All Creatures Great and Small

(THOSE SHOWN HERE ARE CRITTERS COMMONLY KEPT AS PETS)... bottom left we have an African Pygmy Mouse which is even smaller than a harvest mouse, being about 3cm long... bottom right a Roborovski Hamster of course... about 6cm long but much rounder in the body; these are the smallest hamsters in the world (and the least tame!) TOP: is Hercules, the world's largest dog... in comparison (as you can see ~ duh!) with a horse!... he is an English Mastiff, just like my legendary (and fictional) Gwendolina... the slavering hellhound who chews dolls and pram wheels and bays at the kitchen light...

Have an entertaining day folks!!

STOP PRESS!
I've just heard that Hercules dog is CGI! Looking closely he does have a slightly shiny outline so... here's a new photo (white dog, top) of another "world's largest dog"... Moose... who weighs 286lbs...

***

PS: If you want to see some real Russian "роборовски"s, clickonthatRussianword...

Watch the Best of British TV...

THE BBC HAVE JUST LAUNCHED THEIR SO-CALLED I-PLAYER, an online VCR type device that allows you to view any of their major TV programmes within a week of first airing.

To use it, go to:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

... select what you want ... and view on your computer.

This should work anywhere in the world - ye expats out there! If it doesn't, please let me know .... many thanks...

ps: if you're really stuck for something to pick; click "categories", choose "drama" ~ select Holby City or Eastenders....

***

OK re "MARS PICTURES"... THIS is what Ruth told me to look at... it's a humanoid "person"-type figure on Mars as photographed by Nasa...

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...

***

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

Winehouse Crack "Shocker"!

POOR AMY WINEHOUSE! Caught piping crack by the sneaky Sun newspaper's undercover exposee team and now splashed over four million copies of that newspaper's front pages...

I always found it difficult to credit that Amy, a self-avowed heroin and crack addict one minute could jet off on holiday to the Caribbean with hubby Blake Fielder-Civil the next and return home miraculously non-addicted. I just didn't believe it.

Her husband is a goodlooking if slightly spivvy-seeming guy and she obviously worships the very ground he walks on.

In fact, if you listen to Amy's CDs her weakness (long before drugs) always seems to have been men. Not just sexually; I mean that she appears to be one of those women who at first glance appears to be strong. Independent. Assertive. And yet her whole existence, her self-esteem and everything seems to be held not by herself, but in her man's hand. To me this is a real weakness.

When the story of Amy and Blake's excessive drug using hit the papers, the blame seemed to be passed to Blake by most of the press. I am not sure this is true, as Amy was heavy drinking for months before she got married to this guy.

But having been in a druggie relationship myself (how do you think my habit kicked off the ground?) I know how two people fixated on drugs can very easily use the other as their own excuse to use. That's why rehabs often "try to split couples up" ~ if you know about addiction you will hear this allegation time and again. It's done for a reason: unless you're unusually focused and strong, as I said, relationships where drugs have played a prominent role have an uncanny habit of returning to that situation...

Now, with her man in prison (accused of assault and attempting to "pervert the course of justice" ~ ie to bribe or otherwise nobble a witness in the forthcoming assault trial) and her British tour cancelled (because she "can't do it without her man") Amy's spinning out into an ever-decreasing spiral of drugs, drink and depravity.

Speaking as an addict who's seen it time and time again I'm long past the assumption that just because someone is using heroin (as she WAS) and crack (as she IS) they are "going to die". We're all going to die and some addicts can live a long long time. But having seen Amy's frailty, her weakness and her dependency ~ not just on alcoholic and chemical fixes but on her man and the flybynight "friends" who seem to fill her home, I must admit it's very sad. I see a woman with a rare talent who's doing all she can to mess up her career (cancelling live engagements ~ you can't do that! Those gigs represent birthdays, anniversaries etc you can't just walk out of a booking because you'd rather have a drink! Whatever happened to "the show must go on!"? To mess up her life. And yes, I hate to say this, but if you're a fan of Amy Winehouse, then try to appreciate her while she's still here ...

because I'm really not sure how long she's going to last...

***

Today's screen:
Winehouse Smoking Crack

***

Fascinating never-b4-found addict blog of the day:
MANTRAMINE ~ "the art of being" ...

Authorship: Harvest Mouse Ship!

PEEPING IN AT MY HAMMIES on Sunday afternoon, imagine my surprise ~ between the two Parmesan tubes ~ to spot a gargantuan ball of fur with three faces. Yes! The tiny trotters had set up a nest out in broad daylight. Between those twin bed-come-"toilet" tubes; right underneath the waterbottle. All three in a row, blinking dumbly at me in late afternoon's sheer sunshine; Itchy, perhaps, might take to licking at the bottle. Bashful, by natural instinct, joins in. They look so funny there, a symmetrical pair of robbies licking simultaneusly at their mouse-bottle. Then Spherical really does clamber across the room for a poopoo and climbs straight back home on top of the other two... The tubby pair just close eyes as pink paws tread over ~ they're quite used to this. And so my furry pyramid, eyes open, ears pricked up alertly up top, two thirds slumbers, one third washes self. Looking so entertaining, it's a strain not to laugh in their treble-faces. (See top photo to see how their sleepy pile appears...) Such cackles must be restrained, else my tiny tubbies can get offended and scared.

What they do like is a poke from a fried-ricey chopstick-end. Unlike Naughty - my rottweilerien former snow white Campbells Condensed Russian hamster, who used to grab said stick with arms and jaws and perform a trick by allowing self to be picked up and waved around the room as he savaged into the hapless wood with assertive teeth... These present whiskery gremlins grab half-heartedly, or stare in asonishment and the MSG-and-eggs ponging end and nibble as it comes close enough... And of course, now and then take horror and ping off in astonishment to tentatively sniff out of hidey-toilet-tubes with quivery fat pink noses. The swines!

And how am I? Thankful for the interminable weekend's eventual end. Druing which I ran so totally out of money I didn't even have the other 30p to add to 29p to purchase cyder not-on-tick yesterday...

On Satruday nite I was happy since I found a clingfilmed lump ~ a £10 deal of crack! ~ on our front doorstep! That really made my night.

