7a.m. Booze

DRUNK AT 7AM! That was me today! A cleaning bug bit me (bedbug more like)... and I had to have alcohol to get moving... in the end it deteriorated into me plunking out random glockenspiel sounds on Yamaha synthesizer as Moonlight Sonata blared from free Mail on Sunday "Country Cottage" CD. The neighbours have spent enough time annoying me I felt it was my turn to make some noise. Strangely none of this woke up Laundretta or Matran... perhaps I was being quieter than I thought...

Later in the morning I took to feeling really quite ill. Eventually I had to return home and to bed and sleep it all off. How inconvenient.

Nobody got disturbed by my impromptu classical music concert, either.

I THOUGHT I WAS HALLUCINATING EARLIER ON WHEN I SAW BABY ITCHY RUNNING AFTER A BALL IN THE PARK! Yes! My escaped hamster had turned loose on the green I was frantic with concern... till I realized it was just some old age pensioner's Yorkshire terrier... hmmm.

AND BIG MOMMA SPHERICAL GOT STUCK trying to squeeze her fat backside out of the Tea House (a Sainsbury's Red Label 40 teabags box with "windows" cut in all sides by moi) ... she looked so indignant and I had to resist temptations to give her a poke with an old crow's feather or something that would really have got her moving. Neither was she put in a good mood by my sudden appearance, cackling at her and saying "Have you got a fat bum? You have!"

BASHFUL has done nothing of note of late except been bashful.

YANGYANG the Chinese hamster has aphagia. I once told a certain friend "aphagia" meant giving up smoking and they believed me!

Yesterday I revelaed to Ruth how I have 50% turnip blood coursing these battered veins of mine. In fact half my entire family have (or had when they were alive) Wurzel Gummidge accents.

Ruth was quite shocked and confessed she had believed me to be product of some ancient aristocratic lineage.

Not so, I'm afraid. Although I did used to speak in the same voice as Prince William when I was a student in Norfolk many moons ago... this had more to do with being surrounded by public schoolboys and Sloanes and being out of touch with the local people. Two of the people I know now claim to hail from elevated backgrounds. But most of my friends nowadays really are quite vulgar. Some even have Cockney accents.

Yeah, as I was saying to the Duke of Marlborough only the other day: I'm a real man of the people .....

And on that note I had better leave things be...

Tunes:
Sinead
Thank You For Hearing Me
Three Babies fan vid
Three Babies original vid

Baby Itchy Frantic Nonday Sunday Posting L8R...

WHAT ARE SUNDAYS FOR? Mine always seem to go past in a haze or lumpen plodding of useless disrespectability... somehow...

Baby Itchy, the Porkshire Terrier lookylikey was due to pay Mother Hubbard a visit... but he scrabbled so desperately against his carry container and ran so eagerly for the light each time I looked in on him that I eventually relented and left him at home with the other two. (If he IS a him... I'm now starting to question even THAT!)

So I went to Mother Hubbs alone. She was claiming not to have "used"... which I somehow found easy to doubt... why do people lie to me?

THERE IS A DRUGS DROUGHT ON! Heroin is scarce... but I'll tell you what's really hard to find and Mother Hubbard knows this from her grandsons and I know it from Valium Marilyn's son... that evil green herb, the Devil's own grass.. CANNABIS! Ukkie stuff - I'm glad.

Well this was just a short post to say I have actually got out of the house today... even though I did stay under covers till 3pm...

There is another post due later... so do pop back. I have scribbled it out already in my maroon booklet so it shall be here within 2 hours I promise... consciousness permitting.. no don't say that....

wahey!... ho-hum...

thanks for the bookwriting advice and comments, folks... THAT is what that other post's ABOUT...


Tunes of the Day:
~ Randy Crawford - One Day I'll Fly Away
~ Bob Marley - Sun Is Shining
~ Sinead O'Connor - Troy

Yangyang Robo Clawed Frog African

BABY ITCHY ROBOROVSKI IS OFFENDED because I was laughing at him saying he looks like a Yorkshire Terrier puppy ... ("You look like a Porkshire Terrier! You do! You do! You little Porker, you!"/etc) Only he is just two inches long. I've never seen a Yorkshire terrier, even a puppy, that's that small..!

When I slept earlier this evening I dreamt of albino African clawed frogs of the type I altered Clip III to fit in... Man! They are greedy little gargoyles look at that swine, already bloated to near-exploding stuffing yet more nosh (live earthworm!!) into his gob!!

In the top clip "African albino clawed frog Down Under".. does anyone know what the giant viridescent iridescent fish is called... it's the biggest one in that tank..

Also that's the first time I've ever seen a fully grown clown loach (the orange one with black stripes... so called because of their love of "fooling around" e.g. lying sideways etc.

Baby Itchy dropped almost right into Yangyang's bedroom earlier. I picked him out before he could get murdered... Chinese hamster to Roborovski is pretty much the same size/shape ratio of thunderous freight train to human being... the Chinese hamster is literally three times longer though his body's not much fatter or wider and his head's pretty much the same size... bit like a nuclear mouse (elongated in an Apple Mac) or a furry footed eel...

O wow! I actually, for the first time in TEN MONTHS of life witnessed Yangyang EATING tonight! His head poking unwittingly from the sheltering toilet tube I heard and saw distinct munching... Seriously that animal has the smallest appetite of any pet I've ever had even tropical fish and I'm not kidding... he surely eats a tenth of what the Roborovskis consume.

Right I've gotta go and compose chapter one of my autobiog now so wish me luck.

Cheerio!!, till L8Rs!

New Clips III
i Albino African Clawed Frog Down Under
ii Albino African Clawed Frog Gobbles Live Earth Worm!

Drugs Hell Literary Hell

I AM HAVING TROUBLES WITH THIS autobiog' of mine - my drugs hell memoirs are starting to create hell of their own.
1. I feel desperately uninspired
2. I would say "I don't know where to start" except I do. (Basically with a rewrite of my From Depressed Acorns Miserable Oak Trees Grow post.)

What I'm 3. worried about most is how to turn this tawdry story of mine into a full length book ie at least 150 pages (bare minimum) at 400 words to the page = 60,000 words... 200 pages 80,000 words would be better.

