Amy

RIP AMY WINEHOUSE

Found dead at her London home on Saturday afternoon. No surprise to me. No surprise to any of us. This is what drugs really do: kill hope, promise and talent and eventually take life.

Amy having a good try at snorting a white powder while on stage:~


BACK TO BLACK ~ official video
... not just "the heart of Amy Winehouse" ...

Terrible Nightmares and Attempted Robbery ... but a tolerable day!

IT'S BEEN A TOLERABLE DAY SO FAR... possibly because I have done nothing at all except doze doze doze in bed, then switch on Channel 4 where Friends was on followed by a Girls Aloud concert (I think Girl Bands are OK; it's boybands I can't stand, with all that Christ-style arm-throwy-outing and "I'm o-so sincere because I want to get in your knickers" heart-grabbing. It makes me sick... Anyway what was I saying... yeah done nothing except that and had a drink. And another drink. And a shower. And forced myself out to the shop because I'm desperate for sugar (or else no tea! I tried sugarless tea and really tried to stick with it but nothing doing. Ever since I woke up on a trolley under a hospital striplight (heroin overdose) and spent TWO DAYS in there (which is well unusual for overdose; usually they just chuck you out... but that was my second ever IV hit, as I'm sure they noticed by the state of my arms, so I probably got special treatment. I remember trying to wash and realizing I was covered in coloured sensors from those whirlybleep machines we all know from ER and Casualty... Ever since that I've been resolutely addicted to sugary tea (when I do drink it: in my heavy-boozing phase I glugged nothing but intoxicating liquor and maybe the odd sip of water... Right anyway what was I spouting on about... O yeah I found myself out here. I'm posting this in my old internet caff. I think they were not at all pleased to see me as they remember me shambling in daily and nightly in the most dreadful conditions. This is also the place I lost 0.4g of heroin which was highly annoying as that costs £15!

I had a dreadful nightmare 2 nights ago. We were supposed to be in a holiday home. An extensive palace of a home this was... my brother, my Dad and me. But I had crackheads and junkies surrounding me... My brother went off to do things of his own... my Dad was not at all pleased that these undesirables had followed me in the house (I had "let them in" only in the most passive way. The dream ended with me trying to escape by bus (a huge red double-decker London bus pulled up in the lobby of this 5-star hotel-sized and styled house only I could not run to it fast enough to get on... All this time some hassle was going on that I was supposed to meet my dealer where I grew up (and where summers seemed to last a million years). It all ended with the house catching fire. My Dad was REALLY upset by then. And I couldn't get out because so many of these crackhead-junkies were pressing round me in my way... wonder what THAT symbolizes..?

I next had a dream that I was in the company of the socialite Tara Palmer Tomkinson and she was being my new best friend. I don't usually like "socialites" and those dreaded tv-ified "it girls"... Tamara Beckwith who could play Cruella De Ville with no makeover always spouting "I I I: me me me..."... as for Paris Hilton and her punani-flashing.. who can say anything?!? But Tara PT has a ditzy charm. I admire her for kicking a blazing coke habit and she pushes herself: e.g. singing on celebrity bootcamp reality tv... Yeah I like Tara PT I think she's OK... I think this one symbolizes the fact that a better life and better friends are possible... (Can't see myself ever mixing with real socialites though...)

