Clean Clothes

BY TOMORROW MORNING I shall have an entire set of clean dry clothes. The present ones I have on smell like they've been through a well seasoned sandwich toaster. I put a load of smalls through the sink with three doses of lemon washing up liquid. It's on the radiator as we speak. The other stuff was there anyhow; I just didn't know.

I get money tomorrow. I need to buy a charger and a chip to phone my Dad free of charge. I lost the old chip when I wasn't even on drugs (I remember that bit clearly; neither was I drunk but I spilled water on my phone and went so mental trying to dry it out that the SIM lept out and installed itself between a pane of glass and my seat on the bus. The pane of glass is there because the bus is British and they want to cause more serious injuries in the event of a crash. Well why else would glass be on a bus; not on a window?)

And I have to buy socks. Dark ones without heels and toes busted through.

I just spoke to my Dad and his side of the family. That worked better than antipsychotics. But I've taken the antipsychos again to be a good boy in time for Dr NutNut on Thursday. I need to look all responsible. I stopped taking them because I had side-effects that were drastically horrible. Something like a drowsy brain-fog where lights glared into my head making me want to lie in a darkened room (yet not sleepy-drowsy so you just suffer it out till the pill wears off). So I canned the pills and was so high (on "life", not any drug) by the time I had confirmation that I should take the entire dose at once, as in week one that I took no antipsychotics. Then I got tired but was still on a high. Then the high just wore off, just under a week ago, on Monday afternoon. And ever since then I've been pissed off. I'd rather say pissed off then depressed. I hate the word depression. I never know when I do or don't have it except afterwards (when I usually did have it) somehow some sort of denial confuses me. Henceforth I shall attempt not to be confused.

I'm not taking heroin because heroin stops me being high (might as well be frank). I'm dreading going to the doctor because the doctor will also want to stop me being high. Last time I really started going high on antipsychotics I felt really weird, so maybe I'd better get used to feeling weird (I got used to being weird long ago, I just didn't feel it).

I cured my depression with drink. It antidepressed me enough to pick the phone up for social reasons and to get clothes washed. I think my doctor should prescribe cherry flavour 4.7% ABV cyder for medicinal reasons (joke).

Meet the Fockers has been on at least four times today. They keep talking about something called a Jimmy Changa. What the hell is that? I thought it was a cocktail but it gives Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman) most terrible wind. Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) said so by accident on their answerphone message.

And now I'm vanishing into the night like a tired moth that's just taken 2x2mgs of chemical cosh. Sleep well. Or GET OUT OF BED (if you're in Australia).


Illustrated: Indonesian owl moth

My train-wreck life trundles on and on ...

I NEVER KNOW WHAT TO SAY when I feel the way I do today.

On the one hand, scores of people read this blog, some barely know me. I assume they will think I'm being a dramaqueen. Or writing "performance diary" ~ more about posture and pose than anything I'm actually feeling.

On the other hand, this site is the nearest thing I have to a diary. It's for that reason that I won't post personal pictures. You know me far better as Gledwood the hamster than you ever could know of my "real" image. If I posted up my face I'd be too self-conscious to reveal even half the stuff I actually do. So you're better off with Hamsters and Double UO Globe logos than my face, trust me.

Let me tell you my reality.

During the deepest pits of the drought I did three weeks on pretty much methadone alone. I continued trying to use, getting almost nothing for my money on four particular days in a row, and so over this time, and the subsequent week, when I did give up scoring and spent my money on books and socks instead, I was taking fewer opiates than at any point since the late 1990s. Yet I felt empty inside, and miserable. Barely showered. Late at night when I was tired, I chatter of crack-voices came back to my head, even though I have barely touched crack in two years.

I pray that God, who understands my mind and motives won't condemn me for not coping. Because I am barely coping at all. I haven't done any washing up except single plates, spoons, mugs, in months. My clothes desperately need laundering. They stink, as do I. I wish I could care enough to bother, but I can't be bothered. My floor is a melange of dirty teeshirts, odd socks and jeans that won't button tangled with empty pizza boxes, newspapers, carrier bags, intermingled with sacks of rubbish where the urge to tidy up has seized me, but not for long enough to make any meaningful inroads into the chaos.

My drinking got so bad last week that I was having blackouts again. I lost half a gram of gear ~ in my own house! ~ I hold out no hope ever of finding it. I was so out of it the other night I actually flushed a £20 note down the toilet.

I need glasses for reading. In some troubled corner of this fleapit they lay safe and undisturbed. But though I can barely see without them, I can't trouble myself enough to bother looking for them.

The thought of suicide haunts me every single day. Knowing that people come here in desperation to find out the latest on the Great Heroin Drought 2010 and that although I hate the Mean Green, I am at least lucky enough to be scripted methadone. Entirely at the mercy of street dealers, some have spent £100s on stuff that has little else in common with low grade Middle Eastern heroin except that it is brown. As those in the thick of this drought will know, the strength of even the best heroin has fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was some months ago. Some street gear is so bad that long-term addicts have been testing heroin-negative. A fantastic achievement, if only it could last longer than present circumstances dictate.

Last week especially people were becoming increasingly frantic and desperate. I tried to do what I could, which wasn't that much. But I did try.

