Mumzy, Tutankhamun and the Jubilee Line Trauma

FINALLY MUMZY AND I got to see Tutankhamun at the O2 Centre (formerly known as the dreaded Millennium Dome) in North Greenwich. The exhibition was fantastic. It does not include the famous golden Death Mask, but does have lots of other stuff including Neffertiti, Queen Tea (Neff's mother or mother-in-law, I believe) and the white Tut bust illustrated...

... I was in a really Egyptian mood when I left.

This however got totally wiped out by the trauma of having to ride the Jubilee Extension through Canary Wharf (mini New York) and London Bridge Station in hi-tech cattle trucks full of gormless office-zombies (ie folks like me in the future, I expect!!) Dismounted at London Bridge to Change Northern Line only to find out the connexion I wanted was unavailable due to a broken escalator, so cussing, I resumed an extraordinarily crowded train, had to change in the middle of town and finally am home what feels like an hour later (but it was only half an hour tops!)... those trains are so exceedingly sweaty I felt like I was going to melt. How on earth people endure them daily in full business dress unable to change and take a shower on arrival I shall never comprehend... When I'm an international typhoon I shall have bed, kitchen and bathroom in my office (in other words so I never have to go home!!) ... but that's another story or kind of daydream of mine.

Actually the exhibition was so vast my mind started wandering... and rather than admiring the last of the 3200 year-old statues inside them I started wondering whether the plexiglass cases would make nice homes for the Roborovski family...

My Mum was fine by the way... And how was YOUR day..??

PS Next time we're doing Buckingham Palace..(!!)

What a Gorgeous Day

(I NEARLY SPELT THAT "GEORGEOUS" (what? as in Stanislopoulos-type...? //whatever..:~
Yes it is a very nice day with a cool breeze. Though not quite like the illustration. Panting dogs outside the betting shop, lots of cold beer on sale. Mars confectionary have ceased advising retailers to put their chockie bars in the fridge after figuring out that Mars Ice Creams will sell even better and for more than twice the cash!!

I am sure it is barely more than 80F/30C today. Because I've not been using buses or tubes I'm not complaining too much about the heat. Our buses (a totally new fleet as well!) have been non-designed without adequate opening windows. Their only concession to "hot" weather is a white roof, with the microscopically fractional heat-deflecting effect that might achieve... (To be honest, I thought this was just a ruse to save on red paint!)

The tube is totally non-air-conditioned and soars up to 10C HOTTER than the surface shade temperature ~ so imagine that! 45C and steaming with humidity and crowded. Not nice!

Which reminds me: I'm meant to be riding into town tomorrow to see my Mum so wish me luck (in case I don't melt before I get there...)

VIDEO

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM HOT HOT HOT

Very Anglo-Asian hot

Smelling the Way Ahead

HAH! THAT MIGHT well have been a title for me some months back in that old house with no hot water, yes a bath (full of a gnome's beard shavings) and no way of plugging it except with flannels and old socks (so I barely ever took a bath...)

Actually I was thinking of my Tiny Trotters yesterday with that Minty Corridor plunked in their midst and how within 30 seconds Itchy and Bashful were investigating in the most highly-strung way (one behind the other), cautiously creeping up to the garage-door style cardboard flap opening at one end only to spring back in amazement as the entire structure took to feverish vibrating ~ because Big Momma Spherical had thundered in blithely at the other side and was duly stomping through it...

But really it has to do with those strange "memory" flashes I mentioned yesterday. They come in aromatic form, but are actually windows into a lost world of stately halls with long oaken libraries full of musting books ~ the world of my old imagination, before it got gutted by a life where I ceased to daydream for years at a time (except for craving more you-know-what...)

Now I even have aromatic flashes from this book I'm intending to write. The only downside is that much research needs to be done before I can even start it, as it's not set in the present day. I have given up on the idea of writing about drugs: I don't think it's a popular subject and I've always said I want to write for the entire world ~ not the tiniest section of it that doesn't even buy books anyway (it only shoplifts them!!)

That is what I meant by the scent of freedom... see I'm sniffing out the future...

(but have yet to find it...)

PS: Do you like the golden hammy picture, top left? I was thinking of using that as my new "avatar"...

Robotrotter Sunday and the Smell of Freedom...

IT IS 7:30AM SUNDAY at precise time of writing. The world is dead, thanks to having been hijacked by sunworshipping Roman-Catholicized 4th Commandment-breakers who have purloined the title "Christian" and made a travesty of the Sabbath!

How I hate Sundays!

(Sorry, slight irritation moment there. I was angry because I was WIDE AWAKE and WANTED TO DO SOMETHING... and yet the dopey, closed-down world was stopping me... not even the shops (supermarkets and all) open till 11am on Sundays, thanks to antiquated trading laws...

Well I'm sure I shall have to wait well past 10:30 for any internet caff to open to type this in.

Actually I'm in a glowing good mood this morning {well it didn't show, did it!}... full of the world-conquering thoughts that used to drive me on, before all this switched to heroin-heroin-crack-drink-heroin...

I met a vulgarian crackhead at 6am in the Ornamental Gardens. Bellowing my name 6 times before I deigned to notice and turn round with a great false smile. He looked like he wanted to murder me (so rude!)... I had the misfortune to bump into him last night, when he pulled the same expression. I know him from the mental hospital, where he was confined as punishment for crack-induced paranoid psychosis.