I scrawled out a single halfbaked stanza, a "quatrain" ~ four lines of a 14-line attempted sonnet about heroin adiction. On reperusal next night I found it wasn't actually so very terrible. So I'm sticking with the attempted poetry. Because I love poetry. I think I have an ear for it @ a real ear for it; a facility @ and not so very many people do. Poetry is a high art. And merifully compact enough for me; hopefully ~ eventually ~ to churn out & be able to declare: look! A polished, all-completed Work of Art. By me!! What a blast THAT would be!

I haven't pushed any further with my book of memoirs yet, however. I had riginally hoped to have completed draft one by now: I can't though. I need to finish my book. I see it as my passport out of this drudgesome morass of a cess-heap ruined, bombed-out, self-destructed void of a life...

When done; once out there, my book shall declare:~

1. that I have talent enough to warrant taking seriously as an Artist in the Literary Sphere, and

2. it shall hopefully accrue me advance finances enough to pay my way through express detox (which costs several thousand pounds) ~ plus buy me a multimedia Apple laptop and all the facilities I need not only to wordprocess, but to document my life in audiovisual clips. These I would collect either to youtube or to put towards a wizzy selfmade documentary of myself or both. Or summut like... and... be able to pay rent on at least a 1-bed preferably (bc I could do with the space) 2-bed flat ... (or even better get a £5 million advance and be able to buy a pokey flat outright (well that's all you get for £5 million in London these days...)...


3. most obviously, basically of all ~ authorship sets me, at long last, on the road to a proper and fulfilling career...! (Yes it does!)

TA-daa! And now I must go! I do hope y'all loved Saturday's harvest mouse montage. MICROMYS MINUTUS ~ I love that Latin! ~ a very teeny-tiny-mini-mousie... how can you get cuter than that~?!?

PS How's everybody like my new "avatar"... I got fed up with tiny nervous roborovsky baby on hand; I tried to be tubby old "I ran 10,k00 miles/16,000 kilometres ~ as far as Paris to New Delhi in my 3.5 human years/120 hamster years too-brief-lifetime Pandable! But poor Pandable wouldn't take... so I'm a tiny gingery harvest mouse instead ...


ps Take a peek at the top pic to see how the dismantled pile of mass-groomers appears ... don't the robos look gremlin-like..??

☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆

☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆.¸¸.☆*´¨`*☆

this is a really good photoblog: joannwalraven.blogspot.com

Pleasant Weekend Harvest Mice; Back Monday

A HAPPY WEEKEND EVERYONE!

AS PER USUAL my time has nearly gone... and I probably won't be back on"line" till Monday... so for the time being I'll leave you with these furry harvest mice....

Better and Sublime

HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS RATHER fanciful image of a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger? Because yes I think I am better! And I ate one last night (though it was nowhere near as ripe and towering as the image suggests...) ... also, being part of the "poundsaver" menu those cost £1.19 here (up from 99p) which translates as $2.50 at the worst exchange rate... somewhere around $2.15 now (I think...)

Is it true in America they cost just $1~?!? For a double cheeseburger, that is..?

Wow. How come EVERYTHING seems to be cheaper State"side"..?

I have consumed 1x500ml can cyder 7.5%ABV today, 1x500ml Coca Cola and 1xplate MSG-style eggfried rice... plus I know I shouldn't have done this but I was thirsty: I drank a litre of value orange juice and suffered no worse effects than some slight bloating. All the guttering gurgling inner mud-boiling gallumphing has gone and thank God! Hurrah!!

(The skylark you'll see why if you scroll down to the "pome" at the bottom; the micromys minutus European harvest mouse I just put in because it looks cute ...

*

I NOTICED MY THREE GREMLINS all up and zipping about at midday today. Their bodyclocks have become confused by my proclivity for hiding them under a bedsheet during daylight hours (from Evilstein's prying eyes) and opening them up to common gaze at night. Which means, being contrary little swines that they are, they've taken to sleeping at night and waking up by daytime which in Outer Mongolia, where they come from, would surely get them killed.

Anyway imagine my surprise when I suddenly witnessed a parmesan tube dancing about of its own accord. Standing in before it, ears up like a transfixed Porkshire terrier was Itchy. I have never seen her in a state of such astonishment. Turned out Spherical had got her head stuck while climbing in and was shaking the entire tub up and down in a hilarious attempt to remove it ...(!)

*

Now:~ speaking of sublime things, here is the dead poet Shelley's yodel; sorry "ode" to a tweetling birdie:~~

To a Skylark

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert—
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden light'ning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight—

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:—

Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embower'd
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-wingèd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers—
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Match'd with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt—
A thin wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

by Percy "Bushy" Shelley

Videos:
1. Mozart: Requiem
2. Mozart: Requiem Tranced Up

Put A Cork In It

I WOULD IF I COULD, BUT I HAVEN'T any spares lying around and besides, I don't drink wine so I'm not wasting the money...

I thought I felt a bit better last night. Then a dreaded rumbling, gluttering gurge 'gan to bubble up somewhere ominously deep inside me...

I slept soulfully quiet....

BUT MY ท้อง "TONG" IS STILL VERY MUCH เสีย "SIIA?"!

And the diarrhoea made a spiteful repeat attack early this morn!

Curry sauce was spraying out everywhere....

All I've eaten in the past 24 hours was a small portion of MSG-fried rice and some dry handfuls of chocolate wheatie breakfast cereals... I've not dared drink water, though I know I should. As I just thought it might add "thunder" to the "rotting Niagra Falls" of the morning...

Paging down my blog I was astonished at how very much of it is food-inspired. And pictures of hamsters. Frankly all that cuisine's making me feel sick.

In desperation I turned to the works of Shakespeare on my bed of death: I've so far gone through Macbeth and half the sonnets and am shovelling my way through Antony and Cleopatra.

Then, feeling inspired, I attempted to write a poem of my own...

... but it was just a load of crap!

