Sunshine

IT'S A HOT DAY TODAY. I had to take off a layer of clothing because of over-zealous central heating in the methadone pharmacy. The sun is shining; it's actually quite hot. I know I should have done this weeks ago but I'm about to take my computer to hospital today. I just couldn't face doing it before as I thought I'd fused it. Turns out it does turn on after all ~ but then it says something about a cable disconnection and won't do anything further.

I didn't get stop smoking stuff yesterday as it turns out yesterday was "preparation day" they wanted to make quit day a week yesterday but I insisted on giving up today. I can't handle the stress of so many cigarettes knowing I'm on a slow countdown to the very last...

You have to pick one type of nicotine replacement therapy and I think they do most types but not those electronic cigarettes you smoke cartridges in... So I'm going for gum. I couldn't deal with a patch unless I had absolutely no choice: that would be too much like a nicotine version of methadone! If only drug cessation clinics gave a wider choice of therapies I might have cleaned up years ago. (I am still on prescribed methadone now, so I don't count myself as "clean".)

I've actually forgotten the password to one of my emails. How stupid can you get?

I have to go now; I have an appointment with Smoking Cessation in just over 2 hours...

O I've just remembered my password; I'm signed in.

Gotta run; take care everyone......

It Only Hurts When I Cough

MY THROAT has been colonized by alien spawn I have been sleeping half the time. Why my throat should affect the man in the moon I've no idea but it does. I'm really tired.

The bug killers came by today. We still have cockroaches in our house. The extermination man came at about 10:45 when I had just woken up. He puts this gel down that kills nearly all of them.

I don't feel as depressed as I did before. I've seen some light.

Tonight I have a stop smoking appointment at 5, so I should come out of it with a free prescription for nicotine gum. You have to choose what kind of NRT you would like and I decided the gums would be best: you use it only when you feel you need it; and chewing gives you something to do which might substitute for the action of smoking.

I'm kind of dreading giving up but I don't want to be an old smoker. I'm scared of hospitals more because of the thought of being forced to give up than anything else. I need a new life and I don't envisage cigarettes in that life.

I have to go now and buy a cream tart from Morrissons.

Things I Am Supposed To Do

AKH THERE'S so many things I'm supposed to do; I don't feel up to doing any of them. It's only because I'm such a misery, no real reason, no real excuse. And where does self-esteem come from? If anyone knows of any for sale I want to buy some. I think I was left with a short supply at birth

CHAMPAGNE SONG ~ ANGELIKA MANN: CHAMPUS LIED
this is genuine East German pop music from the early 80s



This is the film I got that song from. Doesn't this tune start like an evil flower opening stealthily in the dark...? Then it sounds deadly sad.



I can't stay on long. I have been watching a film called The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) about the Staasi secret police. I have a thing about the cold war. I would have loved to visit East Berlin or Soviet Russia...

Illustrated: Martina Gedeck "the German Meryl Streep"...

Acrobatic Mice

I WAS LOOKING for the Jordans advert with two harvest mice talking in posh accents and kissing. My robos never spoke but I'm sure they would have been posh if they did. Roborovski hamsters are like the aristocracy: a rare breed. My robbies did used to kiss hello though the way French people kiss on both cheeks. One day Itchy was running the wheel with Spherical sitting next to her on the ground. Itchy kept stopping to kiss-kiss Spherical hello. Spherical was highest in pecking order and so got the most kisses... Anyway aren't these harvest mice tiny?



I have been staying off drugs which made me very miserable yesterday when I really wanted some heroin. Somebody offered me some crack today but I turned it down outright that stuff doesn't agree with me. All these drugs affect my mood. Heroin by flatttening it; crack by switching it sometimes. Some days when I was on heroin and crack, I could stay high all afternoon just off of one pipe on the crack. It just seemed to keep going. When I smoked too much I got paranoid and my life became more miserable than ever.

I'm finding it hard not to take heroin as a life without it seems like a life devoid of meaning. Some days like today it's easy. Other days like yesterday when I ordinarily would have used it, it seems far far harder. I can't remember when I did last use it. Over a week ago. I've been using it probably once every two weeks on average so it's more and more infrequent. Luckily they're testing me each time I come into the clinic so they can see the tests are negative. Heroin stays in your system for about 4 days; crack is a bit longer, I think. I was never interested in giving clean tests before so I barely know anything about the issue. Last time they tested me using a lollypop you pass around your mouth he ticked just about everything in the "please test" boxes including stuff I'd never use in a million years like cannabis.

I think the reason I find it hard without heroin is that I was relying on it as an antidepressant mood stabilizer and without it I get far more depressed. Up until about nearly a year ago, I just couldn't handle doing any more than a day off heroin and even that one day was hard. The methadone just didn't seem to work the way it was supposed to. So I'm fighting through unfamiliar territory with methadone declining by 5mg per week at the moment. I don't feel withdrawals from that reduction as the dose is still 95mg; quite high.

Well I have to dash time is running out I hope y'all are well...!

Hummingbirds

FEATHERY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY


Psychedelic


Colourful ...