Claiming he was "sick for B" (heroin) and did I know anyone? (No: not at 6am)... then he wanted me to come to the wider Kings Cross area (a heartland of vulgarity) where he'd split a £10-deal with me. No thanks. He smokes his on the end of a crackpipe which is a pitifully diluted way of taking the stuff (but safe though and litle chance of overdose, which I suppose is good and is why I have never tempted to induce him into taking it a more potent way... which is an act of sheer self-restraint, as his pushiness threatens to bring out the evil side in me every time we meet)...

The guy's pupils were tiny whereas when you're "clucking" your eyes dilate widely, like a raver's... I told him if he goes on like this he really will get a habit, but no-one ever listens...

I know I've barely been in touch with anyone and it's eating at me daily...

I bought a new toothpaste yesterday and my Trotterovskies were at first sniff in sheer terrour of the new minty-smelling corridor. Next thing I see is all three furries scampering full blast on the wheel as quick as they can possibly manage! They are running away from their beautiful new Household Feature as rapidly as nature will take them..! Scuttling in such confusion that Bashful (whos' now the smallest, hence the lightest one, hence most likely to be picked up and flashed round and round and round along the wheel, and, after much Roborovski-squealing and honking to establish the fact,unfortunately for her, Bottom Peck under the Ruthless Pingy Baby Itchy. Big Momma Suherikuru-san is Top Dog as ever, though naughty old Itchy had the cheek to try even this one on. Boy! And I can tell you the robohonkings from this one in the Itchy Challenges: The Battle of the Spherical Supremacy were quite some honkings to behold.

I tell you what: Someone else in possession of the same three Furries might have kept these pets as long as I have, laughed and cried the same as I have and yet never realized quite how socialized these little trotters actually are ~ they even greet with a European-style kiss on both cheeks ("pink nose to pink nose") ... their hierarchical social structure is quite something...

DUR! Does that paragraph make any sense at all? OK I'll put it another way, if I hadn't been given a wildlife documentary lesson in animal society from Meerkat Manor I wouldn't realize how critters of the same species inevitably have a hierarchy. Now that I see it with my roborovski hamsters let me tell you it is fascinating, big time, to watch...

Anyway: back to today and Three Balls of Fur are a-rambling the wheel. Really, I ought to go purchase a second McMambler for 'em all, but our local petstore ~ believe this or not ~ sells ONLY those wheels that clip to the sides of a barred cage and no freestanding ones at all. There's a posh ballbearing ultra-smoothie £9.99 model that I really want for them...

... and all I'll say now is:

It comes to me in aromas, but visions of my future have it me Time and Time Again. I see it, I feel it.

I smell freedom!


VIDEO:

CHRISTIAN THE LION

Wow... amazing. I've never seen anything quite like this.

Keep watching, it does launch into some of the most amazing film I have ever seen...


Thanks for this to Laurie of the Los Angeles Pimps and Prostitutes Mission...

Harrassed and Happy

I'M GETTING TROUBLE AGAIN from nasty neighbours but, as the song says (see below) "I don't wanna talk about it"... all I will say is that when I threatened to call police the poison person in question quickly fled!

One of very few vaguely interesting things I've read about drugs recently came from an Ecstasy Fact Sheet I picked up in the drugs agency. It was actually a good 4 or more sides of closely typed foolscap/A4...

"Are people still taking that?" I thought, and read on. Now some of the old hippie types at ecstasy.org-type websites would say that MDMA (ecstasy) is a "heart-opening substance)... it's basically an upper that, as well as making you feel excited (like you're at the best party that ever was, hearing the greatest music, etc.. etc...) it actually does, to recoin some 1960s-speak, make you feel full of "peace and love"... quite amazingly so, in fact.

One of my more curmudgeonly friends, who preferred nasty old speed, told me "but I don't want to sit in the corner of the rave feeling like Buddha" (exactly the effect I took it for!)

Anyway this new (to me) info told me that ecstasy does not elicit any feelings that are not inside you anyway...

... which is one of the most positive things I have ever read... meaning that I am full of the most amazingly transcendental joy it breaks the limits of description.

To put it another way, I suddenly realized something I suppose I've always secretly known all along: that you don't need drugs to feel "high"!

After reading this, I decided to contact this Inner Joy: and suddenly I did. It was a couple of weeks ago and I was trotting mundanely back from the chicken shop with my £1 special deal (+ piece + fries), and I thought about what I'd read and ~ wow! Amazing! I did get right directly in touch with this amazing joy inside me!

That is the happiest thing that's happened to me for a long time..!

Videos:

Everything But The Girl: I Don't Wanna Talk About It

Everything But The Girl: Missing

This one got to number one time back in the late 80s (if I remember rightly...)

a v nice tune.

The group's name, btw, comes from their original ad in Melody Maker or the NME magazine "everything but the girl" (ie we have a group put together but we need a sweet singin' vocalist) and she does sing sweet...



This, however, is probably their greatest and most memorable hit:~

Everything But The Girl: Missing (club mix)



ps Bashful's name should really be バシフルさん Bashifuru-san (far as I know, that's the nearest Japanese equivalent...)

and here is the dictionary definition for "itchy":

かゆがってさん (that is Kayugatte-san)

Bashful would be 内気さん (Uchiki-san)

Spherical is 丸さん Maru-san

(the katakana readings given yesterday are phonetic transliterations (yes: Iichi-san, Bashifuru-san and Suherikuru-san are the nearest the Japanese can get in their own language to Itchy-Bashful-Spherical!

PS yesterday's title Frank was a pun I forgot to elucidate on the former British National Drugs Helpline "Talk to Frank" ~ clickonit to see...

