Waiting for da man

MY MUM SAW ME YESTERDAY.

Note the phrasing. I didn't see my Mum. We were there together. She saw me. She said I reminded her of when she first saw me on the gear, about 5 years ago. Lank hair. Pushed self into shower. Probably nowhere near as clean as I'd have liked to think. Pinpoint pupils. The B ain't that good, but it's chock full of benzos. (I know this because I tested my piss.) I felt Valium'd out of my brainbox.

It's interesting that she rang my druggiworker in despair. I do not feel that she forced my hand in this, as I was planning to steam in and tell the unacceptable truth about me and my addiction and this crappy methadone ANYHOW.

This is me on methadone. No showering. Barely bothering to do anything, unless absolutely essentual it's done NOW.

Endless depresssion. Aged 10 I was depressed enough to believe I was dying. I have never felt the same, ever again. Parents' divorce. Parents' remarriage. Both parties wanted me to live with them. I loved my Mum. But my Dad's was the place to be. Had I insisted on going with Mum I would have torn my family apart. How selfish would that be?

I am still depressed. Clinic barely ever ask why. I could go on. Suffice it to say, if this is "therapy" it ain't working on me. I do WAY better on heroin. Sad, you may think. But true. Absolutely 100% true.

I wish it weren't that way. But that's how it is.

The could-be's, should-be's, ought-to-be's. All these I have pondered and indulged. I "should" feel some other way. "Should" do it that other way. I have tried and tried. It just does not work.

If only somebody in power would put forward a therapy that actually works. I'm not talking 1 and 2 year habits where methadone might work. Subutex might well work. I'm talking decades lost to ineffectual methadone. And every spare penny STILL going on gear. If methadone worked so well, no-one would feel the need to use on top. Ever.

Such drugs are out there. The government just do not have the balls to give effective Therapy. Injectable diamorphine. Morphine tablets. Morphine and hydromorphone (dilaudid) amps are also available. Somebody, somewhere, use some imagination. PLEASE!

Rant over.

I despair. I look like a homeless. Lank, greasy, dirty. Haven't been near a laundrette in over a month. Yes a lot of this is down to me. But a half-decent therapy might push me half-way to "normality". The other half would of course be up to me.

Opinions, please! Just say what you think. I'm sure a lot of you disapprove anyhow... :-(

:-) I'm waiting on da man for a G. He's taking ages.

VELVET UNDERGROUND: I'M WAITING FOR THE MAN

IT WAS 5AM when I first thought of writing this... somehow an hour has flown by. I am dipping Turkish chockie biccies (Ülker Biskrem Duo ~ they have chocolate creme inside) in hot tea while the birds tweetle and chirp like crazy in the trees outside. On my road just now I saw a giant tubby pigeon. It flapped away the second it saw me. I don't know much about pigeons but there seem to be three types round here: gutter street pigeons (equivalent to me, a gutter street junkie); posh loft pigeons (equivalent to The Queen) these are kept by owners with whistles who race them or do whatever pigeon fanciers do... and finally, the type I just saw, which appears to be a different type, with white sash round the neck. These are wild birds of exquisite rareness. The supermodels of the pigeon world ~ Linda Evangelista or Naomi Campbell. And all I could think as I trotted down the street, chocolate biscuits in hand and spotted it was "that would make a nice pie!" (I must've been hungry.)

I have found the German equivalent to Coronation Street! (A lower-class soap opera. British soap is always working class. I wanted to make a new soap, a kind of modern Dallas-Dynasty combined set in London-Paris-New York (well you'd only need to shoot a few minutes of exteriors per season, most could be improvised in a studio garden anywhere). It would star an ageing Larry Hagman as evil patriarchal billionaire with Joan Collins as his bitchy matriarchal billionaire wife. Roger Moore would come in as Joan Collins's luurve interest. I would do all I could to get Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Lauren Baccal and the Hollywood old guard to put in guest appearances. The younger generations are all classless so I'd get some dogsbody to cast them. I would ensure that an international cast of actors with followings across the most important television markets of the world got parts, to boost foreign sales and ratings.

