Memoir Monday

WRITING... my passion all het up got me back to WRITING AGAIN... Yeah! Back to memoirs! (Not an autobiography; a memoir. An autobiography is (supposedly, though most authors pick and mix the truth to a shameful degree (I get the impression) a tale of one's entire life from birth to the point of writing. Mine being a drug memoir races through childhood and adolescence to my first encounter with drugs and yarns the tale from there.) My only departure from "truth" in the strictest sense comes by my renaming all my friends (as I do here: do you really think I know someone called "Laundretta"~??!?) and the necessity to briefen many secondary incidents in the interest of keeping the flow. All this and well over 100 pages handwritten (that has to be at least 25,000 words) and STILL I've not come to heroinsville! The story is "told with warmth and wit": I hope a reviewer will be able to say. And humour. Nobody wants a tale of misery from beginning to end and mine certainly isn't...

I did about TWO WHOLE PAGES last night... slept and was so whacked out I dozed all the way through my favourite radio show: Vanessa's programme on BBC London. Great literature is exhausting!

OK there's little other news. Except that I put in my red fireglow light last night. Within five minutes Bashful, my first gremlin emerged from the lightbulb box where they now sleep. Twenty minutes later saw Itchy make an appearance. Pinging all over the shot (or is it shop?) and gnawing on yellow pepper pumblechooks (y'know: the inside bits with stalk and seeds)... and at longest last Spherical stuck her moose-head outside: plaque-on-wall-style (which always looks hilarious) and lumbered out. Did a wee. Got on wheel and thundered ever onwards throwing the other two roborovskis off in varying directions; occasionally keeping one snaggled on flashing Daz-white undercarriage round and round and round. Spherical, being, well: almost Spherical and twice as heavy as Itchy is top peck. And what Spherical says in roboland GOES!

Happy Confectionary Monday to y'all!

Video: Duck Raids Campsite

Chilly!

IT'S BEEN A VERY COLD DAY! Here in damp old London (London is meant to be a damp city: in the 1950s fog used to combine with coal smoke from a million plus chimneys to swirl into those famous "pea soupers" a kind of 1950s supersmog. Some evenings it was so bad they had to have the sighted led out of tube stations toward the trolleybus (tram) stops ~ by the blind! Maybe the fog was another reason for the enduring popularity of the trolleybus (which is a doubledecker tram*: ie like a double decker bus but powered from overhead electricity. For some reason they never tagged two or three together; which I always thought the entire point of trams: that they're longer and can go on-street then flume down underground suddenly to reappear in celestial rosegardens ... (sorry imagination took control of me for a sec). Yeah anyway does anyone know why they got rid of the trolleybus?

*no it was not! I just put up the trolleybus picture above (from South Africa) you'll see that one (and every trolleybus I googled) ran on TYRES not on street-embedded rails... why on earth would you want that? All the disadvantages of being tied to electric power and yet the possibility of taking a wrong turn and wrenching yourself free of the electricity!

I do apologize about my earlier post on books. The post is an extension of a telephone conversation. Or to put it another way: I wanted to put the idea of e-publishing to YOU the e-reader. And it all got a bit vehement. My vehemence is now dispersed.

Anyway now it's up to me to FINISH the bloody thing. E-book, selfpublished book or massmarketed book. Aaargh!!

I spent all day asleep. I don't know what got me. Something to do with not having slept more than a couple of hours a night for several days in a row. And suddenly I'm slaughtered!

Yeargkkh! I just realized Easter CONTINUES tomorrow into Monday. Why an Easter Monday? What's that all to do with? Eggs? Did you know in the Chandogya Upanishad the entire world is born from an egg? See: these myths were interwoven at the misty dawn of time...

Sorry not Chandogya: Katharudra Upanishad see verse 20 all gods and demons in the cosmic egg...

Music:
Taffy: I Love My Radio

Shiny Sunday

SHINY SUNDAY... it's been the earliest ~ and coldest ~ Easter in nearly 100 years. I say "shiny" ~ really it's a bright white day. Much of London (apparently) had snow yesterday, though none settled. We've not had serious, Christmas-card style snow to the best of my memory, since 1981. I remember tobogganing down the middle of the road (cars slippin' and slidin' all over so no chance of gettin' mown down and this was on a hill with a dead end up top) aged nine and drest in my first pair of jeans. (I'd been a couldroy kid up till then ~ how very 1970s!)

I went through a memoirs brainstorming session with a close friend last night. And emerged from it feeling less conclusive than ever before...

Also I was advised to publish electronically, online. The thought of selfpublishing memoirs or fiction, either e-wise or on paper, I have to say, leaves me utterly cold. Since starting this blog I have realized the essential paradox of the net: that with well over 100 million potential readers (in English) and all the clamour and confusion for attention, it really is hard to get noticed... without paying massive pounds-per-click to Google to get toplisted... I get only 80 hits ~ and that's on a good day.

I think a blog like mine with its sometimes challenging subject matter demands a level of ongoing emotional investment that most people feel unable to give. A book of memoirs requries such investment for only days... and then you move on. Far more attractive!

If my blog stuggles to make 80 hits, how on earth would I sell a book of 100,000 words ~ and CHARGE FOR IT (because that was the suggestion) and make anything like enough income for a 7-storey double-fronted house off Sloane Square with basement swimming pool? I really don't see this internet publishing thing working.

People go online for FREE information. They go to a bookshop to pay. Books are selling better than ever before (unlike newspapers, which are sinking Titanic-like into the meery gloom...)

Seeing new readers appear on my blog who might have spent two hours or more a day for several days in a row perusing my blabberings... then they mostly vanish. This convinced me that some people were reading my blog like a book anyhow.

But surely most people are still like me. They want a book they can take on the train to work each morning, eat sandwiches over at lunch, take into the bath and curl up with at night before dropping off. It becomes part of them for a week; then goes to a friend, or to the bookshelf.

In these days of pain, the socalled Misery Memoir has become a topselling category on any general publisher's list. These books sell. And I have a story to tell. If it's worth telling, it's worth selling.

My "dream", if you want to call it that, has always been to snag a top agent who will make a deal with a large conglomerate publisher with the power to orchestrate international publicity etc and get my book into every bookshop, airport, railway station etc the world over. I would be willing to play my part and go out promote promote promote on radio, on television (if they'd have me ~ ha!) and in print. Because that's the game, these days more than ever...

Books are showing no sign of any decline in sales in this so-called electronic age. It is worth bearing in mind that of all the massmedia: films, records etc, the printed word is by far the oldest and most enduring. In the last decade the highest sellers have sold higher than ever before ~ 50 million plus on seven Harry Potters and The Da Vinci Code. Distribution systems are more sophisticated than ever before. My blog gets only 20% of its readers from the UK. In other words 80% are scattered worldwide. How can I possibly selfpublish in volume format and arrange anything like such international distribution? Or even worse, e-publish and convince anyone to pay? Be honest: have ANY of you EVER paid any money for an online text-only product? I'd love to hear from you if you have.

First rule of business, as I see it ~ the customer is set in his ways. No matter how good my book might be I honestly don't see that I'd get anything like optimum revenue by putting it online and expecting people to pay ~ when there are reams upon reams of websites offering information on the same subject whether or not it's worse-written ~ for FREE.

Also, no traditional publisher would go anywhere near my work after I'd done this. When blogs have been "published", it's nearly always been on the understanding that the author adds at least 50% in fresh material.

A recent radio documentary on the future of the book surprised me in that even young children, the socalled Harry Potter Generation STILL preferred printed volumes to e-books or reading onscreen or scratting through nasty old print-outs.

I'm not against selfpublishing when it comes to roborovski books and other sideprojects. But I'm looking for a career. And I intend to make one by crafting memoirs and fiction: and by getting well paid for it!

Nobody seems to get it. I don't WANT to be a publisher. I want to be an author. Publishing is a business; authorship an art or craft. And as I said before, my ambition has always been to be an authro of heatwrenching bestsellers and to sell enough books to stretch end on end to the moon and back. Harper Collins or Random House could do this for me. I couldn't do it on my own!