What separates writers from wannabe writers is one simple characteristic: the ability, having planned and envisioned your work actually to put it down on paper no matter what your personal feelings of the moment would rather you do. I do speak from experience. When I wrote before I forced the writing out of me... if you wait for "inspiration" to strike, chances are it'll never get done. Trust me.

Baby Itchy Roborovski seems to be proper perturbed by Satchmo's trumpeteering... he just done a massive ping off my arm and into a toilet roll tube I had thoughtfully provided (what would the domesticated hamster population of the world do without cardboard toilet tubes?? They'd be utterly confounded.)

Yeah so as I was saying about books it's all down to me which makes things doubly depressing... would you want me in charge of YOUR life??

Just as with any job you do you just gotta show up and do it however discoraged you feel. And tell yourself what a feast the book buyers of the world will be missing if this never gets scrawled down.

I suppose....

Clips:

Nina Simone: For All We Know
Sinead O'Connor: Rebel Song Live
Sinead: I'm No Man's Woman
If you click on the last two simultaneously, watch No Man's Woman to the Soundtrack of Rebel Song... perfection (try it; you'll see what I mean!)

***

The Saturday Play
Our Man in Jamaica, by Marcy Kahan, set in Jamaica in 1962. Noel Coward's neighbour Ian Fleming is determined that Noel should resume his wartime activity as a spy.

Click for BBC Radio 4's Listen Again and select the above for a fantastic glamour romp through 1950s Carribbean with Noel Coward in the company of Marlene Dietrich, Ian Fleming and Jamaica's very own Doctor Evil!

While you're there, why not select Just a Minute: the legendary panel game where a topic must be discussed for a mere sixty seconds with strictly no hesitation, deviation or repetition!

Evilstein. Robos. Childhood Poo Pain.

HEY THIS IS THURSDAY'S POST... I MISSED MIDNIGHT BY three seconds ... not thanks to my own dallying but thanks to Googles up-****ing. Thanxx a log Google...

EVILSTEIN, MY OBJECTIONABLE LANLORD'S AGENT came bursting in this afternoon, knocking my drink over, telling me the place is too untidy (he thinks I should dispose of all I own and subsist in an operating theatre. Even then, like the legendary military tent-inspection, I know he'd find fault enough with whatever I did to label the surgical blankness "dirty".

Evilstein's useless henchmen had to measure up in order to fit/order/install replacement windows~(??!) I cannot help but wonder what extremes they will be pushed to in the bodge-job stakes with this particular assignment ... What will go wrong?... Windows that don't fit? Ones that don't open (that's more Evilstein's style). PVCu monstrosities that go cloudy in the sun..?? Something's bound to go dramatically wrong!

I had horrible dreams all night last night. Some recurring nightmare of being under arrest in a giant hi-tech police station. Can't even remember the alleged "crime" but I've never done it. What I recall was that it was all symbolic of my giving up drugs. Seeing that no escape was possible I turned to plotting methods of suicide. Eventually settling on an undeclared hunger strike to weaken the body then to take a piece of metal, a shard of glass, plastic even or a paperclip or anything that is sharp or could be sharpened, anything that I could muster in desperation and lunge at, tear into my flesh deep enough to gash open a major blood vessel open in the dead of night and lie there quietly bleeding in rivers of my own blood wrapped in sheets trying not to sob or scream out, just to get through it right to the bitter end... and then... Sunrise.

Not to perpetrate Natural Justice upon myself for I had done nothing wrong (not, at least the major crime of which I was accused). But just to Go Home... finally. At long last. Just to Get Out of there and Go Home... Where I belong.

Woke up in a sweat and feeling sick for drugs. The methadone I'd taken had not been enough.

I've always been useless at detoxification. A big crying baby whose dummy has been taken away. (Only by my own choice!) Of course I've managed these past 33 years without a dummy but o! At the time, aged 2, I bet: the horrors! The pains I went through!!

Imagine if you can that we could all recall in detail the protracted agonies of our own babyhoods? The hot nights crying ill with childhood fevers, the horrors of teething, the constant upsets. All those hours on end we have spent lying abandoned and bawling our eyes out with curried nappies and nobody is running here fast enough (Mum is probably fast asleep and I don't blame her. Looking after me must have been so exhausting.) At 4am nobody hears your screams. And time, of course, passes ten, twenty, perhaps thirty times more slowly through the infant mind... only multiplying one's discomforts... What an agony life would be if we all grew up remembering all of that... And we'd all think we had the excuse to grow up into heroin addicts - addled by the sheer trauma of not having been coddled ...

Not much in the way of robo-news today. Last night I gave them Red Label 40 teabags box with tiny windows sniped into each of six sides. Itchy, once he got fed up of being loop-the-looped by the 2 heavier wheel-marathon-ing hammies, spent hours in there, washing his wet fur even wetter and attacking alien-fingered millet sprays...

Wow I'm knock-knack-knackered. I'm sure I've still got dregs of that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from eleven years past. As every time I physically push myself I end up oversleeping... hours and hours on end... for days and days at a time...


2-day's vids:
Sly and the Family Stone: Family Affair
Sinead: Sacrifice
"Moonfall": Making a Record... (original link was to "take ii")

Sly Stone's Website! http://slystonemusic.com

Sly stone

Bashful Annoying; Whitney Memoirs; No Drugs Boo-Hoo-Hooo!...

ROBOROVSKI NEWS: BASHFUL IS SERIOUSLY starting to "peeve" me. To my crime of inserting an ever-so-slightly rustly (and expensive, might I add) millet spray she shot from their tube-nest exploding like a fire cracker and sending hamsters splurring in all directions like furry fireballs. The swine. They did go mental over the millet, once they realized it was not a blobberous alien's craggy reptilian fingers or whatever the hell they thought it was first time round - Roborovskis have massively overactive imaginations.

Which reminds me: I was crossing the road earlier when Celine Dion yelled at me: "Will he think I'm weak if I tremble when I speak?!"

To which Barbra Streisand replied: "Love will be the gift you give yourself!!"

I thought I was having another psychotic episode.

Fortunately not - it was merely an off-duty blonde secretary's sound system blasting from her brand-new-looking ultramarine Vauxhall Tigra.

Which makes me wonder: what on earth possessed a car company to name themselves after a run-down, seedy sector of South London that is famed for nothing more exciting than its Victorian railway arches and high levels of street robbery? Vauxhall is hardly the most salubrious setting one could evoke for the selling of automobiles... it's a bit like naming your new cars after Haarlem or the Bronx... Ukk.

