... The Very Best People

IT'S TRUE: ADDICTION HAS TAKEN SOME OF THE VERY BEST PEOPLE; and still has many in its relentless grip. I got talking to an old friend today. His name is Peter. He is about ten years older than me (about 44) but he looks 60. Sensible. Kind, reliable. And, in an age when I meet a fellow junkie on the street and say nothing about my business because I know that if I do mention anything to do with drugs or money they will inevitably start whingeing and begging off me, feigning a sickness that, two minutes previously, just wasn't there. We sat down talking for over an hour. This guy's life is an utter shambles. Drugs have taken some of the very best people.

I had a nasty dark alley experience this evening. Awaiting runner for a dealer aptly named "Wicked". Twenty minutes of hanging around this alley behind people's flats a shadow emerges. "Who sent you?" I insist on knowing. I wouldn't be the first person to have given money to the wrong man who just runs. The shadow wasn't up for speaking. Full sentences seemed too much to manage. "W," he eventually managed. "Whh-kid." So I gave the shadow my cash and got two lumps that looked like Wicked's by their distinctive wrapping. Wicked has a penchant of some sort for demanding clients meet his people in locations of the most utter degradation. His old favourite was a park of the most loathesome after-dark atmosphere I've encountered in a long time. Shadows gathered in corners. Eventually some turned out to be acquaintances. How any woman managed to push herself to brave this place alone I have no idea, but many did. One man was ripped off; another was, so the rumour goes, beaten up and left for dead there. Nasty, nasty place, that Shadowland.

Nasty business, I can hear you muttering.

Due to a glitch in appointments, I got to see my very first methadone key worker. Not having freely volunteered very much information since I don't recall when, and feeling too overflowed to stop myself, I spilled out my heart. Told how down I'd been. How much in a mess I really had got myself (though I'm dragging myself out of the pit. I'm truly trying.) How doctors and psychiatrists have fobbed me off. How my mental, emotional and spiritual "situation" predates in many aspects my drug addiction years. I fully used up a 20-minute appointment to overflowing. First Worker insisted that, if he does see my Present Worker, he will tell him what I said. But if he doesn't, of course, he won't be able to. And he might not. So I won't know where I stand next time. This heart-outpouring is exhausting.

My own lifestory is so immensely complexicated that I've more than once been accused of lying merely while attempting to tell of how some situation relates to one of however many past ones that have repeated however many times. Perhaps forgetting the precise specific one. I cannot trust myself to make self-statements anymore, not the "when did I first do this" kind of thing because my past is such a tangle.

One day I shall work myself loose from that tangle.

One day, at last, I know I shall be free.

Reduced to My Foot

YES: REDUCED TO MY FOOT. I’M NOT PROUD to be saying this, but my veins have all gone into hiding so badly I’m reduced to stabbing — ever so gently — in my foot.

This does not make me happy. My crazed ex, MadBirdNutNut who was as totally straight as you can get, even she was perceptive enough to tell me I’d only stop when the veins were all gone. Which has hardly happened yet because I have my untouched femoral “groin” on both sides … which I’m not sure I want to tamper with. Many people who do end up with deep vein thrombosis. Plus I have my neck — which is never getting touched. I know myself with enough confidence to say that is one bridge that is never getting crossed, and I mean that. The neck is a prime site for drips and anaesthetics. It is medically very useful and drugs-wise unwise to tamper with.

Medical concerns aside, I would like to keep some semblance of nonjunkiedom about my person. And a nicely-veined neck would make a lovely start.

Bulgarian Blood Orange Juice

Bulgarian Blood Orange Juice
NOTHING IN my local shop seems to be British. This is a typical one:
Некмар — Черβен nормокал … Blood Orange Nectar …

O & by the way. So much for that mega-"short" post below. Typical. I know.

A Short Post

YES, this is going to be very short because I'm singularly uninspired. Or to put it another way, yes I did (some of) my "proactive" day. Then fell into a deep sleep. O hang on there was MY DREAM!!

Gotta tell yous all my dream. When I was little we used to go to this huge swimming pool on a weekly basis. My Mum forced me into swimming lessons. I think this was bc my Dad always hated swimming due to a childhood getting pushed into pool experience. And she was determined that I should not be like this. So I spent (what felt like) hours in this pool weeping in the water. Of course, in chlorinated water no-one can see your tears. Oddly after these traumatic swimming lessons I did get to enjoy swimming. But I never ever did the proper strokes as taught.

Anyhow, this pool had a 12.5' deep end with three diving boards. The top one being merely a platform. Only once do I remember jumping off the top. It was like a suicide leap. I went so far down in the water.

The other thing dreamlike about the swimming pool was that if you had goggles on and dove down under the water in the 6' deep area there was this shelf going down to the 12'6" area. I remember trying to swim down it like a shark but obviously I couldn't hold my breath THAT long so had to come up. And nobody hit me on the head, I didn't venture into the middle of the diving area. I wasn't that stupid.

Anyway my dream was very simple, I was trying to climb the ladders to the top board (okay, platform) at this swimming pool and could not quite make it. I trod on something that felt like a cricket ball. And woke up with agonizing cramp in the middle of my foot. As if I'd been trying to pick up said ball in my sleep and my foot had frozen.

Well I'm not sure what this is relevant to really... but there you have it. The only people who've been disturbing my sleep lately are drug dealers. But they don't bother me because I don't pick up the phone. (Usually I couldn't find it in time anyway.)

So I'm saved!

On a temporary basis.

From them? Or from myself.

Busy (not B)

TODAY IS GOING TO BE A PROACTIVE day when I sort myself out. Apart from about an hour surfing quite randomly through nextblognextblogs, I've been striving to be practical. And domesticated. And clean and tidy. Eg chucked out all old rubbish. Hoovered carpet. (That has to do with Electrolux/Dyson type of Hoover. Not J Edgar.) Going through little lists of things I have to do. Have to keep myself busy.

A Joke I Found

This is a joke I found on someone else's blog.
It's quite funny actually ...

A soldier in the army was transferred to a new post, and his officer commanding sent with him a letter to his new superior stating that the man was a recalcitrant gambler.

“Your reputation precedes you, I hear you’re a great gambler,” remarked the soldier’s new officer. “What do you bet on?”

“Sir, I bet on everything and anything. For example, I’ll bet with you $30 that you have a birth-mark on your backside.”

The officer, forgetting his dignity under the temptation of an easy $30, said, “I’ll take you up on that,” whereupon he dropped his pants and quickly won $30.

The officer wrote to the soldier’s former commander and told him of the incident.
The former commander wrote back: “This guy hasn’t changed a bit. He has won $100 from me. Before he left, he betted with me that within 10 minutes of meeting you, he’d have your pants off.”

If you want to read more, go to http://jokeslinks.blogspot.com/
I found it via my "next blog" activities...

Make it a Better Day.

I DON'T FEEL QUITE SO LOW & HORRIBLE as I speak; I'm hoping this is a "real" improvement. If I sound a little overly concerned about feeling a bit "blue", I should explain that I have spent years of my life in various grades of depression and when it starts to come back it terrifies me because it can sometimes go on for a full year on and off. But mostly ON. And I haven't always got on with those antidepressant medications they dish out like sweeties at times....

