a lush pathway, alone. It was like an Islamic paradise.
All these things come back to me still, with the golden dream that they could happen again. And I don't feel trapped any more in an eternally revolving present, between drowsiness and despair.
Somehow, I know, I won't always be like this.

4:24am: Chogstable the nightingale, who shares the cherry tree with Flapper, is chirruping her head off as we speak. She's amazing...!

04:24 Uhr: Chogstable die Nachtigall, die oben im Kirschenbaum mit Flapper die Ringeltaube lebt, zwitschert laut! Sie ist wunderbar!

Chinese Proverb of the day!

當一個人內心能容納兩樣相互衝突的東西，這個人便開始變得有價值了。

It actually came from a piece of spam left at Addicted Rantings's blog by somebody named 韋于倫成 on 27 May this year at 1:18pm and it means:


When a person's heart can hold different conflicting things, this man started to become worthwhile.

Cool, huh?

Happy Birthday, Your Majesty!

TODAY IS HM THE QUEEN's Official Birthday...

... note the term "official"; Elizabeth II actually has two birthdays. Her actual date of birth was 21 April 1926, making her 84.

Her Official Birthday has no set date, but is ordinarily celebrated "on the first, second or third Saturday in June, though it is rarely the third," say the experts at Wikipedia.

As well as hosts of cards, bouquets (why would you send the Queen flowers, knowing they will more likely than not spend half an hour at the Palace before being sent on to a children's hospital?) and prezzies great and small from politicians, dignitaries, presidents and Kings, the today's highlight is the ceremony of Trooping the Colour; all soldiers in microphone-hats (bearskins) and Her Majesty riding side-saddle on her trusty steed Burmese. A stately display of pomp and splendour straight from the lid of a souvenir toffee-tin!

Highlights of the Queen's Birthday Honours include: actress Catherine Zeta Jones becomes a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British British Empire), she says it's "humbling and overwhelming" to receive such a distinction; Oscar-nominated actress Sophie Okonedo ~ who I don't like because she skulked into the shop I begged outside on a regular basis and never spared me so much as a glance, let alone a penny ~ gets a CBE too; a railway station announcer ~ MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and a farmer who was awarded an MBE for "services to ploughing" ..(!)

WORLD CUP:
England v USA at Rustenberg. 7:30pm kickoff (London time) tonight.
(Not that, though I've yet to watch a game this year, I'm secretly following this in some underhand, mentally interesting unconscious-eyes-closed-type way ...)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MA'AM!

84 GLORIOUS YEARS:
Commentary by the Queen herself ...
If you've ten minutes spare, this will provide educational, entertaining and highly informative coffee-time viewing...
Excerpts are from my Elizabeth R documentary. You can watch this in its entirety (about 2 hours) on my Fabulous Celebrity Blog!



TROOPING THE COLOUR:





BEN STILLER ~ ROBERT DENIRO ~ BARBRA STREISAND ALERT!
MEET THE F*CKERS IS ON BBC1 AT 21:30 HRS!
Having seen Meet the Parents, I wanted to see this sequel when it came out. But of course my local cinemas ran it for all of three days so I missed it. And every subsequent chance of seeing it. Till now...
To those of you not resident in the UK. Sorry.
Why not move here? Half of Mogadishu already has ...(!)

NOTE TO SELF:
GERMAN GRAMMAR LESSONS: BEGINNERS'/ADVANCED

The Nightingale

Befiederter Samstag ~ die Nachtigall
Feathery Friday on Saturday



Romeo und Julia
Akt 3 Szene 5

Julia:

Willst du schon gehen? Der Tag ist ja noch fern.
Es war die Nachtigall, und nicht die Lerche,
Die eben jetzt dein banges Ohr durchdrang;
Sie singt des Nachts auf dem Granatbaum dort.
Glaub, Lieber, mir: es war die Nachtigall.

