Dr Ruth is Driving Me Mad

DR RUTH ON CASUALTY IS GOING CRACKERS. I saw her last night on BBC1. I watched the entire long long thing it was longer than comfortable. It drove me mad too.

I don't know what was eating me last night, I got really upset in an odd mentalist way (not the way I used to feel upset before). Which doesn't make me feel good. I feel whatever went wrong is still going wrong but medication is blocking some of it out. That if I wasn't on those meds I'd be totally crazy.

I'm not sure that's true but that's how I felt. I was really going into one. I had drunk 2 or 3 cups of tea and the caffeine seemed to disagree with me. I think I'm going to have to switch to decaffeinated. Tea is my way of avoiding alcohol, so it doesn't feel good to be avoiding it. Also I like tea more than cigarettes and THAT is saying something!

I didn't use heroin last night. I didn't even look for a needle. I don't need heroin.

What I felt last night was a desperation I do not like to feel. I wasn't "depressed" if I was anything I was going too fast and hyper. But my body was exhausted, so I slept eventually and slept for hours. Zopiclone (sleeper) and risperidone (antipsychotic) helped.

I woke up feeling calm and clear but this is the issue. I keep telling myself I'm OK then I realize I am not.

I don't know what I'm going to do.





*******

I am definitely going to AA; I want their Big Book.

*******

PS: £200 in free bets? I was talking about this yesterday. I think I was getting wires crossed. It was £10. I played a £200 game in Fantasy Money. Dur!

Toothpaste stains

I GOT UP AT 4:30 this morning. I feel like I could do with a year's more sleep but there you go. After smoking lots of cigarettes, trotting down the shop for smoked mackerel, Hovis bread and 2 litres of cyder (I'm cutting down) plus my tropical fruit juice (supposedly it's as good for you as eating veg, but I find that hard to believe)... after all this I scurried back home and wasted an hour watching BBC's early morning news and rubbish. The guy presenting used to be ITN's royal correspondent but I can't remember his name. Nick something. Being royal correspondent meant tilting your head slightly and inflecting the voice all sentimental-like whenever mentioning the Queen Mother. I was never convinced the Queen Mum was quite as kindly as portrayed. For one thing HM the Queen appeared, from the vast distance I view her, to be completely under her thumb. Since her Mum's death she seems to have become much more of her own woman. Her fashion sense appears to have improved immensely. The Queen is the funkiest-dressing old woman alive. With the exception of Rosie, the Trance granny who made luminous laurel crowns. I met her at the Warp club (Rosie, not the Queen) under an enormous railway arch round the corner from the London Dungeon, but I had seen her picture in the music press. She was famous for her octogenarian psychedelic ways.

There is a bevy of sparrows down my road. They live in a hedge and chirp their tuneless little heads off every morning. Cheep! Chirp! Twit! Twat! Twitter!! They say. My nightingale, who used to live in the nearest tree to our house is still on migration in West Africa. He or she won't be back until the spring. I know it was a nightingale because I matched the bird by appearance and song. The song was amazing, it tweetled and twittered all night like an LSD canary. I kept my window open especially. O man those sparrows are chirruping LOUD this morning. Sparrows all but disappeared from London about 15 years ago. They used to hang out in flocks along with the pigeons in parks. Even today, though you see them more, they're rare.

HEROIN! I haven't used any since I non-used the other day.. how many days clear am I now..? Seven days. I scored on December 23rd. Just checked me blog. That's the convenience of being a blogger. I know the day and date I did everything. Now I'm off to get my methadone. They're usually open by 8:30. I took half as much methadone as usual yesterday and today and am not feeling it so far... does this make me Addict-Invincible or will a horrible rebound come and slam me with creepytime withdrawal..? I bet it will. But there ya go. I want OFF that crap. The sooner the better. Chemical slavery. Heroin without any fun at all. I hate it.

I've got to go. Those sparrows are distracting me bigtime.

This is the twit-twit jug-jug chirrupydirrupydoodles song of the nightingale:



WOW I can't believe this, this is ROSIE from the Warp on film!!!



Warp Club London 1999: on lots of lovely MDMA hippieflipping I accidentally took 2 Mitsubishis at once in here, fell asleep and woke up flying through the roof. That was a good night (well morning: the club finished at 9pm so I never usually turned up till 6 or 7 in the morning)...
The place looks sparse because it was probably 11am by the time this was shot, and there were at least 5 more rooms of equal or bigger size, it was a HUGE club...
... ukh was the dancing really that terrible? I must have been on drugs!!



Illustrated: wow! a sink dirtier than mine! BBC Breakfast with Dermott Murnughan and Sian somethingorother; HM the Queen, looks good in a hat; a nightingale

Perfect Sunday!

I SPENT the entire day with my Irish friend Patrick and a black girl I'd never met before who at first was lots of fun. We drank and drank white cyder. I bought Chinese sweet chili chicken pizza and cheese-and-onion-baked rolls. Tanisha bought the cyder. She grew more and more aggressive as we all got more drunk...

... in the end I had to go home before a full-on row broke out.

Oh, what a perfect day!