Frank

No Part II
(Two spitting-image portraits there of イーチーさん (Iichii-san (see below) my tamest hamster...)
YESTERDAY'S POST was scrawled on pizza boxes before I took it in here to tap in... I'm glad now I did not type up part II and was cautioned by my own warning, as I don't see it as anything much better than a bit of "drug porn", the ramblings of a user who is just high and glorifying his cocktail of choice and achieving very little else.

Thanks for the answers yesterday! I did read them but haven't yet at time of writing responded to them.

I keep thinking of rehab. There is a kind of rehabilitation you can do where you go into a mixed house full of people with all manner of life problems. It is called a Therapeutic Community and though "therapeutic community" is so often a mere descriptive term for drug rehab (as opposed to Minnesota Method or 12-step) there are in existence mixed therapeutic communities where not everyone's main problem is drugs and some may not be in for drugs (or even drink) at all. (Anorexia, self-cutting and other life problems are the type of thing that would bring people in there.)

Not knowing really where to look I'm going to have a bit of a search around the www for it. But what tends to come to prominence here are the expensive private ones the State will not fund for the likes of me!

If you're wondering why on earth I would want to engage in "recovery" not in the uniform presence of other drug addicts it's because I've been in detox/rehab twice (for very short times until I checked myself out!) and, in the second place especially, which was a full rehab, found myself outnumbered by folks in legal trouble whose main motivation for being there was for a "jail swerve" (no wonder talk of prison crops up so very much in places like that: even though in the first such place it was expressly against the rules...)

Junkies all tend to be very much the same and I got bored of the same presentation, the same self-deception and emotional constipation. The only apparent difference between me and most other addicts is that I have picked up from years of counselling before the addiction really grasped hold of me, an unusual frankness and an almost complete lack of shame in discussing my emotions. This is so extremely rare in drug addicts, especially common street junkies like me who have taken on their mantle of self-protective manoeuvres many years ago and now find it ever so hard to drop them. It was this quality, rather than anything special about my life story that, I thought, qualified me to pen those memoirs I keep rattling on about. (I'm always going to finish them, but am more minded now to knock out a ficitonal story of drug addiction. The subject crops up so very frequently these days and yet is so seldom written about with any degree of depth or frankness I feel compelled to put the record straight...)

Having said all that, self-deception and emotional constipation are so much the hallmarks of the regular junkie that I'm sure I must have them in spades. Deception, wily as it is, is never going to wave arms yelling "This is me! Here I am! You're doing it this way..."

But I would much rather "recover" as I say among a mixed group rather than boring old addicts. They really do get boring and I get fed up of them. Mental patients, on the other hand, differ even more greatly from one another than ordinary people do; I suppose because mental illness and personality disorders illustrate the extremes of human experience...

Now I won't rattle on about boring self any more.

Though I don't really like modern chicklit, I did used to have a thing for the family saga style epics of the 1970s and 1980s. Belva Plain's Evergreen would be a good case in point. I'm not trying to fess up that I enjoy romantic novels either! The ones I really liked tended to be long and complex tales of money, hatred and revenge! Not love at all!! My present tome is one I've had for donkeys years and somehow picked up in my hurry to flee the last place (where I left more than half of my old possessions behind): Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance. If you like the old television series Upstairs Downstairs (about life, as the title says, amongst the servants and family in an upper-middle class family at the turn of the 20th century (how old I feel having to specify which century I mean!) I think BTB's prose, at its best, is quite luxuriant and elegant (though I have to say she uses twice or three times the space I would to tell the same tale). The only irritating thing about it is a tendency to treble-underline everything in metaphorical red pen: yes we did pick it up first time Barbara you don't have to rub it in! As I say it's not really a love story, more a tale of money, power and business success. One day I'm going to write an historical novel with these ingredients. I already have my characters and theme, I just need to do research first. (And plenty of it.)

The Roborovskis paid a visit in their diggery to Mother Hubbard's house last week. I managed to get Baby Itchy to walk about on her hands. It was funny though, Itchy was far more confident rambling about on me than anyone else (and I had to be ever so careful that she didn't hop off and ping across the floor...) Of all my Trotterovskis, Itchy is the ONLY one who will countenance rambling about my hands, and even that she will only tolerate for five minutes tops until she gets fractious (and has even tried to bite me!)

まだ日本語を勉強します
mada nihongo-o benkyo-shimasu
(I'm still learning Japanese)

I've translated my hammies' names into that mysterious Eastern tongue; they come out as

イーチーさん Iichii-san (Itchy)
バスフルさん Basufuru-san (Bashful)
and
スヘリクルさん Suherikuru-san (Spherical)

and their names come out of the translator as
かゆみを伴う (Itchy) 恥ずかしがり屋 (Bashful) 球状 (Spherical)!
I have to say those "translations" seem suspiciously long-winded to me. Most English words can be expressed in two or three kanji at most (the Chinese-Japanese characters).
I wish I'd remembered to bring my dictionaries with me. Those translators can be fatal and I hesitate to think what I've actually written in The Language of the Rising Sun...



Here's another tune that goes round and round my head. Here, in the original clip from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey Hepburn sings Moon River:~



PS the title Frank was a pun I forgot to elucidate on the former British National Drugs Helpline "Talk to Frank" ~ clickonit to see...

What now?

Part I
GOOD AFTERNOON ALL. The druggie part of today's post lies herebelow in italics. {CORRECTION: IT WILL BE ADDED TOMORROW}... I would strongly advise caution ~ or simply not to read it ~ to anyone in recovery whose poisons were heroin or crack or the so-called speedballing mixture of the two...