Do I sound chirpy as a budgie pecking a millet spray tonight? Because I don't really feel it. By the way the hand-painted budgie on the Trill box looks hilarious - the obvious product of an artist who's never actually owned such a bird. The posture and expression are all wrong. A bit like those hilarious early paintings of Orientals and Africans the sixteenth century white colonizers took home to show honest church-going folk what genuine heathens looked like... This particular budgie has a murderous look in its eye, as if it's minded to brutally slay the humble canary with that eagle's beak the artist so thoughtfully endowed him with...

Yes I am highly (?) depressed. Deeply depressed. Because I am forcing myself into giving up drugs plus writing my memoirs all in one. I keep telling myself I'm the Whitney Houston of memoirists in order to spur myself on but it's not working.

I can hardly call it an autobiography because as my Dad pointed out I've not done anything with my life: "That's the whole point," I said. "It's a memoir of drug-induced dereliction." I'm not sure he does really get the point, which can only really be told by the completed book. Which is why I have to write it... Also I want a gargantuan advance so I can get my eight-foot bogwood aquarium brimming with diddly dwarf frogs and tetras (did you notice it gets bigger every time I mention it?!) ... This to furnish my art nouveau flat in Chelsea that I shall move into directly from B&B...

If I say I've quitted heroin for good I'll only fall slapstick straight on my face like every other time so I'd better not and say "Hoorah! I just bought an ounce!" (Except I didn't.)

Righty-ho: better go and pen those memoirs, Whitney...

By the way my left leg in particular is covered in red lumps from my injecting highly acid brown heroin into tiny thread veins... nasty business... There appear to be none left now... it can take nearly an hour to get a "hit"... And you wonder why I said I've ordered myself to stop.

Right I really have gotta go. I'm hungry and craving baked beans and halal (turkey) Frankfurters.

By the way how's this for a title: My Drug Hell by Whitney-Mariah Roborovski... already I'm hunting out my old Judy Garland fright wig again for the Stephen Meisel author photo.

(And if you believe that you really will believe anything!!)

Righty-ho folks. Till 2morro...

Nonday....

EVERYONE ELSE (in this country) goes back to work... what do I do? Conk out from sheer exhaustion all day... letting hours tick past... and more hours.... and hours more... and eventually it is dark... And now at about ten minutes to ten I tear myself up to tell you how I did nothing...!

BY THE WAY... talking of music that scares Roborovskis; I've found a tune that really does: it's Dream a Little Dream of Me as performed by Nat King Cole on CD... something about the loud whiny clonking noise they incorporated into the track has them racing to hide in bed... I'm not sure quite why...

Well I'd better go. An appropriate non-ending to a non-day...

Night-night...

Clips:
i: Pete Doherty & Co... Hang on what do they perform?? So forgettable...
Oh yeah: Dream a Little Dream of Me ... what am I saying??!
ii: Nat King Cole - Autumn Leaves
iii: Amy Winehouse & Charlotte Church perform Michael Jackson's Beat It. This was an hilarious rendition... I've no idea why Amy Winehouse's performance is so bizarre... whether she was trying to upstage Charlotte Church or whether she was just drunk... who knows... but this is a classic moment from the Charlotte Church TV Show....

***

Wednesday's traxx:
Bryan Adams + Mystery Guest II Finally Found Someone
Human Tetris from Japan
7 Roborovskis
Tiny Baby Roborovskis

Bankholiday* Heatwave

...*in response to the query I got the other day, a bank holiday is merely a British public holiday. So called because the banks take yet another opportunity to shut their doors early (what's new) ...

WHAT A SULTRY SUNDAY. "HEATWAVE" is how the forecasters phrased it. And yet again - there's me unconscious on the carpet snoozing as Amy Winehouse tinkles round and round on repeat play.

WHEN I REGURBISHED THEIR DOMAIN with Yangyang the Chinese hammy's cast-offs, the Robbies went bananas investigating it all, especially running back and forth throughout the Signal toothpaste box, poking heads through the chewed-out parts, squirming thru, pinging, ponging, do nothin' wrong-ing...

SORRY I didn't post yesterday (though it's labelled "Sunday" the last post was actually inputted late Saturday night). It got L8R & L8R, I had no messages to pass on. London had went Carnival crazy. Streets seemed full of beautiful black girls in spangling frocks. Black kids drest in West Indian cub-scouts garb. And black men tagging on possessively behind drest in nothing more special than their best baseball caps... (It's a Carribbean carnival. When white people have been; unless there's a whistle hung on Jamaican flag-themed ribbon about the neck there's usually scant clues at all that they've been. Except for an unusual level of drunkenness...)

Last night I decided to introduce Yangyang the Chinese to Baby Itchy the Robo. On neutral ground, of course: my two hands. All went fine except that in my enthusiasm I had gone and confused Itchy with Bashful - the absolute worst move I could possibly have made. No sooner had their whiskered faces said hello (in my own falsetto) safe from separate hands than Bashful went ping!! disappearing across six feet of carpet in two seconds and hiding behind a fallen laminated fire alarm notice. Yangyang merely looked on, ears poked up on high alert with a bemused expression and clung resolutely to my right hand that I suddenly needed for Robo catching duties (as Chinese hamsters do). When ten minutes later the situation was resolved, Bashful was blasting about the tank like a firework rocket panicking the other two for ages and Yangyang, who I'd not had time to return home had vanished. I later found him having burrowed down a new bedroom in the sleeve of my best jacket. Then the real Itchy showed face as if to apologize and he looked itchier than ever, wet from head to foot, like a brush from one of those drive-through automatic car-washes... except two inches long and beady-eyed and sand-colour, not blue....

... AND SO THE BANK HOLIDAY BEAT GOES ON... it's a sweltering day. Sly and the Family Stone are a-jazzin' & a-tootlin' behing the Robbies' empty-looking tank. The Robbies are all stashed away in their Maltesers tube fast asleep like mini gremlins. No wonder they're tired. Bashful and Sphericlal were running the wheel all last night while Itchy ill-advisedly attempted to go the other direction and so ended up clinging on for dear life doing constant loop-the-loops - and getting repeatedly trampled on the head as the other two passed another time over... (No wonder his behaviour's ditzy. Perhaps he's got brain-damage from all that gettin' chucked about... I don't know.)