Yesterday was a crap day. Compounded by the fact that I returned home to see a black man I didn't know knocking at our front door. Instinctively I walked on past, in case he was a bailiff as much as anything ... then I thought "how long am I going to have to hang around pretending not to live here?" and irritatedly approached my own door. The man put on a cheesy smile and did that knuckle-knock thing they call "touch". Usually I would only indulge in that tripe to say goodbye to a dealer... "Who are you looking for?" I enquire. "John the rastaman..." I've been there approaching a month yet I'm still yet to eyeball all my fellow tenants... I tried to get out of dodgy guy what room rastaman supposedly lived in; he vaguely told me downstairs at the back. I unlocked the door, feeling thankful to have set it on security lock (that is: not just banging it shut, but turning the handle upwards so about five bolts insert themselves the length of the frame. This way nobody can get in even if they do smash the laminated glass... I noticed he moved to follow me but I swiftly slammed the door behind me. At first there was no answer, then an annoyed-looking Spanish guy opened up, yelling "no I don't know him" (black guy was by now waving in the most pathetically OTT cheery way) "DO NOT LET HIM IN!" So I went upstairs and paced about thinking "I need to go out again. Why should I feel prisoner in my own home because some would-be thief has come to pick on the poorest and most vulnerable at Christmas. And that is how I'd clocked him. Possibly looking for a crackhouse but most probably out to rob someone. But of course when I returned downstairs four minutes later he'd vanished. I made sure the door was fully locked again.

Well it's Xmas day and I've no definite plans. Valium Marilyn invited me to her's this afternoon, so if she phones I will come and watch Discovery Channel on her cable TV. She tells me her son is going away...

Valium Marilyn was in tears yesterday saying no Christmas Spirit was left and blah blah. The staff of McDonalds were staring at her like she was a space alien just because she was a bit benzo'd (though to them she would most likely have seem half drunk...) Then I cheered her up and got her to do an impression of a shrieking gypsy pensioner we both know at the top of her voice. We got funny looks from everyone but hey it's Christmas...

The Queen's Christmas Message is on in 40 minutes ... after that there should hopefully be a half decent movie and I have to make Chinese stir fry. If Valium Mal does call she won't have bothered to make Christmas lunch: it will be Quality Street and Doritos with dips and temazepam ~ I know her.

Righty-ho: gotta go. If your day has not gone merrily then I hope it's at least gone tolerably and may 2009 bring what you've wanted most of all...

PS my top picture, by the Spanish artist Goya, illustrates the origin of the English word "nightmare"... yes it really does have something to do with wild horses riding out of the inky black!

HM THE QUEEN CHRISTMAS MESSAGE 2008
Here's the Queen's Speech for any expats out there who'd like to view... or foreigners or Americans who've never heard HM's squeaky voice droning in the vaguest, most diplomatic "allude to everything; say nothing and don't rock the boat" message that comes out at 3pm sharp Xmas day by which time most are too sozzled or patriotic to switch channels...

Insalubrious Firsts

I SURVIVED IT! Survived a bitter weekend blank with lassitude and bleakness.

Before addiction snapped me fast in its hopeless mantrap, in my mid-1990s era, when I was blighted with chronic fatigue syndrome (so bad sometimes I could only go to bed and lie there as my exhausted brain sizzled and zapped like a massively burnt frying pan that is grabbed off the fire, flung to one side and yet still continues to smoke and spit for ages afterwards.)

I used to get so mentally exhausted I couldn't focus on a tabloid newspaper even, couldn't cope with the visual overload of anything, not even television. it was then that I took up talk radio listening. I also used to get so guiltridden and depressed I felt that as a non-contributory member of society I had no place in the world.

I told my Counsellor this and said maybe the fascists of World War II had something, and that the sick and disabled (ie I) ought to be put out of my misery as I was doing nothing but costing the state money. Her response was that in a civilized society everyone has their place; that's what civilization is. A situation where the sick and needy are cared for by those able to do so...

She was a great lady. And I'm no fascist by the way. Such guilt was a symptom of my depression, not my politics. Politically I'm so central and boring that in many countries including this one, I could vote for any major party as I occupy that central space where they all collide...

Anyway! I was trying to say that despite my troubles (perhaps because of them; and my Counsellor used to say that we all have our crosses to bear ~ we cannot pick or choose our cross...) I was growing in self-awareness, self-belief, self-mastery. So my most recent addiction Eureka!s would barely have registered on my old radar...