Perhaps this soudns arrogant. To me it's just ambition. As the saying goes: reach for the stars and you might just catch the moon.

*

EAster has so far passed me by with nary a chocolate egg. All my talk of "trotters" and I've had a dose of the trots myself (yeah: you really wanted to hear that!)

If you're enduring fractious relatives after a ten hour road trip you have my sympathy.

It's a bleary day here. What do people actually do for Easter? I've no idea. I've never done it.

OK: bleary day; cheery day. It's what you make it. I hope all goes well with you.

***

Easter Bunny Doggie...

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Music of the Day:
The Specials: Ghost Town

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Hey! Spherical did a furry entertainment yesterday, when she poked her head from the teabox where they all sleep again... the hole is only JUST gnawed big enough to let a tubby robo in or out... so her head, protruding from this teabox, looked moosehead-on-plaque just like a bizarre piece of weary Victoriana ~ she was so entertaining

Fertility Goddess Friday...

"GOOD" FRIDAY... Easter... a man on the radio yesterday explained the pre-Christian origins of the "cross"... which represents the disc of the sun interposed with the crossing lines... a remnant of sun-worship, the wider world's version of monotheism... He also made a point that had crossed my head once in religious thought. He was wondering how the cross could possibly have become an emblem of Christianity when it represented that religion's darkest hour. "It's a bit like using a machine gun to represent Jacqueline Kennedy," he declared.

The picture above right is a South Indian fertility goddess; Easter apparently being a tie-in with fertility cults of the ancient world... Ishtar... Venus... and so on.

This "interview" ... I was trying to explain what happened and this is it. When you phone a talk radio station there are professional phone answerers. Depending on whether your point seems worthwhile and whether or not there is time to fit you on air they will take your name and may or may not ring you back.

Usually when you're rung back you wait about five minutes with the radio playing through your handset. When you're put through the host will already be discussing the subject you said you wanted to talk on, then you are put on live and it's up to you to make your point. This time, however he kind of "interviewed" me by asking a series of maybe twenty questions. They were very well put, and because I've got used to being able to discuss addiction I gave what were apparently fairly good answers. Because a couple of people phoned in afterwards and said so. That was what flattered me because one said he'd never heard addiction explained so well. It was, as I say, as much down to good questions as anything I answered "why did you start injecting?" etc etc he went right through it... So that's why I talk about an "interview". I wasn't specially put on as a special guest ~ I just phoned in like anyone else...

Well I'd better go. Have a merry day everyone and don't eat too much chocolate. (Or isn't that meant to be for Sunday? I've absolutely no idea...)

Radio Interview

I PHONED THE RADIO AND GAVE AN INTERVIEW about being an addict... it gave me inspiration to carry on writing (which has stalled. I mean: stopped completely)... I lost all enthusiasm for it. But now I'm carrying on.

As for the radio; I'd called up seemingly hours earlier... then the phone rings when I'm fast asleep and I had to compose myself and just talk. The host structured what I said by asking questions (precisely the right ones, too) which is why I call it an "interview", as that's how it felt...

So these are three resolutions:
1. complete these dreaded memoirs. they've been going on for ages
2. cease using the words "tubby" and "trotters". what on earth someone coming here for the first time would think of my blog i shudder to think
3. keep self and living conditions in tip-top form. evilstein is on at me again (nosey old git: admitted to poking round in there under pretences of "spraying for cockroaches" (so why did I spot at least three last night? he sprayed nothing. just intruded where he is not welcome)

And that's that. Now I have to go. I dunno why but I cannot sleep properly still. so i've been listening to the radio all night (there's some very good stuff on)

and on and on i go... hey it's "Good" Friday tomorrow so have a happy pagan time all you who somehow manage to associate eggs and bunnies with Jesus Christ becoming Saviour to humankind...

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THIS is one of the finest photoblogs I think I've ever come across:~
Betwixpix2...

Grey Skies

REPOSING HOME ALONE of a weary Wednesday afternoon... white-grey skies slowly shifting, stark light floods my double-glazed top window (bottom section blanked), the radio prattles on subdued volume; every now and then the front door goes banging, letting some busybody personnage in. Busy body: I am all but busy. I feel like those clouds: ever so distant, drear and insubstantial. Just like the weather, my heart feels chilled.

"Time goes by so slowly for those who wait," says Madonna.

But what about me, waiting for nothing? Time goes terminally slow.

Of course I must fabricate my own future. And that's what's new, I realized in my despair. I'm one of the people who's forever waiting for my boat to come in.

In lifetime past I was, of course, accustomed to sending out many little boats. All the time, on a frequent basis. Even though they usually were the tiniest of boats, out they got sent; and many did come back in...

For instance, I used to send off my answers on a postcard (remember those competitions? Before the blanket predominance of email and premium phone numbers?) By selecting prize draws with care (e.g. from trendy magazines whose readers mostly considered themselves above such trivia) I won all manner of nicknacks: guides to snowboarding, manga anime videos and so on...

And I had an endless stack of eyecatchingly funky specimens from the "please take a postcard" racks in trendy bars. I collected hundreds. These eyecatching postcards definitely helped me win...

I also applied myself to writing (unpublished) fiction, poems and other "works" I don't feel I wasted any time in so doing: firstly, writing is way more satisfying than timewasting old crosswords, sodoku and so on... and second, you actually have something to show for your efforts. As the only worthwhile author of writers' how-to guides, Dianne Doubtfire, pointed out; nobody expects to perform other acts of craftsmanship such as banging together furniture, or etching glass vases without first completing a rigorous apprenticeship. And so it is with writing. So none of my time or efforts have been wasted. I try to approach my memoirs etc with a sense of mellowness... Well I do try...

I was watching Trotters TV last night (ie handfeeding bits of bread etc: and they were so funny. I only gave one blob of wholemeal bread roll and Spherical grabbed it, who is top peck. Bashful immediately took up nibbling the other side, but Spherical reared up into wrestling position. Then Itchy's ears went up as she finally realized food was in the offing and it was right beside her... She stuck her nose out... till she realized Spherical was playing top peck, and didn't even attempt to have a nibble. Off she slunk to the wheel and let Spherical, now alone and relaxed, finish her top peck meal in peace...

Watching them I realized suddenly how very tiny they actually are. And why I gravitated towards such tiny trotters in the first place. They're just like kittens or puppies at two to three weeks; yet you know they will never pass the "tiny enough to sit on your palm" phase. Plus they do trot round and round like a furry horse race at times of tubby excitement.

(And I'd promised myself no robo-rants today. Sorry!)

And last but not least MORE legal news:

The Express Newspaper Group has reached a $1.1 million out-of-court settlement with the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann, who was apparently snatched from a holiday apartment in Praia de Luz in the Algarve, Southern Portugal, last September.

The Daily Express and Star newspapers had libellously suggested that the little girl's parents had something to do with her disappearance, which I'm sure most reasonable people consider to be absolute rubbish just as I do.

As part of the settlement the Express newspapers' legal team made an apology before the judge in open court, and more to the point were compelled to publish grovelling FRONT PAGE apologies in both national titles this morning. The Daily Express and the Star have a combined daily circulation of 1,400,000 and a readership of over three million.

Click here for the Independent newspaper's report on the matter... (The Daily Express and Star are mysteriously not googlable this evening...) I got the article from the Express online via msn; but on further clicking "the article ... may have been deleted"...

OK post over. I'm off to SLEEP... I've not slept properly since Sunday...

GOOD NEWS for an Australian lady in Hanoi, Vietnam. She got caught with about 3kg of heroin in her shoes (must have had a very funny walk; you imagine 3 bags of sugar in YOUR shoes...) a high court has downgraded the life sentence she was inconveniently awarded into a sentence of death... why on earth people think life is "merciful" but death "cruel" I fail to comprehend... the British prison service are especially pervy... keeping double child killer Ian Huntley alive after two (rather pathetic, it has to be said) suicide attempts... if death is so against "human rights" why not have an elective death penalty? Where anyone sentenced to life can make the decision to die at any point during their sentence and be permanently out cold within the hour? Now THAT is civilized for ya...