I never know quite what to say or what not to say when it comes to my drugs but they are, for better (hey what am I saying: for WORSE!), still the central axis of my life and despite what steps I may have taken away from the most intense times now past, the obsession is very much still there (under, perhaps, an occasional virginally pure-seeming layer of thin snowfall)... very much still my addiction.

Recently I feel I've hardly discussed anything else.

I feel I've come close to, and perhaps have been circling, some kind of turning point or crux.

Remember when I described a day things got so bad I actually felt REVULSION and AVERSION in place of what ordinarily plagues me:~ a near-constant magnetic attraction (for ever there, only to be activated by a simple suggestion, or an image, or a thought. (Hence my warning hereabove to those walking the thorny path to freedom: be careful of part II!)

Looking back over my life ~ the recent years of shadow ~ a shameful near-relentless emotional carcrash of a life plays out before me. Interviews by those who have put out memoirs of their own drinking and/or drugging or the books themselves, have freaked me out. I know it's hardly a competition, but I've reached the stage now where my own experiences are so much darker and more sordid and more despairing than anything these people have seen fit to reveal. Most of them seemed to hit a supposed "rock bottom" (I use inverted commas for I never felt any solidity below my feet there, merely the unbearable crush of the mega-gravity of an emotional black hole where everything's so intense it's become unbearable. I have come time and time again to such states where I just cannot go on. Just want to die. And yet on I have dragged myself ~ on and on in the dark. On despite teh soul-destroying gravity and depravity. And I've carried on using. Barely ever have I denied myself when I really "wanted" to use. I do methadone days now because I cannot bear returning to the chaos of hitting up morning, noon and night, hitting up for breakfast, to eat and to sleep... never feeling any confidence my raging need was going to be fulfilled, never knowing for sure where my next hit was coming from and yet knowing beyond any shadow of doubt that within little more than eight hours of the last one I'd start to need it. I crossed so many barriers and bridges on the Way Down, gave up so completely the remaining semblences of dignity ~ that I just do not know how I can do whatever it takes to fight out of this, get out of this. Break free. I ahd so very many aversions, self-warnings, self-cautions to break down to get here, that once the transgression's accomplished, my only refuge from the shame of knowing how polluted I am has been drugs, more drugs and more of them. I still hate myself even when I'm high. But when I'm low I can't live at all. And I don't live. I barely survive. I need to learn so desperately how...

I need coping mechanisms so bad. One at a time, as I cast the old echoes of my former life off, as I slithered ever lower down the pit, so I lost nearly everything.

Now I just want it back.

What do I do?
I'm asking: does anyone really know?
What ~ please ~ what on earth do I do now?
Somebody help me, please!


Video:
Thorn Birds the love theme as played out on "the beach scene"...

The book was a massive international hit when it came out in the late 1970s. The only romantic novel I have ever managed to read to the end...

Then the TV adaptation starring Richard Chamberlain as the Priestley Lover, was a huge success when broadcast in the early 80s.

How many of you remember this, the Love Theme music...?

All these years later and still it has not gone out of my mind!

Taking Care

I'VE JUST HAD TO LOOK AFTER A FRIEND who nearly overdosed in front of me... had to watch on her, check on her, keep squeezing the hand (nicer than waking them up saying "are you OK? are you OK?" which is just annoying for the other person) making sure I get squeezes back... yes all due to lovely heroin.

Heroin the "love" of my life. And that's the saddest thing... it's like a bad relationship where you're consistently abused, battered, let down and cheated upon and yet still you turn back and back again and again because it's the only thing in the world that makes you feel better...

... like that Bob Dylan song:

I'm on the pavement
thinking about the government;
he's in the basement
mixing up the medicine...

heroin is like the ultimate balm...

imagine a medicine that soothes every ill within seconds of ingestion, the ultimate easing balm... that's what it does. Sad as may be, I have loved heroin like nothing and nobody else because no matter how I have otherwise felt, it always made me feel better than before.

And apart from that I don't know what else to say.

I had a long talk at the drug service. My worker, whom I've clicked with, said "you seem to be drowning in this moroseness"...

Drowning? That's exactly it.

The day before I'd spent entertaining the repetitive thought of curling up under a hot shower, digging nail scissors deep into the pulse at each wrist and lying there bleeding...

morose?

Then I told her I was learning Japanese, and she said "what do you want to do for the future?" and I said the only thing I could think of that I could easily get qualified for (something that does not require a degree or long training course) was the TEFL Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate. It costs about £1000 to aquire and once you have it you can travel just about anywhere in the world and get a nicely paying job, as I say, teaching your own language. And because I have troubled to pick up two more languages approaching fluently and another three more basically I do feel qualified to do that job well...

... so as for the future...

... let's see ...

;->...

It was Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday last week...

VIDEO: SPECIALS AKA ~ FREE NELSON MANDELA



VIDEO II:
MOBY: Go
This tune incorporates the dreamlike theme from Twin Peaks...



VIDEO III:
NUCLEAR TESTS

I found a really poetic compilation of nuclear test fireworks, it was absolutely beautiful... Nuclear fusion is the very power of God Almighty in action and this video is the nearest thing I could find to it today...



PS:
This may be old news to some of you, but I heard it on BBC Radio 4 this morning... my blogging acquantance, Olive, from Sydney, Australia, "the world's oldest blogger" died last week aged 108... RIP Olive...