NOW I HAVE TO GO and cook mushroom tortelloni with grated vulgarity cheddar and demoralized chopped tomatoes with French herb garnish... it's rather pleasant once you get used to it. (But some have died trying....) Hokay, till L8R...

Tunes of the day:
Bryan Adams with Mystery Guest: Everything I do
Chinese Violinist: Autumn Moon On A Placid Lake... this is the nearest I could get on youtube to my 50p charity shop CD of the same name featuring traditional Cantonese music with the traditional one and two-string South Chinese violins.... The tracks with "birdsong" are fantastic as it's all played out in alt-altissimo on violin strings... quite genius... and just the thing to have glinting in the background if you ever throw a dim-sum dinner party ....

***

ROBOROVSKI ALERT: CLICK HERE ... and scroll down to see Itchy's lookylikey ... (sorry it didn't come out properly the other day...)

Note the nervous expression on the face... that is so characteristic of the Roborovski hamster

The Robbies Are Upset...

5:38 SATURDAY A.M. THE ROBBIES ARE UPSET because I removed their maltesers tube to stop them hiding all the time. Spherical has just completed attempted excavations beneath the empty cardboard box they were meant to sleep in but for some reason avoid (they would rather sleep under it. Which as much as anything else just looks ridiculous. Stupid creatures.) At one point the three of them were lined up furiously digging in a row. Which looked so entertaining. Though they don't always scarper the second I delve my hand beside them, they do eye it with grave suspicion. And if Itchy allows the rubbing of his back with one finger which is an action Bashful would never countenance, the other two look on with baleful eyes as if to muse: "Itchy, man, you're a fool not to run like we do... can't you see where this is leading? Those humans, they win your trust. Then they'll have you turned into half a shoulder pad on a fur coat before the month is out ..."

There is a Swedish lady called Eva who is an expert on rodents, who insists no species of hamster is a truly social creature and that all hammies, including all types of dwarves (Lord of the Rings Hamsters) will always eventually fight. My Russian hamsters never fought. And these robos, who clearly do things together on purpose are the most social pets I've ever had. Like a pack of mini rotund doggies who squeak instead of bark.

CELINE DION: I was, of course, merely being provocative yesterday beginning my post with those uncompromising words. How could I ever have associated "Celine Dion" and "adventurousness" in the one sentence? In mitigation let me state it was on special offer. But nowhere near as forgivingly low as the £1 a disc Gnat King Coal cost me. I was attracted by that famous love theme from Titanic which I always thought had a haunting Scottish panpipes thing going on... though it did get played to death... Also Luciano Pavarotti appears pretending to be her 70 year old pasta-munching lover (ukk! Perish the thought!) ... Anyway, on hearing the record through I know now why, despite having seen Celine on television numerous times I had no memory of any of her songs... that is because they're all so forgettable! With one exception: track 3, titled Treat Her Like a Lady a really entertaining dancehall-influenced number in which Ms Dion affects a West Indian accent to a ragga-girls chorus... So much of this record is eminently forgettable. Which just begs the question who bought all those 15 million copies sold?

THE ROBOS ARE SAT UP FURRILY IN BED, nibbling those pink and green hamster-scones in a line. O! Now Bashful and Itchy are having a grooming fight. Spherical is eating a biscuit (no wonder she is spherical). O! Now she's gone in the corner for a poo. Either that or she's staring into space in a Zen-like moment of blank... Come morning they get their Maltesers tube back to hide in. But they are not allowed such diversions at night. Else they get too boring and never come out.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME I slept like a fallen tree earlier on... hours and hours and hours. It is very hot today (well, hot for here). I woke up parched... water more water... such raging thurst? Why?? Well I gotta go really it is too late now. All this post relates to Saturday not Sunday. Sunday is merely the technical day of posting as midnight's a near hour past...

righty-ho...

Louis Armstrong: Wonderful World (Live on TV)
Wonderful World Illustrated Video

Videos II (Sunday (there was no post on Sunday))

Thousand Hand Chinese Dance
Showing off to the Girl Next Door (parakeets and budgies) (I think it was screen II I specifically posted up...)

Bank Holiday Ugh!

I BOUGHT A CELINE DION ALBUM TODAY! But every time that love theme from Titanic, My Heart Will Go On, comes on, the Roborovskis scuttle off and hide in the Maltesers tube... has anyone got any idea why?? Also I'm sure I saw them looking green in the face and attempting to be sick earlier on when that Streisand duet, "Tell Him" came on... do you think they've got food poisoning? I wonder why they're behaving like this..??

Click here, btw, to see Itchy's life-size lookylikey... on someone's hand for scale... teeny-weeny...

Seriously though, talking about Robos, I've had to put in an urgent info request to AllExperts.Com seeking advice on what to do if Spherical actually does give birth... do I separate all the hamsters? Or just the male one, Itchy? Or what do I do..? My £4.99 picture book The Dwarf Hamster (translated from the Dutch De Dwerg Hamster is unrevealing on this point... in fact it's not much cop. Apart from some unflattering pictures of Chinese hamsters (the author had obviously never owned one) plus cute ones of winter whites, Campbells ("condensed hamsters") and robos... there's not much by way of info and they fall into stupid traps like saying "the (plastic) tunnels in some of those Hamster Paradise setups available from petshops are poorly ventilated"... what? More poorly ventilated than muddy ones dug in the cold earth? That they live in wild? I hardly think so..! They omitted even to mention that Russian Hamsters like to take dust baths... if I'd have known I'd have provided them with proper sand to roll in (sawdust made their coats horrible). I changed their cage litter to cat litter but wish I'd known they were rolling about for a reason. I just thought they were having itchy moments ...

Right: on to CDs. Yes! I did actually pay for a Celine Dion album. This is because I am rapidly becoming middle aged as my best years were misspent. (Well what else is youth for?!?) Also I got three Nat King Coles, which were called Unforgettable, Nature Boy and something like The Collection... at £1 each! All 1950s recordings. Plus a 1950s collection called simply Opera... I don't know why but the sound quality on this one is very wooly whereas Nat sounds like he's in the next room... fair enough the very top frequencies don't come out like they would on today's records but for 57 years ago I don't think it's bad... also I got an amazing 55 tracks for my money. In my opinion Nat King Cole is thee King of Crooners bar none. As for Celine it's called Let's Talk About Love and, as I say, had my hamsters running for the sick bucket...