... and cute


With precision beaks that suck nectar from flowers...


... they fly amazingly; but look just as good perching.

WISHING Y'ALL A CHIRPY WEEKEND!

Better ...

I AM MUCH BETTER TODAY than I was yesterday and far better than all last week. Akh I hate to admit this but I had genuinely forgotten to take my medication and that was part of the problem. I wish I could find a doctor who would prescribe what I WANT only a small change to a different type of the same thing. As it is I HAVE NO DOCTOR. (No psychiatrist, only a GP outside whose catchment area I actually live). Thank you London Borough of Evil for messing up my life in yet one more aspect. I am housed by one borough yet live in another. I would rather live in the (more innercity) borough I am housed by. At least inner cities are funky and full of life. As for drugs they are never more than a bus ride away so it's just as druggy here. I don't happen to know the local dealers as I never bothered getting introductions to any bar two. One who seemed to have forgotten me last time and another who sells crap. I don't care about drugs now anyhow. I'm spending my money on foreign DVDs and a book. The DVDs I bought were I Have Loved You So Long (French, starring Kirsten Scott Thomas); The Lives of Others (German ~ about the East German secret police and with the same female lead who played Ulrike Meinhof in The Baader Meinhof Complex and Michael Jackson This Is It this last one was on offer for £3 or I wouldn't have bothered and frankly although I do like Michael Jackson I think for even that money they could have done better. The first two were on a two for £10 deal and it took so long to find the Kirsten (or Kristen) Scott Thomas film to make up the deal.

Tomorrow morning I take the tube into town to pay for a book I have already ordered over the phone from Waterstones. There is no Waterstones, the nation's biggest bookseller by far, anywhere close to me and I'm not saying anything about the locals. I tried WH Smith, which sells magazines and stationery as well as a selection of the most obvious titles in each genre and the man rather ridiculously said of Piaf: la verité (which means Piaf: the Truth) "it's not a book we stock on our shelves". The fact that WH Smith do not stock French language titles is painfully obvious. Can you order it specially? No. So I rang this other shop who took the ISBN and said yes for £25 and a 3-week wait you can have it. I have a thing about Edith Piaf after watching that film about her La Vie En Rose.

Now I have to go else I will get cut off; my computer is still in hospital.

Here is a high quality pop video of Edith Piaf singing la vie en rose...



Milord

thank you Buggerlugz for this one... this and la vie en rose sont les deux chansons that have been going round my head...

Dentists Done

SORRY I HAVE BEEN AWAY. My computer got briefly restored, then fused. So it's totally dead now and has to go in the repair shop down the road.

I have been feeling very depressed. I was hypomanic for just two days. Of course the second of these had to be when I was seeing the doctor at the druggie service plus my worker. My worker was visually backing off from me, I was talking so much and probably too loudly about the ins and outs of my long term heroin addiction in the waiting room. Then the next day I crashed!

I have been tempted to use heroin but only through sheer desperation. When I was still in a good mood I bought three good films in French, German and Spanish: La Vie En Rose; The Baader Meinhof Complex and Dark Habits by Pedro Amodovar (whatever his name is). La Vie En Rose, which is the life story of Edith Piaf, who grew up between a brothel and a circus, earned a living busking and was discovered by a nightclub owner named Louis Leplée. I love that film so much I have seen it four or five times already. It has been the only thing that brought meaning to my last days that have been so miserable.

I did see my Mum yesterday and I wrote her a letter explaining the past. I don't know if she liked what she read. I was beating myself up afterwards for being too frank. I didn't look at the letter in the five days between writing it and handing it over. I think I have a problem with over-frankness, the opposite of most people. I felt ill all day though it was really nice to see her. By ill I mean like a crotchety 108 year old who can't do anything without getting tired easily. My Mum seemed OK I hope she didn't notice my poor health. I really feel ill and I'm only calling it "depression" because I know from experience that's what it probably is, but I've been feeling physically sick, exhausted and as if my life is over.

I went to the dentist today for the second of two appointments and got my upper teeth cleaned (the lower ones were done last week) and had two fillings. The lignocaine took over twenty minutes to work and had to be injected twice into my lower gums until it froze me up so good I can still barely speak!

I think/hope I am starting to feel better. I am dreading next having to see a psychiatrist (whenever I get one) and having to explain my dreadful mental health. Ukh. Oh well not worth worrying about now. I have to ping off as I'm about to be terminated I will try and get in touch with some of you tomorrow.

I have to go; I'm feeling bad already.

Ordinary People Having Extraordinary Experiences

ECSTASY, as longterm readers of my blog will know, is the only drug I ever considered truly AMAZING. It was the brightest light in a trinity of MDMA, mushrooms and ketamine. But I loved MDMA the most because on MDMA you can dance for hours. Forget the touchy-feely stuff. I danced on E. I had experiences like the one Ruth has here by wandering outside house parties on my own and finding myself in grasslands at dawn, haloed by rainbows. At one such party a white Barbadian girl named Summer Rain was meditating 6 feet high on a wall.