Neither Hide nor Hair

MY HOUSE HAS BEEN QUIET SINCE MONDAY when a man from the council came to "measure everybody's rooms"... he had ever such trouble getting into Immaturity's room; standing outside waggling keys in the lock etc etc...

... the house has been quiet and I am glad.

I keep finding Roman Catholic magazines on the street from some organization called The Two Patricks (or something like that)... all stuff to do with apparitions of the "Blessed Virgin" ("Mother of God")... I looked for apparitional videos on Youtube but found only disappointing shots of Virgin Mary dolls (supposedly a statue) opening its eyes... a cross-shaped light over an Armenian church... oh and a "film of a real demon"... but as soon as I saw the first shot, a guy in darkened woodland with a torch on his face I thought "no no no!" and disconnected. So I posted something far more REAL instead: a nuclear bombing. THAT is the real future!!

VIDEO: HIROSHIMA



MUSIC: Cygnus X: Orange
Here's one of my favourite tunes from olden times. Here in the original version with video



ORANGE: BEST MIX

There are gerzillions of versions of this out, but I think this is the best. You need to give it nearly a minute to get going, then it doesn't stop (made me feel like I'd been at the disco biscuits again...)

"Washing My Door For Me"

WHEN KINDERGARTEN KID returned after 11pm last night, she stomped upstairs to my door (I was in); she did not knock but I heard something clacking loudly against the woodwork, as if she'd petulantly smaked the door with a dogchain or keys or something. She hared off downstairs, I ventured outside in time to hear her entering her own room downstairs. An empty McDonald's style Coca Cola cup was lying outside my door and wetness at the bottom. She had chucked the remains at it and what I'd heard had been the ice-cubes.

So I stood the cup neatly at the top of the stairs last night. This evening, just before leaving, I brought it downstairs and put it neatly by her door. Unfortunately she was out. When I do get to speak to her next (and I'm not speaking to the boyfriend again. Do you know he was actually pressing up at me agressively in a way I've not been treated since my school days. And I left school over 18 years ago!)... If he ever does that again I shall say what I was tempted to gush before and say, "really, I do wish you'd stop rubbing up to me like that ~ people might get the wrong idea!"

And when I do get to speak to her (not that I'm going out of my way to have anything to do with a silly attitude-ridden little girl: as I say I had my fill of that ilk of behaviour at school and am not up for tolerating any more now that I'm approaching 40, living alone, keeping myself to myself and less interested in "The World" by the day...

... I'm going to tell her, "it was ever so sweet of you washing my door for me like that, but you don't need to do that on my account as we have a cleaner coming in once a week. And I thought you might like your cup back."

Thanks last night's wise remarks, people:


Baino said...
. . .shame you can't pick your neighbours . .
Too true!

Sometimes Saintly Nick said...
Well, it seems the adolescent “house mate” likes to play damsel in distress and whine to the would-be dragon slayers. And you got to be the dragon!

Am I really a "dragon"~? Ooer!!

S**t! I mean, I’m glad you didn’t accept the s**t and I believe you did the absolute best thing in confronting the would-be damsel directly rather than messing with her rescuer!

Great job! I applaud your handling of the situation.

Thank you, Nick!

Anonymous said...
Hhehee Nick has said it all! You handled it well Gledwood, best avoid the trio from now on.

BEWARE: do not bounce along gathering bluebirds. They will bite!

What is gathering bluebirds..??!?

Vincent said...
What a twat man. Someone's going to be ignored for a while I think.

Yes most definitely, Vince. I'm just flattered that I seem so important to these people!


Flipside said...
Good evening Gledwood!

Sometimes Saintly Nick makes some very valid points.

Your house-mate may just be attention-seeking!

Girls can be very sensitive :o) You were consciously avoiding your house-mate, but she left the door open for you. That was an indication that she was aware of you, and made a friendly gesture. You then "banged the door"? She may have seen this as an aggressive response, and been disappointed! Maybe she was expecting
a shout, "Thanks for leaving the door for me!"?

Does she fancy you?! (She effectively got close and spoke to you, and got you to speak to her (!) without incurring the wrath of her big fat "bodyguard"!)

The man may have been attempting to sus you out and establish "Pecking order".

You skilfully defused a potentially explosive situation by employing a biblical technique, (ie "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.")

PS Intrigued to know who I am ? - why? I'm also intrigued to know if it would make any difference to your response if I was a rock star, a waitress, or the heir apparent? ;->
In time you will know me.::::::::::

I don't think she does fancy me, as I've been pootling about in my German exchange student fluoro orange kagool, wearing my worst glasses and doing all I can to appear (drugswise) "straight"... and it works! Junkies in the street beg spare change off me, not realizing for a second I'm one of them! Oh the joy of sheep's clothing!!


Bimbimbie said...
Hi Gleds, I'm in agreement with Nick, you did the right thing speaking directly to the girl. Hopefully she's a quick learner and won't try that one with you again.

... would you believe the great seed trail brought two King Parrots around for breakfast just one day after my telling you I hadn't seen them for weeks. They must have heard your request ;)

I'm glad the parrots came back. I love those redbreasted "giant robin" style ones especially... like that one that used to follow you round the garden...


Akelamalu said...
Some folk can cause trouble in an empty house! I hope this wasn't a taste of things to come for you Gleds.

Hopefully not! If things deteriorate any further I'm keeping a timed/dated (+witnessed, if possible) antisocial behaviour daybook... if any of these little kids DARES touch me physically I'll have police on to them quicker than they can say "but he slammed the door in my face when I wasn't there!"