FROM THE NEWS:
BRITNEY SPEARS: "suicide runs in family" story of tragic gran
TIME TO GO BACK TO BLACK, AMY: Winehouse's hair "looks like pig's bed"
STURGEON GOES ON AND ON: 2 Brit anglers land 10-ft fish

THANKS ~ EVERYONE ~ FOR YOUR MESSAGES OF PERSONAL CONDOLENCE...

I had some drinks with Laundretta this afternoon in strict contravention of "how to treat diarrhoea" though since this morning's spite it has shown no sign of a splurging return...

... I showed her this story: I fell in love with MARCO, the Brazillian escort my boyfriend booked,... and she was laughing her head off...


***

Videos of the last 2 days...

Bodysnatch Euphony Just 4u London
Zefirelli Romeo and Juliet (1st sonnet)
Faust

***

MORE NEWS EXTRA!
VIOLENT GERMAN YOUTH SENT TO SIBERIA! For nine months' "intensive educational experience"... (is this 2008? or 1958..??)
GEORGE MICHAEL TO WRITE OWN MEMOIRS SHOCKER! The "superstar" has signed a deal with HarperCollins worth $7 million US of which $6 million covered "British rights", or, more probably, "those areas of the world traditionally covered by British publishers" which means everywhere in English except the United States... plus, that's right! ~ he's fully intending to pen the entire manuscript himself...

... and then rely on a hard-bitten HarperCollins editor to pull the entire thing into some vaguely publishable shape on the company wordprocessor...

o!

and I nearly forgot this cracker from last Sunday's News of the World:
INSIDE THE DEN OF EVIL: soccer star's dad's drugs and vice shame
with full pictures inside the crackhouse
(must say, the "punters" are far more glam-looking than at the crackhouse I used to visit...)

ps I just found out the average purity of nasty British heroin is 39.9% I find that hard to believe...

Porkie Baby Itchy/ท้องเสีย~Diarrhoea Attack

MY BOWELS ARE AFFLICTED!
I SEEM TO HAVE COME DOWN with the diarrhoeary norovirus that has afflicted around three million people in Britain so far ... no vomiting in my case just the most horrific diarrhoea. I barely had the confidence to step foot outside even this afternoon after a trotting morning of it... whatever could be the cause (apart from the virus that, seriously, has his 1 in 20 in this country so far and is so widespread that doctors' surgeries up and down the country are advising people not to come in with it unless it's extremely severe or has been splurging out for more than a week. Also, unusually, they recommended people quarantine themselves and not try coming into work (how could you? without leaving splattering puddles of "curry sauce" behind you?) ... in their national attempt to stem the diarrhoea's over-eager "flow".
Either that, or it's that dodgy blackbean sauce I got reduced to 37p a jar last night ...

BABBY ITCHY LOOKS JUST LIKE A PORKSHIRE TERRIER this afternoon. Her fur's been all bashed up and licked to sogginess by the other two in their bizarre robo-compulsory-grooming-on-the-youngest ritual.
I sought for them in vain this afternoon. Not in the teabox. Not in any tubes.... I honestly thought they'd escaped. Until I realized all three were packed inside one small Parmesan cheese tube. Probably they'd kidnapped Itchy in there and were using it as their hideout as they groomed her to death....

TALKING ABOUT DEATH I don't feel so very far away from it's hallowed "door" so I had better go before yet more urgent splurging occurs!

Till tomorrow folks -

and good health!!

PS The Thai term for diarrhoea is ท้องเสีย tong siia?- which means literally "the stomach has gone rotten"!

Apostomus: income, then practice virtue

Newspaper Gremlins/Cheap Blackbean Sauce

THE TAPIR PICTURE IS SPECIALLY FOR SOMEONE WHO IS IN PAIN AND DEPRESSED.

THE GREMLINS HAD AN EXCITING TIME LAST NIGHT, because I cleaned them out with them still in the tank, pinging this a-way and thatta way. As handful after handful of weewee-ponging woodchips were excavated, secret stashes of seeds suddenly came to light, revealing all manner of exciting scents to the tiny tubbies who rushed up to pack their pouches with this forgotten treasure. The tearaways were so excited - roaring up and down; hiding in tubes. Poking pink noses out. Too excited to wait - scampering back. Packing pouches yet again. Forgetting to empty them out and wondering about looking like oversized furry chicken nuggets. Once I'd thrown out that soiled lot of woodchips that was that for "professional" litter so they're reduced to living on newspaper for the time being. A large picture of Amy Winehouse lies under their wheel. I've always thought Winehouse's old hair looked like a rats' nest. & now it's closer than ever to actually being one.

As for me - I found blackbean sauce reduced to clear 37p a 440ml jar this afternoon. I was so excited I went into near oriental meltdown. OK: slight exaggeration but I did "snap" up five jars. They didn't have boil in bag rice in Iceland so now I've got to relearn to cook it properly not in a bag... Which I don't trust myself to remember ... Surely it's dead simple? Two cups water to one cup rice. Cover. Bring to boil. Turn down. Cook for 10-12 minutes. When it's done all the water should have cooked into the rice .. (?? ~ yeah?) Well if it's a disaster you'll surely know all about it by tomorrow!

I hope the pictures entertain: second one down (with the tubes) ~ the robo on the right looks especially gremlinlike there I'd say... it's really hard to get pictures that capture their precise expressions....

Take care everyone

ta ta!

Haily Monday: Robo Robbery!/Chicken Mayo Sandwich

I'VE JUST HAD TO RUN INSIDE to take shelter from a massive hail-attack! Spraying everywhere like stinging polystyrene beads it comes zinging down..! Massive gusts of wind trumpeted off into the bargain. A real "funny half hour" from the weather...

Yeah... Haily Monday! OK the hailstones weren't quite as big as illustrated... I found those on an imagesearch... if you clickonit, the picture should come out giant-sized and then you should see close up how each golfball sized "stone" is actually many smaller hailstones fused together... how wonderful! (To look at. Not to be caught under. How inconvenient would that be~?!?)

Has anyone else ever witnessed giant hailstones? If so I demand to hear the story forthwith in my commentary box!

My youtube vid of the day shows giant hail too. Windscreen-cracking stuff!

How was your weekend?

Mine went dopily. Not in a drugged sense, but because I've still been sleeping 12+ hours per day. Sorry night. Though I do sleep in the day, too...