Nate on Ecstasy (screen 2: Nate): yes this is the sort of rubbish I have twaddled too.

I think we all have.

Mania reminded me of ecstasy because of the bright lights, enhanced appreciation of sound and colour, hallucinations (which you get at high doses) and the rushing feeling, leading to "peak experiences". I got higher on E than I ever did on cocaine, including crack. Yes crack was more intense, but Ecstasy was several clouds higher (cloud 9, 10, 11, 12 and counting...) The most intense high known to man is said to be that of heroin and cocaine taken intravenously together, the socalled snowball or speedball. This reminded me of MDMA. On Ecastasy I was frequently the highest person in the room. When I danced I would come out of my trance now and then to realize I was surrounded by people vibing off my energy. On my best nights I was constantly pestered by people wanting to know if I had pills to sell. To use the NA phrase "they wanted what I had".

If you're wondering how Ruth got E'd up on a camping trip and how Nate got there at a family dinner, it's because his brother David idiotically dumped some Ecstasy pills in the aspirin bottle. Excellent TV if not entirely believable.

If I could take ecstasy once more I'd get ten good pills and do a session with my mother.

Thanks Bimbimbie

THIS PICTURE is courtesy of my Aussie friend Bimbimbie, whose name means "birdie-wirdie" or "place of the birds" in the local aboriginal dialect. She knows red king parrots or "king reds" as I call them are my favourites and this is what flapped down from the trees only a few hours ago.

If you go to Bimbimbie's blog you'll find endless snapshots of rainbow lorrikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos and other delicacies direct from her garden.

So this is my feathery Friday on Saturday. Thanks Bimbimbie!

As y'all may have noticed I have been feeling down and flat for nearly a month now. I'm hoping the mood swing is petering out. Because that's all it is, a mood swing. Just as my OTT excitements are mood swings too. It's hard to accept that how I feel is labelled and illness. The "sickness" part lies not in the undulations but in the extremity of the the highs and lows. I have been "high" enough to be hallucinating voices from the walls, have seen spirals everywhere, especially in ceilings, which I stared at a lot, seeeing as I was going "up". I once saw a purple face appear in a man's neck at the Nutter Club I used to attend before it was disbanded due to lack of funding (my one lifeline snatched from me ~ thanks NHS) so I have had extremes. I've also had weird ideas when I was low but am too paranoid to describe them in any detail. Not because they're real to me now. More that they're too embarrassingly nutty.

Well I wanted to ask y'all who've followed this space for a long time, do I really seem nuttier now than I was before the last year when I knew I was labelled "schizoaffective"? I'm not sure I'm any madder than I ever was (between the extremes). Just that there's a name to it. I am, I believe, what is known as a cyclothymic personality. That just means someone whose moods swing up and down, in and out, like high and low tides. You could say we're all cyclothymic then, but it's a matter of degree. I'm rarely on a truly even keel for very much more than a week. In bad periods I seem to have been up down left and right all the time for weeks and weeks on end. I am not claiming to have been at the very extreme of how up down left right it is possible to be. Merely that I was to some degree in some such direction.

Well this is solipsistic twaddle yet again. I am trying to heal. I am doing my Spanish every single day for at least half an hour if not 90 minutes or more. Every single day. Without fail. Everything else has been half-cocked as my sleep has increased in line with my depressed mood and low energy. I think some days I must have been sleeping 16 hours. Not in one single go, but endless dozes, then ultra long periods in bed. I haven't timed myself as i'm no longer interested.

There was a time when I knew something was wrong, didn't know what it was, knew most of the doctors were barking up the wrong tree by calling it depression triggered by drug abuse (when actually I abused heroin because I never felt truly well and heroin did make me feel truly well. At least for the first couple of years. Thereafter I was truly addicted. So take from that what you will but don't take this as my blessing that anybody young, lost and vulnerable ought to experiment with hard drugs. I would be horrified if anybody got themselves a habit because of me. I'm anti drugs yet still a drug addict (on 99% methadone; 1% heroin ~ it's that 1% I'm fighting against). Hence the shifting sands of viewpoint you'll encounter here.

Now I must go it's getting late. Have a marvellous weekend everybody thanks again Bimbimbie, and don't get pecked by a king red!

8 Days a Week

I JUST REALIZED it's been over a week since I posted. In that week I have been eating, sleeping and feeling down. Today I went to the clinic where I was supposed to see a doctor. I would have given in a dirty test, like an idiot and the dr wasn't around. So I asked my worker, can't I come in this time next week when I'll be clean and he said OK. My dose is going down by 5mg. I have to come in on Thursday to collect the reduced script.

A friend lent me a the Three Colours movie trilogy. It's in French so I thought I might better myself by watching it.

I'm still learning Spanish every day. Playing those CDs over and over. £35 for 2400 words vocab is not at all bad. 2400 words is enough to start leafing through magazines and simple books. I've always wanted to speak Spanish, since childhood. I haven't dropped my Oriental goals, I just got fed up of substandard teaching materials eg books that printed Chinese characters in such heavy type you could not work out what on earth was there.