K.C. said...
Good for you, honestly, writing it out and getting it out. Can't change what others do.. only how you react to what others do. How you react will determine how the situation will evolve...

I didn't know you at all until a few days ago, and now I find myself thinking of you several times during my day and wishing you all the best... you will change lives.

Kayce

I would like to think I could change lives when I'm clean... I've been thinking of that a lot. Of course I want to redeem myself and the only way of doing that is by reaching out to the "still-suffering addicts" and to the vulnerable kids. Maybe I could do something worthwhile... I certainly hope so!


Nicole said...
What stupidity. It's probably just mental illness of some sort, but still nothing you should be putting up with, you've got enough worries of your own.

Precisely! And I really do not have time for timewasters ANY MORE. As much as anything else, I'M TOO OLD for it!


Puss-in-Boots said...
Would you say that behaviour is drug related, or is she just an attention seeker? Good idea to keep clear of them, Gleds...idiots they are...what's with the black dude, is he their pimp??

Interesting you brought up the idea of "pimp", too. Someone else made that suggestion to me. If he IS, he's well at the amateur end of the spectrum.

I've met some pretty formidable people in my time: these lot are childish, amateur would-be's and all the more pettily irritating for that!!


Kahshe Cottager said...
How very annoying, but it sounds like you handled it very well. I wonder why people do things like that? It seems a waste of energy to me.

I'm not wasting my energy on THEM, that is for sure!

Welshcakes Limoncello said...
Oh, dear, Gleds .. there's just no fathoming some people! You take care.

No fathoming: yeah. I'm not going to waste my time fathoming the sewers of some 17 year old's insecurities. Far as I'm concerned she can go on being insecure, just not in MY face!



Megan said...
Wow. "Overwhelmingly ridiculous" is right.

Here, here!

Monogram Queen said...

Yes just avoid them if at all possible. I hate smart-ass whippersnappers!

That's precisely my plan!

AS for the Proverb quote above: well said, Nick! "A soft answer turns away wrath!" That's always my first line of resistance...

OK folks, slightly unusual post here, I know, but I gotta go. Time's timing me out already.

Take care everyone!

Gleds
xx

Slam Door Argument in Hallway...

WHAT IS IT WITH SOME PEOPLE..? I'm just leaving the house nary an hour ago on my way here when I'm confronted by the new people downstairs. The new resident is a white girl: very young, quite depressed looking. She doesn't look heavily into drugs and appears to have her sanity (two big pluses against most of the inhabitants of this standard of accommodation..(!!) but I get the feeling she comes from a miserable and highly disturbed background (that is, that she was probably in "care", is an "orphan" or has been otherwise abused. It's unusual for such a young person to end up in "emergency accommodation" unless they're here directly from a foster home type situation...

... Earlier on I had returned home exhausted, wet, tired, ill, hungry and all-round not feeling very good, only to glimpse her at the end of my road. "Oh no," I thought, as I was not feeling up for conversation of any kind... thankfully she promptly disappeared into her room, leaving the front door open for me. I ran inside and banged it shut behind me thinking at least she's considerate enough to leave the door open for me ~ how atypical of the younger generation.

A couple of minutes later a tapping at my door that I did not answer. I was irritatedly pinpricking something at my foot in the bathroom. Something to take the nastiness of the day away. And was seriously not up for discussions of any type. Especially "are you my new housemate" type cooings as I (rather magnanimously, as it turns out) ASSUMED this might be...

On leaving I'm confronted by her, her tiny female friend, also about 17-18-ish and short and a great fat black bloke. I said "alright?" to them, as they had been banging about as if locked out. I don't know what their problem was.

Black guy promptly squares up to me saying "we all keep ourselves to ourselves in this house, right? Well what's this slamming doors in her face?" and he indicates New Girl.

I was utterly flummoxed, I have to admit. I did not understand what on earth he was going on about.

Turns out he was accusing me of having "slammed the door in her face".

Only afterwards did the overwhelming ridiculousness of the situation really hit me: that she's a grown woman and why on earth should she need this amateur-would-be-bouncer-type "threatening" me..?

I said what? Did was someone outside? I didn't realize. I'm sorry. Nothing intended.

Then he blahblahblahed like well it's OK then let's drop it. So I spoke directly to her: "did I slam the door in your face? I'm so sorry!"

She quite aggresively countered: "just forget it, OK!"

Point being, NOBODY was outside, door slammed in NOBODY's face. That's called trying to stir up doggy-do's where there is none!

Well I have the measure of THEM. But if they think they're even edging towards the league of my old house they're sadly mistaken (very 17-year old attitudes). I had a neckful of crap at my old house and I aint' taking no more off THESE type of pretenders..!!

PS Especially for ME {thanks Bimbimbie!} Red and Rainbow Queenslander garden parrots!!

VIDEO:
THE HOOBS
"Hubba Hubba steals the show"..!

This is the former "favourite children's TV prog" I used to go on about well over a year ago...

... (little else to say about it now..!!)

The Crackhead on the Stairs

O NO! History is repeating itself... there's a crackhead sleeping (not piping as in the pic: that was the best crackhead picture I could find...) on the stairs. SHE (yes another she) hasn't washed in days and appears to have a bad case of "crack lung"... at night you hear her coughing outrageously. Nasty business...