The German soap is called Lindenstraße, "Lime Street". Launched in 1985, it was the first ever German soap opera and was modelled on Coronation Street. I would say it is more similar in spirit to the British daytime soaps about doctors surgeries, or Australian soap, than British prime time TV (and this goes out 18:50 hours Sunday on Das Erste ~ which would put it up pretty much against the dreadful Larkrise to Candleford ~ a truly awful piece of British costume drama. I also had an idea for a costume drama soap, but trust me, it would be nothing like Larkrise! More Anna Karenina ~ all aristocrats and ballgowns, laudanum parties and duels. Not chatteringly dullard middle classes. Anyway, the episode I chose to watch on Flashplayer was called Schnee ~ "Snow". I thought "how lovely, a German winter wonderland on TV"... little did I realize the "snow" in question comes in little white lines for application straight up the nose! Of course when I realized it was drugs I was riveted. A butch lesbian dealer had an argument with her femme girl who has a motorbike helmet haircut. If I were her I'd worry about my hairstyle first and sort out the druggie girlfriend later, but that's TV for you.

My Mum has cancer. It came back. I saw her Thursday. I could see she was ill. I went out and bought a gram of heroin after that. My counsellor says I have to talk to my mother. She also says I see heroin as my Saviour. (How did the counsellor know that?!) But now the heroin has less appeal. I can't say why, but it does, and I say that sober. Usually junkies only want to be clean when they are high. Bring them down to earth and all they want is more drugs to get back up to la-la land, where they can look down and convince themselves they want to clean up yet again (but not now: "tomorrow") and on and on the cycle rolls. Eventually they give up on giving up and accept "I am an addict. I am powerless over my addiction, so I will simply go on using". Then they realize addicts DO have a choice and the choice is to STOP. (Using isn't a choice, using drugs is automatic to a drug-addict) ... eventually they might come to a place like NA where they say "I am powerless over my addiction, so I surrendered to a power greater than myself"... This is the mysterious "higher power" these 12-step groups talk about which "restores us to sanity"... I believe only God can save me now. But God would not be interested in someone who loves heroin more than him. (What a Catch 22!) My higher power is God Almighty. For me, no other power is high enough or powerful enough!

As things are, I have left it with the clinic that I'm not interested in reducing my methadone dose any more. That I would rather go on as I am and use several times each week and let nothing change.

I didn't tell the druggieworker this, but I thought, having such a great track record at breaking every resolution and promise I've ever made since Heroin Addiction, perhaps if I promise mediocrity and inaction ~ I might break THAT one too, and all for the best!!

... And you wonder why a mere AVERAGE length of heroin addiction is 14 years..?!


View Lindenstraße

PS I THINK the pigeons I keep seeing are WOOD PIGEONS ... they make the famous coo-coo you hear on hot summer days that is not a cuckoo... (they are musical cuckoos)

ILLUSTRATED: "DOUBLE UOGLOBE" is heroin from Burma's Northern Shan State; other pictures refer to Heroin Assisted Treatment, a scheme which might well have got me off drugs long ago ~ and would certainly have severed my connexions with dealers... but as it is ~ miserable methadone or street heroin. Or go through hell trying to stop (probably to use again at the first opportunity ~ let's be frank). What fine choices!

Results of Dutch supervised trial of injectable heroin hydrochloride or smokeable heroin base (for "chasing the dragon" though I have never heard ANYBODY except a journalist use that expression ~ most people either say chasing, or when they get old and can't be bothered to sound cool just call it smoking. Smoking or injecting.

www.opioids.com/heroin/holland.html

Sickness...

MY MUM IS ILL. I think it is serious. I can't go too far into it as she doesn't know I'm posting and it's not fair.
I am very unhappy. I don't want her to die.

STOP PRESS: IT IS CANCER (CONFIRMED) ~ RE-EMERGENCE FROM A FEW YEARS AGO.
I POSTED THAT TODAY (SAT). BUT THE POST ISN'T ABOUT THAT BECAUSE I WOULD RATHER THINK ABOUT GERMAN SOAP OPERA THAN CANCER %;-/...

Vegetarian Vomit

ME MUM had high tea but I was starving so I had vegetable lasagne. I don't usually go for vegetarian options these days but used to when I was younger. I have found in general that vegetarian cooking is of a higher standard that non-veggie ~ and with a less-inspiring ingredients-list, let's face it, it has to be!

The lasagna was OK. I'm no expert on cooking but if I'd made that myself I'd have labelled the flavour "empty" and poured far more tomatoes and seasoning into it. I don't know whether this place was having boiler trouble but oh my days! It was Vesuvian in there!! Conkers of sweat dripping off patrons and increasingly bedraggled waiting staff alike. (OK slight exaggeration but I was feeling increasingly queasy.)

Then when I got outside I was sick EVERYWHERE... thankfully Mumzy and I had gone separate ways by then.