Romeo:

Die Lerche war´s, die Tagverkünderin,
Nicht Philomele; sieh den neid´schen Streif,
Der dort im Ost der Frühe Wolken säumt.
Die Nacht hat ihre Kerzen ausgebrannt,
Der muntre Tag erklimmt die dunst´gen Höhn;
Nur Eile rettet mich, Verzug ist Tod.

Julia:

Trau mir, das Licht ist nicht des Tages Licht;
Die Sonne haucht ihr Luftbild aus,
Dein Fackelträger diese Nacht zu sein,
Dir auf dem Weg nach Mantua zu leuchten;
Drum bleibe noch; zu gehen ist ja noch nicht not.

Romeo:

Lass sie mich greifen, ja, lass sie mich töten!
Ich gebe gern mich drein, wenn du es willst.
Nein, jenes Grau ist nicht des Morgens Auge,
Der bleiche Abglanz nur vom Cynthias Stirn.
Das ist auch nicht die Lerche, deren Schlag
Hoch über uns des Himmels Wölbung trifft.
Ich bleibe gern; zum Gehen bin ich verdrossen.
Willkommen, Tod! hat Julia dich beschlossen.
Nun Herz? Noch tagt es nicht, noch plaudern wir.

Julia:

Es tagt, es tagt! Auf! Eile! Fort von hier!
Es ist die Lerche, die so heiser singt,
Und falsche Weisen, rauhen Misston gurgelt.
Man sagt, der Lerche Harmonie sei süß;
Nicht diese; sie zerreist die unsre ja.
Die Lerche, sagt man, wechselt mit der Kröte
Die Augen; möchte sie doch auch die Stimme!
Die Stimm´ ist´s ja, die Arm aus Arm uns schreckt,
Dich von mir jagt, dass sie den Tag erweckt.
Stets hell und heller wird´s; wir müssen scheiden.

Romeo:

Stets heller - und stets dunkler unsre Leiden.


Im Winter gab's eine Nachtigall, die hoch oben im Kirschenbaum lebte.


Am 4 oder 5 Uhr morgens, als ich Schokoladenkeks einkaufte, laufte sie die Straße entlang, und dann sitzte sie im Gebüsch meines Nachbars.


In winter, we had a nightingale, who lived high in Flapper's cherry tree.

When I used to go out to buy chocolate biscuits at 4 or 5 a.m. there he was, running along the street. Then he would go and perch in my neighbour's bushes.



Das Lied der Nachtigall ist einer der schönster aller Vogellieder.
The song of the nightingale is one of the most beautiful of all birdsongs.

NIGHTINGALE SINGING CARTOON
ZEICHENTRICKFILM: SINGENDER NACHTIGALL



Romeo and Juliet
Act 3 Scene 5

JULIET

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET

Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.

ROMEO

Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day.

JULIET

It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us:
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes,
O, now I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day,
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

ROMEO

More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!


HÖREN SIE DAS LIED! ERSTAUNLICH!
HEAR THE SINGING! AMAZING!

Eine außerordentliche Aufnahme (kein Video).
An excellent recording (no video).

The World's Most Beautiful Game

IF YOU ARE FEMALE OR AMERICAN OR YOU JUST HATE SPORT, this might have made little if any impact on your consciousness but ...

FOOTBALL'S WORLD CUP... (that is soccer-football to you Americans ~ but of course) kicked off about ten minutes ago with South Africa v Mexico.

Crowds of 94,000 are packed into Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium blaring away on plastic horns named vuvuzelas. Detractors claim the cheap "musical" instruments (a post-apartheid South African tradition) sound "like swarms of angry bees" or like "a herd of elephants breaking wind". European TV companies apparently went nuts when they realized the soundtrack to all games would be blighted by this noise and attempted to have the windy trumpets banned. They were not successful and instead label the strange sound the "authentic voice of Africa" ~ haha!

Traditionally soccer is a Big Deal on three out of six continents: Europe, South America and Africa. In recent years the sport has taken off bigtime across Southern and Eastern Asia ~ where the British team Manchester United is said to have fans numbering tens of millions.

More recently David Beckham has done a great deal to raise soccer's status as a professional sport in America.