Well that's me for this week. Boring as ever. I hope you all are OK and better than I am.

I wonder how Anna Grace is out there in Wisconsin. Been a LONG time since that one commented here....

Clearly Unclear

LAST NIGHT I had about 7 hours' sleep; that's not very much for me. I've been feeling headfucked and down of late; precisely how I feel when I'm about to become hyped up and hyper. Maybe I'm just depressed though.

I made a call today. I'm half interested in going back into counselling. But there are provisos: person-centred is out. I only did well in psychodynamic deeper counselling. No time limit. The 2 year time limit the time before last got extended by 6 months but 2.5 years was barely enough to scratch the surface. And lastly no fees. And I'm not getting into anything longterm in the London Borough of Evil where I presently and resentfully reside. I want to Go Home Again. Back Home Where I Belong.

I wish I could have some manic energy back. Darkness and winter are closing down around us.

I just wish I could feel OK again. I'm taking the pills; I'm taking the methadone. The methadone is doing my head in; dose is far too high. I want off that crap as fast as possible.

I try to structure my days with books in different languages but I have no drive. I want to curl into a ball. I'm too far gone to be OK again ~ maybe. Maybe that's my problem... Too far gone. Do you think so? I don't know any more. I've turned my attention back to my house and the giant clear-out session I still need to do. So that is where I am now. Clearing, clearing, clearing!

Better Already

I REALIZED while rushing to the chemist that I feel WAY BETTER than I have in days. Not so paranoid. More to the point, not so depressed.

I'm only 28 pages from the end of my French novel. That and 6 Feet Under, an everyday tale of folks living above a funeral home, have been soundtracks to my life.

No I don't think 6 Feet Under has depressed me. It's the best TV series I've ever seen. I like Billy the bipolar brother who keeps coming off my meds. People who do that are shockingly irresponsible and should be institutionalized!

I hope you like the furry chinchilla picture? I really would love a chinchilla or three (as long as they had huge wheels to ramble upon). They need a special "marble" which is a stone chopping board you slam in the freezer to be lovely and cold in summer. As dwellers of the high Andes, chinchillas find summer captivity unbearable ~ sometimes to the point of death.



I can't really keep a chinchilla. The nearest tiny equivalent is the Russian or Djungarian hamster also known as a "winter white" because its winter fur tones with the snow. They also have thick luxuriant fur, with fur on the soles of their feet; they also take dust baths and like chinchillas probably do need a "marble". Mine looked close to death one summer's day (thanks guidebook for giving no warning of this). They perked up immeasurably rambling on a tray of ice-cubes. Before y'all call me an animal-torturer, remember these are Siberian hamsters. And if they didn't want to be on the ice, they'd have walked off it.

Anyway I have to go have a charming weekend everybody.

PS has anyone else seen Made In Chelsea? Docusoap. One character is heir to the McVite's biscuit empire. I like the blonde girl with the kind eyes. I don't know her name yet. She went on the fishing trip where the other girl put a live maggot on her tongue. That's a true sign of class ~ not being afraid of dung and wiggly things. If you don't believe me, observe the reactions of lower class people around dirt. They act like they're too perfect to get dirty. True upper class people never do. I met the upper classes at university. They're OK.
I try to be classless (which makes me middle-class). How about you...?


Illustrated: chinchilla in ball with cat looking on; winter white hamsters in summer; winter white hamsters in winter...

Not Feeling Well

I DON'T FEEL AT ALL WELL. I think a doctor would call it "depression" but it feels like so much more. Like something's gone badly wrong; that something is about to go wrong. That I can do nothing about it. I'm back on my meds, even though I hate them, even though I want to change tablets yet haven't a doctor who will do this for me because only a psychiatrist is willing to take responsibility and I'm between psychiatrists. I need a psychiatrist. I'm on page 315 of the book I'm reading or rather skimming through in French noting down unfamiliar words. Only another 50 pages to go then I'll be lost because "reading" this book is all I've done for the past week. It takes away the pain. I'm not sure I would have the verve to focus on a book in English. Not without whizzing through it on fastforward; the exact opposite to what I'm doing in French. Once I finish the present volume I'm meant to read it slowly from page one, homemade glossary in one hand explaining to me each and every single expression I do not know; but I don't know if I'm up to it. I can but try I suppose. I have to go now; I'm still computerless. I hope you all are OK. Don't worry about me I'm not doing or about to do crack; that was a complete abbarration. I actually enjoy being clean nowadays. More than I ever enjoyed being on drugs. In some strange sort of way. If that makes sense. More than anything I long for the end of my script; for the day when I'm finally methadone-free and everything-free and can tell myself that nightmare, 11 years and counting of constant opiate addiction is finally and at long, long last... OVER. OVER AND DONE WITH.