Of the two gears I have been buying, one looks cloudy, like orange juice with black bits floating on top. The black bits can easily be fished out. The remaining " orange juice" contains a little B and a lot of benzos and possibly some other types of downers, too.

The effect is the same every time. The miniscule drop of B I feel instantaneously. A big part of heroin's addictive potential lies in how it almost instantaneously crosses the blood-brain barrier, creating what journalists like to call a "rush". Cocaine also crosses this blood-brain barrier very quickly, hence the super-compressed two-minute "flash" experienced when a large amount of crack is piped.

Not all drugs have such rapid effects. Good example: a cannabis bong. The paranoid schizophrenia and alzheimers that cannabis smokers call a "high" keeps climbing and climbing for a good five-ten minutes, a trickle more than a rush. Heroin and crack by contrast smash into the system like a tidal wave.

Yesterday I found some better gear that looked at first glance like crushed up paracetamol. It sparkles because it appears pre-cut with vitamin C. This stuff cooks up the colour of dilute whiskey, has about three times as much heroin as the "orange juice", but ALSO contains so many sedatives that although I started trying to post around one pm, I kept waking up having to delete screensful of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzs.

Like an evil cannabis-bong, this mysterious sedative creeps up slowly. So I didn't even know I'd inadvertently taken it till 20 minutes later when I suddenly felt heavy-limbed and buzz-eyed and dropped off so sleep till half past five.

I think I've caught up on several days' lost sleep. I even have a crazy scheme where I'll stick to methadone 100% yet again. Because if at first you don't succeed, as the saying goes ...












PS If you want lots of confessions, methadone and Suboxone (formerly heroin) and the most luridly intimate accounts of the author's "booty calls"; Anna Grace I Hate My Face, I Hate This Place and I'm Strung Out Again from Wisconsin (nr Chicago) cannot be bettered: I particularly like the blue wig shot.

Keeping Mum

A KINDLY GANG-MEMBER from Da Local Baby Gangsta Crew let me have some drugs on tick today. I paid half and owe half. I only had money to spare because all plans for today fell through, leaving me at a loose end, exceedingly "peeved", to put it mildly and in need, so I thought, of a chemical emollient. (Not an exfoliant, that gets off hair. An emollient. That soothes.)

O man the effort I put into today. All for nothing!

I was supposed to see my Mum. I got up, crystal clear. Cleaned myself up as best I could, physically speaking. But to be frank I just looked like a heroin addict on a daytrip.

I had checked train times and prices etc etc etc. I had the option of going in and out of London or taking a long couple of bus rides across town. The bus rides seemed cheaper and got me to a station further up the right line.

So I took this bus. Got to station. All was silent. The ticket machine utterly refused to take my £5 note. Not that it was bulimically constantly regurgitating the thing. I think this machine was anorexic. Its mouth refused even to open.

By the way I know someone who used to work on the Eating Disorders Helpline in Norwich who said that without exception bulimics verbally spewed and spewed, while anorexics were barely willing to open their mouths and thus said barely anything at all... Isn't that fascinating...

So anyway this ticket machine refused my money, which hardly bothered me. I chucked 10p in the Permit to Travel machine. This meant I was covered if an evil ticket inspector chose to pounce on me like a barn owl on an unsuspecting harvest mouse... as frequently happens on London suburban trains. If he queried whether or not the machine was in fact working, I would just tell them to check CCTV. Britain does not have the oft-stated 4 million cameras (surely it's many more than that now as that figure's a decade old) for nothing. For once I might use one to my advantage. I do not trust ticket inspectors after having the most almighty altercation with two on a platform having been told my ticket, which I'd checked in advance was good for it, was invalid on my chosen route. Something, incidentally, which tended not to happen before rail privatization. The worst ever move by the Tory party, in that particular line of activity. I got my money back and a grovelling apology. I always do. Or did. When I could be bothered with such things.

Anyway long story short, I got to the interchange station to find it surprisingly quiet. I hadn't taken the train, I'd walked because it was so near the other one (but wrong for the bus). I thought I'd let the train take the strain. In the end my feet did. And this station was empty with almost unreadable electronic notices saying something I could not understand. It transpired the entire line was down, and if I did want to see my Mum I'd have to take two trains in the wrong direction, with no guarantee how long they might take.

Full of misery and fury I phoned her and said this is impossible. So we had to leave it for another day. Such a shame as Branzy my step-Dad wouldn't have been there earwigging in every word. In other words we might have done something else except discuss 25 topics I don't care about, skating merrily over life's surfaces, yet barely scratching them.

I went directly to the nearest cyder-selling shop and got two White Stars. Well I wasn't gonna need this money for train fares any more. Poured them into Lucozade bottles to spare myself disgusted glances. Jumped on bus. It was well over an hour till I got home, and then I phoned that heroin dealer who "kindly" ~ if you wanna call it that ~ provided that lump for half price.

If I don't cough up tomorrow I get a bullet through my brainbox!

Anyway all this just goes to show, I'm stone cold sober and it still goes mammaries up. Oh what a day ...



Illustrated: selection of ultra-modern British trains. Especially the top one.
Very top pic: HM the Queen mysteriously riding public train (no wonder she looks glum)...

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 %;-/...

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!