BEES BLOG

MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY... lack of recent peace... taken over so many say by a country soon to have Olympics, though the country soon to have Olympics has, so I hear always thought of the mountainous land as an annexe... to see recent pixx click here

Plotting... (& "only" $50million!)

NOT MY WIZZY NEW NOVEL, I'm afraid; though I wish it was. I've been plotting the course of what might eventually become part of another book (if it gets into my memoirs)... And that is: my FUTURE.

I sat up for what seemed like hours last night, penning all manner of conceptions to paper...

I would particularly like to set up a Gledwood podcast. Surely that's the way forward for "freestyling" radio these days rather than taking the hospital or pirate radio route...

(Just what would I cast about? Not more hamsters and heroin; it has to be grown-up stuff...)

Well that's about it. No point telling ideas before they're done. That's called "fiction" or, to put it perhaps more kindly; tends to turn into "plans never executed"... I'm only into planning the future present. The only kind of planning worth doing!

*

AND I NEARLY FORGOT! LEGAL EVENT OF THE YEAR: Heather Mills McCartney yesterday obtained a £24.3 million (ie $50 million give or take a couple of months' interest) divorce settlement from Sir Paul.

The press have had a field day baring all of Miss Mills's "porno past" etc. Even the judge insisted on taking the slightly unusual step of making his decision public... his judgement branded her an "unreliable witness"... and awarded her a fifth of the alleged £125/$250million she had claimed from Sir Paul's £400/$800 fortune (though the press have claimed he is worth double that...)

Poor Heather Mills. Though I'm hardly her biggest fan I don't hate her as the tabloid press do... If you click on this link the full tabloid post mortem plus some lovely photos should pop up, showing her seemingly utterly deranged. The press are so clever at getting these. My diagnosis is of a single-minded lady of great determination whose mind has become focused on this divorce to the exclusion of nearly all else: which has led her to become over-wrought... so over-wrought, in fact that as soon as the case was over she allegedly ran up to Sir Paul's lawyer and doused her over the head with mineral water (it was a posh brand though).

Hopefully Miss Mills and her $50million can now move on to fresh pastures and poor Sir Paul can retire in peace to his Scottish hideaway and live out the rest of his days $50million poorer, but with $750million still intact...

BLOGTHING OF THE DAY:
American "high end" motorhomes (poshest personal coaches I've ever seen: these are fantastic... if you could get one shipped over you could have SUCH a lark driving around Europe in one... (so much more glamorous, as I said in their comments than camping in the awning of a shivery 1960s Dormabile!!!)

BLOG II Spanish-seeming person's Wales-looking photos...

PS why are Chinese and Japanese schoolgirls into such candy-coloured kitch like this..?

Tubby Diggery

MY TROTTEROVSKIS went visiting Mother Hubbs's house yesterday... stashed in the lollypop jar, filled nearly to the brim with woodshavings and multipunctured with airholes on the bottom... They were installed upside-down because the lid is bright red and impenetrable by anything much short of a red hot poker (btw did you know the English King Edward II died in 1327 with one of those up the you-know-where..! True!!)... anyway it was like a living version of one of those glass domes the Victorians so loved to store dead things under... Though most of the time little was to be seen except agitatedly shifting sawdust... then every now and then one tubby trotter would poke her head up; followed by another.... Then her tubby bum would vanish back into the shavings and the other follow directly down...

Mother Hubbs is funny. On the one hand she wanted to show my "living ornament" directly to the cat who was most astounded and sneaked round and round it making me feel very nervous (though the tubberovskis were taped in and closely supervised: I know all the kitty-trixx: like waiting till your back's turned (so you can't I even took them to the loo with me) then knocking the whole thing down so it springs open ~ ta-daa! And three-times cat heaven emerges pinging into the shadows... So that made me just slightly on edge though I knew they were perfectly safe. Then she started fretting about whether or not they had enough air. Of course they did!

But we ended up rather farcically blowing in air through a drinking straw... Which if anything, I'd imagine would only INCREASE the carbon dioxide levels... though I'm no expert. It did seem rather over the top but Mother Hubbs has an obsessive nature like me and once she's got a bee in her bonnet she cannot stop buzzing...

In fact, before long all three simply fell asleep right in the middle of the diggery (a real burrow for once! What hamster luxury!!)... though only TWO ever emerged. In paranoia I tore the thing opened, only for a bleary-eyed Spherical to emerge from the very bottom, where she had slumbered in seclusion for two hours flat (and probably been nibbling on the red binkybonk things: moulded uppydowny recesses for the shopkeeper to stand lollies upright atop the closed jar as a sales display... THAT is what most probably attracted her down (I know the hamster brain!)... also the relative peace and quiet. She's an old momma, is Spherical. Doesn't like needless excitement of any kind. Meanwhile the other two were going mental digging up then down, then together in a chain. Then popping up sawdust-covered heads and looking surprised to have got nowhere!

We had a yummy Sunday lunch and smoked lots of real cigarettes (not nasty rollups like I normally do. Mother Hubbard is very posh (well, compared to me; as are most people haha!))... then Bashful and Itchy persisted in scrabbling against the top of their dome as if they were bored and had had enough so I took them home. Not before causing a spectacle amongst some young children on the bus... so that was MY Sunday... and how was yours..??

BLOGS OF THE DAY:
Tubby chocolate mice...
Amazingly fluorescent coloured smoke...
Beautiful hotair baloons...
Rainbowtastic paintings from Spain...


ps

Ever heard of a natural phenomenon called a "fire rainbow"?
Click to see it: they DO exist and that's a fantastic specimen!!

Radio Sunday

MOST PEOPLE SPEND SUNDAYS putting up shelves, baking cakes... (OK ladies not cakes: I mean peeling potatoes while the Archers omnibus is on, lighting the oven during Desert Island Discs and sweating away over a hot stove doing ye olde Sunday roast all afternoon... whereas I have made a short and selected (though it seemed to take up best part of an hour) international talk radio guide... really I did it for myself and have Australia's Radio National playing in my ear as I speak (barely past midday here: approaching midnight there. So you can listen to any of these selected stations including the best of the BBC live through your PC simply by clicking your option and selecting "listen live"... except for BBC7 (mostly plays, comedy and audiobook type readings) which asks you to "select player" I use Windows' own player and it works fine on this one...

All that talk of food and I'm hungry... must go! Have a cheery Sunday everyone... unless you're in Australia in which case you'll have 22 minutes left as it's 12:38here meaning it's 11:38pm there (though what timezone he's chatting for I've no idea...) OK must be going... bye!

PS I didn't make airholes in the lollypop jar because (1) the lid was far too thick with binkybonky up-and-down poggled indents in the top in which to stand your lollies for display... I could make holes in the bottom and invert it on them and maybe I will... it's just I realized this will make it useless for the subsequent storing of anything airtight in later days e.g. my spices or something like that well I don't know I have to go my brain feels like a rotten apple core...

PPS: the world's best radio programme in my opinion is Outlook on the BBC world service. If you clickonit you can listen again they always have good stuff on... I think Heather Payton has the friendliest (and Australian-accented, incidentally) voice on the radio...

SONG: Madonna: Who's That Girl...

ROBO-BURROWING! // Hamster-Keeping!

FOUND AN EMPTY LOLLYPOP JAR last night... it was about 6" (15cm) wide by about 9" or 10" (about 25cm) deep... I filled this two thirds full of woodshavings and plonked my three robbies on top... at first they tubbily trotted round and round like a tubby horserace (always clockwise:... dunno why? Is this something to do with the Northern Hemisphere and the way our water gurgles down the plughole? Or what? But they always ramble round in that fashion...

Spherical was first to use the initiative to dig ~ clever girl! I quite easily got the others to join in by simply inverting the entire container on their heads so the old top was the new bottom... and in a jiffy I had three burrowing tubbies. Spherical still showed a distinct lead, digging persistently and profoundly deeper than the rest and staying under for far longer... as if she'd been a deepsea diver in a "past life"..!