The recipe for Chinese curry sauce closes in ever more tightly... Mother Hubbard's Sunday gravy had an inimitable tang of Chinese curry about it so I thoroughly annoyed her by demanding to know precisely how it had been made. Turns out an Oxo chicken stock cube went into it. (Something I'd never have started off curry sauce with... so big thanks to Mother Hubbs)... O, and I'm off to get my batgok/bajiao 八角 star anise right away the minute I've finished tapping this out... Which reminds me buy new woodchips from the pets isle; my poor robos need cleaning out... which further reminds me how could I forget this?

ROBO BURGLARY!

Yes! I saved the poor swines from rank thievery last night! Caught an evil wild sewer mouse right in the act of attempting to sneak into their tank when they were fast asleep dozing (as per usual) to pinch all their tucker! I understand more now why their incredible obsessive pouching instinct and why they've packed that teabox practically to the rafters (well, if a teabox had rafters) with seeds... and then for extra security sleep on top of them.

The mouse pinged off like an electric shock. Hopefully he won't be back in a hurry...

I hope yous all had a cheery weekend. I'd better go now else knowing my luck Tescos will sell out of Star Anise ... (c'mon you know my luck...)

;->...

have a nice day everybody!!

***

SKIES ABOVE MY HEAD
a brilliant photoblog I came across today...
http://skiesabovemyhead.blogspot.com

***

Righty-ho: I gotta go. Massive craving for chicken mayo sandwich with red peppers strikes me. I've already got the Czech cornbread and the pepper (actually it's yellow because they're cheaper)... precooked chickenlegs and mayonnaise are calling my name with ever more insistence! GOTTA RUSH!!

***

A DAY IN THE LIFE
http://koosasworld.blogspot.com

Furry Weekend

I'M LOW ON TIME... SO all I can say is this... HAVE AN ENTERTAINING WEEKEND, EVERYONE!

And how do you like this entertainer?... Isn't he a star??

He looks like a cross between Mike Tyson and my old eight miles a night runner Golden Hamster Pandable, who died many years ago... he did live till three and a half which is about 110 in hamster years - a very ripe old age...

I SHALL BE BACK ON MONDAY...

Marathon Sleep/八角 bat gok/ba jiao/star anise currytrail

MARATHON SLEEP? I did at least fourteen hours last night. And even when I tried to get up I just ended up sleeping again. "Drugs" didn't come into it either as I took nothing nonprescribed (ie nothing except methadone).

Last night I was in a very dire mood. On reflection what happened was that I topped up a little too much drink on top of an already mournful "humour" and ended up feeling quite morbid.

All I seem to do is eat and sleep. So maybe there is something in that SAD thing. Otherwise it is what they call "atypical" depression - that is depression with increased sleep and appetite and a reactive mood - rather than the flatline or "worse in the morning, better in the evening" typical of more "traditional" downers.

Zhu told me the the curry ingredient I'm probably looking for is 八角 (ba jiao in Mandarin; bat gok in Cantonese - both mean "eight sides" referring to the "star shape"... It is in fivespice and I did find it in my local supermarket (eventually) but held of purchasing it when I saw a jar full of whole Stars. Aparently the spice degrades quite rapidly when pulverized ...

All I can say with any authority so far about the elusive Chinese curry is that it almost certainly contains: onions, garlick, ginger (not overpoweringly so) and star anise (again not overpoweringly). The colour is distinctive: most Brits will know what I mean, it is a mid yellow-orange-brown colour NOT red - this again must be a clue. (As I've said before I cannot vouch for curry sauces in other countries. It seems to be elusive enough just to capture the one you get here...

And so the search continues!

Curry Disaster/CrackAttack/Sleep

CURRY DISASTER ALERT! Yeah, how predictable. The curry came out DIRE. First I fried up onion and garlick in specially purchased cooking oil (not marge I was trying to be posh today) - to this I added about three heaped teaspoons Chinese Five Spice. Now fivespice DOES have the "secret Chinese curry ingredient" I'm after... but at least one ingredient (namely CLOVES) I did NOT want. So I attained this weird mentholated stirfry. Chucked in cornflour and made into a professional-looking "trotting" sauce. So I decided it needed something more. Mr Brown's Jamaican curry was pretty useless so I went out and bought a tub of garam masala. No! The cumin was overpowering and again something totally wrong in it. Chinese takeaway curry is definitely cumin-free. So all in all I ended up with purple chicken stir-fry (from my red onions) and to add insult to injury I sweated about 85% of these spices out in the night making me pong of a second hand currywagon. Ukk!

Second head-do-inner was my dealer who "kindly" offered me crack on "trust". (Ie buy now have knife at throat when can't pay later (joke!) but I'm averse to running up debts with such persons...) I turned him down flat and walked off. Then spent the next hour regretting this and fantasizing about white smoke and ear-whooshing highs (not that I've truly had one of those for quite some time...)

In despair I crawled back to bed and fell into deep sleep where every aspect of my "life" was played out in varying images, like tiles on the bathroom wall...

... and that's about all I've got to say for today.

...Don't worry though. I know the secret of Chinese curry is almost within my grasp. If EVERY Chinese takeaway the up and down of this small island can produce curry sauce with near-identical flavour the secret behind it cannot be too obscure.

I shall prevail!

***

Video:
New Guinea Singing Dogs II

Chinese Curry Sauce Recipe: the net closes in! + Hillary for President!!

FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE MY HUNCH SEEMED TO BE RIGHT! Hillary is pulling through... I know lots of people see Hillary as rather strident, and Obama has the "likeable" vote, but Obama seems to have said little more than that he's going to "change things" ... Hillary already HAS changed things (as she keeps hammering on) ... I must admit she does have the air of a stateswoman - whether you like her or not. Sorry Hillary fans for those photos: when they came up on the image search I just couldn't resist!