If you do live in middle-America you might be surprised at the level of passion this Beautiful Game evokes. Imagine the Super Bowl crossed with the Olympic Games and you're starting to get some idea of the sport's ubiquity across most of the planet.

World audiences may exceed TWO BILLION.

According to Reuters, the 2006 World Cup in Germany pulled in 26.3 billion (were 20,000,000,000 of these on another planet? Because there's fewer than 7,000,000,000 people on earth).

Whatever. It's a lot of people.

So crack open a cold beer. Have a blast on a plastic pipe. Click on the telly and enjoy ...

(I'd love to join you, but I will be watching Lindenstraße and Marienhof instead ...)





(ANM. DEUTSCHER INHALT KOMMT NOCH SPÄTER)

Robin chirping its head off in bush....

On again with my birdsong theme.


Here's a robin having a chirp on a twig with water glistering attractively behind...


The song seems to me even more intricate than Tuesday's blackbird's or yesterday's thrush's.


See what you think:

Noch weiter mit dem Vogellieder-Thema.

Hier gibt's ein Rotkelchen, das auf einem Zweig zirpt, mit glanzvollem Wasser dahinter.

Mir scheint das lied noch verwickelter als die Amsel von Dienstag oder die Drossel von Gestern.

Was denken Sie...?*




*Franziska, Gattina und andere Deutsch-sprechender ~ bitte hilft Ihr mich!
Ist meine Grammatik korrekt?
Ist das die richtige Übersetzung?

Till divorce do we part....

I was going to title this post:
TILL DEATH DO US PART...
but
I DON'T BELIEVE IN DIVORCE (not really) so how am I to proceed in this ongoing passionate affair with my chemical life-partner?
I am so used to letting myself down regarding any and every resolution I have ever made concerning my heroin/methadone addiction that my new motto is: TILL DEATH DO US PART.
Heroin is the most efficacious antidepressant I have ever tried. So effective, in fact, that for the first months of my addiction I naively considered myself CURED!
Seems ridiculous to say now, but it's all too true.
Workers at the druggiecentre, spouting stock platitudes, want me to believe that I'm using a depressant and that is making me depressed forget the fact (actually nothing is forgotten ~ they never researched far enough to learn it) that for hundreds of years opiates were pretty much the only effective antidepressants mankind had; that in the early 20th century "morphia" were frequently administered in mental hospitals for the relief of severe melancholia. (And to stabilize mania.)
(The first ongoing effect I noticed opiates had on me was a distinct flatlining of my formerly-oceanic mood-swings. As well as the downs I had frequent fizzy "up" days, when I was so buoyant practically nothing could force me down... Unfortunately (but just like conventional mood stabilizers like lithium/etc) the most prominent change I noted was an end to those lovely "up" days...
(Opiates also have well-documented antipsychotic properties, though the psychiatric community have a vested interest in not researching that particular inconvenience...)
Though I have mentioned "bipolar" experience and symptoms, I don't think I'm clinically bipolar. But I do seem to fall into a subgoup of depressives who are liable to experience agitation, euphoria and "hypomanic"-like episodes on antidepressant therapy. My last such experience, with mirtazapine, was so disastrously extreme I flew up then plummeted right down, so profoundly I went into spiritual crisis. I had no idea it was the meds causing this. As far as I was concerned I had finally hit rock-bottom. I was not suicidal but my life was over. I just could not go on... I have googled all this and it would appear I'm on some "bipolar spectrum" (spectrum-disorders being the buzzword du jour in the psychiatric community). Because I've had similar, but thankfully nowhere near as extreme, experiences from Prozac, a totally unrelated antidepressant [Prozac/fluoxetine is an SSRI; mirtazapine is tetracyclic], the last doctor I saw suggested we give such chemical interference a miss from now on. Hurrah!
It was he, incidentally, who put the term "self-medication" on the table. A first-class excuse, on the face of it, to go on using. Except that in using I'm trapped, I'm still not happy, I see no worthwhile future. And I cannot travel. Physically separating myself from the druggiescene I'm so much part of might, I hope, be one of the things that saves me.
I spoke to Narcotics Anonymous about this. In NA fleeing the places associated with one's using is often known as "the geographical cure" or "doing a geographical". And according to them it seldom works.
The NA-advisor I spoke to told me the best thing I can do is to go to meetings in London ~ 90 meetings in 90 days, though it's possible and for someone like me probably desirable, to do 180 meetings or more. There are 7am sessions for financial workers in The City, as well as lunch-hour meetings peppered around Central London. And if you go to an early-evening meet, it is often possible to go on to another, later one, somewhere across town. If I'm not using, the transport costs won't be a huge issue. Even under Mayor Johnson, tube fairs are still cheaper than heroin (though not much)...
No, they basically told me, face up to the addiction and do the recovery where you are. Do at least six months. If you can do this in London, where using is so easy, you know you can cope being anywhere else... THEN do your travelling.
I think they are right.
Though I do have some reservations about NA (and especially the way some members seem to implement their theories), I have to concede, in most areas on most points concerning Recovery, they do seem to be right.
The Narcotics Anonymous method probably isn't for everyone.
However, I have been to enough meetings, over more than 10 years, to be able to vouch that NA does work for those who not only "keep coming back" but who trouble to WORK THE PROGRAMME.
I'm at a point now where my best options appear to be: 1 get heroin on prescription or 2 clean up altogether. Kiss my beloved opiates goodbye.
Compromise options 3 and 4 are to stick to methadone without using on top (never been able to do it before) or just to carry on as I'm doing now. No life. No future. Little hope.
So as I say, my commitment is to option four ~ for no life and no hope and no joy and little (let's be frank) to look forward to except a hopefully early death.
TILL DEATH DO US PART