I got totally freaked out the other night having conked out with the radio on doing phone-ins at full blast... I wake at 3:30 am in the dark and alone with a woman describing vividly the demonic voices that have plagued her head since the age of 15... she describes some weird childhood occult cult meetings she was frequently taken to... claims the voices are down to Voodoo, the implantation of a demon in the head by the adversary to gain advantage. And all throughout this shadowy conversation, which was about as heartwarming as a candle flickering inside a human skull on the Altar of Satan, some cracked-out weirdo is creaking this way and that back and forth along our hallway... UGH! A seriously unpleasant night!!

And so on to my hamsters... who are all as furry as ever and were pinging in a Roborovski Donkey Derby (TM) between gazing up at me adoringly before I left to come here...

Have a cheery day y'all..!

VIDEO: BARBRA STREISAND SINGS "EVERGREEN" in French!



VIDEO 2: DJ TIESTO ~ DJ AS GOD...



PS Next week, at long last, the tell-all expose on Madonna the world has been thus-far lacking. Written by her brother (the one who appears as Chief Consoler) in that Truth or Dare movie...

My Name is Gledwood I Am An Addict

I WENT TO NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS again... (hardly my first meeting, I knew someone there from three years ago when bingeing made me want to be clean)...

Usually at such meetings there is a "chair", that is, someone gives their account of what brought them to NA and how they have done since, then whoever wants to speaks (one at a time) either in reaction to the chair or just to say anything they want. This meeting had no chair just a five minute silence for "meditation" (no crossed legs though). Everyone their seemed normal apart from me. Then at the last minute a mad Swedish woman with a Liverpool accent turned up on a bike insisting "look after this! Don't let anyone steal my bike!" and almost wailed in utter despair about being on crack, having CCTV'd up her entire house and still a voice is screaming in her ear (ie she's paranoid) and basically she cannot go on like this any more. I know how she feels (crack made me exactly the same way except I thought other people were spying on ME and nearly electrocuted myself dismantling electrical sockets etc to remove the hidden cameras...)

Do you know I actually (how naive is this?) embarked upon my drugtaking "career" hoping to "find God"..? The ONLY spiritual "personnage" I have encountered along the whole way of chemical "enlightenment" has been the DEVIL!!

What a charming picture of drug abuse I have found. Hmmm someone is smoking hash right behind me. Anyway look at the state of this man's veins he has been digging trenches in his crooks. Mine are way too hammered to inject there (though my arms look "smooth" apart from the giant blister scar on the left one, track marks all down the back of my hands and from my thumbs to my elbows and a gigantic barbiturate burn on the back of my left leg. (The "infection" I had in February.) It WAS almost definitely caused by barbiturated heroin by the way. The fact that a urine test done three days later was barbiturate-clear means it was probably Seconal or something like that (which leaves the body in a day or so). The hospital were flummoxed as to why anyone should have such massive blisters full of brown fluid when not burnt. When I said "could it be barbiturates?" the doctor said "yes that's it!"

You should have seen the look on the nurse's face who'd come in to "aspirate" them (ie pop them and drain out the goo!) when the doctor pretty much introduced me as "the local barbiturate injector". I did protest several times that I've never "seen" a barbiturate in my life (never knowingly bought them) but no-one was listening oh blah blah OK gotta go

Here is the NA Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

The Long Weekend

... AND BACK TO N.A.!...

HELLO MY FRIENDS... back again at long LAST. I never WANTED to be away, but was separated from the e-world by a lack of internet connexion and a lack of funds so bad I couldn't EAT yesterday, let alone shell out money for fancy-shmansie international textsational bloggeries..!

So what have I been doing? Not sulking, not surlying even... just kind of "hibernating" in my room... even though it's not "hiver"/"hiber" or any hibernational time of year...

My trotters have been on good form though... Poor Baby Itchy is fed up of my cooing: "are you the Tiniest Trotter? Yes! You're the Tiniest One...!"

She just looks up at me all furry and weary and goes: "shut up, man!"

Now as for that free drugs gift from that evil dealer: I do know the man; he rang me, saying "where are you?" "Why?" I wanted to know. "Because I have something for you." Then he came round with said Free Gift ... it was NOT a "sample" as they sometimes give out, but rather a Compensation Bag as I complained so vociferously and bitterly at how microscopically TINY his previous sale to me had been. Plus, as I said on the day, it STILL blocked the blinkin' works up. I.e. it was useless and I have refused to call him since.

... So, cutting a possibly circuitously blabberous story short, I'm returning BACK TO N.A. TONIGHT! And shall tell how it goes!!

And now on to music. Please answer this query of mine as it's a point of fascination:~

MUSIC OF THE DAY 1 (play this first...):
REM ~ LOSING MY RELIGION...

Intrusive Query of the Day: Have you ever wept bitterly as this song played out around you...?



MUSIC 2:
REM ~ EVERYBODY HURTS.

No queries here, but don't you think this is the better tune? (Not to mention video..?)




Have a cheery day, everyone!

The Tiniest Trotter

WHO IS THE TINIEST OF THE TROTTERS? Answer: Baby Itchy Roborovski. She is intensely small. All my hamsters have been in hiding in a dark cupboard by day (from the sun and from the landlord) only to come out (in 2 senses, as they come out of nests and also get physically presented under a red light that makes them apparently believe they are in pitch darkness) after evening time...

They do recognize my voice as whenever I start talking to them they up sticks and perform something like a mini furry horse race darting and pinging about and gazing up at me as if in Great Expectations... only to flee or chase it the moment The Giant Hand enters their domain.