NOW ON TO MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS: CURRY SAUCE. Chinese curry sauce, I might add. NOWHERE on the internet have I found even a vaguely satisfactory recipe for this. They all say basically "take garam masala or Madras curry powder and make a sauce out of it" - duh! If I wanted to make Indian curry I wouldn't specify Chinese would I? Now this Chinese curry has a secret ingredient and I'm pretty sure I'm zeroing in on it. This morning I chucked five-spice (which contains cinnamon, ginger, star anise, fenugreek (STOP PRESS: NO! fennel not fenugreek) and cloves) on to fried noodles - tried it and instantly the inimitable flavour of Chinese curry came up. So either it is just fivespice sauce, or it's a curry heavy on ginger and Star Anise (the only top tip I DID get from my Chinese curry secrets searching). I'm due to trot out the first experimental batch this afternoon so I'll let you know how I get on.

Am I right that this is a basic curry sauce recipe: stirfry onions and garlic in a little too much oil. Add spices to the oil. Fry for as long as possible (ie 15 minutes if you can) add water to this. Allow to simmer another 10 or 20 mins... and that's basically it? I also bought cornflour this morning but have no idea how to use it. (Maybe if I do I'll end up pulling faces like Hillary's.)

Wish me luck!

***

Here are two specially good photoblogs:

1. Greek person's magickal Czech photos

2. Dutch person's mysterious morning photo/etc...

***

Today's (campaign) video:
Hillary vs Obama

Water Chestnuts; Poor Britney Spears; Howling Hounds, etc...

POOR BRITNEY SPEARS! I have been meaning for quite a while to present her behaviour for "blogside" examination. I mean, what on earth is wrong with the woman? She's been regularly reported driving "wrongly" in her car. Driving round Los Angeles with your baby on your lap then saying it's "because you're country" doesn't really wash, Britney.

The most obvious cause of her odd goings-on would, of course be drugs. She certainly looks like she's on something. Legal or not it's surely something strong as well!

Repeatedly the scatty girl has failed to take and allegedly failed numerous court-appointed drugtests. The famously mysterious headshaving escapade was suposedly an attempt to thwart a proposed hairstrand analysis. The strand test, you must understand, goes into far more embarrassing detail than a simple urine or blood screen. Not only does it blare out what you've taken - but how much of it and how often... going back at least two months - potentially far longer. THAT's what got Britney and those clippers together... see what I mean now?

Surely though, even she could see that, by shaving her bonce coot-bald and garnering Alp-sized mounds of publicity even if she HAD taken drugs, even heroin (and I'm not saying she has) the scandal, rumour and speculation kicked up by all this has lost her out far more than she could ever have hoped to have "gained".

So what's behind poor Britney's increasingly "lost" and "odd" and frankly incomprehensible behaviour? All manner of speculation has been mooted. The most persistent pointer being (drink and drugs aside) that Britney is "bipolar" (that is manic-depressive to me and you) ... which would put down her irrational outbursts and oddball acting out as symptoms of "mania". I'm not so sure. (Well I'm not a psychiatrist either.) But surely if she IS taking even half the drugs she's alleged to, then her hyper episodes have nothing to do with any "disorder" and everything to do with a good oldfashioned drug-induced HIGH!

And now we hear she's supposed to be holed up with a slimeball Brit visa-dodging paparazzo and two of his chums. The guy in question has, according to the Sun newspaper, been stalking her for five months, has filmed her and got all manner of "revelations" out of her in recent days and is demanding a million dollar fee to reveal all... Honestly even I am beginning to think we've seen and heard enough already...

The worst incident of all happened last weekend when, facing the prospect of having to give back her children, who she'd taken in on an "access" visit, back to her ex-husband she freaked out totally, threatening to kill herself and wound up being carted off by ambulance to a mental hospital. This is perhaps the most lurid episode yet in this terribly sad publicly played out tale of personal decline. If she's not careful, Britney's going to lose her kids for good. And to whom? That spivvy rat Kevin Federline?

C'mon Britney! "Bipolar", drug-addict, whatever ~ you're better than that!

I HAVE DISCOVERED THE WORLD'S ULTIMATE BAYING HOUND! It's a rare (and real!) species called the New Guinea Singer. Reportedly the world's oldest breed of dog, and only semidomesticated, the New Guinea Bayer (as I like to call it) prefers "singing" a whistly howl - to their worldwide doggie cousins' traditional bark. You'll see the New Guinea Bayer on my Youtube screen of the Day. Or if you'd prefer to find out about the squealy swines in more detail (with more baying sqeezed into less time than ever before!) clickonthis and select the "listen again" option. Once you've done that you can minimize and the prog will play on while you can lope off bloghopping or emailing or doing whatever you please online.

I REALLY MUST GO TO THE CHINESE SUPERMARKET on an ingredients hunt one of these days. The ordinary supermarkets' "oriental" sections with the industrial blackbean sauces etc I've been chucking on my quick-chop chicken stirfries are hardly replete with the currymixes of my heart's desire... For example last week I looked everywhere for canned waterchestnuts, which I love and which are expensive... only to find waterchestnuts melanged with nasty cheap old beansprouts. Now I don't mind beansprouts but I'm not stupid. They are cheapo and common. Waterchestnuts are rarified and uncommon. I don't want gold mixed with dogs' doings!

Babycorn is another fave and also costly. For £1 you can get about 15 fresh ones - but usually packaged with mangetout. Though I must confess those are the deluxe mangetouts that go ultrasweet and yummy in mixed stirfry. My secret ingredient for that (as well as the controversial MSG) is a couple or three pinches of dustpepper, especially over the fried rice. Now there's a time for coarse ground pepper - I'd say it goes best on European dishes. But dustpepper (you know the working class type of pepper most of us used to sprinkle on our fondues in the 1970s) comes into its own on Chinese food. It adds that jazzy pep without getting obtrusive.

THOSE NAUGHTY GREMLINS! Remember I said I'd put down an extra Parmesan tube as the original - a urine-stinking toilet cubicle - had been taken over by Bashful and Itchy as a new bedroom. Well the naughty swines had taken to peeing and then sleeping in BOTH tubs. The tubby swines! They do look entertaining, specially when they poke their pink noses out in response to my nonsensical cooed greetings. Just like Pingpong the Chinese hamster (click here to see Youtube film) who had no fewer than FIVE nests in his old house at one time - my gremlins (and they do look just like minigremlins when they sit on their haunches) - have FOUR beds. The teabox, two Parmesan toilets and their strawberry Jaffa Cakes box. The boxes are going to have to be changed soon as their whole house pongs of pee-pee. They are funny critters. That teabox was so stashed up with birdseeds at one point they barely had room to sleep. (They love sleeping on their seeds. Weird creatures. Imagine bedding down for the night on the contents of your refrigerator!) I have to say they're wise to stash their dinner rather than leaving it out. I personally wouldn't trust those naughty wild mice not to sneak in and pinch bits of it...

