Autumnal

THERE WERE 2 UNEXPECTED EFFECTS of becoming opiate dependent (I noticed).

1. I barely ever catch cold and

2. I hardly feel the seasons of the year any more

Autumn is the only season I still feel. I feel it now, and I feel weird. In an indistinct kind of way.

I feel vaguely excited, yet vaguely depressed. At the same time.

Also I'm craving heroin in a distant way. I haven't taken any since Sunday when I didn't feel it anyhow. I only crave heroin by association. And I associate feeling autumnal with doing gear. I'm reminding myself that it's only been about 12 years, or a couple more, depending how you count, since I went ON gear. So I've done many autumns without it. I also went down the SOAS bookshop for Japanese dictionaries a year or two ago, so I could associate that with autumn too. I'm very much into associations. I need a Chinese dictionary as well. Mrs Li has finished teaching me to tell time. I'm on Unit 5 now. I still can't do the accent at all, but I'm doing OK at writing.

I nearly was sick yesterday having that blood test, it was awful. I felt so nauseated. She kept asking me if I was alright. How a junkie could be so afraid of needles. I couldn't tell you which one she used; I didn't dare look.

I spent £5 on one pen and 100 sheets of holepunched blank paper to write my book on. Yes I'm doing it the old fashioned way as my computer is down and I write better in Real Ink. It makes me focus on High Quality.

Now I've got to go before this internet cafe terminates me.


Illustrated: a Charles Dickens manuscript

PS my blood samples were tiny drizzles compared to yesterday's illustration. My vein was so collapsed she thought it wouldn't hold out...

Hammy in winter ...

YEP, winter is upon us. Creeping up, closing in. Darkness surrounds us. It's in the air. The aroma of bonfires, the stench of death.
Autumn is my favourite time of year, being the time golden hamsters are at their tubbiest, hamstering away a gargantuan hoard of goodies to last all winter through.
As the days grow shorter and colder, so the wild hammy gradually gets more and more lethargic. Eventually he realizes the time has come for the Big Sleep. Carefully he barricades himself in, blocking all burrow entrances in case a naughty poisonous snake slithers down the tunnels while the tiny tubby is "torpid". (Hamsters don't technically hibernate.)
Then little hammy goes into a deep sleep, breathing only a few times a minute, as his body temperature falls. Every 4-8 days he wakes up for long enough to bumble out of bed into his bathroom (hammies never wee in their bed, if you've ever kept one has a pet you'll remember they usually use the furthest corner opposite for wee-wees). Anyway he does a wee, then his tubby bum vanishes down dank and mysterious pitch black tunnels deep into the lower depths of his burrow. He returns football-faced, pouches packed to their furthest extreme with a face-full of goodies upon which he nibbles till sleep overtakes him yet again.
When the burrow warms up, hammy re-excavates the burrow entrance and ta-daa! A bright springtime world full of daffodils and bumblebees, warm breezes whispering through the leafy trees. Harvest mice and dormice and woodmice are all scurrying in the bushes. Hurrah! says hammy, fresh seeds! And off he pings into the sparkling sunshine.

EVA CASSIDY: AUTUMN LEAVES

A New Leaf...

YES I'VE TURNED A NEW LEAF, A NEW PAGE I'm moving on. I don't even know why except it'll make it easier to travel when I'm hugely successful in the not-too-distant future (I tell myself). I've lost enough years to "researching" this book of mine. Now I want to write it and get the hell out of the "research" stage and concentrate on something else. I suppose I could talk cow's crap and say I know all the wonderful things the world is full of; but I don't ~ not really. I could parrot some of them out, but I feel none of that wonderfulness at all. As I said the other day, I realized at some point in time past that, as they say, end-stage addicts tend to fall into thirds: one third die, another third carry on using until they die, the last third get clean and live. And I know, and have known for a long time, that I belong to this last third. And so I just have to make it. And no arguments ~ OK!!?!

Here's some beautiful pixx of the autumn...

Canada:



USA:



Finland (I always wanted to go there...)



Nothing autumnal would be complete without this song, yet again...
Watch this vid for lots of lovely "fall colors" ...

Sleep without Drugs*... at Last...