Let's face it, if I manage to stick to this new decision as resolutely as I've done to promises past I SHOULD BE CLEAN AND SERENE BEFORE THE YEAR IS OUT!!



Illustrations top ~ opium poppies=slavery and war; bottom ~ poppy as international symbol of peace, picture at TheLensFlare


Continuing my birdsong theme; another English garden favourite, the SONG THRUSH:
Said to have one of the most sublime of songs...
... an incredibly intricate and trilly tune...
PS HEAR THE FLAPPER WOODPIGEON COO-COO-COOING IN THE BACKGROUND!!!



NA LINKS:
Narcotics Anonymous World Service Office
Narcotics Anonymous UK
Narcotics Anonymous Australia
Narcotics Anonymous Canada
Narcotiques Anonymes French language site
Narcotics Anonymous German language site
Wikipedia article about NA

Blackbird

A BLACKBIRD was chirping its head off on the roof.

They sing the most glorious song ...

Eine Amsel saß auf dem Dach. Sie zirpte laut. Das Lied ist erstaunlich.

BLACKBIRD IN SOMEBODY'S GARDEN
Look at this, you can see it right close up chanting and chirrupping away:

If you watch this through you see the most amazing woodpecker poking at the peanut-feeder. All black and white with bits of red, like an old dog-blanket!




Some German garden blogs I've been reading:
Lunas Garten-Rosen
Herz und Leben
Jouir la vie

(I found many other good ones but these were all my Browser would list for me.)

Wenn Sie dies in der deutschen Sprachwelt lesen, bitte lassen Sie Ihren Kommentar hinter!
Wenn Sie dies lesen in der deutschen Sprachwelt, lassen Sie bitte ihren Kommentar hinter!
(Welcher ist korrekt?)
(Weder das eine?)
Danke schön, Gattina:
Wenn Sie dies in deutsch lesen, lassen Sie bitte einen Kommentar.

A flock of pigeons, Evil Mr Fox

Just a feathery fantasy. They aren't actually doing this. Just perching on opposite terraced roofs and aerials coo-coo-cooooooing unendingly!

YES, my pair of pigeons appears gradually to be forming a flock. I'm pretty sure we now have three if not four of the portly pigeons gathered on my road. No hot pigeon pash though. No paired-off coo-banter. It's like one of those 1950s dances: boys one side, girls the other. Nobody daring to be the first to hit the floor ...