Having said all this I've resolved to go to a doctor and talk over everything that bothers me because I have loads of silly health probs which I won't go into they're not embarrassing but trivial ... this is an odd thing about junkies; you on the one hand have to be very much in touch with your body, lose the embarrassment eg of using bathroom with door open (because of being in people's houses where people have to walk in and out to get eg toilet paper to wipe off blood, type of situations). But on the other, and this struck me so forcibly at my old methadone pharmacy (because you pick it up from a pharmacy here, it's only a "clinic" for fortnightly (lack of) progress reviews). Anyhow this pharmacist was so incredibly slow I ended up every day mixed up in a queue of old ladies and people with coughs and colds and sick children and kids with nits etc etc. It frankly astonished me the petty complaints people came in and were willing to spend money, basically just to get a nice little bottle of something that makes them feel they're taking care of themself. Many a time I've looked on in amazement as a businessman type person (and we all know men are meant to suffer colds worse than women. That is a fact of life.) would spend £18 or £25 on a common cold. A day remedy. A night remedy. Something to numb the throat. Some lip chap thing. Or whatever. My mind boggled at the needless billions flowing into pharmaceutical conglomerates' coffers all in the name of soothing the population's glorified hypochondria ...

The Monday Papers

HOW COULD I HAVE DONE THIS? I LEFT OUT from yesterday's news review Mystic Meg’s MESSAGES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE-!!

Surely she does them with a Road Atlas Britain, eyes shut, with a pin, flicks randomly through a “name your baby” book, then pulls sundry words from hats to complete the effect. Every week there is hidden treasure to be "revealed". EVERY WEEK.

Here goes:— SARAH OF BIRMINGHAM: YOUR LEGACY IS AN EMERALD RING IN THE GARDENING GLOVES. GARY OF EDINBURGH: YOU MADE THE RIGHT DECISION FOR THEM AT THE HOSPITAL. LIZ OF DOVER: TIME TO SMILE AGAIN.

Do you reckon Liz is so happy because she got to the gardening gloves before Sarah?

And now today’s Sun newspaper.

Shilpa wins BB for us all

TRIUMPH OVER RACISM SEE PAGES 4 & 5

(This is the bitchy Brit girls vs Indian Bollywood superstar actress “racism” row. The press continue in their typical way to squeeze every penny’s worth of value from the scenario.

Front page, main headline. (This is a laugh.)

STATE X-RAY SPIES TO SEE YOU NUDE

Secret cameras in street lamps

X-RAY cameras capable of seeing through people’s clothes would be installed in LAMPPOSTS under leaked anti-terror plans seen by The Sun.

All passsers-by could effectively be seen naked in the Home Office scheme.

Police would monitor the pictures to snare terrorists and criminals …

… page 3 NEWS IN BRIEFS (half-page colour picture of Keeley, 20, from Bromley, tanned and naked but for bikini bottoms.

KEELEY has mixed feelings over the idea of anti-terror x-ray machines ... “I’ve got nothing to hide. But some will see it as an intrusion.” She perceptively declares.

More “celebrity” Big Brother bluster on pp4-5.

Hooray for Bollywood — headline. Indian actress Shilpa has won. (She’s a far greater star than the rest of the house “celebs” put together because she has a following running into hundreds of millions on the Subcontinent.)

Jo “I don’t give a ‘forklift truck’” O’Meara “was last night in pieces” over the death of her agent over the weekend from a heart attack. Now, after all her bad behaviour, her mentor has died. And she’s beating herself up and blaming herself.

Oh dear.

And that, dear Readers, is today’s NEWS.

Don't Buy the Sunday Papers

OK HERE’S MY CRITIQUE of the Sunday papers. (But cheapskate that I am I only BOUGHT News of the World)…

SUNDAY SPORT … 1001 NIPPLES INSIDE

SUNDAY MIRROR … SHAMELSSS JO: I’m NOT sorry & I’d do it AGAIN. (This is to do with “Celebrity” Big Brother racism row: Jade Goody (prize Essex thicko), Jo O’Meara (abovementioned) former S-Club Seven (teenybopperbandmember) and (soccer) footballer Teddy Sheringham’s vulgar-mouthed model partner got into race-spat with actually proper famous 1000,000,000 people following Indian Bollywood actress Shipla Shetty.

It wasn’t racism at all in my opinion. Merely girlie jealousy. But you try telling the British tabloids that. (Michael Jackson’s brother Jermaine was also in the house. If these three Brit girls were so “racist” why did they never have a go at HIM??)

THE PEOPLE … JO’S HOOKED ON SEX & GAMBLING BIG BROTHER EXCLUSIVE. PLUS DIRK RACE STORM. (Same Jo. Who the hell this Dirk is I haven’t a clue I’m not wasting my money on that paper.) Then…

(Massive headline.) DEC BROKE MY HEART. (Declan Dontknowhissurname was in kids’ TV show Byker Grove then went on to present ITV chart show and is now joint KING with (male) partner ANT of SATURDAY NIGHT TV. But he is hetero.

NEWS OF THE WORLD … World’s oldest mum at 67 (huge red figures) — photographer wisely used “extra wrinkle” lighting.

Ooo. There’s more “news” inside…

Is KYLIE (Minogue — Aussie songstress’)’S LOVER 2-TIMING HER?

“Olivier (her boyf) in secret hotel trysts with beauties”.

Then we launch into main “text” …. COURAGEOUS (because she’s “battling breast cancer” — they love their alliteration) blahblah four-year romance with duh duh.

Friends say (what “friends" ever talk to News of the World??) the couple are locked in bitter rows over their relationship.

And well that’s the story. Move ON to page…

OK in the corner of that one Mad dog mauls 2” that is a current obsession — pitbulls. Yes. And here’s another.

322 Sex fiends on the loose.

Because our Home Office doesn’t know its bum from its elbow.

Where’s KATE MOSS… Surely KATE MOSS is somewhere. O! I’ve found her!

KATE FACES AXE …!! Oh DEAR!!!

Rimmel (cheap Maybellinw type company) ‘looking for younger model’.

Big Pete Doherty snap.

Brooding Kate pic caption: LIP STICK. Kate’s getting ‘too old’.

Rimmel … secretly holding castings for young girls to find a replacement for Kate, who turned 33 this month.

A source said (they nicked this expression from the National Enquirer): “Age catches up with everyone — even Kate.” O you don’t SAY??

Considering not TOO long ago she was “Cocaine Kate” to all the press. She somehow redeemed herself & they’re frustratedly implying (v. B-tween the lines) that she’s USING AGAIN. Well she’s “marrying Pete Doherty” for 1. But NOTHING IS PROVEN wind back a decade ago it was the “Kate’s on heroin” rumour. I’m not sure I believed that one; you can’t travel the world on heroin without A: a connexion near every airport or B: trafficking.

OK. Blar blar blar. O yes here’s where it gets stupid. “But she was kept on and secured more deals with other companies to take her earnings last year to £30 million.

DON’T BELIEVE THAT.