MY MEMOIRS are crawling slowly along... Far more slowly than I'd like. I have to be incredibly careful not to miss anything out. Unlike blogging this writing is meant to be permanent and authoritative - I can't be quite so casual. Can't say "oh I was going totell you this or that but I can't remember so I'll fill you in later." You expect a precision and authority from the printed word that blogs don't always provide.

I know it doesn't always show thru my bouncy-bouncy writing style, but I am still feeling pretty down and exhausted and wading through honey and sleeping hours and hours each day. (Not just at night, but halfway through many of my daytimes too...) I am making effort to pull myself out of all - in line, I suppose, with my Resolutions that aren't really Resolutions.

Now I am exhausted. I have chicken in the fridge - chicken and mixed vegetable ciao maine is calling me. OK so I'm off: cheerio everyone!

AND LAST AND MOST CERTAINLY LEAST: THOSE YUKKY UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL "PRIMARIES" are blithering up the radio waves. And far too much in my view. Three floating voters were just on prevaracating on and on about who they might "favor". They Republican former mayor of NYC Giuliani seems to have pretty much dropped out. Hillary's trailing badly, so I hear, behind Obama. I know she's a highly controversial figure and that lots of people don't like her... but I have an inkling, a hunch, that she might somehow steal through and snatch that crown at the end!

PS What's all this crap about Obama being "black" - he's MIXED RACE - duh! ie just as WHITE as he is black!!

Veal Brains: Two for Ten Dollars

I KID YOU NOT. My local butcher is selling calves' brains (at first I thought it was ready-made microwaveable spaghetti bolognaise) two for five pounds or ten dollars US. I'm not sure why. Do people actually eat these things? (Maybe foreigners do~?) Ukk!

It is dark and cold. Christmas is over, though the council's special lights are still up along the main road. They promised us a dip in temperature over the last two days. Dip? Siberian subzero they should have said!

My "Chinese" takeaway cookery is coming along wizzingly. Best method for egg fry rice is definitely hollow out a "well" in the middle of rice in the pan, crack an egg into this "well", vandalize the egg with a fork, allow to begin cooking, then, when about half done, rapidly stir into the rest of the rice. This gives lovely ricey clumps and makes the eggs integral to the dish, rather than the other method, which basically just treats scrambled egg as yet another ingredient in the stir-fry...

I've not a lot to say today as I'm tired and bleak. Well a bit. We had a miserable morning: all wanting drugs and our favoured dealers switched off. (Dunno what's wrong with them.) I'm plotting my escape from all this scene so it's no great loss if they do all retire on me. Eventually I accompanied French Pascal on a ten minute walk to a place where I used to live... he was funny. Not one but TWO drug deals went on pretty openly before our eyes and he missed both of them. And HE calls ME dopey!!

On an "alternative" note I'm reading Leap of Faith: Memoirs of Queen Noor of Jordan. A fascinating book, especially if you're into Israeli-Palestine or Middle Eastern politics...

I hope your day went better than mine everyone. Peace!

Video of the Day:
Queen Noor of Jordan: Life in Pictures

***

Come here for some really entertaining pictures...

***

"BAYING ALERT!" 100% TRUE! I heard a radio documentary this evening about the New Guinea singing dog which is a rare bordering on endangered breed and said to be the oldest breed of dog alive today ... (clickonit for the Radio 4 info page...)

I've got a video of New Guinea singing dogs on my pets blog which I shall post up here tomorrow...

Hey I've just found the New Guinea Singing Dogs Conservation Society link (http://www.canineworld.com/ngsdcs) ~ which has a silhouetted doggie baying soulfully as its trademark ... I am in my element ("LOL"!!!)

(Click here for a link with one of the furry bayers lying down...)

Szechuan Chicken Egg Fry Rice with MSG

YES! FINALLY I MADE EGG FRIED RICE proper. There are two ways of doing this and I tried both.

You must boil basmati rice properly and according to the instructions. ie use boil-in-bag as I did or the 1 cup/2 cup method (twice the volume of water to rice). If you overcook the rice it will be too mushy and sticky.

Drain and heap out the cooked rice into an uncovered bowl. Refrigerate 30 mins to 1 hr (or overnight if required but beware; keeping cooked rice for days on end can breed a foodpoisoning fungus all over it!)

Method 1: Separate egg. Crack egg into a glass. Whisk with fork until thoroughly yellow. Heat ring medium-high. Blob butter/oil into pan. Bring to heat. Pour on egg. Within 30 seconds it's cooking. Scramble it. Literally 1 min later it is done. You add this egg midway or towards the end of rice-frying (too early and it gets so mixed in you merely have yellow rice without visible eggy bits).

Method 2: you chuck rice into pan or wok. If doing mixed vegetable fried rice fry these first THEN add rice. When rice has been fried for a minute or two: make a hollow in the middle of the rice. Crack an egg right into this. Immediately bash it up with chopsticks or a fork. Allow the egg to half-cook, then quickly stir into the rice.

I think the second method works better - it looks more like the way the takeaway does it.

As for monosodium glutamate (MSG) - this is a fine crystalline powder - like salt. The flavour is slightly salty, but warmer. They say that MSG "intensifies" flavours. I would say it smooths them over, like a magic factor-x. Making things like fried rice less bland. (It doesn't go nearly so well with boiled rice.) I added one pinch to the rice-water before boiling (so it was right spread throughout). And two pinches to rice just before frying. Lots of people say MSG is bad for you. But on the plus side it does give egg fried rice that "direct from the takeaway" buzz.