Other points: here is a really good feel-good blog post.
Statistically X people love you in the world... x people rely on you... you are unique and valuable...



HORROR IN HACKNEY THIS SATURDAY!!

A not-so-fantastic Mr Fox ~ sneaked from a back garden, through French windows, into the dining room of a "posh £1,000,000 house" in innercity Hackney, North-East London, padded silently upstairs and savaged twin toddling little girls so badly they are still in hospital today covered in bites and lacerations to face and arms.

A "humane" fox-trapping cage, baited with food, placed by the fateful patio doors has already "retained" one furry suspect...

Police say the bushy-tailed reprobate is in custody of the RSPCA, waiting to be punished and killed.

Foxes are perhaps our British equivalent to North America's raccoons, though I would say they are considerably more wily and a little standoffish compared to those catfood-guzzling 'coons.

It is not at all unusual to see a slim red dog trotting down the middle of the road at 4am. Look twice and you realize this is no doggie, it's a fox!

Foxes are notorious for raiding farmers' chicken sheds, where instead of selecting one choice, tasty bird they slay every single one just to be sure ~ and make trips back and forth over and over to stash the dead hens where they hope other foxes won't gobble them down first.

The vulgar vixens also attack pet rabbits, cats, even small dogs. They rip open rubbish sacks, strewing the street with tin-cans which the rats then clamber into. Soon there is a wildlife jamboree with blackbirds, starlings (in season) blue tits, great tits, nut-hatches, greenfinches and even Flapper the wood pigeon and his kind fluttering down from neighbouring cherry trees for a peck-about.

Residents of Hackney say the usually reserved-but-bold critters are becoming increasingly daring. Sneaking into living rooms. Raiding kitchens. Nudging open refrigerators with pointy noses to emerge coleslaw-footprinted and yoghurty-nosed, garlanded with strings of chipolatas chomping on piri-piri roast chicken legs à la Attila the Hun.

OK slight word-painterly exaggeration but the gist is true. The neighbours said they're sneaking into houses all the time.

I hope those poor little girls are going to be OK. The red-furred robber apparently left the two girls' younger brother sleeping peacefully in his cot in the next room... Thank Heaven for small mercies..!

STOP PRESS: 7PM MONDAY one twin transferred to Great Ormond Street, specialist paediatric hospital this evening "for further treatment". Both girl's condition is said to be serious, but they're out of immediate danger.


Here's a good read:
There is no Hero in Heroin blog.
I've been reading about addiction "from the other side" quite a lot of late... An Addict in my Son's Bedroom, Mom vs Heroin, Hurting Parents: Addicted Son, Mom Trying to Detach with Love... and so on... searing stuff...


Re my promised Druggie Post, you'll have to wait till tomorrow, you'll surely be glad to learn :-)

PS the Cute Overload blog is good today ....

PPS: blog of the day ~ here's a good one. Tina B makes her own beads fired in funky glass... but how does she do it... and how does she sprechen such gutes Deutsch? I've no idea.... handmade-by-b-tina.blogspot.com

Coo!

FLAPPER THE WOOD PIGEON's persistent cooing has finally been rewarded. Yes, a new tubby cooer has appeared on our street! The two portly pigeons sit on opposite aerials cooing mindlessly at one another. Some mysterious love-dove courtship ritual appears to be underway as I've yet to see them perched together... (The photograph is courtesy of FlickRiver Nature Reserve: you can see some marvellous stuff there.) Full updates to come!

I'm writing one of my long druggie posts but it's not finished and I didn't want to post it today. So tomorrow, you know what not to read, haha!!

O bloody hell more cooing. I can hear it now. When will those two birdbrains shut up??!?

Not furry

NOT FURRY FRIDAY. OR SATURDAY...