Though Mother Hubbard who I’m probably NOT having dinner with 2day actually BELIEVED concrete-breasted Katie Price/”Jordan”’s “I earnt £1 BILLION tabloid claim.

Well there y’are.

Saved yourself EIGHTY-FIVE PENCE THERE DIDN’T YOU?

So don’t buy the News of the World.

Long Sleep & Dreamless

THAT'S RIGHT: NO NIGHTMARES last night.

They've probably been having one of their mega crack sessions in on eo fthe other rooms as every time I woke in the night (which is alwyas frequently) I heard Jamaican voices hollering. At one point there was almighty crash-banging at my door. I let this go on for three minutes, cussing self for not wearing EARPLUGS, which you need in my house, believe. Laundretta was at my door saying: "Oh please will you let me in again because Matran's got my key." I checked the time. It was 4:50am. She was coming back in an hour and could she phone me when she needed to get back in? No because my phone doesn't work. I slammed my door. She was only going out to "do" a "punter" anyhow.

You can't put our front door on the latch: there isn't one. It has to be a Yale-type lock cos of fire regs. So all you can do is leave it ajar. Which ain't so unusual as it's been kicked in so very many times. We had a wide-swinging lockless front door for about three months out of the past year. If not longer. Yes that's right. When I took up blogging about two months ago my own front door had no lock whatsoever. Hadn't done for weeks. And was simply hanging mournfully open 24-7. But nobody DARED cause any trouble from outside. So I wasn't that bothered about it.

Anyhow Laundretta's gone. Now it is a drab Sunday pm. I don't know whether I'm going to Mother Hubbard's for lunch as our mutual friend PASCAL stirred so much "muck" between us earlier in the week (I'd said I had only £10 which was true. I could not afford to give half of it away. Not for the unwanted luxury of waiting on a dealer in someone else's house. This git TOLD her all this.)

So I don't know what I'm doing today. I think I'll stay in and eat bread and hummous.

Late Night & Lost

I FEEL BETTER for having a big hit of B. If you're wondering why the Enid Blyton language below it's to do with me striving to avoid bad language. Becuse I know myself. If I do start that the whole thing will turn into a kind of truckdriver's four-letter rant blog rather than what you see before you: my can you make head nor tail of my Self-depracating Irony-sincerity no I don't think everyone does stylee.

Tonight I'm not posing any questions and I'm not answering anything except what precisely was I originally keeping this blog for? Isn't this meant to be my confessional blog? So what am I doing? I feel myself self-censoring something meaningful.

If I did dig it out, I'm sure it would only make y'all laugh...

I HATE NIGHT-TIME. That "turn off the light and go to sleep because everyone else is sleeping" time. Maybe I'd do better in New York City. Is that really the City that Never Sleeps? More than London? I wouldn't know: I have no comparison. My local shops are open 24-7. The local supermarket is open 24 hours all week; but come the weekend and bizarre Sunday trading regulations it has to shut sometime over Saturday night to reopen 10 till 5 or something stupid on Sundays so the staff can "go to church". As if any of them actually do.

My nearest local pubs shut around midnight or one a.m. One further up the road stays open till about four at weekends, but I'm definitely not in the mood for that place tonight. As I've mentioned loads of times, I used to go partying every weekend. Clubbing on E. But eventually, in the end, when reality (of whatever type) hits you, it just gets frazzling to mind, body and soul. I have too many memories of bleak mornings, chilled to the core, too knackered to walk, stuck on the wrong side of the river miles from home and probably trudging to somebody's house where I don't want to be anyhow to hear yet more techno, take in the herbal aroma of other people toking spliff (because I wouldn't touch one) and keep gum-chewing as my mind continues to scramble on E.

Really, in my heart of hearts, what I need in such a situation is a long hot bath plus deep restorative unconsciousness.

Possibly deep restorative unconsciousness isn't too far off tonight. And besides: even if it's not, the airwaves are alive with kids running their pirate radio stations. They are alwyas good for a Saturday-night laugh, and the dial is choc-a-block with them. We get the best TV and radio reception in this corner of town. I got digital TV through a £1.99 aerial. Whereas most people have to spend £100 on a rooftop replacement (that's what that little star signifies in the Argos catalogue "in some cases aerial upgrade may be required" - you bet!)

If only my brains were less inclined towards scrambling. Have I a project to sit down to? Something ghhhh. (Not like me. The word's escaped my skull.) Something worthwhile to... Think. Think. Well don't think. Thinking hurts. I'm off to read irrelevant things. Providing I can concentrate. (What IS relevant..?)

Feeling Horrid

TO USE ENID BLYTON LANGUAGE yes I do feel "horrid". Have been feeling horrible all week. My mind feels at this moment like a pressurecooker about to explode. Went to my old blog thinking I'd cheapskate it and whack up one of my old postings. The slowness. And the eggtimer. All got to me. So bad. I just logged out.

I have spent years of my life on antidepressants. Then once they gave me this anticonvulsant (why?? I'm not epileptic.) Whenever I tell psychidoctors what actually happens to me I get the strong feeling they don't believe me. Which is all you need when depressed. Because you feel your feelings have no validity anyhow. And if, like me, you can convince yourself that what is happening is not real, you will see that it all turns into a hall-of-mirrors-type mindgame. Here's a quote:

Eccentric is one step before insanity.
StalkRaymi/Raymi.

If that's true then I'm done for. Eccentric - when have I not been. Insane? Well I can't hear through walls like I could this time last year.

One thing to be said for opiate addiction: it does calm down moodswings. But the upshot of all this is what Ivy calls a flatline. (Which is even worse on methadone as that has such a long "half-life".) At least a decade ago when I got depressed I'd flip up into a joy-to-be-alive state for a few days. Now when I do go down I just sink into the goo and stay there.

I'm afraid of telling my full mental states story to any doctor in case they start slapping words on me like paranoid or bipolar. Actually I did tell them when I was paranoid about the "bad energy" Nutnut was sending out to me. She was destroying me by the powers of her own sickness. And her own way of thinking was not one to inflict on someone drifting out of his own etre to another raison.

Normally when I feel like this I would tell myself I need a drink. But I don't need a drink. I don't really want one.

Even if the fairy godmother waved her wand over me right now, I reckon I could turn normality into its own madness. I'm one of these people that whatever advantages I get in life - they are still going to get peed away up that wall.

Now I'm going to bed.

Nightmare Or: Living

WOKE UP SCREAMING SO FORCEFULLY I FRIGHTENED MATRAN SO BADLY he yelled up in fright thinking Laundretta was being attacked. Which was all I needed to deal with, surfacing from another nightmare.

Briefly, here's the dream: trapped in strange family house. Time running out. Unfamiliar girl trying to thwart me. (The source of stress was vague: was she trying to throw me out yet leave all my stuff in the house?) I attack her with turkey carving knife and prong fork. Could not defeat this woman. (Who is it?) That's when the dream ended with those screams.

There's some comedy value with me trying to carve woman's face open with knife and turkey-prong fork. But I wasn't laughing at the time.

I don't know why I'm posting that. But I have been nightmaring every day.