FINALLY LAST NIGHT I got some half-decent sleep... For many days I have found myself totally unable to achieve this... too weary... too cold... too knackered even to sleep. So I stay half-awake for hour after hour, running into day after day. That gritty feeling prevails: you know, when you feel like you've had grit in your eye, only that feeling's all around your body (not to mention the mind) ... on the inside.
My home is still freezing ~ and not a hope of heating on the horizon.
The boiler's still kaputt.
Each morning, when I do come round, I'm buried safely under a self-constructed tent of old duvet covers... it's far too chilly to consider emerging till way into the afternoon...
The language books don't really help me sleep at all. They actually keep me awake. In German I'm thinking "just another page; just one more; just another one; OK just one more then I'll stop... when we get to an even number..." and so I plough on...
Japanese is even worse... I pour over the kanji books and dictionaries I have, pondering: "I wonder what such-&-such thing looks like... e.g. birds, fish and eels... (鳥、魚、 鰻)o! and this... and that..." and I'm obsessively copying them down in my amateurish westernized calligraphy...
And I just cannot stop...




Illustrated: "nightmare" pictures by Spanish artist Goya ...
* not that I was taking sleeping drugs to start with ~ I just WASN'T SLEEPING AT ALL!

I Love Autumn

SEASON OF MISTS... and all that. Lots of folks I know deplore this time of year because it reminds them of death and dying. But I love it. I associate it with new beginnings. Especially when there's the smoky tang of bonfires in the air ...

PS: this is a note to self really ~



Grimms' Fairytales: Complete edition
ISBN (978) 389 555 2380 Amazon link.

Hear this: this is sublime...
EVA CASSIDY



I don't know about you, but I always think of this as the "original" version ...
EDITH PIAF

Scaredy Morsel No Gear Dark Early Day

FIRST OFF: I scared poor Baby Itchy by calling him/her "a furry morsel" and pointing out there wasn't much for an owl to eat "and if he caught you and gobbled you down he'd have to fly off and catch another one;" Itchy was terribly afrighted by this and has gone in hiding in a toilet roll tube... ooer.

... But the broccoli trees are still standing despite frequent nibbles.

MY DEALER TOLD ME HE HAD SOLD OUT OF HEROIN. I was in a dismal mood after this. Nothing except my own abstinence is allowed to come between me and my drugs. So I took out all my gear spoons - all eight of them - and got cooking and swishing with lots of water at the stuck-on brown bits round the sides (these are disposable cooking-up devices from the needle exchange - like miniature frying pans the size of 10p pieces)... the resulting brandy coloured "hit" put me in a good mood for some of the afternoon and I did 2 pages of writing. Then I rang again. No answer (=no news= bad news) so in the end I phoned someone else who was alleged to have ripped my friend Pascal off by charging £20 for £5 worth then running away but I got money's worth. I desperately opened the bag and sniffed - yes the smell of real "gear" came to my nose. Such scurrilous stories. Anyway this one doesn't like Pascal as Pascal's rude to him. Though he was a bit dur earlier when I called around 2pm he said "well I'm at community service can you come down to-" then I got cut off and called back to some baby crying on the answer phone (they all have babies - maybe that's why they need so much money..?) Anyway I'm fine now...

What differing responses I got to the Stats post. From "I check mine religiously every day" to "I really couldn't give a flying ..." The only thrill I get is knowing people in vastly distant parts of the world can read my ramblings... and I don't even know who most of those people are!

Poor Britney Spears has lost custardy of her babies. Poor cow. I've never seen a "star" go down the toilet as publicly or as quickly as her... I wonder what shall become of her?

It's getting dark exceedingly early these days... half past six and skies are mirksome... ten to seven and night has fallen already... Winter is on it's way. I think this year's will be a harsh one with Siberian temperatures and Xmas snow... (that's what I'm hoping at least - I want to make money on a white Christmas bet for once!)

Righty ho! Do take a look at my Desperately Thirsty Giraffe. Have you ever seen anything like that?

Other vid of the day: Upside Down Robos

***

2 entertaining blogs of the day
http://deitsch-family.blogspot.com - the baby Cameron is so entertaining!
and
http://tbegoidze.blogspot.com - surreal pixx - and isn't Georgian writing the second funkiest in the world..? (After Burmese.)...

***

I've been researching the supposed royalty rates I should get on hardback, paperback, etc.
The first book I consulted was right the typical top paperback rate is indeed 10% of cover price.
The typical top hardback rate is 15% of cover price.