I could think of nothing furry at all to post today. So here's a poor raccoon with no fur. Seems to survive OK, but:~



According to the Ugly Overload blog, this poor creature, resident in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada has been thoughtfully named "Baldy" by the householders who feed her. They say she started losing her fur two years ago, but has since given birth to ordinary babies.
Her coatlessness doesn't seem to be too much of a problem. I expect she is used to feeling exposed and windswept and cold.
But I just feel sorry for her. Poor, poor swine ...

Heroin in the crack-bush

I HAD DRUGS ON THE BRAIN this morning. Specifically heroin (of course). For several hours my thoughts and actions centred on nothing else except using a teeny tiny residue I had left ~ and rushing out for more. This involved the biggest flap-about. I would gladly have changed places with Flapper the pigeon to have got down da area more quickly than I did. Because I got to what I thought was the right place, only for da man to inform me he had no wheels and could I come right down to him. Which, being already half way there I did. I took the bus fare out of the scoring money (too right!) Went on a massive excursion.
Half an hour later I was there. I had to wait in a park with suspicious mothers throwing sticks at dogs. And workmen (for some reason) poking at holes in the tarmac. Then a random black man floats past. I had to double-take as I've only ever seen him in the front seat of a car before. People look different in plain air. Through the railings £14 exchanged hands for a third of a gram of B. He says they're half grams, but I think they're 0.4s or thirds. With this in hand I went skipping merrily away. A tubby black woman gave me a queer look from her front step.
On the corner of the bus-stop I found a side entrance to a huge local park which I power-walked through to the scrub at the back. Here I could have done my hit, but it didn't feel private enough. About three or four years ago I found myself in the company of two mentally ill junkies ~ one was an American girl. Americans in London are not that common (apart from rich international financier types). American addicts are even rarer. On that day we ended up in a huge bush needlepoking all together. I was determined to find this bush.
Crossing over a bridge at the back I found myself in a leafy walkland. I'm sure I was in the right area. Families with grandchildren rambling far too slowly. Well I couldn't exactly say would you hurry up and go away I have a bag of heroin I wish to bang up in these bushes? could I? Lacking the patience to go any further I delved into the first huge bush I saw. It was like a tardis-bush. It went on and on with miniature paths, trodden, so it appeared, by tiny Norwich terriers on dandelion-sniffing rambles.
Eventually I stumbled upon (and nearly down) a sharp drop with piles and piles of piss-stained newspapers, used drug works, cooking spoons (not the sort you eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream with, these are for drugs), and old pipes and packets and sachets of citric acid everywhere. In a corner was a seething fly-ridden splat of dripping diarrhoea. The whole place stank and looking up I saw some industrial window glaring emptily down on me. I shifted a yard to the left and the window was obscured by blackberry bushes.
Preparing the hit was stressful. Voices from the nearby pathway rang out disconcertingly near. I cooked up one hit. Looked yellow and weak. I shoved half as much powder again in the spoon. Now it looked dark brown. This dealer sells strange gear that looks the colour of beach sand, yet goes very dark when prepared. I'm not sure why. Once I'd done the hit I carefully sealed up the gear with a cellophane bag purloined from a nearby greengrocer's just for this purpose. Then I bared my bloodstained, gnarled trackmarked leg, slotted the works straight in and remarkably had the vein at once. In the hazy poppy-juice disappeared.
I held my leg up in the air to let it flush down. If I don't do this, my circulation is so bad there's a good chance the hit will sink to my foot and go nowhere fast, so I have to use gravity rather than my own heartbeats to pour the juice to my heart.
Then I felt OK. And I could face the day.
It was nearly two o'clock. I had been up for seven hours.

Is there a way out?