I've been ill all day today. Spent practically all day in bed. Sitting at this glaring screen I feel unsteady and unwell. Depressed. Sleep-drunk. Can't focus. And I've had neither too little drugs nor not enough. I've got to go. My head is emptied out...

Blast From the Past: Y/N?

ONCE AN ADDICT, ALWAYS ONE..? Met this old friend a couple of months back who I used to share a house with, along with five other house "mates". She is an actress/teacher/healer. (Some mixture.) Her boyf is what I always thought was a "recovered" cocaine addict. He'd been the chair at NA meetings. Didn't use coke any more. Drank alcohol without seeming to have an alcohol problem. Took the odd couple of Es now and then.

... All these are things NA would view seriously and tell you you'd "relapsed". Some years ago we went to a New Year's party together. It was supposed to be this enormous illegal squat-rave. We drove round Hackney in a cab. He was drunk and being fractious with the driver, who wanted paying in advance. Wouldn't give driver more than half the money. Couldn't find the right place. Eventually we did get to a party. I remember thinking "this is well decked out for an illegal rave" - Grecian pillars made of film-prop type material, beautiful lighting, silky full-length curtains against the otherwise plain-brick walls. I found out at the party's end that we'd inadvertently gatecrashed a club-decorator's private party which explained it all. Anyhow, meanwhile we both took some Es and this guy's behaviour grew from bad to embarrassing. At one point he was on the floor kissing this poor girl's (boot-shod) feet. While I rolled my eyes back to said girl's eye-rolling friends then told him: "Get up, man. She doesn't want to marry you." I had to literally drag him off her. Without detaching her shoe. Which was difficult but I did eventually manage.

Before this incident I had thought this guy was seriously okay and that NA were wrong. Because he'd done all 12 steps in the programme of abstinence. And had (in their eyes) "put a foot wrong" and been okay. Ever since that night I've not been so sure that anyone can be okay once they've been addicted to drugs and use again. Even if it's NOT the old "drug of choice".

Thought I'd throw that little anecdote in there. Anyway, his girlfriend since told me he'd relapsed quite badly on the "charlie" (as they call cocaine round here) and his acting-out had caused massive trouble amongst their friends. But she stuck by him.

Anyway, point two is, she'd run into some of my oldold friends, the ones I had before this heroin ever got to me. I found out my exbestfriend felt guity about "not having helped more" (but what help can you give someone when they're spiralling down, a grown adult, in absolute charge of their own actions? What help CAN anyone else give if that person doesn't REALLY want to change?) I thought this informally passed-on message from my exfriend odd because I'd actually gone and written a bunch of letters to people from my past a couple of weeks before, meaning to restrike-up the friendships. There's no real reason these people shouldn't want to talk. As soon as the drug-habit "got" me I purposefully stayed away to save my friendships. Otherwise I would not have been able to resist continually pleading destitution and asking for money. I know what I'm like. Get away with something like that once and it becomes yet another habit.

I'm not even thinking of seeing these people. I just thought it might be nice to exchange emails. I've still got their parents' addresses. Just haven't worked out what I'm going to do.

Waiting for...

YEAH DREAMS. I did have a nightmare. All was chaos. It quickly faded. Then I had to face the day. I knew nothing was going to be all right. Soon as I awoke I rang da man. He said he was in court. About three hours later when I got up I called again. He says he has no wheels. Well whatever, so I try person #2 who says have I got the gnome on a bike (his runner's) number ... some messing about. He said he'd be half an hour. I know what his half an hour means. Someone else (person 3) rang back. So I cancelled #2. I wish I didn't have such a stonking tolerance to that stuff. A big part of the initial attraction was that it could quite possibly wipe me from the face of the earth. Then only THIS trash would outlive me. Woo. The guy's coming down the road as I speak. I need a drink.

Why I Don't Have TV

Okay do you want to know why I don't bother with telly anymore? I had a TV don't we all blah blah. In this country you are supposed to buy a £140 television licence or you will get trouble (if you are thick enough to let said licensing man in your home). Anyway long story. TV on 24 hours. Me in drug-coma. Or just depressed without enought drugs semi-coma. Had clear-out. Saw TV in corner. Felt temptation rise. Carted telly downstairs and threw into front garden. Gave digital box away to Mother H. And ever since have had same radio channel droning 24-7 in background. I really wanted to be able to read a book. But that was a year ago and I don't think I've finished a single one. Still get to see everything because I only go home to mope.

Late Night Melancholy

IT FEELS LATE. AND I don’t want any more dreams like that, to wake up in lemon-fresh sunlight feeling so mournfully down.

And I forgot to tag anyone with the six weird things. So I tag everyone & Chipper (who I emailed).

Laundretta was lying drunk out of her brains on the stairs when I came in from the chicken shop about an hour ago. Had to go about five minutes out of my way (avoiding the one that fries in pig-fat) for the one that does two pieces, chips and can of orange (excellent for turning cyder into punch) for “only” £1.99. Yeah, yeah, I bet you Americans can get the same for $1.99. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. One thing I hear over and over about the US of A is $1=£1 in spending power. Though I have to say, reading the prices in American magazines, this is not the case. And my friend Tommy Tired went to Manhattan to stay some years back. He said a loaf of bread and some eggs were $3.95 or something extraordinary. But maybe he bought them in the NYC equivalent of Harrods’ food halls.

Well I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to sit on my own without the warming glow of the computer. There is no television. One day I will explain just why I stopped watching it. I’m not one of those bourgeois “no telly in our house”-ites … oh that is a long story. Not into it now. The radio of course is babbling away as ever. There is always the Chinese mouse for entertainment. He was very naughty today. When I panicked, believing my landlord was going to come thundering upstairs into my room I piled some paperback books into his tank, which sits on a cupboard unless I take it down. With books inside it just looks like a scruffy bit of my clutter, you see. Anyway, at some point today the swine got up, got a liking for the back cover of one and had a good nibble at it. Which serves me right really. I could let him out for furry Scalectrix I suppose, but I’m not up for the stress of him running away. So usually I only let him run about on me.

I do not want anybody’s company. Other people don’t help me when I’m in a mood like this. When it gets past 2am, we’re into the dead part of night. My local shops stay open, but the streets are bare during those hours ’tween two and five-thirty.

Wish I could find a good book to read. But I don’t always have the attention span. I actually find it easier to write than to read things closely. Which does make sense when you consider it. I mean, be honest, folks: How many of us would rather talk than listen —? Be frank!! Well there you have it.

Well I’m going to go now… And go to Innesfree… Yeah. Hmmm. Lough Neagh was on the radio today. Biggest body of water in the UK & Ireland. Maybe I could drown myself there. O you’re getting stupid now… Okay shuttup man. Shut UP. Wish I could think up a good joke to finish on. Well the only one I can come up with is an old lollypop stick one. What happened when the frog’s car broke down?

It got toad away.

Boom-boom!!

Laundretta's in a Spin

LAUNDRETTA, WHO IS Matran’s girlfriend:— über-long hours hard-Working Girl extraordinaire, a Girl with enough emotional probs that, floated out on the North Atlantic, they’d reprimand the Titanic — peasy:— this Laundretta girl collared me in the hall as I skulked unwittingly home this afternoon & DELUGED me with her amaranthine emotional needs.