Why all this rampant CD-collecting? I was spending money that would otherwise have gone on drugs. That's my new habit: attemptedly collecting Solid Things That Last... know what I mean?!?

Those robos do have a "complex social structure" with odd behaviours. If they were humans they would scurry away and hide behind the sofa every time the doorbell rang... when something startles them they scarper and hide in pyramid formation... always seemingly with Spherical at front (she is Mother Robbie), Itchy behind her and Bashful (of course) at the back. Only when Spherical makes a move forward do the others relax. I never saw my old Russian hamsters behaving in this way. Another odd thing they do looks like kissing. Then the more dominant hamster (it could be any one of the three at any time) kind of knocks the other one over and compulsorily washes its stomach and private parts:... I never saw the Russians doing that either! And there is nothing sexual in this... unless Bashful and Spherical are part-time lesbians (well, you never know...)

No big news. It's Bank Holiday weekend. Hmmmm. I have dreadful memories of August Bank Holiday. A few years ago I forced myself into all-night clubbing followed by the Notting Hill Carnival (which attracts a supposed 1.5 million visitors over 2 days making it one of the biggest carnivals in the world), had Jo-Rei healing and something along the lines; I don't know whether it was Jo-Rei or ecstasy or what it was, blew a gasket in my brains and I had a complete and utter breakdown of mind and body... lay in bed sweating bottles of white wine (well afterwards when I changed the sheets, that's what it appeared had been poured all over them)... and crying and unable to get up to do the slightest thing because I had an ear-labrynth infection and the room was spinning so... What a nighmare that was. Notting Hill Carnival? Never again!!

Clips of the Day:
From my favourite crooner ever, Nat King Cole - Mona Lisa ...
and
Bizarre Clip:
Japanese Man with Real Flesh TAIL!!

PS FOLLOWING YESTERDAY'S TAG... may I revise my shortlist to EVERYONE who reads this blog is HEREBY OFFICIALLY TAGGED. So unless you've done the Eight Random Things Tag there's no getting out of this one ... thank y'all and goodbye!

Eight Random Things About Me ++

JUNKY - FINALLY I ANSWERED YOUR TAGG!!

This took me ages to think up... until I walked about holding pen and paper for an hour or so earlier... (blank computer screen engenders psychic blankness in one like me. As my blog so duly testifies...)

1. I have written two books. Both are novels. One is 200,000 words and crap and about 20 MS pages are missing (thanks to an unnamed person who is not me); the other is totally handwritten, untyped and about addiction. I decided not to go ahead with editing it as will write my own memoirs instead

2. I "speak" four languages (arguably) (including English). These are French, German, Welsh and English. The Welsh is only conversational and because I did my secondary education in Welsh Wales where language classes were compulsory!

3. I used to have pet prawns in a fishtank along with fishes, a giant snail and a frog.

4. I once travelled from Carmarthen in West Wales to Marrakech in Southern Morocco and back entirely by train and boat

5. I can touch type a good 60 wpm ++(why? Because I once wanted to be a journalist and knew that whatever career path I followed, computers were the way of the future.. so why not learn to keyboard "properly"??

6. In my life I have been Christian, Hindu (Siddha Yoga), Buddhist, Pagan and back to Christian. Never have I been agnostic, apart from the early days of my heroin love affair

7. Aparently I have the same voice as Usher. (Isn't Usher a rapper? Wow. Big deal then.)

8. I am going to permanently stop using drugs ...

...AND I TAG...

Akelamalu
Audrey
Bimbimbie
Chipper
Jungle Jane
Kahshe Cottager
Merle
Peed off Patricia (Morning Martini)
Puss-in-Boots
Sadgirl
Wayward (Crystal Clean) Son...
and
Welshcakes Limoncello

Rules are: you write out eight random facts about yourself and tag eight others...

I tagged nine* because I wanted to torture Chipper* as well...

*OK I got carried away. And did more than nine...

O! And Roborovski news: I caught Itchy attemptedly raping Spherical again last night... thankfully he is getting very tame (unlike the other two) which is good as he's going to have to live in solitary if too many babies appear. Poor swine. I wonder if he would get on with Chinese? Probably not and I don't want to risk blood and hamster guts on the wood shavings ...

I'm not sure Spherical and Bashful (who is rapidly becoming spherical) are pregnant yet. But they surely will be once Itchy's balls drop (which they haven't yet.) But I know for a fact he is a boy because he has a pink dot and a pink patch. Girls never have any proof positive for being female... just two tiny holes you can bearly see...

So let's "see" what happens ...

***

Hey my Google word verification (bc I used to post too much) is "pigorsy"... what a word... Maybe I will pass that name to one of my baby robbies if and when they arrive ...

***

TUNE OF THE DAY: Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman - Somethin' Stupid

entertainment clip: Finding Amy Winehouse... short film by Leeds Uni students ... I've not seen this through myself I have to admit so I'm unsure whether they do find her ..!

Shrink Result: Spherical Error?

PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT II THIS MORNING. Result. Have been depressed in past. Not depressed now (wahey!!) Had psychotic episode caused or not helped by crack over a year ago. Have strong obsessional streak to personality. Also prone to paranoia sometimes (but do not have paranoid personality). Verdict: never use cannabis or crack again. Stop heroin which is what I want anyhow. Ta-da-da-da-daaaaargh!!

Re the hamsters, I am pretty sure Spherical and Bashful are girls. Bashful is also starting to look markedly spherical too so it's difficult to tell them apart. Itchy (so called because he has been obsessively washing his back) is dead easy to tell apart.... not only the manically wet back fur he is tiny compared to the other two. And has a suspicious pink patch underneath. (I got him to stand on an empty CD case.)

So even if there's no babies on the way now... there soon may well be unless I do anything about this...

Itchy is far tamer than the other two. I was trying to train Spherical to walk on my hands. Which she does with great reluctance. (Roborovskis are extremely flighty animals and often never get as tame as ordinary dwarf hamsters. That's just what they're like and I knew this before I got them.) I want her as calm as possible in case she does have babies. It would not do to have a panicking mother dashing about threatening to eat her offspring (which is what they do under stress). Bloody cannibals. All will tolerate me putting my hand down among them without running away: they just come up and sniff it. But none of them actually seems to enjoy being handled and Itchy is so tiny. He's about 1cm shorter than the other two, who come from my fingertip to the second joint of my index finger. About 6cm long or just short of 2 inches...