Of course they don't always publish first time authors in hardback at all... which is a ****er but there you go.

Then again I've always had a pretty good feeling about my writing that if only I could get it into print it would do pretty well.

A certain member of my family always winds me up by suggesting I should e-publish online and that people would pay to read my stuff on screen... I really can't see this and considering how few hits you get on a blog compared to the one billion potential readers I think I'm right in wanting to go the traditional route of approaching a good agent and getting a good international publisher to do all that hard work for me. The way I see it: writing is an art; publishing is a business. You publish to make money or you're a fool!

PS One rate I could not find was the one you ought to get on translations... after all Agatha Christie, for example sold half her books in English, half in 40 other languages. Does anyone reading this know the right percentages? I tried googling them to no avail...

As Summer Morphs To Autumn...

DARK, DANK, RAINY AUTUMNAL MONDAY. Welcome to October everyone!

I know some of you are surely reading this in sandy parts with azure skies and gekkos on the walls... well lucky you. There's a chill in the air and I am so weary today I can barely move. I really had to drag myself off a pile of cushions in the corner of the floor where I had fallen asleep earlier (like a dog, I know!) Tonight I have to do lots of writing, I've told myself, as despite what I've said in posts, the weekend has marked a lull in production I have to have to press on on on...

That annoying George Michael was on Desert Island Discs yesterday morning. How precious can you get. I don't have much truck for people who make their fame and fortune appearing in teenybopper popgroups and playing the publicity merry-go-round... only to turn round eight figures richer and say "oh I want to be taken seriously now so I won't follow any of the rules that brought me this success" - then he wonders why he falls out with his record company! I could go on and on but that's my George Michael point. I could understand how he felt and even why perfectly but I just think he should have grown up and accepted commercial realities - it's not like they haven't paid him handsomely over the years. He made a pretty good interview subject (most people who come on Desert Island Discs are - it's a kind of Vanity Fair magazine of the radio. Nobody's invited until they truly have made it. And the most interesting personalities, incidentally, (so I've found) have been the captains of industry. The "stars" of showbusiness tend to be self-obsessed puffballs of nothingnesses, but that's hardly an original observation...

It is nine minutes to six and gloweringly dark already. Headlights are a-shinin'...

OK I gotta go pharmacy... Ta-raa!

Have a click on my video of the day (up top at present) it's an entire (4.5 mins) episode of that 1970s/80s BBC kids' TV classic Morph! Haha!!

***

BORING STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
I had a poke through my "traffic reports" earlier...

As of today, approximately 32% of my visits come from the USA; 22% from the UK; 5% from Australia, 5% from Canada. A whopping 18% are from unnamed countries. Does anyone have any idea why the hitcounter can't tell where they're from??!? I don't know about this stuff...
There's no seriously far-out locations of late - no Myanmar, no New Caledonia or French Polynesia but I did get 1% each hits from the following countries: Ivory Coast, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Malaysia, Hungary, Japan, Sweden. I have no idea who any of those people were. Who does read my blog in Japan?? Or Morocco? Hungary I do know who it is, Malaysia possibly... but like everyone else, I suppose lots of mysterious individuals slink across my blog in the dead of night and were it not for Sitemeter and Statcounter I'd have no idea they'd been... (spooky!)(not!)

The average visit length is about 5 minutes, which is good.

Sorry I tell a lie I just checked the actual figure: 4 mins 30 secs.

Oh and at the moment I get about 80 hits a day. Over time the numbers vary from 40 to 140 - usually at the lower end - humph!

When I see other people's counters I sometimes have a click to see if any meaningful differences arise. Usually they don't. But one fascinating fact does: ie. the average American blog would tend to have about 80% or higher visitors from the USA and maybe 5% from Britain. So here I am in Britain and far more Brits congregate here... which brings to mind that saying: Birds of a feather flock together...

Having said that I don't think many other addicts read this at all. If they do they never get in touch. There ARE "communities" of addicts online, but they tend to keep themselves to themselves; also I'm not cool enough to be one of them...

...o! I just thought about that...

... I think I'm going to cry!! hahaha ;~>...

I bet you all get more hits than me. Evil Spock gets 300 a day. But then Evil Spock has magnetic powers of evil beckoning that hypnotic gaze between the eyeballs...