Her silver watch and earrings: she took them off last night & somewhere…. Hid them… Now they’re not in the appointed place… (??)…

The query being NOT just did Matran nick 'em & pipe them in the form of cocaine crack. (He’s off all that now, she insists. Which I don’t believe for a second. But he might have cut down because he has put on a great deal of weight, a telltale sign of cocaine abstinence.) But rather:— do I believe he took the jewellery, which is fresh enough to appear brand new, so she says, to give as a gift to either his “bit on the side” girlf or his babymother. —?

I don’t know! And told her this. But did keep listening and smoking…

Between her revealing this and us imbibing a can of alcohol and three cigs each and the Evil Landlord taking up clonking about downstairs (because this conversation took place in the hallway on neutral ground; all quiet and Matran at his weekly drugs test (which he either fakes or fails — surely —)) at least a half-hour of vague chitchat elapsed. Nothing is sorted. Laundretta put my head in a washing machine spin-cycle tizz with the stress of it all.

And now she’s so upset she’s vandalizing Matran’s room all lovely & nice for when he gets home…

My Bizarre Dream(s)

WHY DO I KEEP having bizarre dreams? I'm not sure I'm even ready to describe this to you. I woke up at 1:30pm. It is 2:10 now. But will I ever be able to explain the inexplicable. Let me describe the elements. You, dear Reader, I'm afraid will have to put 'em 2getha urself.

Okay: so we have. Me winging through Marrakech-style souk of covered outdoor markets into someone's bedroom behind a stall. Yeah, it was most like an on-&-on-&-ongoing indoor market. I remember going in them as a kid and the "bracing" smell of the fish-stall etc. And me being 4 yrs old putting me hand out to these dogs towering over me. (I actually do remember this. My mum dragged me away.) Okay so I wing into this bedroom and steal a book. Run out with it. Don't know if theft is detected but I regret it and sincerely WANT to give back but cannot: don't know where.

The other dream-bits = Marilyn Monroe (nothing 2do with my friend) acting well in her misery. And a house. And my brother. And someone has removed a central girder of this house and the other girder is kind of swinging round anti-clockwise in this indescrippable way yes I know that's not in the dictionary but bear with me. And something else is up. I'm always being blamed for things I never did (in nightmares). What does this mean. We are on a countdown: the house is falling down. And nobody here is qualified to put it right. Then I WAKE UP.

And feel very tearful.

Look not like I'm weeping buckets but I'm v well you know when you FEEL LIKE crying. Like that...

The one disturbance I had 2day was the fone ringing. I ansa:= "da man"= so friendly= do I want NEthing. He speak so much like my friend.

But in the sober lite of day. HE IS AN EVIL HEROIN DEALER OUT TO DESTROY ME and PROFIT from my DESTRUCTION. N'est pas?

C'mon surely there's some dream interpreters out there...

Getting to Me. Will I ever get to me? I'm lost..... (who isn't?)

I HAVE JUST SPENT about four hours reading other people's blogs. Have I got a disease?

Also all the ones I promised to read I keep forgetting in ever cog-nogg-i-log circles.

Eventually it all got to me and I left this comment in someone's box because they'd mentioned their pets. Including a mesocricetus auratus (tubby hammy).

You gotta be careful with hamsters. I've had loads of 'em. My best one used to gnash his teeth at me and strike like a poisonous snake when I disturbed him in bed. Then he yawned, stretched and rubbed his bleary eyes and realized it was me and 4gave me.

Now I've got a Chinese one and everyone thinks it's a mouse but IT IS NOT. It looks like a mouse but it has pouches. So it (or rather HE) is a hammy. Whoopee!!`¬

I really think I ought to have a lie-down now.

Tagged - Again! - 6 Weird Things About Me...

TAGGED AGAIN!! Because you're always getting this in reverse-chronological order, that STOP PRESS below is quite redundant - duh! I never think dem typa tings out.

Anyhow, the next one's easy.

SIX WEIRD THINGS ABOUT ME. So get sniggering, folks. (Thanks a lot, Ruth.) (Ruth is the one who tagged me. Again. Grrrrr!!)

1. I DON'T LIKE HOT FOOD at all. I much prefer it lukewarm. Or even room temperature. But definitely not piping hot. (Easy one to deal with. Just give it 5 mins...)

2. I SLEEP JUST AS HAPPILY ON THE FLOOR AS IN BED. And Hammy likes sleeping up my sleeve. Where it is nice and warm, I suppose.

3. I CALL MYSELF AN ALCOHOLIC BUT I'D MUCH RATHER DRINK CHOCOLATE MILK. Campina Yazoo is the only brand I'll buy. Or I make my own with Nesquik. (& yes I've tried adding spirits to it. I just think that spoils the flavour. Or flavor. (See below.)

4. I DON'T WATCH TV. I keep BBC Radio 4 & World Service on 24-7 instead. (Really I ought to get digital radio, I know.)

5. I'M HOOKED ON THE DRUGS (as you all know) BUT I CAN'T HANDLE A SIMPLE SPLIFF. I'm glad I haven't got MS...

6. FI'N SAES OND FI'N SIARAD CYMRAEG YN DDIGON DA I ALLU SGRYFENNU LLYTHUR ELECTRONEG SYML. (I'm English but I can speak Welsh well enough to be able to write a simple email etc.)

Straight Mother Hubbard: My Moods: American Spelling

I HAVEN’T DONE THIS for a while, but today I thought I’d jot down on paper before I post, in the hopes of coming up with something more “thoughtful”. Hmmm... I'm reading it back myself now. Not sure I was so successful..!

Well, the Quiz is on its way through cyberspace somewhere. (& STOP PRESS- I've just been tagged with another one!!) Wasn’t sure whether all those I “tagged” were strictly the type to post Q&A lists, but what the heck — I asked them. Also, the last three people I know I don’t know yous very well (Raymi’s Mom I don’t know at all but I read her daughter’s blog)…

… Anyway, as they say; it’s all “just a bit of fun” & noting to stress over answering or not.

Mother Hubbard surprised me this morning by turning down the opportunity to use. She said she’d had enough of being messed around by lying little so-n-soes and besides on Monday, a friend had shown up and she’d demolished £50 worth & felt (so she says) no better for it. Yesterday 100mg methadone sorted her out fine. So good on ya, Mother H.

(I’m not naïve enough to even pose the thought: is this a turning point? In the fullness of time the balance of probabilities will most probably label today as an aberration. But who knows? Who am I to pre-empt time’s mysterious fullness?)

A flash of depression this afternoon cast a brief & frightening light across my pit-fallen life. I’ve done very little with the past handful of years, bar survive. In the most elementary living-breathing kind of way. My flash didn’t so much entail pondering nihilistic thoughts as merely FEELING this endless emptiness. And like the best illusions, it reached on, neverending, into infinity.

Okay, misery’s over. What I DID notice re yesterday’s quiz answers, three who’ve answered ALL remarked on the Brit spellings “favourite colour” etc. All 3/3 of them!! (The questions came to me as an Anglo-American hotchpotch. I couldn’t resist going through and adding missing “u”s…

I used to work in printing many years ago, which has made me far hotter on spelling and punctuation than I would otherwise be. (I am aware of my idiosyncratic use of the colon-dash (:—) among other things. And I know I spelt sentence with an A the other day. (See somewhere below.))