Although they had well over a litre of air in there (for three rodents weighing barely 100g between them)... this would surely have lasted them an hour, lid closed (no breathing holes) but my paranoia forced me to open it up every five minutes or so... which had all three trotters scrabblilng up towards the light...

I also kept turning it this way and that way up, to keep the burrows fresh... this sometimes produced some quite amazing natural caves, which Baby Itchy used to sit up in, washing her ears!

Then I had all three trotting in a row, the lollyjar rotating like a tumble dryer, woodshavings heaping deep on their heads as they went...

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ALL hamsters originate from some of the harshest conditions in the world... at both extremes. The "great regular" two-thirds-of-a-rat-sized Syrian hamster (as in my "avatar" self-portrait...) is in the wild a severely endangered species. As far as is known, less than a hundred burrows exist in the wild, in the deserts near Aleppo, which is by the Syrian-Turkish border in the hostile scorpion-ridden Middle-Eastern wilderness...

Pingpong, my Chinese hamster, comes from the naturally most clement conditions: that is, the woods and mountains of nothern China. He has specially adapted wrists and feet to be able to hold onto your hand or any branch, tree or other climbable support and adeptly scale up.... to the uninitiated he looks like a mouse, only his body is nearly twice as long as a mouse's (coat the same colour though... with a marked "dorsal" backstripe...) Like the European woodmouse he has large markedly hemispherical poppy eyes, but unlike the droplet-shaped woodmouse, Pingpong's body is elongated like an eel almost... which is why I call him a "furry goods train"...

My old two Russian hamsters were actually of two species: the ordinary Russian or Siberian hamsters in most American petshops are called Campbells (the "condensed hamster")... less than half the size of the tubby regular hamster, these come in a wide variety of coat colours and have remarkably soft fur... to keep Russian hamsters' fur at its best it is recommended to provide a bowl full of sand or chinchilla dust for regular dust-bathing... these animals love this! And it keeps their coats in tip-top condition... European petshops almost always sell so-called "winter whites" ... these being grey or albino with a marked dorsal stripe and stripes down each flank. They don't come in a wide variety of colours but have a hippo-shaped squarer head than the Campbells and are said to have a better temperament (which I certainly found to be true! My Campbells was most "assertive"... forever spinning round threatening to nip me upon picking him up! The swine!! If you keep a winter white Russian hamster in a naturally lit room with little or no artificial light at night time (e.g. in a child's bedroom) his fur will naturally go a white colour ... to blend in with the deep snows of Eastern Siberia... (which is one of the coldest places on earth, and where the Siberian or Russian hamsters come from...)

Russian hamsters do not like and cannot comfortably tolerate high summer temperatures, so if your home exceeds 30C or 85F in summertime you'll notice your poor hammies lying flat out panting... so adapted to the permafrosted Siberian ground are they that even the soles of their feet are fur-covered. One blazing hot day I took pity on my poor little swines and let them ramble in the (at the time food-free) icebox of my fridge... unbelievably they rambled about the ice-sheet quite comfortably, suddenly perking up from their summer near-death-seeming repose... I made them a little nest; propped the fridge door open to avoid any possibility of suffocation and allowed them to chill out in the most literal sense!

The roborovski hamsters come from the outskirts of the Gobi desert where summer temperatures reach blazing highs and, without their tubby fat reserves and wooly coats, winters would chill them to the bone. Like hamsters of many kinds, robos do not have constant or reliable supplies of water in their home environment; rather they lick the morning dew from rocks, or eat greens for moisture. This is no reason to deprive roborovskis of water however. Domesticated hamsters are accustomed to bottled water being there at all times and to remove this would be an act of cruelty.

Robos are the smallest, fastest (and wriggliest) of all hamster species... and are widely regarded to be the most pretty... They form strong social groups and bonds in pairs or groups of up to four (I have heard that larger groups can cause problems with pecking order, domineering, bullying and fighting...) more than any other hammies, the robbies will tend to perform activities together... and though all hammies are described as "inquisitive", robbies take the biscuit in this regard. Put a new toy in their home and, even if fast asleep at midday, the chances are that within five minutes they'll be pinging out, sniffing, exploring, jumping, rambling and entertaining themselves all over it..! Roborovskis are quite possibly the most entertaining of all small animals and their antics never cease to amuse. They do, however startle VERY easily, and it's quite normal for them to panic, even if you just put your hand in their tank. One day they might come up to sniff you: another they might flee in sheer terror. These are very tiny, flighty animals who do not really like being handled, though you may be able to tame one or more of your brood to walk on your hands. Just beware: they are apt to jump on the floor without warning! And are VERY difficult to recapture. For this reason the roborovski hamster, though ever so cute, isn't really a suitable pet for most small children...

All hamsters live in burrows during the daylight hours, though they are not necessarily asleep when in the burrow. Much of the day is spent grooming the self and others (Russian and roborovski hamsters live in social groups; male Chinese hamsters, so I'm told, may be paired but must be closely watched for fighting; Syrian hamsters of both sexes are highly territorial and will not share a burrow with another hamster. They only interact with their own species in order to breed: and even then (in captivity) an issue of Vanity Fair magazine is essential to prevent the female spinning round after the act to bite her stud partner where it hurts most of all...!)

Hammies are no longer considered merely children's pets. In this age of the flat or apartment-dwelling twentysomething, hammies are perhaps the easiest-going and least demanding of pets to those following the modern lifestyle.

The regular "Syrian" hamster is the most strictly nocturnal of all pet hamster species and will tend to rise at dusk, yawn, stretch, wash, then climb on his wheel (an ESSENTIAL for all hammy species)... which he might well ramble constantly until dawn... perhaps running upto eight miles (12km) in a single night...!

Russian, Chinese and roborovski hamsters are more likely to be active during the daytime... they tend to catnap then get up for short periods... then maybe go to sleep again... Still, they all prefer the hours of darkness to light.

If you wish to observe your hammies in "pitch darkness" you need to know that a red "fireglow" bulb is invisible to hamster eyes, just as infra-red is invisible to us. So instal a red light beside their home and you'll witness their full furry ferocity as they recklessly ramble the night away...

One last tip: if keeping hammies in a bedroom, an aquarium-type enclosure will be much quieter and less annoying than a barred cage. Constant gnawing at the bars is a sign of hammy frustration meaning you need to give your little pet or pets more toys and more things to do. But all hammies do this from time to time...

Likewise there is NO REASON why you should put up with a wheel that squeaks, shrieks or otherwise makes unduly intrusive trundling noises. Most noisy wheels can be rapidly remedied with a blob of butter or marge or a drop of cooking oil...

So here's the Gledwood's hammy advice... get a hammy and add endless entertainment to your life!!

Forgot to mention: Most wheels sold for Syrian hamsters are actually too small to allow your hammy to stretch out and run full-tilt. A rat wheel is far more suitable. Also, though it would seem logical that a solid plastic wheel would be preferred; when given the choice some of my hamsters actually opted for a wire wheel. Perhaps because it gives the impression of climbing bars very quickly..? I don't know. I'd also say that most hammy homes, though fine for the dwarf species really are a little tiny for a full-grown Syrian hamster. I kept my Pandable in a 2'6"x 1' (floor area) by 18" deep cracked old fishtank rescued from the street. (That is 75cm x 30cm; x 45cm deep). Also he ran (VERY QUICKLY; far quicker than on any "hamster wheel") on an expensive wire rat wheel with a 10" or 12" diameter (I think it was 12") that is 30cm. When I took him to my Dad's he had to go in the dreaded mouse cage fitted with a wheel of half diameter. He advertised his disgust by nibbling furiously at the bars all night, every night until safely back home in his aquarium...

*

MANY THANKS for all your moral support regarding my tribulations and trials of life... your comments have all been much appreciated... I only apologize how long it's taken to get back personally to each and every one of you... please bear with me and do not be offended! I try to keep in touch with my every single contact as often as I possibly can! And on that note I say goodbye for now: and I hope to be in touch with y'all as soon as possible!

My new radio station of the day: 4BC Brisbane 1116 (Queensland, Australia) ... it's 9:48pm London time but I take it very early in the morning out there... everyone sounds so sleepy... they're talking about lawn mowings and "fruit fly traps"... (whatever those are...~?!?)