THIS is one of my favourite songs. Written and originally recorded by Lou Reed, the following versions, I think, are two of the best:

SUSAN BOYLE: PERFECT DAY



"BBC & STARS" (Lou Reed, Bono, Skye Edwards (Morcheeba), David Bowie, Suzanna Vega, Elton John, Sir Andrew Davies, Boyzone, Lesley Garrett, Burning Spear, Sir Thomas Allen, Brodsky Quartet, Heather Small (M People), Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynett, Shane McGowan, Sheona White, Dr John, Robert Cray, Huey (Fun Lovin' Criminals), Gabrielle, Evan Dando, Courtney Pine, Brett Anderson (Suede), Visual Ministry Choir, Joan Armatrading, Laurie Anderson, Tom Jones, BBC Symphony Orchestra): PERFECT DAY

A NEW COSTUME DRAMA hit our screens tonight. Downtown Abbey on ITV. In common with the BBC's dreary, bourgeois Larkrise to Candleford, it's an original, not based on any classic novel.* But it's quite good. A modern Upstairs Downstairs. And it stars Dame Maggie Smith. If you're reading this on foreign shores, keep a look out for it. If you like historical drama, you'll probably like this. I think historical is the only stuff produced for British TV that's in the same league as the best American telly.

My one gripe with the genre is its tendency to reinterpret the past in the light of modern (politically correct) outlooks. For example the master of the house objects to a war-wounded servant being referred to as a cripple. "I hate that word." But in those days that was the expression; nothing condescending or insulting was meant by it. Here's the trailer. Perhaps someone'll load a longer extract to Youtube by next week ...

*that statement isn't quite true: according to the BBC's website, Lark Rise is based on Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood...



THE WOUND ON MY LEG is less manky since I stopped covering it up and have been cleaning it with alcoholic ("pre-injection") swabs every few hours. It isn't oozing chocolate sauce, just a hint of strawberry. It still smells like a drain, just not as strong. My wound and I are off to hospital tomorrow to see what the emergency doctors think of it...

I hope y'all had a cheery weekend. What are you doing next week? I'm making a start cleaning my life up in a literal sense. My house is a mess. I have that festering sore on my leg. Not a clean stitch to wear. I have to wash my jeans as they've absorbed pus down the leg. So I'm starting by laundering my clothes so I can skulk into casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) looking at least vaguely respectable. Then I'll get the wound seen to and hopefully dressed. Then I can set about cleaning my house. It was cleaning my house that set it off last time, with things knocking into it making it bleed. It's been itching lately. Itching is a good sign with these things; in my experience it tends to mean they're healing.

Hot, exhausted day

IT WAS 28 DEGREES CENTIGRADE TODAY. For London this is hot. I'm sweating like a swine. It's ten minutes to ten at night and only just getting dark. High summertime!

I'M STILL EXHAUSTED. I slept nearly all night; then what do I do but spend half the day asleep from sheer exhaustion too!

I wish I had something interesting to post. Not really. Flapper the wood pigeon appears to have upped and left. I think he is having an affair.

My friend's dog, who is so elderly he looks like a little silver-grey donkey, has had an operation. Every time I see him he's in his basket with the most forlorn expession on his face. I have never seen a doggie look so sad. I think he is in pain. I hope he's OK.

I heard a radio feature today called Home Thoughts from Abroad, where the BBC take London-based correspondents from the foreign press and give them open mike to hold forth on any aspect of life in the UK that interests them. Today's broadcast, by die Zeit journalist John F Jungclaussen basically outlines the reasons why I want out of Britain. That we are becoming ever increasingly authoritarian and less and less free.

If you want to hear it you can listen online (from anywhere worldwide), click here.

Deutsche-in-London.net review of programme.

Keywords/Schlüsselwörter: exhausted verbraucht; sheer exhaustion absolut Erschöpfung; wood pigeon Ringeltaube; to appear erscheinen; to up and leave abhauen; elderly ältlich; donkey der Esel; basket der Korb; forlorn öde; expression der Ausdruck; hold forth sich über etwas auslassen; broadcast Sendung; authoritarian autoritär

Queen "Tantrum" II - BBC Report

I'VE POSTED HERE THE BBC'S FOOTAGE of The Queen's supposed "tantrum" during the official photo-portrait session with American snapper Annie Liebowitz.

You can click here to see it, and last night's BBC Evening News analysis of the supposed "incident" as reported in the ever-reliable Sun newspaper ...

According to royal biographer Penny Junor, The Queen is cursed by a face that "does not look photogenic in repose" - you can say that again. Quite often she appears to be nearly scowling as she looks on at crowds, performances, new buildings, exhibitions and displays of all kinds. Personally I think this is a bad habit from childhood that was never corrected and so is now seen as part of her character. It is not. I can look just as grumpy as the Queen with "my face in repose" - if I make every effort not to smile and pull my mouth about like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

And as for the Queen's famously squeaky voice. In actuality she modulates her speech far more cheerily than her impersonators ever manage to. I suspect that in childhood her vocal quirks were spotted and an elecutionist was dutifully packed off to the palace to teach one how to use one's voice properly. The elecutionist failed dismally. Rather than improving one's voice in any way, the poor young Princess Elizabeth (as she was then) was merely saddled with a squeaky version of the upper-class and royal accent of her grandparents' generation. This would certainly explain a lot. Listen to her late father, George VI speaking: he sounds almost normal even by today's standards. But that accent our poor Queen has been saddled with for most of her life (only in very recent years has it shown any signs of fading into more normal pronunciations) ... whoever's responsible for that deserves to be locked up in the Tower of London and severely punished!