One thing you Americans probably don’t realize (or realise, if you prefer) — you hear Brit writers remarking on this a lot. When an American novel is published here, nothing is altered. All cultural and factual references, expressions and so on, they all go straight to press unedited — spelling included. The only (slightly bizarre) concession to British printing protocol is that dialogue will always appear in ‘single’ inverted commas as opposed to the American “double” — that I choose to use.

American editions of Brit books, by contrast, are edited so heavily for “clarity” that many authors feel the unique “flavour” of their work has been quite vanilla’d out. Ian Rankin of Detective Reebus fame, recently complained that the Stateside edition of his latest actually had “pavement” translated…!

Did Barbra Streisand sing in Memories:—

“Midnight — not a sound from the sidewalk…”??

… But you try telling Random House New York that.

Some Brit authors do, of course, get territorial about our colourful added “u”s, French-looking “centres”, mediaeval “æ”s & foetal “œ”s. Some of our renditions look foreign even to me. Ie. The straightforward American “maneuver” our dictionaries insist we spell “manoeuvre” — very Inspector Cluseau, don’t you think?!?

As for American spellings, I suspect the entire world will be using them in a couple of generations’ time. They are just as historically valid as our British versions. After all, in the 1550s, Queen Elizabeth I penned an epistle to a supporter to squash false “rumors” of her being sequestered in the Tower of London. She mentions these “rumors” several more times throughout the letter — never inserting a so-called British “u” — makes mention of her “honor” — and promptly signs off. I saw this, in the lady’s own handwriting, with my very own eyes. So if rumors and honor are good enough for the Queen of England, they ought to be good enough for the rest of us.

Righto. Slight tangent there…

Not too much to tell by way of news. Mousey’s sleeping, Marilyn’s upset because her grandson’s got dyspraxia (co-ordination probs). And to the best of my knowledge, Mother Hubbard, nearly 12 hours later, still has money in her purse and methadone in her belly — and has YET TO CAVE IN.

Tag Quiz: Free For All

Yes... roll up!! The tag quiz is a free for all... that's the point... let's see yer answers now...!

And of course if you don't want to ansa you don't have to... I don't know people THAT well. I have, after all, only been blogging for 2 months. Which seems extraordinary as I've accumulated over 120 postings... ooer...!

I'm working on my own questionnaire. So y'all are getting tagged with that pretty soon. (In 2008, when I finish it. No doubt...)

Tag Quiz

Okay-dokey. Got tagged with this quiz by Ruth of the amazing & beautiful garden. I'm suposed to answer and pass it on to at least five other people...
SO HERE GOES:---

If you could build a house anywhere, where would it be?
If I had to choose one place in the world I would go for central France because the climate is a mixture of temperate & Mediterranean, there's LOADS of wildlife (again the mixture) and I love French châteaux. An Englishman's home is his...
What’s your favourite article of clothing?
Ooer. It would be the old baggy Peruvian jumper my exex stole off me.
Favourite physical feature of the opposite sex?
Turned sideways, the S-line between hips and thighs.
What’s the last CD that you bought?
Seriously cannot remember I was always a cassette cheapskate. It was most probably either Seargeant Pepper- Beatles or Kraftwerk the one with "she's a model and she's looking good" sung more choonlessly than I do...
Where’s your favourite place to be?
Do you really want to know? In dreamland...
Where is your least favourite place to be?
In withdrawal-land (or bad acid land) or outside when it is cold-land...
What’s your favourite place to be massaged?
On the beach.
Strong in mind or strong in body?
Mind. Definitely. My mind defeats me.
What time do you wake up in the morning?
Well the 1st time is 5am. Then around 7am, 8:30am, 10:30am... Obviously I might have to get up before 10:30am though...
What is your favourite kitchen appliance?
Cheesegrater..?.. I s'pose...
What makes you really angry?
Things not working properly.
If you could play any instrument, what would it be?
Piano
Favourite colour?
Blue (of course!)
Which do you prefer…sports car or SUV?
Don't know what SUV is, but if it's bigger (which it has to be- duh! I'd go for that..)
Do you believe in an afterlife?
Most definitely.
Favourite children’s book?
Rupert Bear. Why do people so very rarely mention him as a favourite (?), and yet originals of Rupert annuals... well you just can't find them, they're £100s each.
What is your favourite season?
Spring.
Your least favourite household chore?
Drying up. Ugh.
If you could have one super power, what would it be?
1st choice: Flying (if I could make a living out of it). 2nd: Invisibility (to nick money from bank vaults etc).
If you have a tattoo, what is it?
Asked tattoist about temporary 2 yr tatts (lovely real needle no ugly lifelong mark) he told me I'm not the type to get one as I keep changing my mind. Which is definitely true. The only "tattoo" I need is the one I already have: my memory.
Can you juggle?
Only with 2 balls. Ooer.
The one person from your past that you wish you could go back and talk to?
My maternal grandmother.
What’s your favourite day?
Ruth said "Today". That's a good enough answer...
What’s in the trunk of your car?
Ditto Ruth:- I haven't got one!
Which do you prefer, sushi or hamburger?
Hamburger- definitely! Especially a lovely thick cheeseburger!!! And if from kebab shop with all salad, all sauces, 3 huge chillies...
I tag........... Chipper, Ivy, Mousie, Meg-o-Rama, Grumpy Git!!, my new & fascinating friend Daubmir + Raymi's Mum she lost her entire old blog so I told her this would at least be something to start with...- C'mon folks...!!...

N.B. This is purely for fun and not compulsory so if you don't want to then I SHALL NEVER SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN!! - and if you believe that you don't know me!...

Tuesday Calm

WAS MESSED AROUND for several hours today by "da man" who had no "man" to come deliver his precious wares. Meanwhile a famous shoplifter known to me (well, okay, the guy's about as "famous" or well-known as shoplifters ever get in their local manor); he and his mate (the young companion is actually public school (which means "private school" here) and very posh) - they came to my place to get out of the cold and left me with rather a welcome "free gift" prezzie. In the end, after TOO MANY minutes, rolling into hours of awaiting MY man, (possibly 3 hours, not that I was really counting, coz I was busy in that time) I gave up and rang someone else - and had the treasured stuff in my hand within 15 minutes...

Tonight's tea was cod in parsley sauce on a bed of mixed-multigrain tagliatelle with carefully Gledwooded brocolli florets all a-sprinkled with Jarlsberg Norwegian holey cheese plus "Italian hard cheese": J Sainsbury's equivalent of Parmesan. All this with a beautiful snowball that has me dizzying right to this moment...

This typeface was indeed lifted from a 1910 periodical (and we must pronounce "nineteen hundred and ten", for full "period" ambience):- just look at the faded esezz...