TIRED, TIRED: UNINSPIRED...
SO WHY ARE YOU POSTING? I hear you scream. Save us your whining self-pity. Well I won't.
I haven't done anything of note, except wend round the internet and listen to Flapper the woodpigeon's endless coos. I think the poor bird is lovesick.
I found myself on some drug forums whittering away about heroin. I never thought I knew that much about the subject ~ only what I picked up along the way. Turns out there are people who know even less than I do.
IF you're going to use a dangerous drug, as they say: JUST SAY KNOW!
This is what got me about the drug-seminars I was persuaded along into by Maple Syrup my former druggieworker. I turned up expecting a room full of people just like me. What I actually found though was that my addiction was far longer-term and more severe than nearly everyone else's there. In other words I am a full-blown junkie. A lot of people in those rooms were just ordinary people whose using had escalated and swerved from weekend coke into crack and often heroin. Of course even I was an ordinary person... once...
Part of me still adores the drug heroin. Even though I have chucked crack cocaine, which I did really, really like, out of my life. Even though I have cut out the problem drinking. I do still drink alcohol, but not like I used to. I still love sleeping pills, which I only ever took because I had clinical need for them. Severe insomnia. And I do mean not sleeping at all without them... On the one hand I love all this stuff. One drug counsellor told me this showed I had some willpower ~ being able to say I loved certain drugs, and yet being a heroin addict and NOT taking them.
Incidentally this is one point where NA and I diverge. Most of what NA say I can relate to closely, but not on this point. Their definition of an addict is someone who cannot control mind-altering chemicals in any form. Well I can. I found a batch of ecstasy pills (smiley-faced and orange: what else were they? I tasted a bit of one and they were Es) at the bus stop some years ago. I had no desire to take them and so they remained in a cupboard for several months... (until someone stole them!!) So I am not and never have been a rampant drug-dustbin. I don't understand that mentality. I have had a very severe drug addiction, but that is a different thing. The human trashcan type person runs in every direction aimlessly and endlessly, not caring how/where/when/with whom they end up just as long as something chemical pushes them up, down or sideways. My life, by contrast, ran in constant circles. The same tracks. Round and round and round.
I don't know if I ever can stop loving heroin the way I'm supposed to in order to stop it. I know I hate being a heroin addict. And I never intended to be a heroin addict. One of the worst bits of mis-information I encountered over and over (I think this originated in the Freudian-tinctured 1960s where cod-psychology prevailed), the "fact" was repeated over and over that "nobody gets addicted to heroin unless they want to be an addict". Well that is nonsensical. I used and used, every day (and what got me into even that is a story in itself ~ the drugs came to me. I didn't have to go score. They were already there, enough to use every day for weeks on end (I didn't have a habit, remember, so we're only talking a few grams)... Every day dawned. I didn't particularly feel like using because the drug was in my system from the day before. Then afternoon... perhaps evening. And I had it there, so: oh go on then. I snorted it in little white lines. The drug was so clean I could barely feel it up my nose. Then the hot, sweet syrupy nodding opiated haze took me away into noman's land. And come the next day and the next day I wanted to do it again. As some tolerance built up I found it gave me a stimulant, confidence-boosting effect.
I wanted to be golden and glowing and great. I did not ever want to be a dirty hopeless junkie. And that ~ no two ways about it ~ is what I became.
Now I can only see two possible ways forward. I either need a far better substitution therapy than methadone. Because methadone makes me feel horrible. Or I need to come away from these drugs all together. Learn to live drug-free (somehow).
And somehow learn to live at all.

Stalked... by a Wood Pigeon!

I THINK FLAPPER the wood pigeon is stalking me. When I left the house early this afternoon, there he was right by the front door. Needless to say he flapped off with great commotion once he saw me.

Then, when I returned just now I had just passed the neighbour's bins and ~ huge a huge flappery occurred again. I nearly had a heart attack. But it was just Flapper, who had been pecking in the lawn taking flight to his second favourite TV aerial. (He prefers the luxury one that looks like a grill-rack on my side of the road.)

Up on the aerial he took to cooing incessantly. I don't know who he is cooing to, or what he is trying to say, but he appears to have an urgent message for somebody...

At first I wasn't sure whether there aren't in fact TWO pigeons on my street, but I'm pretty certain now that Flapper is one person. Perhaps he is cooing for a significant other. The only other wood pigeons I know peck around in the bushes by the public library. Someone should tell them Flapper is here before somebody gets fed up with his mindless cooing and shoots the bird-brain!