On a moonless night

WHAT A LOAD OF BLAH BLAHS I posted yesterday. Those are the product of an unproductive brain. All I have done... ALL I HAVE DONE is skim through this one novel in French. I haven't a clue what happens because my concentration span is too fractured. Every single word I didn't know I looked up and wrote into a glossary notebook with the intention of reading back from page one, novel in one hand, notebook in the other now with a completely clear understanding of the text. O yeah and I took up Spanish, which is really easy. No more idiotic pictograms that all look the same. No more hong dong bing and bong words all nearly the same. I was looking for a project I could complete that had some usefulness. Chinese will never be useful to me at an intermediate level (ie after 2 or 3 years' daily study) unless I go hardcore backpacking. It won't be useful to in a career context unless I get past university level. That means 6 or 7 years' study at home. I can use Spanish just by flying to Spain for £50. Actually I'd like to go to Paris, Berlin and Madrid on the same trip. I love big cities. I once spent half an hour in Madrid. I looked out over this huge city, simmering on an endless plain, thinking "wow, I'm in the centre of Spain". British tourists hardly ever go anywhere but the coast and Madrid is about 200 miles from the sea.

The idiotic shitheads from the council are coming round tomorrow to criticize me for living like a pig. So I'm having a half-hearted effort at cleaning up. I'm just afraid of making a worse mess where I can't find "important" documents etc. I'm terrified of throwing something important away. Hence the hoarding. Anyway, least I can clean up to loud Spanish dialogues. I don't get why I can follow Spanish very easily, even when the words are just as unfamiliar as any other language. Eg an apple is una manzana. Yet Chinese words: hong dong shui dui lua I cannot remember. I think maybe it has to do with Spanish having grammar parallel to French. The little words are nothing like the French. A shop is una tienda; a street is una calle. When you get to posher vocabulary things are more similar to the English: libertad, igualdad, fraternidad and of course la electricidad.

I'm reluctantly agreeing (with myself) to go back on medication. Yet again.

I desperately need to see a doctor yet have no psychiatrist ie nobody willing to alter or tweak my meds.

When I went to this God-forsaken new methadone clinic I was promised continuity of care. This has not happened. The old clinic had a consultant psychiatrist who diagnosed me and prescribed the pills I'm on now. The new clinic's doctor said she could not prescribe medication so I lost my psychiatrist and appear to have no hope of getting a new one.

The bullshit on the clinic wall says you are to be involved in and allowed to make choices in your treatment. This has not happened. I am on 110mg methadone against my wishes. I want the dose lowered. And they force me to drink it in the pharmacy meaning I drag myself up there feeling crap each morning and have to wait 2 hours to feel OK. For years I drank my juice in bed meaning I got up feeling fine. I don't know whether the pharmacist is watering my dose but that is how it feels. I'm not using on top; haven't used any heroin in however many weeks I cannot remember, yet I go through spates of quasi-withdrawal symptoms in the mornings. Anyway my new worker, the third one I've had in 3 months, is getting me a clinical review so I can hopefully pick up my methadone like a normal adult and drink half of it before I sleep and the other half before I get up. The 2 times I really need it and it's not there now. He should also get my dose reduced. It was meant to stay at 110mg for 4 weeks (for no good reason). It's been on this ridiculous dose for 6 weeks. If they don't give what I want I'm making a detailed formal complaint as I feel totally let down by this clinic. The titration nurse was bullying, coercive and rude, forcing me into groups therapy I had no interest in. I went twice only so I could say I'd tried it and hated it. The second time I left within 4 minutes of it starting. Once you've been to one such group you've been to them all. They're set up as a punishment for people caught shoplifting so at least half the group announce at "check in" that they do not want to be there. I used more toned down language and said I was giving it a try.

The only week I stayed the entire session I was hypomanic enough to dominate the entire discussion. Then of course my mood crashed and I couldn't face the same group of people who I knew would have assumed only crack could make somebody that high. My experience and the life of the average junkie have diverged a lot over the last few years. I haven't been out begging or shoplifting since I can't remember when. I cut down my heroin use gradually with no help from any clinic or group. All these clinics do is put excessive pressure on you. I did a bit of crack ~ for the first time in ages I might add ~ about a week and a half ago. I used the stuff 3 or 4 days in a row. I gave up by buying a gigantic French dictionary, notebook and novel and forcing myself to look up every new word I found. It felt like Chinese torture in the beginning, then I couldn't stop it. I was up at 4am with 6 Feet Under playing and those dictionary pages whirring. I didn't "enjoy" this activity but I liked the brain-dead emptiness of it. As I say, I lost contact with the narrative flow nearly all the time so I was just looking up words words words and the same words cropped up over and over "mes larmes" means "my tears" I now know. But French isn't onomatapoeic. So a brush which is shush-ush-ushshshshshy, sweeping over the paper, is le pinceau. Which I looked up endless times yet still could not remember out of context.

So my mind is blank and my mood is low, despite all this talk.

I'm going to have to take risperidone, when I really want something else. Because I have been let down YET AGAIN by a network that seems deliberately to be constructed with man-shaped holes for people like me to fall down.

That's it for today. Don't be offended if I haven't visited your blog in an obscene length of time; I've visited nobody.