I'm still regaining my equilibrium a little, cyberwise, after a cyberpergatorial weekend. Got so over-the-top severely wound up re simply dumping my old blog into a new one here (as I know I did intimate at the time)... (don't ask quite WHY I set my heart on achieving this, the reasons are obscured in the mists of my own irrationality...) - I did at the time resoluve, I remember this, to carry on blogging using a different company, put all of what had been said in the new one and simply continue from there. Only GOOGLE would not let me. They saw my excessive "dumping" as signs of all being unwell and took to DEMANDING not ONLY that I interpret words from Old Church Slavonic (I never CAN key them in right, with all that bouquet bracken, barbed wire, branches and split telegraph poles behind the chmizldeffosynssness... surely I'm not the ONLY one...)

... I fastidiously achieve all this... only THEN for a renewed demand to log in (I obviously already HAD been logged in merely to get to this point) and my username and password to be rejected. Ie after transferring 50 a day, this same company that assured me I could post 999 times in a week and keep it all on one page, was not letting me get away with a mere 51!! There's very little left to say about this, save by swearing, and I'm sticking to my (self-imposed) no bad language ruling however much this might pain me. Blogspot is a lot better than my old "home". So much QUICKER just for one thing... ANYhow...

Chinese mouse: He sleeps daily onwards as he always does. Last "PING!!" he made outta my sleeve (while I slept):- rather than perform Furry Scalectrix on my massive Turkicesque rug;- he snuck off! And made a "woodland berries" nest beneath my Adidas top! Looking so cute, with beady eyes peering out of his woodland laundry bedroom:- I hated even to move him.

(It's like when Panda-Ball, my humungous tubby pensioner Syrian, the one that lived till nearly FOUR (that's a long-long time in hammy years, believe) packed up his bed in his pouches (imagine that! Being able to stuff a double-mattress and quilt plus sundry pillows and sheeting in your MOUTH-!!- & run across the room like that-!!) Did all this on his nightly run-arounds (I always used to let the Panda-Ball go rambling, he got fractious with me if I didn't...).

Anyway, said vigorous hamster found self a place he liked more than his cracked old aquarium -- behind my chest of drawers. Begged to be let back in his tank to gather yet MORE nesting jazz... repeated procedure to my amused amazement...:-THEN I realized what was happening, the little swine was set on moving house. And kept pawing at the glass when I removed him back "home", imploring at me "let me out, I really DO want to live behind your undies drawer, honest. & I promise I won't cause you no bother, man. Serious! (Oh, and be a mate, will yer, and leave me rat wheel out...? Just to the right of that telephone socket would do it... Aww..- Fanks, you're a mate!...") & I'll behave me self an' all. Honest, boss I will! Why d'you keep lookin' at me like that??"

Because, Panda-Ball, thousands wouldn't; but I believe you.... Like you're not going to NIBBLE dem wires sprouting from said telephone socket... oh yes!..

Poor hammy was GUTTED when he got delivered permanently back into "4 walls of glass" container. Well. Let's face it:- only the very worst human non-death-penalty murderers get sentanced to spend their entire rest of their lives behind walls of glass... And yet tropical fish and degus and hamsters are expected just to put up with it...)

... a-HEM-!! Wasn't THAT a bit of a tangent!!?

But I'm off to get some Jaffa Cakes, so I'll see yers later. Bye for now...

Uppity.... Me?

Ooer, I was getting a bit up myself last night, wasn't I? Having "nothing to say about such vulgar people" - nothing to say about myself then either?? Yeah, right.

Actually I DID just have two rather vulgar people at mine - just now as it goes - but THEY are friends of mine. Spent ages messing about with bits of this and that... Oh well you know the score... (But DO you?? Ah! See! Well...)

Am I actually saying anything here? No. I think not. Gotta go.

Stick with the Times

YES FINALLY I think I have found a typeface I like: Times enlarged a little. Gives my blog a distinctive look and feel. Don't know that I've seen another Blogspot blog use it...

Though I still think it has that old-fashioned kind of 1910 newspaper ambience.

WELL I've been sitting here for quite a while having fun with the next blog button up top and writing hello messages to people I come across whose blog looks interesting... there's quite some selection out there!! (oh state the obvious why don't you, Gled!)... no but seriously I've found some pretty good ones I've written all the urls down for future use (I call this "bookmarking". But to be honest I'm not too sure how proper "bookmarking" - the electronic variety - works...)

Hmmm, there's no chaos around me tonight. No confusion. Which kind of makes an unusual change. Don't tell me everyone in my house is SOBER!! Surely not?!?

Came in this evening to be accosted instantly by one voice from the bathroom: have I got a cigarette? (No: only rollies.) Get upstairs. Another voice instantly confronts me asking for spare drugs! The cheek of it!! By this same person who knocked on my door after midnight enquiring whether I knew anyone with crack cocaine for sale...?!! (This coming from someone who knows probably twenty times more crack contacts than me because I hardly use it. This is the guy who goes mental. The one howling like a wild animal that night...) I do find it annoying being sponged off, even attemptedly, like that. What is WRONG with these people? I'm so glad I've stuck within certain perameters in life. Ie I generally keep myself to myself, and for the greater part of time stick by the old maxim to "never a borrower or a lender be" - it keeps life immensely simpler, believe me!

I have nothing else to say about such vulgar people.

PS Just found a thing called RandomBlog.blogspot.com - brings up some really bizarre things. But you CANNOT READ THE URL; it's blocked from the top of the screen. So what's the point in that??

New Font: What D'ya Think?

DO YOU LIKE THE NEW TYPEFACE EVERYONE? It's just normal Times (I'm shocked at how paltry the selection here is: especially of colours. Everything is two shades darker than the hue I'd go for. As if it needs a good wipe over with a damp cloth...)

Anyway, do you like this typeface? Or does it look too reminiscent of a 1910-published provincial newspaper?

I don't know. The other one looked too girlie to me. A bit Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder packaging... know what I mean...? At least this blog has a far nicer template than the other one (my blogspot archive blog). That one looks to my eyes like a BT telephone bill... Ruth, you're English, do you agree??

Valium Marilyn and My Dreams

IVY said...
Okay GLED I left this comment on my blog on the entry entitled.. (you will NEVER guess, ohmylikegod!) "WITH HOLD."

"NO! I WANT TO HEAR MORE! TELL ME BOUT THE IRISH MAN AND THE VALIUM LADY AND MOST OF ALL ABOUT THE WORST DAYS. I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE WORST DAYS SO I CAN MAKE THEM FLUORESCENT. IT IS MY NEW FLASHLIGHT SCIENCE PROJECT. YOUR MISERY IS MY EXPLOITATION."

22 January 2007 08:28

Okay, to Ivy and all of you attentionally challenged who have heard me mention Valium Marilyn: let me explain here who she is.

Marilyn is my dear friend. I only found out about a month ago that she actually is of pensionable age; ie well over 60. As I did say somewhere before: she takes her false teeth OUT and puts her reading glasses ON before toking a pipe of crack cocaine...

I call her Marilyn because if you imagined Marilyn Monroe, not dead, aged 60+ with the same blonde hair/ blue-green eyes - and yet transformed somehow into a London cockney with extraordinarily brash voice plus addicted to Valium, temazepam, anything else that knocks you out enough to have you wobbling this way and that across the London pavements... then you have Valium Marilyn. She can be VERY LOUD INDEED. 1. because she has an exceedingly loud voice and 2. because she is most probably half deaf.