Hey have a look at the ballbusting entertainment clip I posted today. This is a man hitting a note so high it is off the piano keyboard. Beneath it we have a woman "singing" in the octave above soprano top C upto "G7" in musical nomenclature. I just put this up to prove Mariah Carey is not unusually talented, and this "whistle register" to me sounds horrible and that is not merely a criticism of pitch: I've heard garden birds who sing even higher than Mr Lopez but their voices are sublimely beautiful. Far more than a hypersonic car-alarm screech..!

Contrasted at the top is Barbra Streisand: real singing!

Many thanks Kahshe for this tip: Hampster Dance Website

Today's Videos Were
Streisand: Papa Can You Hear Me
Streisand: Evergreen

Highest ever male voice: Australia's Adam Lopez
Highest human voice ever: Brazil's Georgia Brown

Pregnant?

NOW I AM CONFUSED... is the hamster preggers or not? "She" is definitely bigger and rounder than the other two. If she gets on the wheel when another one's on it, the other one is forced to loop the loop by her very weightiness... Because these animals are so very wild and flighty (it is an achievement just to get them to walk on you, let alone stand still - and even then they're only looking for a chance to jump off) it's been almost impossible to sex them and very hard to establish whether Spherical really is with children or just bigger ... or (this only struck me today) from another litter and thus older. I have no idea and only time will tell. If she really is pregnant surely she will get bigger and bigger as days pass? Then again I once caught a pregnant mouse... had no idea that she was till she actually gave birth. (This was when our house was utterly overrun with mice. I thought if I keep the babies and somehow tame them I can have free pets. (The mice they sell in pet shops, and for that matter the ones they use in labs are only domesticated wild house mice.) But it didn't work that way: all the babies (the size and colour of baked beans) died within about five hours.)

I tried to answer a tag earlier (8 random things about me) but had to stop after two. Firstly I was hungry, but to be honest I couldn't think of any random things. Surely I have posted all? I suppose I could cheat and use my wild mouse breeding thing as point three....

By the way: am I a philistine or has Mariah Carey NOT got an amazing voice? I was quite shocked to hear she had won some MTV poll as "greatest voice of all time" - please no! That horrible breathy fluttery sound... applied to "trendy" R&B "roots" that she doesn't have... plus high notes with all the magical timbre of a dog whistle. Please! No no no!!

***

Vids of the day were
1. Bryan Adams - Heaven
2. African Dwarf Aquarium-dwelling Frog

Robo Hammies

TODAY I WENT ON AN EXTREME MISSION.... my quest began with my phoning all over town ... nobody had them. Shop in Kensington wanted £35 for a pair but they're out of stock till next week... eventually found somewhere right the other side of town that says they sell Robohammies... it took me three bus rides each way... £23 for a bundle of furry entertainment. Man they are so fast! Unstoppable, uncatchable. They do make an entertaining ornament. When they get startled (which means any movement, any noise, anything at all right now, they assume this pyramid formation, each hiding behind another. And probably the same one that voluntarily ran onto my hand, up my arm and dropped onto the floor and scarpered for half an hour being always the one at the front... At the moment they're running the wheel, two in one direction, the other faces the other way and gets spun round and round (it's a wire wheel so he or she can cling on), he is biting at the wire with his nose.... Come to think of it I haven't a clue what sex(es) these critters are or whether they're a mixture. I did notice the one that's tamest towards me keeps climbing on one of the other's backs and that this one looks kind of rounder and more tubby... I wonder why THAT could be! If you want to see what robohammies look like they're on today's youtube screen. But if this is tomorrow click here for a look... film doesn't show up how tiny they are...

This fantastic docu has just been on Radio 4 where a man in a studio randomly calls payphones all over the world and records the resulting dialogues. It was absolutely entrancingly fascinating. If you want to hear it, click here for Radio 4 Listen Again and select Don't Hang Up.

STOP PRESS: when I just tried it Don't Hang Up (which was a repeat) wasn't in Listen Again's Listings... maybe if you try later they'll have got their act together enough to have added it

STOP PRESS 2: try it, click on my listen again link and find "Don't Hang Up" it's right there now. .. well worth a listen if you want something "different" to spew through your computer... you probably can change sites and go bloghopping without losing the soundtrack (usually) though this isn't guaranteed it's happened to me loads of times

These were the videos of the day
Glenn Miller: Moonlight Serenade
"My 3 Robohammies"

Swizzly Sunday

SWIZZLY SUNDAY... Sunday morning... Sunday: lost day... I don't know!... Do you? Do you think my Mum knows I'm still using? She always talks about it in past tense... I feel so ashamed... That's why things must change.

I have been working on my alcohol consumption. I've cut my drinking in half within a couple of days. Do you know what did the trick? I took up drinking tea for breakfast instead. Because (looking back) I just realized I had been drinking nothing but white cyder for breakfast, luncheon and dinner and everything in between and afterwards! Nothing but cyder. No wonder I felt under the weather some days.

Yesterday I found myself sitting with all the drinkers at the bus stand outside a local supermarket. Only two were there, these two are the nearest to friends I have among that bunch. When I did used to hang out with street people (well: at one point, I was one) it was the junkies. But there are no street junkies left anymore. Only the shoplifters, theives, rip-off artists and prostitutes. No "crustie" street junkies after the 1990s fashion (army surplus clothing, dredlocks/halfheads/shaven/punky colours, dogs on strings) seem to be left. Many are dead. Others have gone back to Scotland and Ireland (we had a huge Celtic contingent) ... one or two have cleaned up. But it is just one or two ...