Their telno is 13 13 32 (international code for Down Under is +61 far as I know; haven't a clue what's the code for Brisbane....)

Found another one 2GB Sydney... but they're both prattling on about GARDENING... at this hour (to them) of the morning... why?

OK, OK, found another one: 2UE Sydney... but they're blithering on about sport! And it's not that EARLY they're "coming up to the nine o'clock news" and it's 10pm here...

*

PS Anonymous told me a far better radio station: ABC's (that's AUSTRALIAN Broadcasting Corporation's) Radio National. If you've never done it before and want to listen just click on the name, find "listen live"; click on that; it prompts you to "select your player" I chose Windows. And on you go.

(Once the radio's up and playing to your satisfaction, just "minimize" that window... and you can roam about the internet wherever you please with uninterrupted entertainment streaming through your headphones or speakers...)

Furry Future

HAVING THOUGHT ABOUT THE FUTURE, my mind turned to pets. I have always wanted to get a giant rabbit, you know, the sort you can put in a harness and take out for a trot each morning (a hop, perhaps...)... then I think: hey what about a pika~?!? But you can't really get domesticated pikas (those giant hamster-like critters that live up the Rockies and bound about with flowers and grass bunched in their mouths) they are, apparently, too likely to bite (who does THAT remind me of..?) Then I come to realize in that case I might as well get the world's furriest animal, which looks like a rabbit from Mars into the bargain: yes the amazing chinchilla! They run on 16" diameter wheels and watch television in their spare time. If you haven't got satellite or get the channel or volume wrong they'll protest with a squeak... (click here and scroll down if you don't believe me!)

Then I realized I already have the world's cutest rodents: my three trotterovskis. Surely if a rodent beauty contest were held my three would win..?

When I was first a drug addict my family used to despair that they just wanted the old me back. I, to be frank, was happy to be killing him off: a millstone of a personality I'd tolerated round my neck all my life I'd grown up being told I was useless at school (not by the teachers: I mean the other pupils) and so learned self-loathing... So I had no sorrow for any personality my addiction to heroin might have "lost"...

... now, however, I do look back at some of my good points of old. I remember pushing myself through several situations (job interview type occasions etc) where I was so nervous my voice literally declined into a kind of bleat because I was trembling so much. And yet I pushed myself through. And how I did have some stubbornness and moral "fibre" (if you want to call it that)... and determination. Sometimes I want to get these aspects of the old me back, plant them in a pot like seeds and grow giant sequoias of them...

Wasn't I barking on yeserday! Like a twelve year old kiddie in a sweetshop!! I did achieve something. What I achieved was the near total (and utterly unexpected) demolition of my long- longstanding fear ~ nay, TERROR ~ of work.

Don't get me wrong; I've never been "workshy" in the sense of laziness. (Though like anyone I can be terminally lazy at selected times...) If only I could work and feel good about it and be well paid, I'd have been happy. My fear stems from bad experience. The experience of being hopelessly depressed and yet flung into work and social situations I could barely cope with (I literally had not enough hours in the day at one point to sleep, bathe and eat before getting back to start work again...)... my selfconfidence was at rock bottom and never really improved from any work experience I undertook, paid or voluntary. My last job I felt so very rotten I just wanted to curl into a ball. I could barely focus on anything I was that exhausted. I used to gaze longingly out of the stairwell windows and fantasize about flinging myself out. And I pushed and pushed and pushed against myself and only made myself iller. Then I discovered I really did have something wrong: it was called ME (so-called myalgic encephalomyelitis; though I hate that name) it is better known internationally as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) which I believe is a more accurate description... this was the same so-called "yuppie flu" of the 1980s: and it does tend to afflict people who, far from being lazy at heart, will push themselves too hard...

Then I got signed off sick... drifted... found that heroin "cured" not only my terminal lack of confidence, but all my physical aches too... and my world pretty much ended there.

All I can say is that yesterday I felt I glimpsed a vision through a very narrow crack of a newly-opened door...

SONG:
Dolly Parton: Jolene (listen to the chat she gives beforehand; it's classic!)

I Did It!

I DID IT! Yes I did it! I actually went in there and did not bottle out. How amazing! Everyone DID look at me like: who the hell is THAT?? But I ignored their visual jibes and gratefully took a free glass of red wine (a black woman had white: everyone else had boring old orange juice. ORANGE JUICE ~ to go on air? Honestly!)

We got split into groups. My group was the smallest, consisting of a tiny 40 or 50something year old man who is such a regular caller all the staff knew him. Plus a fat couple from Essex, with very Essexey (that is out-of-town suburban) values and opinions. Not a single person ventured to make any eyecontact or friendship with me (as expected).

While the other lot got a guided tour round the station, we were shoved straight in a studio with a mike at every chair and though it wasn't a fluent discussion, various topics, shows, presenters were brought forth. Three of us out of four looked extremely selfconscious (self included). I died on myself twice. Literally froze from nerves; had to fish myself out (very adeptly so, as well ~ if I say so myself...). I knew this was never meant to be live or even live sounding. They only wanted people's voices to mix into different adverts, trailers, soundbites and all that rubbish, so I wasn't fazed in that respect, and as I said I did fish myself out.

I hope they don't use any of my contribution. At the end we had to say each of us alone "this is blah blah blah radio". I put on my answering machine voice and made the fart woman (typo! but she was one) look at me all different...

Then, traumas over we got a tour of the building by the second in command boss at the station. I noticed he was as badly shaved as I had been before I took razor to face this afternoon. I asked all the most cogent, intelligent, diverse and basically spot-on questions so he spoke to me practically the whole time instead of the useless rest of the rabble (I don't know about you: but don't YOU notice who someone's talking to, when you and someone, or many other people are introduced to a person of note..? I ALWAYS do....)

I took his name, got free mugs and fridge magnets. Security (for once in my life) treated me like a human being and not a theif they just hadn't managed to nail (as I usually get treated by security guards)... out on the street I cheerily said "see you on the radio then!" to the fat pair; they looked at me like well we hope we never cast eyes on YOU again but forced sneering snorts of smiles.

And then I trotted the ten minutes to my bus stop feeling a job had been well done.

I got the deputy station controller's attention, I went in the building. I wouldn't be half as nervous there again (specially seeing how causual they were all turned out!)... I didn't ask about internships (asking TONIGHT had never been on the cards ~ I did try to make that clear)... yeah and blah blah blah ~ wahey! I did it!!!!!!

PS THE ANTIPERSPIRANT (badly-needed) body spray I bought smells so pukeworthy that in this netcaff cubicle the overpowering pong is seriously threatening to make me THROW UP...

Washing/Drying/Et Cetera-ing...

POST-BATH PRE-CLOTHES... OK I'm writing this in a hurry... was unable to post anything last night as fast asleep in post-shopping-for-deodorant-etc exhaustion coma...

Many thanks for all your messages of support. I've not been able to check every one yet as at the present moment I'm rather hurried between just having bathed (woo!), washing clothes in the one local laundrette (that's a laundromat to you Americans) with a spin-dryer (saves a fortune on the dryers!) I painstakingly shaved this morning... actually that's not the right word. Painstaking implies care. My experience was painful, impatient, full of mental negativity and physical blood from my chin.

But the usually-surly man at the end of my road said hello to my fresh-faced self this afternoon... plus I look nearly ten years younger... so maybe it was worth all the effort after all...

All this costing me a tenner I would otherwise have donated to my usual cause... feels so very unusual..!

Anyway, once clothes done (my hair washed, face shaved, clothes will be clean and dry including dirty old winter coat) I shall be ready about two hours ahead of time... wow!

I have the address, the main (ie business switchboard for important people not just bigots who want to spout off on air) telephone number and can get there on one single bus plus a ten minutes (tops) walk.

Barring earthquake or terrorist attack I SHALL BE THERE. Prattling in the mike about whatever floats their broadcasting boat...

yeah I still have very %skewed% glasses, my teeth are brown (at least they are THERE; unlike many a junkie I could mention)... and so on and so on. Right I'm off. If I don't dash back some particularly desperate person (well they really would have to be) might steal my clothes from the soon-dormant washing machine!