These are the Siberian hamsters I was talking about yesterday. I had two about six years ago, but one died after about three months ~ and I suspect through old age. The other ESCAPED and never came back ~ the only one of seven hamsters I have ever lost that way.

If you look closely at the weary swine here, you might just be able to see the furry soles to his feet.

On a lighter note the vomiting had gone by just three outbursts (next to but sadly unable to aim IN the tiny opening on London's bomb-proof rubbish-bins)... And by this morning my appetite had come back with great avengance. I trotted down to Sainsbury's where I got a huge selection of own brand falvoured whip-ip-up desserts. Chocolate and strawberry are just 8p each. Butterscotch is always the best and costs 30p against Angel Delight (the market leader)'s 38p. I shake it up in a special disused coffee jar. My top tip to avoid lumps is add powder a bit at a time...

And I can't believe this, but having start-stopped "learning" Japanese several times (for learning, read glancing idly over books and dictionaries, thinking, "I wonder how you say such-&-such" and brainlessly transcribing roman-lettered Japanese sentences into proper script, which is a by no means straightforward occupation... I actually seem to be getting somewhere!

When I was irritatedly waiting for a bus the other day I went through the list of Japanese animals I know in my mind and it's more than ten. Including the words for bee, wasp and hornet. That's not bad for a beginner.

The rate I'm going I might be semi-fluent by 2026!

Here is a really good Japanese "cultural link" www.japandemic.com (it's not academic at all)...

High T

I'M SPOSED to be meeting up with my Mumzy in town for high tea (or something). I'm sure scones will be involved. In some olde tea shoppe place somewhere obscure... somewhere I don't know... help me I'm falling down a black hole!!!!! Never to escape. Argh.

But I look really presentable. For once.

PS: though they look extraordinarily cute, I might have to give the chinchillas a miss for now. They are too big and need too much care. And don't like muggy English summers. My former Russian hamsters of yore looked literally about to expire on our hottest July and August days and I had to give them ice packs, which these creatures, native to Siberia, walked upon quite happily with their fur-lined paws... chinchillas have similar heat sensitivity... and apart from providing stone cladding and marble blocks (and ice packs) what else could I do... when we hit 100 degrees!??

PPS: just like chinchillas, Siberian hamsters also require regular dustbathing to keep their extraordinarily thick fur in best condition...

Public auction

A Northern Saltwater Croc ~ the biggest in the world (unlike the Nile, as stated on Saturday...) Be careful of those riverbanks in Australian Northern Territory... (The one part of Aus, apart from Sydney and Brisbane and Cairns, that I'd really like to go!)... knowing my luck it's full of mouse spiders too!


I HAD the humiliating yet truthful experience today of having to see a free lawyer at the druggieservice, who phoned my "creditor" (ie the nasty local council), who put her in touch with the bailiffs (the poor girl answering the bailiffs' phone sounds really nice ~ what on earth is a delicate flower like that doing working for scarface heavies like "them"?... and the lawyer told the evil council tax people (thanks a lot Margaret Thatcher) how badly in need of help I was and unable to deal with their ridiculously high demands for proof of identity, address, income/etc etc etc. They needed at least three things I haven't even got. Like heating bills. Because the landlord pays the bills. I have an out of date passport and that is about that.

I did find the bailiffs' letter amusingly overoptimistic. It said something along the lines of "please let us know a suitable time when we can bring a removals van round so your goods can go for sale at PUBLIC AUCTION ~ alternatively you may wish to pay the outstanding amount in full..." Ridiculous!

What on earth they thought, when they saw my boarded up house and trash-filled front garden (complete with armchair in the mud) I would love to know!

Anyway, she is supposed to be getting a hold put on "further action". Thanks very much!

With all this in mind, I have arranged yet ANOTHER psych assessment ~ this one for tomorrow. Maple Syrup, my much loved ex-druggieworker, disbelieved that anything was wrong with me. She didn't know I had a 15 year history of "low mood"/being a weirdo (or whatever you want to call it) PRIOR to any significant drug addiction. And I never told her because she didn't ask. I think this is partly what Jesus had in mind when he talked of "casting pearls before swine"... know what I mean?

Loads of other people I know, who are no worse off than me, have social workers and all manner of other help and I want a bite of that pie for a change. All I have managed to do, for months and years, so it seems, is to slip through just about every safety net (apart from methadone prescription) that there is. And the methadone clinic staff are appallingly uninformed. They think in terms of drug addiction and nothing else.