I'm only just realizing that no matter who we are or what our predicament, we do have the power to pick what we choose to think about; and our musings do eventually furnish our minds.

Such a spectacularly ordinary revelation... well it was no revelation back then, but a fixture of my psyche and one among countless many other fibres of wisdom that held me together and shored me up... which one by one fell away, deteriorated or were stolen from me in the course of my addiction. Knowing how very much I have lost is one of the matters that makes recovery so difficult for me. Each bridge I crossed on the way down was a bridge of shame: even dabbling in heroin put me at such serious odds with some old friends they pretty much disowned me just for trying the stuff...



Then there were the inglorious firsts: my first period of daily use with no break (I never let myself use more than four consecutive days at the start. Each day representing a quarter of a £20 bag as smoked.)...

The first time I held out my arm to let somebody fix me up... My first OD (my second IV "hit", as it goes; and that should have told me something)... the first time I injected myself "skinpopping"... first time I "mainlined" (went into the main vein in the crook of my arm)...

The time I eventually ran out of all money, credit and borrowing options and had to go out and beg on the streets... my habit trebling from £10 to £30+ a day, which was nearly a gram (3 x 0.3g: that dealer sold £15 worth for £10) ... and the first time I realized that £20 of heroin wouldn't hold me all day and I needed that £30 or more worth just to stay normal...

My first speedballs (crack IV'd with heroin)...

My first attempts at rehab, where I spent nearly all the time in the counselling room in pieces before just running out the door and back into the welcoming arms of my beloved drug. And so on and so on.

I lost my dignity. I nearly lost my mind (on crack). I lost myself. Will I ever get anything back?

SONG:
RADIO HEAD KARMA POLICE
Do you like this or hate this? Do tell!


PS Vivienne Vyle
Does anyone like this? I posted the entire series on my random blog (like a lot of British comedy this is all written by one person (in this case Jennifer Saunders, who also stars as V Vyle) and runs to all of six episodes..!

Took me ages to realize the pun: Vivienne Vyle/Jeremy Kyle!!

PPS NB the male guest's ridiculous Jerry Springer guest hair (stick-on moustache-stylee...)



You can see the entire series on my Random Blog:
Rest of this (episode 1)
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

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...

Hollywood Star Found Dead: Drugs Are Involved

AUSTRALIAN ACTOR HEATH LEDGER, star of Batman and Brokeback Mountain, was found dead last night from a suspected sleeping pills overdose. He was 28 years old.

The Sun crowed on about how he was "found naked with pills at side" (implying he didn't swallow as many as he could have done ~ so maybe pills aren't the cause...)

It's always very sad when someone dies so young, especially when it seems to have been suicide. Yes and "prescription" drugs are involved (not necessarily ones prescribed to him though!)... a true sign of the times.

Which is about all I have to say on the matter...

......................................................

Of course the story is all over the internet but if you want a quick link; here's the latest Press Association release...

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Here's one of the new pictures from Mars... showing land seemingly engraved by ancient seas...

My Vision

LAUNDRETTA INSISTS she has found a dead rat in her room. I don't believe this, but I don't like it. Because talk of rats is liable to mobilize Evilstein to put rodenticide everywhere. And having three baby gremlins (Itchy-Bashful-Spherical) and a furry freight train (Pingpong) under my auspices, I cannot have poisons left lying round my room. If I thought we really did have rats I'd be the first one to go mentalist. Rats eat smaller rodents - and that would especially include tubby Roborovskis who don't bite and, living Hannibal Lecter-style within four walls of glass, have nowhere to run... Not to worry: the proliferation of wild mice in here tells another story. Mice only thrive where rats are absent. And rats are most certainly absent from our midnight-scuttling, all-squeaking, all-shrilling mousery of a house!