Video of the Day:
Gabriella Cilmi: SWEET ABOUT ME
Have a listen... this is one of the great songs of the year!

Radio Gledwood¬!

PHONE CALL FROM THE RADIO TODAY offering free red wine if I come in with other prized telephone contributors to go under the mic and testify how wonderful we find the show!!

I took the call in full chirping enthusiasm, saying how much I loved the presenter in question etc, not realizing at the time how every statement I made was a tick tick tick (that's a "check" to you Americans) in the mental boxes of "valued contribution-worthy listener"... I was actually being upbeat in case I'd won a million-pound cash prize. Sadly not. but I claimed I was all up for meeting with other listeners, big fat microphones and some of "the team" at such and such a time on WEDNESDAY. Which doesn't give me too much time to fret about which pair of diarrhoea-stained jeans and smelly holey socks I'm going to wear...

My initial reaction was "I CAN'T GO!" Even when I try and clean myself up I look... well I look like what I am. No contact lenses and lgasses on the skew like a walking %percentage%-sign...

Then I thought why NOT? Obviously make the effort but come as you are.

Then I thought HEY ~ hang on, I could apply for a work experience/internship here. I don't know how to explain a TWELVE YEAR GAP in my employment history ~ except by declaring the truth: that years of illness (depression and chronic fatigue syndrome CFS topped with drug addiction) threw me off course.

Maybe I could vanilla it all out, make it all anodyne and acceptable. But then I thought: hang on, talk radio is about human situations. If I'm used to life on the frontline ~ people ill, diseased, abused, uncared-for, insulted and injured and dying ~ and can meet their tales with empathy and warmth, why should I lie on my CV or resume or application?

As a writer of memoirs, I can hardly reveal all in print, yet lie on my CV and on air, can I? In the end, there can only be one truth, and as the (Biblical, I'm pretty sure,) saying goes: Be sure your sins will find you out!

Perhaps I seem a bit glib at times, a little too ready to spout out all about my disgusting injecting heroin habit. But I'm not proud of it at all. I merely made my decision, many moons ago, to be straight with people online and on this blog... otherwise imagine how it might go? Me making friends the world over under totally false pretences... I'd be leading a double life even more than usual.

Like a house of cards, such fragile situations are apt to come tumbling down at the very first sneeze...

In real life, people see me and know that something ~ they may not grasp precisely what ~ but they realize something's up, not right, quite frankly all wrong... Online I might prattle about hamsters, homes, politics, etc: nobody would be any the wiser. And yet friendships might grow, relationships be cherished... and all under totally false pretences.

If I can possibly avoid it, I'm really not one for living out a lie.

OK tangent over.

Back to the radio. What should I do? Do I turn up to this drinks and "recording how brilliant I think the show is" soundbite evening?

And do I apply for this internship? And if so, how do I handle my past?

Please: I need some experienced advice!


Song of the Day:
Captain Sensible: Glad It's All Over

*

21:16hrs COLD FEET!
I'M TOO SCARED TO GO! I DON'T WANT TO SET A BAD IMPRESSION. I don't have nice clothes (really don't)... no confidence at ALL in my appearance. My hair needs cutting. I desperately need (a) contact lenses or (b) a proper pair of glasses that don't need a hat to sit vaguely straight on my head (that's how bashed up my current glasses are ...) I only TOOK to wearing glasses because of rock-bottom self-esteeem (I feel about 10% as good in them as I do in contacts)... it all feels too rushed, too early. The internship/work experience is a totally different issue: I've obviously set a good enough impression on air; I really feel (no exaggeration) that I would destroy this if I admitted who I was in person and I won't meet the producer tomorrow but some other person.

The two issues:
A) recording praise and
B) applying for work experience
are totally separate. The latter is my focus.
You're all sure I should be 100% frank? I could fudge my career "gap" by saying I'd been travelling and working fleamarkets in Goa and Thailand and no-one could prove otherwise; but as I said earlier, I'm writing memoirs that will tell everything. In the long run I don't see any gain from lying (and hate doing it)... my bad experiences might stand me in good stead

aargh I don't know what to do I'm not dying of pressure to turn up tomorrow (it IS just a thing to record listener soundbites that is ALL) I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know aaarghkkkhhh! Maybe I will bring Baby Itchy in my pocket. She can bite me for good luck...

Tyrannical Itchy Rex & Hurricane Alert...

I AM SO ASHAMED... but I have to get this shocking tale told as quick as poss ~ to get it over with.

Yes Itchy is turning into a real tyrant: she bit me last night! And drew blood!!

I had a bucket of lukewarm (clean) water out and was so furious I dropped her in it.

She doggiepaddled desperately (as expected) then bobbed under which panicked me. I rapidly fished her out. And there she sat all tiny-looking, wet and miserably bedraggled in my hand (which she tried to bite again!) then shrouded and swathed in warming scarves and towels of various kinds for a long while. I burst into tears and rather pointlessly told her how sorry I was (as if she comprehended one single word)~ and felt contrite for ages. What an evil thing to do... but then again Itchy what is WRONG with you? I think she finally has cracked (well I hope not... but what else? She squabbles with her sisters... she's a real rotter trotter!

She is in disgrace in a toilet tube as I write...

Other news: a "hurricane" is forecast locally for tonight (the "worst one in a generation (except we don't get cyclones here: our storms are hot and cold fronts where low pressure causes the sea to rise and wind to come rushing in. When the isobars are packed tightly together on the weather chart that means bad news on the shipping forecast! They are "gales" not hurricanes. The windspeeds are pitifully meagre in comparison... barely 100mph let alone the 200mph of a proper category five superstorm...)) anyhow... sandbags are being delivered... If I fail to write tomorrow it's because London has been blown away...

PS: I only didn't write last night because bloody BLOGGER was down for TWO HOURS last night making any posting impossible? Did anybody else have such troubles? They occurred around 6pm local time...

Crossing the Water

I HAVE ITCHY FEET. Telling me to get the hell out of here. To clean up, ship out, escape... to give you a clue where, the above illustrations represent: top~ Berlin Hauptbahnhof (their new Grand Central railway station) left~ La Défense (Paris's office building that echoes the Arc de Triomphe (and is further along, if you fly off the end of the Champs Elysées) right~ Berliner Reichstag (German national parliament building, including whizzy glass dome installed by Sir Norman Foster)...

(And the very top two: surely you know!)

Yes I actually want to be an immigrant. And there are two versions of my fantasy: the metropolitan fantasy ~ which is trundle off to Paris or Berlin and set down there.

Or the village fantasy: living in a French or German version of the Archers (Radio 4's "everyday story of countryfolk")... I'm not too sure about the latter as bountiful as the countryside is (central France was amazing: like Britain crossed with Mediterranean weather ~ crickets singing all night, glow-worms in the bushes, giant hornets (yuck!) and luminous green frogs in the river... the weather was a lot more tolerable (and the thunderstorms more spectacular)... I seemed to live on French bread (OK well it wouldn't have been English bread, would it?), soft cheeses and red plonk for three weeks... quite wonderful.

I won't spend ages and ages trying to justify my decision. Just bear in mind I do speak French and German to a stunted degree... in that I did A Levels in both, but a year in either country and I actually would be fluent. Being a stranger in a strange land, so I have found is far less lonely than uprooting in one's own country, where you could wander like a shadow and nobody would talk to you... soon as people realized I was English (soon as I opened my mouth in other words even though I WAS attempting my best accent) half the village were saying hello whenever I passed by. Also I thrive on novelty and I mean it when I say there really is NOWHERE else I think I could possibly tolerate in this green and pleasant land except for London, where of course I already am... London full of drugs.

Yes drugs are everywhere: but I am not the type to travel in search of pharmacalogical pastures new. My using is geographically ultra-conservative. I don't trust people I don't know. Don't take chances. Stick to old friends, old dealers, old haunts... crossing the water means looking at the finish-line not the hurdles:~

Crossing the water is for life anew; not a refusing-to-die abscess-ridden limping-on still-addicted foreign-flavoured continuation of the old one!