This afternoon I go back to see MORE computers. We don't have this computer shop, but we have ones like it. Back where I used to live in Nowheresville I, next door to Lidl, the fantastic discount food shop, there were no fewer than THREE stores selling laptops. So I'm going to go in there...

I see my mother tonight! She is in town, and not in France! Wow! I'll tell ya how it went tomorrow...

State Visit

MY MUMZY came round this afternoon. By the time she arrived my place looked like a bomb had gone off in an Oxfam shop ~ scattering piles of ragged clothes/etc to the corners. I also put oven cleaner on the enamel hob. And then panicked. And quickly got rid of it, using carrier bags on hands because I'd no rubber gloves and the instructions make it sound like a more noxious version of nitric acid crossed with rycin. I still wasn't sure I'd got it all off after three goes and lots of water. Half expected to find a dirty great smoking hole when I got back ~ with a baby gremlin's eyes peering out from the rust... Anyway it was nice and clean when they got there. Except the floor looked like someone had thrown an illegal rave in a barn. Mopped-up mud everywhere (from where~??!?) And so on...

Do you like the Queen's picture. Look at those emeralds! Not just round her neck, but on her head..!

Did you know HM the Queen is supposed to have a jewellery safe 14 feet high in her Buckingham Palace bedroom, full of countless pieces belonging to Queen Mary, the Queen Mother... and so on and so on down the line... only a tiny fraction of which she ever wears (what a waste on the ones that never see daylight ~ that's what I say!) When Diana married Charles, her jewellery was only given to her on loan, on the basis that when she became Queen, she'd be custodian of said pieces anyhow... I do like a good bit of jewellery, me ("jewelry" if you're in the United States of America). Never wear it. Jewellery on men, when it's not sharks' teeth or rave beads etc looks distinctly dodgy at the best of times. But it's lovely to look at. I was into doing jewellery design at one time. There's more to it than meets the eye ~ everything must be carefully sized and measured for one thing... It was fascinating. Jade Jagger does it for a living. Not, I am sure, that having an international rock star for a father gave her a bunk up that particular career ladder... I'm sure not!

Anyway, back to today, we had a charming Greek dinner and she bought me some chocolate and museli and I'm going to post up Pingu at the Dentist if I can find it ~ hope y'all had a cheery weekend. My novel's coming on swimmingly... Goodnight all!

"Diana, Princess of Wales" (as she was "supposed" to be titled...) lovely sapphires...

"BANNED PINGU"... Can't find Pingu at the dentist; but "at the hospital" (see under Penguins, yesterday) is similar... whyever this was banned I'm not quite sure... and why the Scandinavian subtitles I've no idea (we never get subtitles in English, do we and they're gabbling BabyFinnish...) this one's trotterdonkey enough...

... o I get it. The jokes here are in the Swedish/Danish... e.g. "get me your strongest whisky" etc. I can just about make some of it out...

... o no they're not.

o how rude! One of them's peeing on the floor now!!...!!!

My Very Nice Day Out With My Mum In Windsor Which Could Have Been Nicer

ALL IN ALL it took a bus and five trains to journey from my place to Windsor and Eaton Central Station. When finally I got there I was stressed out of my brains ~ in the 15 mins' leeway before the 1-stop shuttle train from Slough departed, three giant poisonous Caterpillar-style Intercities roared past at extra-high speeds. I was in such a negative mood I actually found myself entertaining the impulse to jump. When I met my Mum and stepDad Branzie I was mentally frazzled and I'm sure they thought it was drugs. Well maybe "it" was, in a round-about way. No drugs at all!

I only had three hot flashes the entire day. Not bad for a day not on heroin. I didn't feel I needed heroin at all. We sat in a very posh konditorei-type place and had high tea with cut-off sandwiches and little cakes on a multi-storey stand.

Of course Mumzy and Branzy wanted to know how I was but I felt red-raw inside. It was a strain to talk about anything in a graceful way. Eventually I did chill out. My Mum gave me some professional cocoa-making equipment (including luxury chocolate flakes you're supposed to melt into milk but she warned me you can indulge direct from the packet so I don't see those lasting long ... they're the sort of thing a luxury place like that would sprinkle on ice-cream ...

Branzie gave me electric hairclippers. So tomorrow night my hair is scheduled for an encounter with these on #8, 7, 6... whichever it takes. I'll let you know how it goes.

It wasn't my birthday or anything. They just seemed really pleased to see me..!