A drug dealer turned up with a Free Gift of ukky white heroin today. It is "supposed" to be better than the brown but some eejut selling it (several stages up the so-called pyramid as this stuff's everywhere) ALSO decided "this stuff's good so I'm going to jump all over it" ... I don't know what this twazzock added but it crystalizes in the "works" and took three cookings up plus four filtrations before I got anything out of it that was doable. Then I had to go pyoing in my foot, which was not very pleasant. Yes and scarlet blood all over my white socks!

I think I'm going back to NA!

PS I've always wanted pet bees (as in the furry buzzing variety, not bags of "brown" I'm afraid if you're British and into drugs that does sound a bit like a pathetic pun... but no! I mean real bees, the honeymaking insects. Do you know if you DO keep bees you actually can get PAID for placing hives along farmer's crops in spring and summertime?

12,000,000 bees recently escaped in Canada on the way home from a fruit-nectar jamboree on local raspberry/whatever fields... unfortunately the lorry carrying them overturned and gerzillions of the bees decided "right that's it! we're fed up of that boring white old hive they cramped us into ~ we're off!" and duly swarmed!

Highway chaos ensued until firemen with hoses persuaded the poor furry buzzing swines that it was raining soapy water and the insects angrily crowded back home. Apart from the million or so who DIED of detergent poisoning, littering the road with furry winged carcases...

VIDEO:

PET LION CUB

TRUE STORY of a lion cub purchased from Harrods in 1969...

This purloined from Raymi the Minx blog...

Where is the Love?

WHERE IS IT? C'MON, SOMEONE TELL ME! In illustration we have Raphael Nadal (L) currently playing tennis against Andy Murry in Wimbledon and Naomi Campbell (R) currently doing community service for going mental when a bag containing a gown she had been scheduled to wear that night on an American talkshow went missing in London Heathrow's "fantastic" new Terminal 5 (don't go there! All they ever seem to do is lose everyone's luggage and leave you hours late still sans baggages...

Plus I'm posting below (Godwilling it will actually be there on Youtube for me to plunder) the Black Eyed Peas' Where is the Love: the only pop song I can think of that makes a direct plea to Almighty God: (paraphrased)

Father help us send some guidance from above;
People got me questioning: WHERE IS THE LOVE?

Talking of Higher Powers yes I did make it to Narcotics Anonymous last week. Unfortunately I missed the best part of the meeting (something to do with "acceptance") though what people had to say about "acceptance" was interesting. One guy said he never throughout his entire career of using conceded defeat to crack cocaine. What he meant was that he never threw up inner hands and went "that's it, I'm an addict I'm going to give up on giving up and I'm just going to use" ~ which I have to say is not like me. I "accepted" that I was a deadbeat junkie long ago and I can tell you once the inner struggle and all the lost promises "I'm giving up tomorrow/next week etc" had gone I felt a lot more comfortable just wallowing in the pigs' diarrhoea of my addiction (well what else can I call it). Another guy said that the heroin-crack snowballs he used to inject put him "in another dimension"... "but I'm in this dimension. So I stopped doing it". I know exactly where he's coming from re crack and have found it quite easy to accept that you simply cannot stay that high all the time. Heroin isn't a "high" as such, it feels more like pharmacological "food". In fact the dealers often call it "food" if offering in anything like mixed company... I know the heroin-crack mixture well and though I have done it strong (ie 50:50 strength) I can think of one morning in particular when I knew I had "a bit of coke on my spoon", threw heroin on top, banged it up in the bathroom with the window open. All I can say about the coke was there was more than "a bit" of it as I broke into a profuse sweat, felt a trembling nausea rush up from my heart like an express train, followed by a literal whooshing through the ears (you can actually hear the crack rush when it's strong) and a high that was rather like being picked up by the feet and swung around somebody else's head by the ankles. Right in the middle of this the next door neighbour's kid screamed in their garden... a scream that got snagged on the crackrush and seared through the back of my brainbox and out into infinity. I do not wish to experience THAT again 1st thing in the morning and ever since have kept my crack use tinsy-winsy! (Not gonna lie and say I've given up ANYTHING entirely as I only fall flat on my face back in the pigs' diarrhoea when I do...)

Righty ho. It's still FAIRLY hot. Actually I might have got yesterday's temperature wrong. It could have been 38C not 28C which makes it 100F. Boy can you feel THAT in this town. The tube, as Eileen said is particularly stifling and an average of at LEAST 5C hotter if not 10C hotter than the overground shade-temperature. Now I have to go else I'll never get this posted. Take care people!

VIDEO:~

BLACK EYED PEAS: WHERE IS THE LOVE?

Exhausted again

WHAT'S NEW? All I did was go out visiting today. And got back at 5pm. NOT what I had been planning on doing...

O man what IS new? Well I'm not suddenly magic-wandically 100% CLEAN that has not happened.

I'm not as depressed as I was.

Er... and yeah they said it's one of the hottest days of the year today, even though it's only 28C which is only around 80F and I'm sure it went up to 37/38C which is 100F this year (if not, then last). Now THAT felt meltingly hot. Especially for anyone unlucky enough to be caught on board a London bus!

The Trottertubbies are fine. All they do is ping ping ping round and round their house like a miniature horse-race...

O yeah and I'm exhausted. Slept for a good 12 hours last night and still feel like I could do the same again...

... well I'd better go, else this will never get posted and I will never be able to reply to my comments. Take care everyone lots of love

xx

PS 私はまだ日本語学習します。
(I'm still learning Japanese) (and no I can't vouch for the veracity of that though it does say 私は (I) 日本語 (Japanese) and 学 study... I got it from Google translate. My big excuse for not writing anything myself is that ... well how on EARTH would I input in Japanese script..?!? dur!!