Illustrated: the book I'm reading by the Chinese immigrant Dai Sijie who, incidentally, had lived in France only 14 years when his French got good enough to write novels in the language. The title means "On A Moonless Night"

Back from Beyond the English Language

I DIDN'T POST because my computer is still broken and I have spent all my time watching (rather listening to) the box set (all 5 seasons) of 6 Feet Under while marking up a notebook with every single word I do not understand from the French novel I'm reading. I've decided to better myself by reading novels and memoirs in French and German exclusively. I don't mark the books; as I said, I keep a notebook with every word I don't fully comprehend in the order it appears complete with page numbers. If a word crops up 45 times and I still don't get it, I look it up and write the definition all those times. The ONLY method of language acquisition that works is repitition.

Today I bought 3 new French novels (French literature outdoes German by a long way). They cost £2 each from a particularly eclectic charity shop with shelves and shelves of foreign crap.

I'm learning Spanish from a Linguaphone Plus course my Dad got me on ebay. It cost £35 secondhand; that's about $50. These cost about £300 new and bring you to a vocabulary of 2400 words. I know because I counted definitions per page in the glossary and multiplied up. 2400 words is about 4 times what a Teach Yourself book + 2 CDs course gives you. Plus you learn by listening. The handbook explains why it is as it is, line by line. But somehow it all goes in without much effort. Linguaphone is way better than Pimsleur. I tried Pimsleur Hebrew from the library and it's ridiculously repititious. Breaking down a simple sentence into constituent parts over and over on CD because it's designed for people who fear a simple textbook will make them feel like they're at school. I heard Pimsleur gives you a vocab of only 400 words; that wouldn't surprise me. Also Rosetta Stone level 3 gives only 1500 words ~ their customer services had to phone me back with that figure. I got the impression that neither the school-leaver who took my original call nor the supervisor who answered my enquiry had ever learned a foreign languge, let alone actually used Rosetta Stone.

Last week I was in a good mood but now I'm depressed. I decided that it's unnatural to live on psyche meds. Not to mention the fact that I want my meds CHANGED to quetiapine which has a more acceptable side-effects profile. Ever since I took risperidone I had episodic severe anxiety which I will NOT put up with. Surprise surprise anxiety is a side-effect afflicting more than one person in ten on that drug. I want quetiapine instant release. It might stop me needing to take zopiclone, which I mostly buy on the street as my doctor is too prissy to give a regular supply. I only take zopiclone as required. Every so often I go through a period, usually when I'm going manic, where I sleep 3 hours a day or less. Or just cannot sleep at night and sleep randomly during the day.

Now I feel down and out and pretty pointless. But I'm determined to be able to read these pretentious French novels in the original. Why not? They're not really pretentious. French literature is parallel to English literature. There's a huge international contingent in France, the language is used widely accross Africa. So French books are very cosmopolitan. My current one is about the last emperor of China and an ancient manuscript; the next one is called Le nègre du Palais by Thierry Pfister. Something to do with a rich man dying in a big house (wouldn't he be liable to dreaded French wealth tax?) and politics. Well it looks a lot better than it sounds. I haven't taken a dictionary to it yet so it's all a blur.

Isn't 6 Feet Under just about the best thing that's ever been on telly? I was wondering why Ruth, the mother, annoys me so much. That's because she's just like me: a mixture of prissy and adventurous. Meek yet not meek-willed. Just like me. I'm also like Phoebe from Friends. Hippy dippy on the outside; hard as nails on the inside. It's other people who call me hard. I don't think I'm hard. But when they say that I answer: well if I were as soft on the inside as I appear on the outside I'd be a fucking lump of jelly wouldn't I??

I hope y'all are OK. I didn't mean to worry anyone by not posting. If I ever do get to die I'll be a very lucky man. I know that will never happen to me. I am a born survivor. Don't want to be. But I am. Least I won't be a fucking monoglot when I do die. That would be WELL beyond the pale!

Vive le Romance

DON'T WORRY about my over-ernest post yesterday. I was getting a bit over the top, psyching myself up to write write write. The writing is going, but slowly. Strangely I write almost the same for children as for adults. This is fiction I'm talking about; not blogging. Children don't like or relate to abstracts and neither do I. I hate latinate nouns in English; I like things concrete.

Anyway talking of Romance languages I got so bored of German ~ which quite frankly is NOT doing it for me ~ I went out and purchased a Collins Robert French dictionary for £6.50 (second hand) and a selection of books. One about a Burmese monk called Par une nuit où la lune ne s'est pas levée a guide to rocks and minerals: Roches, cristaux, minéraux by the way I do think it's vulgar when in English people pluralize "bureau" with an S! The proper spelling is BUREAUX. You eat gâteaux in bureaux on plateux of vast mountains! My final French book is a murder mystery by J P Manchette titled Fatale. It's only 139 pages so I'm looking forward to that. Plus someone has helpfully biro'd in notes of their own to save my time at that Collins Robert!