It really was great to see them but I wish I could have been a little more gracious, as I say, and less sour. I didn't want to be like that at all. I wasn't bored by them or upset with them in any way at all. But I was afraid that was the impression I would give out if I wasn't careful... I did make a big effort.

In the end I finally did chill out. But then it was time to go. I happened to get a Poisonous Caterpillar Express from Slough that got me back to London Paddington in less than half the time it took to get out...

Branzie even offered to go Citizens' Advice with me to sort my debts out. I have to sort out my financial tangles sometime otherwise there's no point trying to piece my shattered life back together. Y' have to face your responsibilities in the end.

And that was today. I'm back home and so tired I'm about to go to bed.

Cheery-night all {;->...

Illustrated: Windsor Castle, which we didn't go into today but I've been there loads of times before as a kid because my grandparents used to live in Windsor: exterior and inner quadrangle; Windsor & Eaton Central Station; konditorei stand; the Castle; the "Poisonous Catterpillar Express" ...

National Debtline UK 0808 808 4000

NOBODY seems to think much of the videos I post up these days but here's two that might break the ice:

1} BOLLYWOOD MICHAEL JACKSON THRILLER
This from a real Indian film ...



2} CHARLIE BIT MY FINGER!
A totally candid bit of film featuring toddler Harry and his baby bro Charlie who "bit my finger and it really hurts" ~ this garnered over 130,000,000 hits!

Not Seeing My Mum

I'M NOT GOING TO SEE MY MUM TODAY because my stepdad has "manflu". He is in their conservatory sneezing with a common cold. In a way I'm pretty relieved as, having blown so much money ~ on books(!) ~ I can barely afford to get to the out-of-town railway station they wanted to meet at, let alone pay for anything else!

So the date has been pushed back to next week. And hopefully man-flu, piggery flu and no other type of flu will have attacked anyone else of us by then!





LAUGHING BABY:
I find this advert so entertaining!

... and the one I'm looking for isn't there (how typical) ... but this one's arguably even better:




COW & GATE GROWING-UP MILK ...
o here we are; here's the ad I find so very entertaining ~~
everything from the ting~ting~ting to the baby's face, the milk pot, everything ~ but especially the laughter and the mother's "you've done us right proud!" cheekgrabbing:~~



PS I'm reading my blog back on Firefox... does anyone else use that?
It makes my pages look like they were composited in 1825!

Paris Match, Stern-Magazin... und meiner Mutter!

TODAY I WENT TO SEE MY MOTHER and her husband (never really a step-dad to me ..) down the West End. We were going to eat Thai food, until we realized the "Indian and Thai restaurant" my Mum thought she'd found was actually offering Thalis ~ not a Thai menu at all! Both of my parents have the same problem: they read what they think is there. And I picked up this habit from them. But I don't think I'm as bad. It's a genetic thing. I think if it was very much worse it'd be called "dyslexia" or something ...

In fact we ended up talking about my humungous spelling problems I had (I was put in retarded readilng group) in primary school. My Mum used to teach me with flashcards and the teachers said this was confusing me as the "progressive" 1970s school was teaching reading by "phonics". In short let me tell you phonics do not work. They're based on the ridiculous premise that the English language can be taught "phonetically". And thanks to this I was constantly banging my head upon the brick walls of head not pronounced "heed" knees that were somehow K-less and so on. I still remember puzzling at a young age "why are there Cs and Ks. And Ss and Cs?" None of it made sense. My early writing books were a tangle of red corrections. And yet I grew up with the ambition to write novels!

We had a lovely lebanese dinner. My Mum had chicken skewers. I had lamb skewers (too much chicken's gone to my head. I've grown a gizzard. If we didn't have a "socialist NHS" the doctors would want $5000 to chop it off ... Branzy, unfortunately for him ordered something that sounded charming on the menu, but looked like bulls' testicles floating in a yogurty ejaculation. He kept quiet and kept nabbing bits of our salad ...

Afterwards I remembered I'm supposed to be learning Central European Dialect (ie German) so I raided the local cosmopolitan newsstand for Paris Match, Stern and Die Spiegel magazines, and sat there pretentiously leafing through on the tube home. The woman next to me was reading a novel in Swedish ...

And that was that. Today was meant to be hammybuying day but I spent so much time stressing about this evening's food experience I never did anything except the rudiments of getting ready and still I was late ...

Hope yous all had a cheery day too ... Cheerio for now!