FIVE MINUTES til appointed appointment time and here I am in the junkies' waiting room. Full of fellow clients with snivels. Walls choc-full of posters warning us of injections, infections and crack burns. Table strewn with dated magazines. (Shockingly lower class selection: the private clinic I briefly attended had Time magazine, Vanity Fair and Tatler! And, along one wall, shelves upon shelves of "borrow for free but please return and do not sell on" (well it doesn't exactly say that but may as well do: everything's prominently branded in theft-deterring rubber stamp...) Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre... among a 1960s Encyclopedia of Photography, The Piano Teacher, a novel by Elfriede Jelinek and Queen Noor of Jordan's memoirs: Leap of Faith. I purloined the last of these, plus Jane Eyre.

VISION. I'VE GOT SOME of my vision back since the New Year and posting those Not Really Resolutions (that strangely I have since found myself working towards: strange what "no pressure" can do...)

Each new day is a gift and a chance to effect changes. I used to really feel this. Actually, without getting too sobworthy, I finally grasped this fact some years ago in one of the most lost and forlorn times of my entire existence. I wasn't a junkie, and yet in my foolhardy quest for new experience, I had somehow got myself invited back home (to a nasty flat on an infamous estate or "project" as New Yorkers would put it). I had put £5 into a £20 bag, held out my arm and let myself be injected with this £5 hit of heroin in one...

All I remember was remarking how "good" the gear was... and dissolving into a dazzled protracted unconsciousness... surfacing time and again in near-amnesiac fuge to ask where I was. Finally breaking the surface of my dreams to find myself laid out under a clinical striplight. The metal handles of a trolley gleamed on either side of me. "What happened?" I had just asked (a strange snapshot of memory stretching into the shallowest layer of my personal haze). A nurse was telling me, not for the first time I was somehow sure, "You overdosed on heroin. You're in hospital." Bang! Suddenly I was back. And unable to digest these facts... I slipped slightly back into the warm dreams of my oceanic sleep...

There are ODs and there are ODs. I really had OD'd. For despite having been narcan'd to bring me round, I had somehow stayed unconscious or at least in white-out, for fifteen hours or longer: I had been given the heroin injection around midnight. Now it was late afternoon.

When a nurse informed me: "We want to keep you in overnight because we were worried about your breathing," I didn't argue. Merely lay in bed for hours longer. Repeatedly dunking back under warm bath-temperature water... In my alternative state I floated into an infinite haze of poppy-pollen gold. I was floating in the centre of the sun. Glowing yet not burning.

It was a pleasant place to be. The nearest place to "heaven" that drugs had got me thus far, in fact. For days afterwards I just wanted to return to this timeless, placeless place, realized that I couldn't; and cried.

Later on in the evening I got wheeled up to a ward, where, despite all that time spent flat out, I slept like a log all night.

Next day, when showering, I discovered multicoloured sensors stuck all over my torso. The same ones that feed into that machine we all know from Casualty and ER, the one that goes bleep-bleep and tells shocked relatives and associates how dangerously ill you really are.

I told no-one of my experience. Not family. Not friends.

Afterwards I was desperately upset and alone. So upset in fact, that I only wished for the issues this whole nightmare had stirred up to go away. To forget them, totally and utterly, for ever.

What irony: years of craving Death and now it had come so close without my willing it I was falling apart with the trauma of it all!

It was now that I learnt that life is precious. Life really is a gift. Not a chore, not an imposition. That each day is a wonder and a privilege. And that the meaning of life is appreciating the fact.

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OK FOLKS, it's getting late and I've raw chicken fillet, a tub of black bean sauce, a red pepper (sweeter than a green one) and a boil-in-bag sachet of basmati rice (rather unadventurously I'm trying boiled maybe specked with peas if I've still got some...) as well as chili powder, monosodium glutamate ("MSG") and light soy sauce... wish me luck, for "learning to cook just like the Chinese takeaway" starts today. Wahey!!

If you're curious as I was, however, here's a recipe for Chinese egg fried rice.

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Today's music:
The Prodigy: Everybody in the Place
...= my favourite piece of "commercial" rave ..!