Anyway this lady I struck up conversation with said I looked so much better than last time. Shame about her. In a way she did look good (nice and clean. Hair recently cut and neat. She had a touch of makeup on and nice clothes considering.) But she was vague and staring into space. I mentioned something about the time I got hit by a truck and had concussion for a week. She grabbed my hand and put it on a long stitched up cut lump on the back of her head - surely about 20 stitches were there - and told how she'd just got discharged from hospital after perhaps four days. But everything she said was a bit vague... Then an Irishman who I know quite well showed up. When people wonder which Irishman I'm talking about I tend to say "he has really blue eyes"... thing is they all have intense blue eyes no matter what the hair colour. Real blue, sometimes ringed with white. (Not like my mongrel English eyes: bluey-green with circles of what someone once poetically put as "brimstone" - yellow bits round the pupil. See now you can pick me out in an identity parade!) Anyway: thing about this guy is, I've seen him reeling all over the pavements and falling and burbling and calling out... Now he is stone cold sober and all the better for it. Quite amazing. During our encounter she ran off and reappeared with a pair of large white "England" trainers (sneakers). They fit me fine. So that's what I'm wearing now... Whoever threw them away was a trainer-snob because they're hardly worn-out. But maybe they're last season: who knows?

Music playing is Amy Winehouse Back to Black. I slept with this on constant replay. This is what made me feel upset the other morning... Sometimes music goes right under into subconscious.

Thanks, Wayward especially for your dream interpretation. My "holiday camp" prison dream. Where the "jail" seemed so easy to escape from ... to any outside observer ... but of course escape was near impossible. Every time I tried I was fished back inside by (as I recall) invisible forces. Yes of course that symbolizes my addiction. And the fact that though anyone can sympathize with addiction because we're all dependent on different things to differing degrees you cannot begin to comprehend chemical dependency unless you've witnessed it first hand ... or more to the point, lived it yourself...

Yesterday I went to the fish shop where they had a tropical fish "bowl"... I use the word bowl advisedly, since technically it was bowl-shaped but if you're thinking goldfish bowl think again. This held 45 litres of water (about 12 gallons) and came complete (in glass) with heater, filter and light. When the woman saw it was me enquiring she was so dismissive; I thought f--- you and left. I've given up on the idea of fish in my present residence anyway (though I could still have dwarf frogs: two can live in as little as 1.5 gallons (6 litres!) water; they don't need a filter and aparently, providing your home is warm enough the temperature will be high enough... Anyway... no fish for me yet. I have decided to use the tank for Robo Hamsters (Roborovskis). They are social hamsters about the size and nearly as round as pompoms on wooly hats. They ping about all over ... they don't bite, they live long... My present Chinese hammy is fine he is just so shy there's nothing to see of him! So it's robos for me... of course if I do get them this blog will never hear the end of it ....

OK I better go:
These are the vids I pasted today
Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
and
The Aurora Australis ("Southern Lights") - aren't they cool??

Early Saturday Morn...

FIVE THIRTY-EIGHT A.M. And the beat goes on... How could I ever have been so naive as to hang my hopes for improvement on my fledgling music collection? It's only flately that I realized that subconsciously perhaps I was expecting something slightly more from these silvery CDs I've been so avidly collecting than a little musical diversion. As if they were going to magically lift my spirits to soar. As if they alone were going to change my life anew... How very teenage... How very sad... How very me...!

Music does have a mood-enhancing or mood-altering effect of course. That's one of the chief reasons people listen to it. By surrounding myself with sounds that, to me, have no druggie connotations, I had assumed that my quest for clean would be somehow eased. But that's not how it's been.... It's not an unreasonable assumption to have made. I just think I set rather too much store on music's therapeutic powers. they just don't seem to be working as strongly as I'd hoped!

In my room I have a fan whirring. And when a certain substance that starts with shuh and rhymes with bit finally hits it this autumn... That is when I've scheduled clean.

There; I've told you now.

In my head I have a schedule, complete with activities. And this time (for reasons I cannot explain but have no say in) - there is no breaking it.

I've threatened myself with everything, up to and including death, for breaking former resolutions. Nothing has worked. For months and years they lay in smithereens forlornly at my feet, a testament to broken promises, and, to quote a cliche: broken dreams. Now all remnants of that past are swept away.

So to paraphrase Marianne Faithfull (again*): It's up to me. I just have to make it.

***

(* I quoted Marianne Faithfull a post or two ago.)

***

Today's vids:

Leftfield: Release The Pressure
Northern Lights Display

Marathon Prison Dream

MARATHON SLEEP after such a strenuous outing yesterday evening! Yes: I slept a good twelve hours or more, finally awakening after two pm. You know when you deliberately lie in and keep milking a few extra minutes' sleep out of it... and then waking up... and then sleeping again and sleeping again and so on.... And I had such nightmares! Starting with a giant adder (viper) with zigzagging black squares on its back. And nightmares on a sunny day ... And on to my old familiar theme of attempted escaping from prison. As per usual the prison was like a glorified holiday camp in the grounds of an ancient castle and anyone looking in from outside would have said: what's the big problem with getting out from there. But I did have massive troubles getting free with countless invisible agents tracking me down across green leisurely football fields etc and I got put in a chaingang of retarded soccer players .... Hmmm. Prison. No bars to be seen. Appears no problem at all escaping from until you try it... I wonder what that symbolizes in my life??

I kept dreaming this dream on and on until eventually when I did awake I was shivery and exhausted and perturbed and it was late.

I really don't know what else to say about it.

Except I'm off to get some value stuffed mushroom tortelloni from Sainsbury's now so wish me luck....

Cheerio!

PS Videos of the day: I put Enya up for Debs ... Enya: Exile and
American College Students' Paul McArtney and Michael Jackson Girl is Mine vid

***

Link of the Day:
News of the World (from last Sunday)
Amy Winehouse lifts lid on recent drugs overdose

Meeting Mother

JUST AFTER FOUR PM I met my Mum and her Brian just off Picadilly Circus (no clowns, elephants, trapeze artists or dwarves shooting out of canons - it's merely a glorified traffic circle with humungous video screens glinting and flashing high up the sides of otherwise elegant stucco buildings).

We went into a nearby restaurant where they had nachos and cheese and I had a Siamese green curry that smacked of some kind of lime pickle type substance. It was rather pleasant.

When Brian said, "Shall we get a re-ocka?" I said OK - not realizing he meant Rioja. Which I'd always pronounced "Ree-Oh-Jah". No wonder I used to get such funny looks down the wine merchants'.

We talked about: Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen, tropical fishes, cigarette smoke, France (where they have a cottage) compared with Britain (it is much better, especially the health service), the French proclivity for sunbathing beside and swimming in inland freshwater lakes as an alternative to the seaside and whether or not I should pretend to be a retarded English as third language asylum seeker with a rape conviction and surname Ndebe to assist job applications at local Council. (Concencus was: if I do, I'll get job with flying colours. I'll just have to pretend to be albino.) And so on and so on.