I would not even consider going unless I were well and truly CLEAN!

*

OK: I tried 77WABC again (what IS the 77? There is no frequency 77 on long, medium, shortwave or FM: and digital doesn't use frequencies...)... every presenter seems to be a more intelligent version of Rush Limbaugh (surely Limbaugh is the thickest...) I tried ANOTHER email to Curtis Sliwa on his breakfast show (it was mid afternoon here)... in reply to his ranting over how grainy the CCTV pix of that Times Square attempted bombing turned out and how much more precisely the British 7/7 bombers were captured on camera:



Hi Curtis: London calling. {My standard hackneyed international greeting...} I'm listening online.

Here in the UK we have more security cameras by a long way than anywhere else on earth... about 4million of 'em. The average citizen gets filmed x300 a day... though we sometimes feel this a bit of an intrusion on our liberties, you're quite right: when murder, carnage and major events do happen, the police collect not only publically filmed images but stuff from shops, businesses, etc (literally cameras are everywhere here!) and it has got loads of baddies busted.

Great show!

{then, ten mins later; my ps}

(further to my previous message)

ps it's past 3:30pm here... don't be behind times with your security as well. Yes our images probably are better than yours because CCTV has long been a regular part of life here and we have special digital enhancement technology. That's why you see the terrorists' zits!

07 March 2008 15:37

Trotters' TV/Hillary yeah-yeah-yeah!

I SNAPPED MYSELF OUT OF my nightly tailspin last night by positioning Itchy, Bashful and Spherical's home (burrow-side first) right before me, to be instantly entertained by their sleepytime hilarity. (I call it sleepytime: typically one is scratching furiously at the glass floor, as if this will magically enlarge their newspaper-fold "burrow", another is fast asleep but sat bolt upright and the third crawling, living-hat-like atop this one's head in a bid to get out for a trot on the wheel. When I disturbed them earlier by pulling the blanket off their home two tubbies were trotting rapidly on the wheel... and the third ('most certainly poor light Baby Itchy) was flashing round and round and round her Daz-white undercarriage as she clung onto the wire wheel for dear life, the heavier trotters thundering obliviously onwards as she exhibited this dizzying robo-fortitude...

Yes the most horrible thoughts go through my head nightly nowadays... I was going to post them but thought I would save you the silt-stirring mud-kicking of a disturbed subconscious...

What I will tell you is my dream. It seems sick at first hearing, surely; but was actually heavily symbolic... I mean, if I tell you I dreamed I was squeezing my own mother's breast would you think that sick?... Nothing "sexual" about this... And bear in mind that she had breast cancer little more than a year ago; I've had these pussing "wounds" that I've squeezed the poison out of. (I disagree with my drugs worker that squeezing the huge wet-scabbed lump on my arm was of little use: genuinely within 2 days of my kneeding at the lump (which I'd previously left alone) it went down, which shows that I must have squeezed the poison up and out.) So by squeezing this breast I was ridding her of illness... which is an obvious wish-fulfilment... OK, still seems weird I grant you, but do you get how the subconscious goes in circles, that a plain "weird" dream has a genuine meaning behind it? I woke up straight away thinking what was that about? ~ and the above answer came directly to mind. The most instant interpretations tend to be the truest interpretations of dreams, so I've found...

And on the subject of oddness: no that was NOT my leg pictured yesterday. As if! My legs are far bulkier than that. The hairs would NOT look good under stockings. And I've never worn a stilletto in my life (would probably fall off; that's if they could find my gargantuan size...)

That dreadful Rush Limbaugh FAILED to read my email in the TWO HOURS I dutifully tuned into his boresome show. Honestly. For the first HOUR the guy just prattled out his unoriginal opinions. Then he let a few callers on who proudly proclaimed stuff like: "I'm from Texas and I'm a conservative," as if that would impress anyone (are people honestly that insecure in their political views that they need to endure an endlessly bigotted show like this patting them on the back "there there; you're not alone, there ARE others who think like you..."...? I mean..? This Rush Limbo-Dancer whatever he calls himself was declaring Hilary and Obama will end up on a joint ticket (as long as Obama's for VICE-president to let experienced Hillary do the real work that sounds brilliant to me) he said this will shoot the Democrats in the foot. How, why, wherefore he did not venture to explain. The guy's not even articulate... what on earth he's doing on national radio I really do not know. Can anyone enlighten me? Please...??!?

... Poor Hillary is still one hundred or so what-jer-mer-call-it nomination votes behind Obama... OK I have nothing against the guy but what does he stand for? Except for being a charismatic rather circuitous public speaker? Who glitters wondrously forth on the American dream and all that's good as mother's apple pie. But what about the economy? What about foreign powers who want to deny America their oil?

OK I admit I DO relish the prospect of Bill Clinton hosting First Lady coffee mornings for skeletal couture-outfitted 80-year old billionaires' wives socialites (isn't that what first ladies traditionally do?) or playing his sax on the Letterman show... well what else is he going to fill his time with... really having lived under a figure as controversial but as able as Margaret Thatcher (and I certainly do NOT agree with perhaps half her policies and actions) I'd love to see what Hillary does or does not do for America.

Well I'd better shut up now... Bimbimbie said I ought to kit out in cheerleader's uniform to chant my Hillary Hillary Hillary praises... what has got hold of me? She's the only candidate in ANY election (including the sappy choice of candidates we get over here) who's ever aroused even the vaguest of political passions from my acheing old bones...

... righto I really had better go I've food shopping to do and bandages to change. Take care everyone!

Video: On the Rocks ~ the American Pika

Blog of the day:
Costa Rica (including bizarre cows...)

Leg Wound Update

IF YOU DON'T WANT to hear about drugs, scabs, oozings and associated pussing; just scroll one post down to yesterday's leaping lambs:~ far more Positive Thinking...

Right: you have been warned!

I WOKE UP into a classic tailspin last night. Have you ever done that?... well surely we've all done it once or twice; but have you done it lately? Y'know when you go "oh my life is ruined boo-hoo-hoooo..." etc etc... Then I slept through deeply until the Vanessa show on BBC London radio at 9am sharp. Vanessa always cheers me up.

MY WOUNDED LEG is healing nicely. It reduced from (at its worst) treble the size of my palm. One palm of blistering ("2nd degree burns") another palm of horrific bright red, dead white, deep purple, orange, pink and every burning psychedelic colour in between... ("1st degree burns")... and one palm more of patchy purple bruising... NONE of this infected; all the result of ONE single injection of literally half a millilitre (ie about a thousanth of a pint or a two thousanth of a litre) of yukky street heroin....

Well anyway (to recap the story) after my trip to casualty, my consultant's review a couple of days later and being properly dressed (not just me: I mean the wound was "dressed" too...) and being put on the strongest horse-pill antibiotics merely as a preventative measure...

I went to the local drugs service where they gave me a "dressing" with no padding. Of course it stuck on the top and pulled the top off all my blisters (how was I to know any better? Instructions said "dressing: put dressing on wound" so I did put it directly on top. So blood and gunge running everywhere, nothing to do but fold up a table napkin and stick that on top. Of course this stuck too and pulled my wound open yet again. (I think I spared y'all these details at the time as I'd stressed enough people out with my medical upheavals by this stage...) In the end, the remaining dead skin, which was lying atop this wound like sluggish, slack clingfilm I just peeled off, knowing the whole thing would just scab over... and sure enough with three hours of exposure to open air it duly did.

The only trouble is (and this happened to the little one on my arm which HAS duly healed)... the scab is loose in parts (and I'm NOT picking it), oozy and wet in others, intensely painful at one end. In short NOT the supersealed natural dressing it's meant to be, probably because the damage occured underneath and is rising up and out... yesterday in frustration I sat and squeezed it all out, all the blood and runny "pus" (blister-juice from under the scab) and saw that it is indeed healing even though not as gracefully as I'd hoped it would. About a week ago it was a large capital i shape with stalk and upper and lower bars two inches long... it is shrinking.