Funky Indoor Flap-about Feathery Swines

I MET MY MUM in Town yesterday and we ended up in a patisserie having what my stepdad Brian declared "the worst latte I've been assaulted by in my life" (actually the second half of that quote's my own but I couldn't resist) plus some nibbles that I delighted in labelling "Thatcherite food". Brian really hates Mrs Thatcher. I love her. I just think nearly all her policies were wrong. But her sturdy influence did bring to this country ciabatta, fresh pastas sprinkled in fresh herbs ~ oh! and her biggest triumph: bottled springwater. I always go for "mineral" because at least then you're getting some free minerals. Springwater is almost the same thing as tap water left to chill 24 hours in an open bowl-type container, then filtered. No chlorine will be left...

Anyway the highlight of the night came (apart from when I got carried away with myself and confessed to trashing Laundretta's room (after she and Matran (the RatMan) had moved out) and Brian looked like he was about to fall off his chair in shock)... came when pigeons came blithely wandering into our upstairs, indoor cafe. The sort of ultra-hard pigeons who don't flinch when you put the crumbs out which I did in abundance. I suppose you could say Paddington Station is a giant semi-open "concourse" in that you could drive a truck in the front and 15 or more platforms of trains are constantly rolling in and out the back... but it did feel bizarre, having strolled into a glassed off area with sushibars, pub grub, all sorts of grub actually, and WH Smiths etc suddenly to have pigeons at our feet. They even had the cheek to strut behind the counter where the foreign girl (it's always a foreigner in central London) was diddling with the latte/espresso/cappuccino machine.

She kicked her foot and they sauntered huffily off...


LADY GAGA: POKERFACE

I had to get in on this Gaga thing... they luuurve her over here. I think it has to do with the techno-centric music (which we think of as British or European) and the out-there fash-sense, which again could get her mistaken for a native Brit.




MADONNA: JUSTIFY MY LOVE
"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another"...
OK: so legalize gear and crack ...

I Saw Momma Gleddie She Was Fine Except for her Bad Knee ...

I REPRIMANDED OUR URINE-(AND WORSE)-STINKING toilets with a double-eggcup full of Fairy Liquid in each this morning. Seriously the ordeal of taking a bath next to this porcelain fixture that smelt like the knobbly constipation logs that forever seem to float in it freaked me out so much I finally snapped and took action with washing up liquid. It frothed the lavatory-pan nearly out and to the floor the first couple of flushes but it was worth it. The smell has finally gone. And the lingering unflushable unmentionable in the second (solitary) toilet became utterly disguised by enough bubbles to plenish every tart's bathing boudoir this side of New Orleans my fiends. So top tip for today; if you're cheapskate like me or simply cannot find the device to blue-en your lavatory waters, simply add a shotglass full of (undiluted) washing-up liquidn to the toilet cistern. Just quietly pour it in: no need to froth it up there, the flushing mechanism does that automatically in the pan ... and presto!!! ... all odiferous odouriferous problemos solved!!

ANYWAY more to the point, how did my encounter with Momma Gledwood (and evil stepfather) go? It was very good. First thing she did was rush up to me with a hug and a kiss and shove a couple of notes in my hand saying "Take this quick before he comes," (because he cynically thinks I'm going to spend anything they give me just on drugs). Well think what you like Branston. (Yeah that's his name because he's always creating a pickle.) My Mum really liked the hyacinths/other thing arrangement. She said it could indeed probably go outside. I believed the daisies were wilting slightly despite my having kept them out of direct sunlight beside an open window; get the feeling that despite packaging's advice they would prefer to be outside in the relative cool; whereas the other plant with blobberous clusters of tiny square-almost pinky-white blooms springing out from rampantly enthusiasitc growths of succulent-like rubbery thick leaves ... these surely come from Mediterranean countries if not further afield. The leaves are like a money plant's, not in shape but in texture, appearance and "that's what they're like"-ness.

We went round a Renoir, Pissaro, Monet, Van Gough, Picasso etc special exhibition. There were some fantastic works dedicated for the duration. French fin de siecle/turn of the (20th) century pointilliste pixx of bathers and iconographous French ladies in hats. You've seen them all before I know you have. And a Van Gough sunflowers and a Van Gough crabs (which was crap) and a Van Gough stirred up field and stirring cloudy sky that I loved. I love Van Gough, love the spirit of his works. Love the one with the halo'd absynthine stars and lamps ...

Huge St Patrick's Day music stage celebration in middle of Trafalgar Square ...

Lovely dinner ...

Cannot indulge in any detail as have to go now ...

L8Rs...

... Gleds