Afterwards they vanished into the tube while I perused a giant Virgin Records store (almost as big as some provincial department stores), which was full of Chinese tourists (Japanese tourists are so passe these days) - who all seemed totally conversant with e.g. how to scan CD's barcode into a headphones dispenser which then played any track you wanted to hear from said CD... with no need to insert CD into any machine... (all tracks of all CDs were evidently on some central "system"). All this newfangledness made me feel extraordinarily elderly. When I walked into a record shop last week for the first time in about seven years I was so not with it I got confounded: "Why so many film soundtracks?" Until a member of staff helpfully pointed out that I was in fact perusing the DVDs and not CDs. "Well they're all silver discs," I retorted. But didn't dare speak this thought aloud. Feeling like a pensioner I hobbled over to the actual music section.... Anyway, today I walked out of Virgin with a £5 copy of Leftfield's Leftism - which is one of thee best albums of the 1990s. Shoplifting was such a temptation as the CDs were in the cases and half the staff looked like drug addicts anyhow. Until I glanced 'cross the floor to a burly store-D's icy gaze which prompted my quick scurry to the front tills...

Aparently I can keep fish in the Chinese hammy's tank (he would go in next door's recycling box: they never use it). The tank is designed for fish and fully waterproof but only holds a paultry 7 gallons/27 litres. I can have ten diddy fish in there. I thought the remnants of hammy's wee and pooze would kill them off but aparently not so if I soak it out in a strong brine solution for three days... All I'd need then is an airpump (£10), box filter (£5) and heater (£20) and a bit of glass to stop the frog escaping and wahey! There has to be a frog... And a giant snail ("apple snail") and a couple of shrimps... Which leaves room for ... not many fish but hey. (The shrimps are transparent but well funky. They are sold by the bagful as live goldfish food so I'd probably get two for 10p if not for free...)

Is it really boring when I babble on about pets all the time?

O by the way: thanks for all your messages re: I do not have anything wrong with me; lots of people get inertia at various times.

In her autobiography, Marianne Faithfull declares that she became almost paralysed by apathy and will-less-ness at her addiction's lowest depths. She also said that she knew to stop when the pain of living with drugs came to exceed the pain of living without. In an interview she subsequently stated: "I'd tried to kill myself and it hadn't worked," (she fixed up all the heroin she had, fell down the stairs in an overdosed state and broke her jaw but lived;) "I realized that I was just going to have to make it."

Which is pretty much how I feel.

***

Debs: in answer to your query, the music to which today's Diana tribute was set is by Enya. Who was originally lead singer of Clannad. I will post up one of her best tunes tomorrow...

***

Hey did no-one watch or like the teenage kid's alternative video to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive?

***

O BTW here's my blog recommendation of the day: Muench Bunch News

Such a Day

HOW DO I START A DAY after such a confusing night?? I fell asleep with Amy Winehouse's Back to Black CD on repeat play and so kept waking in the night with the funkiest jazzy sighs and screams and well-produced strings sections perturbing my consciousness. One of the songs made me cry all morning. I am seeing my mother this afternoon. Of course that has no connexion.

Yesterday I did a tiny bit of crack and felt so dreadful afterwards... CD player and everything nearly went flying out the window... All life's music and dance killed stone dead. By the crack...

Poor Amy Winehouse is all over the Sun newspaper today. I was going to write about her yesterday in fact. The Mirror was claiming an exclusive "Amy's in rehab in America" while the Victoria Newton, The Sun's entertainment columnist vehemently disagreed; insisting she was in rehab but in the UK; in Essex. The poor girl has really been through the mill. I'm sure carving out a career as a (highly talented) funky jazz singer she never expected in a million years to be "gracing" the covers of this nation's tabloids. But that's where they've all put her. Her husband, a goodlooking guy called Blake Fielder-Civil obviously means the world to her (you can see this plainly in their photographs) but the press are deadset against him, claiming he is ruining her and it is he who has turned her on to drugs. The news now is that Amy is a heroin and crack addict. She and blake had a crisis meeting with their families last weekend during which they had to strip to prove they weren't using needles. Amy's father wants her away from Blake, so the papers say. Even Amy's "caring" manager (and it's unusual for the Sun newspaper to use a term like that for anyone in the music bizniss) is supremely worried about her... so the allegation goes...

I like Amy Winehouse. I don't want to see her self-destruct. I was even going to write to her in rehab but something told me to hold off a day and I'm glad I did: the letter would never have got through.

Don't kill yourself Amy!

Why is it those who bring beauty into the world seem to lead such ugly lives?

I don't know... I really don't know

Well these are my video clips of the day:

Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive
and a original soundtrack one-man remake vid - highly recommended
and the other clip:
Princess Diana tribute

OK I gotta get myself ready shortly. Gotta see my Mum

Fallen. Rise.

FALLEN? FALLING? RISING (HOPEFULLY). WOTEVA - O! Gimme some sweet inspiration!

THIS MORNING was my scheduled appointment with the nice lady from the Council (who technically are my landlords) re my rent arrears. These have peaked at a shocking level. I highlight the word "peaked" as no way can they ascend any higher from here. I dare not disclose the number either because it is shocking and shameful.

Well I crawled in ther like a depressed water snail and when the lady came down she couldn't see me for ages. We couldn't get a private room and so sat between partitions for this meeting, during which she said mercifully little. There's nothing to say; it's all been said before. When my memoirs finally do come out I'm dedicating them to her because it's only her personal kindness that has kept me of the streets. She could easily have had me removed for running up arrears that ridiculously huge.

Thankfully I wasn't asked any whys or wherefores. I hate excuses and bles the fact that I wasn't pressed to give any. I now have a brand new rent book and so no excuses from here on in.

I smoked so many cigarettes before and after (but not during!) this meeting.

Hey I got a Sly and the Family Stone CD for £2 the other day. It is so phunkie, seriously.

Right now it is raining and I gotta go. Brollies and cars splashing outside. A massive red London bus just trundled by. Righty-ho ...

These are me clips of the day:
Music
Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer
Other
Thai Cookery: Satay, Peanut Sauce. Mmmm.