I should hopefully have a Linguaphone SPANISH COURSE. 4 books and 8 CDs winging its way to me. I got it on ebay for £35! So I'm very much into romance languages at the moment. Remember, before y'all tut tut on how fickle I am that my goal is to speak French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. I just got temporarily tired of Chinese and German isn't inspiring me these days. French literature is just so stately. Some of the best books in the world were written in French. I'd love to be able to read Victor Hugo and Emile Zola in the original. Not to mention Flaubert's Madame Bovary ~ which I've only ever seen on television. Amazingly well adapted, it has to be said.

I always thought Madame Bovary was a junkie who just happened to live in an era before the proliferation of hard drugs. In today's world a woman with a taste for things beyond her reach would tend to seek solace in chemicals. In her day, even as wife of a country doctor, the only things available to her would have been laudanum and possibly cocaine. Strange to think of Madame Bovary nosing up a line off her posh rosewood dining table, but there you go.

Now I must off. I got a box set of Six Feet Under, one of my favourite television programmes of all time. I like the bit with the bipolar brother weeping and wailing in the kitchen and Rachel Griffiths says "if you're looking for the olives, honey, they're right here"....

Loose End

I'M AT A VERY LOOSE END. Feeling depressed. I don't get the buzz out of things that I expect to get. Example: I went into town and bought Chinese books and Paris Match and Stern magazines in French and German. I got all this stuff home and felt distinctly flat. Not depressed. Not angry. Nothing negative; just nothing very positive.

My life goals are to speak and write German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese to as near mother tongue standard as possible. To this end I am using every language course I can get my hands on. It's good to have one in German, even if it is "too easy". Really I need a teacher to correct my writing, because I know it's unidiomatic. Someone once asked in all seriousness whether my German blog was the product of Google Translate ~ which just about says everything about my writing. My vocabulary is pretty good now ~ though nowhere near as good as someone's who has put proper effort in. The Perfect Your German CDs and book promises an active vocab of 5000 words. Using a dictionary and multiplying the number of words familiar with per page by the number of pages I calculated I had a passive vocabulary (that is, I read a word and understand it) of eight to ten thousand words.

I've started my book in ernest. I'm only after a name for my central character but I think I've found one. I googled it and it's not been used. That is the big high jump for all children's characters' names. The more unique they are the less allowable it is for them to have featured in previous books, films, cartoons etc. Mine seemed to check out OK.

I've only written about a page of story but it's a children's book. Not a picture book, as my mother assumed, but a children's book like the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter are children's books. Totally unreliant on illustrations. A tale spun in spellbinding language. I know I'm not the best writer alive. But I'm unique: I do believe I'm best at being me. I am not writing in the style or genre of anybody else. I hope to bring a breath of mountain-fresh air to the fetid wizard and lesbian-single-parent-obsessed world of children's publishing. Apart from this I'll say nothing until my book is done. I wouldn't say my story is so much amazingly unique as something that's magical for the way it's told. We see the world through the eyes of our little character, who is an amazing character. So it's a magical world to see. And that's all I'm saying about it.

It's my parents I credit for kicking me up the backside and saying YOU CAN WRITE, WRITE THIS TALE. So I am doing. I'm not entirely convinced self-publishing is the way to go forward. Considering half a billion people in the world speak English well enough to enjoy a novel and many of these hundreds of millions have children. How can I hope to market my production to them. I know nothing about promoting children's literature. The way I see it, writing is an art; publishing is a business. Experience as well as everything I have read about my mental situation has told me stress is bad for me. True I find it exhilarating. But that exhilaration can trip into mania very easily. I've told myself I was being hypochondriac so many times before. Only to look back and see I really was manic. When you're up at four in the morning, TV and stereo blaring at top volume, bouncing balls on the floor you're not just "a bit excited" you're manic. Mania has left me in a real mess every time it's come. It's not that mania itself is so terrible; it's the disinhibition, the feiriness of spirit (ie uninhibited agression), and hyperkinetic distractability that cause problems. Ratchet it up a notch or two and agression turns into outright paranoia, the beautiful enhanced sensory pereception trips into hallucinations. When I was truly manic I saw spirals on the walls and ceiling. I heard voices speaking to and about me. I could not tell what was and was not real. Then of course there's the depression. Less than a month ago I felt my life was so useless that lying down in front of an express train was the best favour I could do my family and friends. I was intensely paranoid and very depressed. Then I started popping my pills again and literally by the next morning two thirds of my depression and half the paranoia had dissipated. Isn't life strange.

This is why I seek a career in writing. Not only is it exceedingly trendy to be bipolar and artistic but I know from experience that rare extremes aside, I'm capable of writing almost no matter how high or low or sideways I go.

I intend to take these languges of mine far enough to qualify as a translator at least in German to English. If you calculate languges as GDP and number of speakers; German is number two in the world after English. Chinese is number three. Japanese is number four. So if you wonder why my German obsession: that's it. German is by far the biggest business language in the European Union after English. I phoned around some agecies specializing in placing bilingual temps and headhunting bilingual administrators, secretaries etc. What language had the most openings? I asked. German German German I was told. Every time.

So that's what I'm doing. Writing my intellectual story book, improving my German. Chinese is quite frankly doing my head in at the moment but I'm still slogging away. I'd like to apply my talents to Spanish if I can.