The Szechuan chicken was just plain chicken stir fry with Morrison's own Szechuan sauce piled on. I wasn't too impressed by the quality of this sauce. It had needlessly demoralized vegetable traces in it. And more to the point I found out that "szechuan" was the horrible spicy yet sweet and sour stuff I got fobbed off with by the takeaway the other day when I'd ordered Thai chicken with babycorn. I love spicy but loathe sweet and sour. Urgh.

I want to learn my own saucemaking.

Tomorrow: egg-sucking for the experienced cook.

The Pink Noses

THAT IS A DOGGIE'S NOSE. But tonight I came to my tubbers and called "come out you fatty pink noses! Come out you furry old gremlin swines!" ~~ sure enough, direct from the teabox two tubby pink noses appeared. Sergeant Itchy and Bashful sure enough, who sleep together. Spherical, who I am not sure is related to them, sometimes sleeps separately in the "jagoda" strawberry Jaffa Cakes box, sometimes sleeps with the other two. When it's particularly cold Bashful and Itchy bed down in the Parmesan lavatory (now bedroom complete with cotton wool provided by me). I've put down another Parmesan tube for them to peepee in ...

As you can see not much news. I've not been sleeping too much lately... Last night I seemed to catch up bigstyle. Hours and hours of vivid-dreamy sleep... the dreams quite confused (be thankful: else I'd be posting them in blow-by-blow detail); but ended up with me and a princess in the Romanovs' (that is the late Tsars of Russia's) Winter Palace running through ballrooms escaping some secret adversary.... Not quite sure how/wherefore/why/etc... but hey it was "just" a dream...

The Chinese cooking is coming on dreamily. I've yet to remember to make the scrambled eggs for the rice and so the present fried rice is egg-free. But I've made a fantastic mixed vegetable one and my chicken blackbean sauce is coming on whizzingly...

AND SO! The first weekend of 2008 approacheth. What am I saying: it's here! Have a great one everybody and don't get too exhausted.

Take care

Gleds
xxx
xx
xx

Video:
Queen Alexandra: the Danish aristocrat who became England's darling...

***

Here's a really good blog about perfume.

***

"Unlawful rendition"... sorry "combatants"... have a look at Damp Dog's blog to see what George W Bush has made of America's laws...

***

PS Re: monosodium glutamate/MSG I've discovered that to jazz up one portion fried rice for example you would add a quarter to a third of a flat teaspoon (ie a large pinch or so). Do NOT be taken in by the packet instructions saying to put on afterwards this means even with a bit of tossing it's not properly mixed in and will stay in the mouth long afterwards leaving a horrid aftertaste. NO! The best thing is to add it in the last five mins of cooking and make sure thorougly mixed in. MSG is essential not to all dishes but to egg fried rice in particular to make "just like from the Chinese" flavoured for sure...

I'm a little dubious about using this stuff at all.


Here's the wikipedia article on MSG which gives some cons
Here's the "glutamate association"'s website which gives some pros!

Read well! And nb I am NOT recommending the stuff. I really don't know too much about it...

***

O righto te! It's nearly 9pm and I've just had my special "leftovers" chicken-peppers-blackbean sauce mixed vegetable fry rice ~ ALL cooked myself and gleddered specially into specially saved plastic microwaveable Chinese takeaway cartons* for added authenticity... Now that I've finished I've had a real yen for Cadbury's Mini Eggs (100g). Now if you live outside the old British colonial "axis" you may not be aware of Cadbury's chocolate but let me tell you they make the best milk chocolate in the world. Loverrly-doverrly. Best dark choc, as I said yesterday, is in my opinion Ritter Sport.

*in the UK, takeaway cartons tend to be either foil with waxed card tops like this; or microwaveable plastic. Not posh origami-style like these American ones ...

Bon appetit everyone and have a lovelly weekend!

Fried Lice Nice; Mini Eggs Are Back!

YET AGAIN I have mysteriously managed to cook a meal just like the Chinese... I always knew they knocked out marvellous dishes with zero effort, but seemed to believe the magic lay ... I dunno where ..??... perhaps in their ability to shout in Chinese while tossing woks over metre-high flames. Or something. Tonight I successfully managed fried rice (no eggs; I saved that pleasure for later). And I must reprimand the authors of online Chinese recipes. If you don't specify "boil the rice first and leave in fridge to dry out for an hour" someone like me is not going to know that! Well that's how I did my rice. Boiled first. Left uncovered in fridge for one hour. Did mixed vegetable stirfry. (Onions, btw are NOT part of takeaway mix vegetable fry rice, at least not round here.) Mine was carrots, mushrooms, peas. I'd have chucked in babycorn if I had any... Then I repeated my chicken and blackbean sauce trick, but added onions to THAT. Far nicer. Wahey!

AND ON TO CHOCOLATE. Cadbury's Mini Eggs are back. Very nice they are too. Cadbury's inimitable (milk) chocolate (cannot be replicated). In a yummy crisp sugar shell. Goes very nicely with a cup of tea (in my opinion). Best dark chocolate is Ritter Dark Whole Hazelnuts (50% cocoa solids). You can click here to see it - look at the bottom right hand corner. Yummmm.

Sorry for the blabber I am fantasizing about chocolate I have to go in case someone buys all the 100g packs of Mini Eggs. They only had 40 left last time I checked...

PS Hamsters really like chocolate!