Okay, Ivy. The Irish guy I mentioned in your comments box (we were talking about embarrassing behaviour) is one called Jimmy who used to hang out with me occasionally when I was a beggar. He took up spot begging for a week. Got loads of money (beginner's luck). I told him it wouldn't last. And sure enough, don't know what it is in that "profession"... do you lose your freshness? Don't know. But after about a week of daily doing this his earnings dried up from an easy £10-£20 in an hour or two to next to nothing so he gave up. But the specific embarrassing escapade in question involved him opening a black plastic-wrapped white rock of crack on the bus in full view of several scandalized of the travelling public. Upon pointing this out to said Irish Jimmy, he just said "Oh, [vulgar language] them." So there you have THAT.

On to dreams: dream 1: I dreamt I was in my blogger friend Ruth's garden. (See Ruth's garden - to the right.) It was an enormous park-sized garden, fabulously planted. Probably what Ruth would have if she were a billionaire. In the middle of said garden was a marquee, so sturdy that the central top "beam" of this tent contained a caffeteria IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCAFFOLING POLE... This coffeeshop was exceedingly popular, full of middle-aged couples having cream teas over the spectacularly planted endlessly rolling parkland of Ruth's garden below. (This is a dream, so you can be inside a tent and yet over the parkland at the same time, just gimme a break on that one, okay??!) I don't know what this dream could mean... Ruth? Anyone? Any ideas... Just my mind playing out in my sleep, I'd s'pose... And I do know quite a LOT about Ruth's garden. You can too, she's online in my links for all to see...

Dream #2 seems to be more meaningful. I seem to have had this dream possibly twice. In this dream I am in prison, but I am a bird (ie. a small seagull/arctic tern type of bird). The window of the prison is open, but there is someone standing by it half blocking the way... if only I wanted to get out. Eventually I do fly out of the window, only to be shot down in my left wing by a prison guard... I go circling down and down and eventually land on the heavily fortified PRISON BEACH. (I've dreamt more than a couple of times about a prison that encompasses a beach.) And then the dream ends with me walking across the sands... I seem to recollect, as a human being. But I'm still in prison...

Has anyone an interpretation for me?

Bearing in mind that I'm a hapless heroin junkie and have been for over seven years the symbolism of open window (easy escape) seems to me obvious... but the being shot down = the reality of my repeated relapse and failure. And human, during the waking day, I'm still in the prison of my addiction.

Comments? Anyone??

Manic Monday

MANIC INDEED: I've been running around like a blue-posteriored fly today (English expression; means I'm real busy). Dashing too and from Mother Hubbard's house with eggs (I don't eat 'em too enthusiastically; she does fried eggs, omelette, scrambled eggs, eggnog, egg surpise... loves her cooking does Mother H), clearing up, hoovering, to and from chemist, being overwhelmed on bus by thirty ticket inspectors (thankfully I had "touched through" my card)... & so on & so on...

Haven't time to say much else except hello coz I'm on my way out again.

Next time I'm here I'm resolved to remind self to answer Ivy's comment (who is Valium Marilyn?), also wanted to put down my two dreams and the interpreters out of you could give my mystic significances a probe...

Gotta go, it's approaching half past three. Getting late. Getting late. I promise to (try and) write something of more substance next time I log in...

Okay folks....

Post-Sunday Lunch

HAD A SLIGHTLY BIZARRE Sunday lunch round at Mother H's house. Sat there watching old Lost on DVD. Never been able to follow that series on television. That and Desperate Housewives came on in same season here, at least in Desperate Housewives there is SOME semblance of a plot, not just random happenings, rivetting in the moment yet meaningless out of it. Also, Lord of the Rings pixie guy on plane: heroin- on gums? P-lease! Also no way would you ever let someone else get hold of your stash. No way. Thankfully did not see THAT part repeated. That would have wound me up way too much.

Had been there about half an hour, dinner was an hour away when Mother Hubbard says, "Come on, Dodge is taking you down the pub, come on, don't you want to go?" etc etc. In other words. "Get outta my yard so's I can have that HIT I got hidden in my top drawer in PEACE." I know the lady well enough, let me assure you.

So I went down the pub, drank 2 pints of pub-water (ie those urine-weak drinks they serve up in pubs). Had fairly pleasant talk. I did notice the toilets had anti-snort pebbledash atop the lavvy roll dispensers. I mean!... It's not even a snorty kinda pub. More a Mogadon (sleeping pill) pub if you asked me. All dark wood and somnolent ambience. Well anyhow. Could not help but overhear Italian-American gentleman swearing at English grandmother not to read his mind for him...? Other people's conversations... Just bizarre because that's not the kind of place you get Columbo extras, that's all...

Had a lovely dinner, could not finish all due to ENORMOUS quantity of fluid imbibed. I drink strong cider in half-litre cans. Not weak beer nearly a litre in half an hour... on top of previous cyder imbibing... I don't know. Or is my body packing up in my old age?

At some point after dinner there was a ckerfuffle in the hall. I had to come out and look. Drugs runner had shown up asking for fresh needles (for self). Hmmm. Then Charles the boxer ran out with cash. I left him and Mother H to use in peace as had three sticky brown filters awaiting me at home...

I didn't really want to get into this my foot, my ankle stuff here. I only would mention it as a sign of desperation,... (what else WOULD it be?)...

Now all's dry, bar 50mg methadone till tomorrow... as Gloria Gaynor most famously sang: until then I WILL SURVIVE.

How do I know that?

BECAUSE I'LL HAVE TO!!!

See yers tomorrow, folks.........

Hello and Thanks

Man I've had SUCH TROUBLE with such an EMINENTLY SIMPLE task as JUST TRANSFERRING MY OLD BLOG in its entirety to blogspot I've given up. If you're reading this, you're reading the right blog. Please tell anybody stuck on the other blogspot one that it's merely an archive, that's right I'm not going through some dumb-bottomed security procedure of typing in a word from the Czech dictionary only for it not to log me back in... don't ask, my friends, just don't don't ask...

As for what have I been doing. Nothing except toiling with these new blogs. Posting old rubbish on the other of these new blogs (go in my profile if you want to see it). Thinking about toiling on these blogs. Thinking about not being able to toil on these new blogs. Hitting the roof because of GOOGLE or whatever they call themselves "Beta" Blogger Blogspot. I don't know. I don't care. I just wish one of their executives had passed me by on my furious jaunt to the cyder shop when I'd just been compulsorily logged out for "dumping" too much. A double-entendre well-put, I hear you say.

Okay it's a drab sunny Sunday. I'm off round Mother Hubbard's for lunch in a minute. Gotta get a cyder before then. I'm parched as the Gobi, man.

Oh look I gotta go, gotta, go my head is spinning from blogs...

I'm falling over...

wh-oa-hh-!!!

PS The comment box ought to be up and running. Don't be shy now. Roll up! Come on! Let's be 'aving yer!
Still don't know about the colour scheme by the way......
OK L8Rs...

Is this for real...

Hi this is just to see whether this blog really is up and running the way blogspot promised me it is...