So here's the news. I hope this isn't too much of a tangle. I'm not lost but I'm trying to break free of the inertia and lassitude and apathy that has hemmed me in like a dancer frozen in a paperweight for years and years and years. Like a cage-nibbling hamster I desire escape. I'd like to go on a City Break to Berlin. And I can't wait to finish my Amazing Tale of Adventure and Wonder!

And how was YOUR weekend?

I GOT A BOOK EARLIER called Perfect Your German so I'm perfecting away. It cost only £19.99 for one 300 page book and 2 CDs from WH Smiths. This might have had something to do with Smiths pricing something marked £29.99 at £10 cheaper but hey. A bargain is a bargain and who am I to complain.

I'm on the lookout for bargainacious second hand language courses so if anyone has higher German or French or beginners to intermediate level Chinese, Japanese or Spanish I'd be most interested.

I have to be pragmatic with these languages. German is the most useful language in Europe ~ or to put it another way, if you add the GDP of different nations together, language by language, German comes out number 2 in the world after English. It's way ahead of Spanish which says a lot, considering Spanish has 400 million native speakers and German has "only" 100 million. Japanese has 125 million native speakers; Mandarin Chinese has about 850 million native speakers; a total of 1,400,000,000 people speak Mandarin as a first or second language. Chinese "dialects" by the way, differ as much as Italian and Spanish. They are really languages, but because all Chinese people consider themselves Chinese the word "dialect" is preferred. On the other hand, Norwegian and Danish are really separate dialects. But they're labelled languages purely on political grounds. When a dialect has a written standard it is apt to be labelled a language. But in actuality ~ so it is said ~ you could walk from Amsterdam to Berlin and at no place would you come across any sudden language divide. That's because German blends into Dutch. And that's why I speak so much Dutch. Not because I'm clever but because I did A level German and Dutch is a version of Low German. Low German is very similar to English. Where a German person says "über das Wasser" a speaker of low German dialect says "over de water" ~ just like an English person. Some of Grimm's fairy tales are in low German. The best one has a man and wife living "in a stinking piss pot". I laughed like a diarrhoea-clogged drain over that one!

Now I must go I'm in an internet cafe. Darkness surrounds us with this weather of late. It's very dull and autumnal.

Sorry no furry Friday. I don't know what else to put! Take care y'all.

PS I'm practising my terrible German once more by blogging in German again.... wish me luck my German grammar is atrocious!

AUTUMN is thick in the air. You can feel it everywhere. The leaves have fallen off the trees already in some places. Conkers are everywhere. Stormy weather is forecast. Already it's grey and cold.


The only good thing about autumn, if you're into drugs of all kinds, is that psychedelic mushrooms appear after the first rains.

I'm not into drugs and haven't taken a magic mushroom in well over a decade... I haven't used heroin since I can't remember when. But my brain's telling me it's about 10 days.




Time for all you cooks to make hearty stew and dumplings.

Cigarettes Level

MY CIGARETTE SMOKING IS LEVEL at about 15 per day. That's not bad, considering they're spindly rollies. I can get by on 10 superkings per day. Those are very long, ordinary thickness cigarettes. I break off the ends and get about 6 or 7 rollups as well as 10 ordinary length cigs. So my habit costs me about £20 per week. British cigarettes are very expensive.

I used NO GEAR yesterday or today (Sunday and Monday are the only days I've used on for weeks, mostly just Sundays). So I'm over 7 days clean now. I don't miss heroin at all. I did crave it yesterday, because I'm used to using on Sundays. But I do not want or need that muck in my veins.

I'm keeping my last memory of a needle in my vein a bad one: the blood test nurse tutting and muttering over my collapsing vessels. If I have bad memories to look back on, I reason, I won't have anything to set me off. Also you tend to glorify the past as you come off drugs and only remember the good days. In spates. Then you remember how bad it really was and are glad you never gave in during those episodes of glorification.

I'm watching a drama about multiple murderers Fred and Rosemary West called Appropriate Adult. The appropriate adult is someone they keep in with a suspect during interviews to ensure procedure is adhered to and that the suspect understands what's going on. Apparently they weren't sure whether or not Fred West was retarded!

The appropriate adult's partner got so excited by press camping round their house (the British press being especially voracious) that he went and caught Bipolar Mania, buying a new car, television and hifi equipment and ending up in a mental hospital. Now the appropriate adult has been sacked... end of part one.

I laughed at the beginning of that drama when they cracked a joke about the buried au pair not "having three legs" (ie 3 thigh bones of at least 2 people were found buried in close proximity). Then he talks about ripping a baby from a murdered woman's womb. And I wanted to be sick. The Wests apparently tortured these young women to death and what they did was vile.

Anyway back to cigarettes and now I have to give up smoking. And I wish my methadone clinic would reduce my dose I hate being on over 100mg.

Take care everyone.


Today's main illustrations are from the Aussie drama, Prisoner Cell Block H. If you want to see Fred and Rosemary West click the links I put up