Chicken with Green Peppers and Black Bean Sauce

YESTERDAY I made the all-famous chicken green peppers (actually, mine were red) in blackbean sauce with rice and peas. Eggfried rice I try later today...
Here's how I did it.
Ingredients:
(SERVES ONE:~~)
1 lb (about 450g) boneless chicken breast
One red bellpepper
One jar Sainsbury's own blackbean sauce
One sachet Uncle Ben's boil in bag basmati rice (this actually serves 2 so if you are sad and lonely like me just save 2nd half in fridge for tomorrow)
Stork Margarine for frying (check that the marge you use has at least 60% fat content; otherwise you'll end up with a pan full of spitting oilwater which needs frying off first. Posh people with cooking oil already in their houses are better off using that...)
Handful frozen peas.
(I added peas to the rice as boiled is so boring...)
Originally I tried to have the rice boiling and the chicken frying simultaneously. However, after a brief burst of heat and ten minutes with neither pan coming to boil I realized my cooker fuse must have gone yet again!
Desperately I sought out a butterknife to undo plug.
Philips crew on plug too fine for my knife.
Eventually I used chicken-chopping knife to open out plug.
Removed fuse. Toyed briefly with idea of placing tinfoil in its place. Whole idea seemed too dangerous so I replaced fuse and tried again with just one electric ring on.
Yes. It worked. Boiled "in-bag" rice for ten minutes. Five minutes into this add a handful of frozen peas. Do this bit by bit over about a minute and their frozenness won't impair the boiling process.
Drain rice and peas pan.
Chicken:
Cut it into thin chopstick-manageable strips.
I was shocked how much like smoked salmon the raw chicken appeared, and how easily my characteristically blunt knife sliced on in! My hands were left really sticky from handling this meat. But I licked them clean soon enough (joke!) In fact I was so paranoid about having handled raw chicken everything that had been near it got treble washed with a brand new scrubber!
Bring oil to boil first and chuck chicken straight in.
Fry for a good ten minutes until browning very slightly. In the takeaway (and remember this is authentic takeaway food, not authentic food from China!) they never spice Chicken in the wok (or pan if you're me) because the flavouring's in the sauces which come on last.
When you're sure chicken's thoroughly cooked (test by cutting the biggest bit) add chopped bellpepper. One pepper per portion is required. Fry for two minutes.
Add enough blackbean sauce to totally cover entire contents of pan (about a quarter or third of a jar (if you're stingy you can add less and top up with water (would I do a thing like that?))) Cook in for about 2 mins.
~Arrk! Nearly forgot. Added tiny pinch chili at end of chicken/peppers cooking.
Eat.
Seriously I am not that easily impressed especially by my own "culinary" efforts but what I conjured last night was JUST THE SAME as the local Chinese for a THIRD of the price.
Wooooh!!

*

FRIED RICE: does anybody have a good recipe for this?
Do you fry straight-from-the-packet rice directly in oil?
Or do you cook rice first in water?
Here's a recipe for mixed vegetable fried rice but it states rice should be cooked first. The Chinese recipes I dug up yesterday (eg this one) seemed to imply raw rice should be fried... can you really do this?

SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!!!

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.

*

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.

*

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

First Day of Tomorrow!

2008. Here we are. Fourteen hours into the new year already and it's all change..!!.. NOT!¬

ACTUALLY I FEEL QUITE INVIGORATED AND INSPIRED today... to rise, like the cream or scum that I am right up to that top where I belong... onwards and upwards!!

My Mum rang me at 00:04 hrs from intellectual France wishing me a happy one. She said she and Brian (her husband) had done it with champagne and massive stacks of oysters. (Well there is an R in the month.) I told her I'd done it with a cheese roll and a can of cyder and she laughed.

Yesterday's Thai babycorn green leaves chicken from the Chinese takeaway was far from inspiring. I couldn't believe they had the cheek to do what they actually did... What I basically got was one container normal fry rice - no prob. The other container even before I opened it... couldn't help but remark to myself how very bright pink it was... exceedingly so. It was not Thai at all. What they had done is take a standard industrial, over-coloured Chinese sweet and sour sauce (which I loathe. I can't stand sweet and sour; as well as being the most cliche'd westernized shorthand for oriental food, the taste of boiled sweets really does not go with fried chicken... anyway... in this psychedelically bright pink sweet and sour they'd tipped another sauce. This one was pretty spicy and nice. So spicy in fact that it drowned out sweet and sour enough that I didn't take the whole thing straight back and complain. But there were literally 3 tiny green spinach leaves. And the baby corn were limp and wilty and so obviously long past their best it was horrible. I really am going to have to have a word with them about that it was well substandard...

Anyway: all this talk of Eastern food has got me pondering: and I present!:~

The Fantasy Chopstick Chinese and Thai Takeaway!!

Sample menu:
Try the Squatting Dragon set meal!:~~

Shi Tibum Chicken with Faast Pu Sauce
Big Pong Pork with Run Toy Let Dressings
with complimentary Ae Ki Be Li pancake rolls
Optional recommended:
(Northern Thai) Ru Ni Spla Ta Yuk Yuk curry (warning: extra hot!)
or an equivalent "dish" from the south (actually only a large tureen will hold it:)
King Prawn and Squid Special Go Khrap Cuiq
or perhaps try the even hotter:
King Prawns Fiil Laik Dai (it's what the prawns died of: comes up even quicker than it went down...)

I hope that amused y'all...

EVILSTEIN's "fixed" the front door (yet again) and done it so badly that the inner mechanism fails to engage with the outer keyturny chamber or latchyflick knob. Meaning that I spent ten minutes confronted last night by a heavy thunky front door that had locked me in... and only judicious excavations with a pea-fork would finally dislodge the Yale bolt from its bolthole... even then it proved to have jammed. I unjammed it by forcing it and then something went click inside and the lock was totally disengaged. Meaning the handle just turned fatuously round and round without unlocking anything. And the key turned round and round and even worse got stuck! Thankfully bashing the (open-doored) lock-part sideways released this. But imagine coming back at 2am on the street. Locked out! With your keys! And to add insult to injury: the door grabs hold of said keys and will not let them go! Hopefully this will happen to Gnomenstein..!! (haha!!)

***

"Charmed I'm sure" as my grandmother's generation used to say...

Now I must go and compose to great literary themes (ie the tale of my life - what could be grander than that..?!? (lots of things actually: but hey!))

and if I get stuck I'll just have poor Gwendolina, locked in the kitchen for her misbehaviour, baying sorrowfully at the pale striplight and fruitlessly trying to nudge her giant snout between the sink unit and cooker to retrieve a dropt piece of bacon...

righty-ho!
hope the new one's going good Everyone

did anyone actually get a hangover? if so please do tell how/wherefore/etc etc in my comments: c'mon!!

***

I've found two magnificent "videos of the day"~~~
1: Mr Putin: Why Can't All Men Be Like You (Russian girlgroup political promo for the revered Dictator)
2: Shock News: Cigarettes are Good For You!