So that's my leg update! No more limping. No more nights of agony (and it really DID hurt: just like a severe blistering burn at worst)... it was more like a tropical spider-bite than an ordinary "wound"... the way the blisters kept spreading and blazing pain at me literally a week and more later. How ridiculous. Whatever Afghan or Turk put whatever rubbish in that "gear" deserves to be shot. Oh and it came back from the test as "benzodiazepines" not "barbiturates" which scuppers the blisters theory (barbiturates cause blistering as a standard symptom of overdose: benzos (Valium/Rohypnol-type drugs) are totally unrelated chemically to the (1950s, 1960s sleeping pills) barbiturates (phenobarbitone/phenobarbital, Seconal, Amytal, Tuinal are famous barbs but the dose is in the 50s, 100s of milligrams); benzodiazepines are less dangerous (unlikely to kill you in overdose) but many times stronger per milligram. E.g. Seconal came in 50 and 100mg capsules; Valium comes in 5 and 10mg... considering how out of it I was on this adulterated heroin I would surely have taken double or treble a "medicinal" dose of whatever adulterant found its way in there. Rohypnol (yes the infamous date rape drug) is willfully abused by junkies when they can get it. It causes memory loss (in a patchy type of way, not a total blackout)... the standard nighttime dose is ONE milligram... so my questions about what on earth this stuff that burned the hell out of my leg, practically had me walking into lamp-posts (Mother Hubbs, incidentally blames that gear on her near-"stroke" type occurance: she stood up and when BANG! down on the floor... but I wasn't there. Next day she did look to me like she'd had a stroke: face fallen, totally doped up (but not in any drugs-type of way I've ever seen...)... a £20 bag of heroin weighs minimum 400mg (ie 0.4g), whatever adulterant found its way in I'd suspect was pa small dose by weight but potent... (sorry is this boring you I'm puzzling aloud what on earth it could have been...)... well I'll stop babbling. If I did have barbs it wasn't within three days of the urine test I asked for... whatever damaged my "soft tissue" is still mystery. If you're young, depressed, lost and thinking heroin is the answer: take note and beware! Maybe one person really will read my tribulations and be put off and that, as the cliche goes, "really will make it all worthwhile"..!

On this note I'd better go. Take care everyone..!

PS Calling New York: I'm trying to get talk radio online from New York City... can anybody local please tell me the names of the local stations... what's 77 WABC like? Further Information Please!¬


PPS This was my message to Rush Limbaugh:

Hi Rush this is London calling. Found you online. Please don't let that faux-Martin Luther King impostor Obama get in... Hillary please. Us rest of the world are fed up of George W Bush and don't trust your Republicans that much. But more to the point I wanna see Bill Clinton as America's first ladyboy and a madam president. We survived Margaret Thatcher. You can ride out 8 years of Hillary! All the best from Gledwood in London Town, UK.

ps go to my blog if you want entertainment: http://gledwood2.blogspot.com "hamsters and heroin"

{I kept a copy in case my transatlantic message gets lots... ? lost? or lost lots. whatever...}

Spring's Sprung (...somewhere!)

I'M NOT SURE what date the first day of spring "officially" falls in this country, but I'm pretty sure it's not yet fallen... despite a bracing freshness in the air... even in urban London. If I remember rightly it's sometime mid-March or early-April even. Nevertheless, spring IS officially here (or there) in several places across the Northern Hemisphere... (chilly old Russia included)... so in the lamb-leaping spirit of things I'm glorifying today with blue skies and daffodils.

Somebody chatting on the radio on Sunday really cheered me up... saying lambs are the only animals who leap for the sheer joy of living. Wow! How that must feel. I remember the wind blowing one time years ago and how this implacable urge toward dancing struck me... I remember waking and feeling those blue skies rayed with gold and thinking what wondrous opportunities would I partake in today...

Feelings that have long gone, of course. But at least I remember having them. At least I've been there. All too many people live in a near-professional state of misery because they've either not been there or doggedly refuse to acknowledge that they have. One professional miseryguts I knew in times past declared me to be naive. Well I think she was naive. It's so easy to reduce life to a tiling of black and white absolutes when actually its saturated in every living colour... even if a lot of it is very dismal and dark!

I don't know what on earth I was wazzling on about yesterday? Did anyone make sense of my post? (Because I barely can. In the clear light of mid-evening.) One person told me to "get a grip"! I have a grip!! It's just sometimes such luxury to let go!

And so back to lambs... I've even seen roborovskis a-leaping (you knew I'd bring this round to hamsters somehow; surely...) Itchy was being fractious with Bashful (which she never used to be. Perhaps spring's in the robbie-air too... or more to the point tiny Baby Itchy's fed up of being tiniest bottom-of-the-pecking-order... (poor swine!)... and while she was pinging about and hurtled straight at Bashful, Bashful literally sprang up directly in the air, allowing the supersonic Itchy to pass safely underneath...

... and how was YOUR day~??

Another World:
Foreign Blog of the Day: the Malay Educational System

Is shyness an illness?
read~ BBC News: Social Phobia
read and "listen again"~ Am I Normal: Social Phobia

ps: as Nicole accurately pointed out, the "lamb" ecstatically sniffing daffodils on the left is actually a baby GOAT (OK, OK, I know: it's called a "kid"...) also, spring begins in Europe officially on 21st of March (whereas Australia's official starting dates for autumn and spring are the 1st of March and September...)

Over-Tired; Locked Out; Brains Frazzled...

TIRED. VERY TIRED. All weekend. ~All day. Listening to the radio. Listening to my inner self. Even when I attmeptedly called Vanessa this morning while giving my leg wound a decent squeeze I was reprimanded by the receptionist: "OK thanks for phoning. We might get back to you."

(In other words, "Your call was FAR too rabbitty and we cannot abide 19~to~the~dozen demi-incomprehsensibles like you. Please don't ring back. If you do your number's blacklisted so don't worry about it"... Surely something like alll that.)

I couldn't BELIEVE that I, Mr glibly blogging articulacy himself was discounted from speaking across the waves because I was too bumbling... such a shocking sign of the times. Such a shocking sign. I'm tired. Had enough. Can't do this nonsense any more. That's what life style has styled me out of...

So I'm finished.

My whizzy new window. My heavy new window. When I tie a tie round the handle; guess no what would occur. I'd tie the ligature round my neck. And crouching from the sill, jump down. My sheery eight would slam my window shut and my tubbiness send the latch clicking closed. Hence I'm locked out, hanging right in full view of my downstairs window's view, legs jigging and all underoing that "danse macabre" (the dance of death") right in his full view. Locked out of my own room by my sheer fatty overweightedness; jigging haplessly. Unless Mr Downstairs had the presence of mind to grab a scimitar to cut me down, I'm gone. Otherwise worst of all worlds: cut down; twenty-foot fall ~ two broken legs and a crushed windpipe with no voice. Horror upon horror. How I had broken...

I'm sorry to be negative, posting bad dreams, rotting imagery of the death-dancing self. No!

Though I've had enough of today and all my views, my life tells to me that a radical haircut and somehalfware across the world can achieve.

I have to go now. Apologies for nonsenickalness. Late. Tired. Frazzled. Depressed. Bear with me ~ if you can ~ ... Most appreciated...
;->...

Furry Sunday

HAVE A CHARMING, FURRY SUNDAY EVERYONE.... that's fur as in little furry animals not as in rotten old mould... the picture to the left shows a pet pika (sitting on the same green spiral "staircase" of the same Habitrail cage my Chinese hammy Pingpong has... it will quickly outgrow that!)... And to the right a wild pika having a squeak outside its rocky abode...

... and top: a tiny roborovski so you can see why I coo into Itchy's ear "you look just like a pika!" among the reams of other rubbish I spout at her. (Well she does look a bit like one!)

Today I caught her trotting on the wheel and picked it up. She clambered about my hand trying not to look disappointed, upset and impatient to just scuttle off and be left alone. I shoved her into the seedery (the "teabox") and within a second her furry face appeared next to the Weetabix. Out she popped and I shoved her back in. There she was again looking all furry by the breakfast cereals. Then Bashful appeared looking all tubby and harvesty (they actually smell of harvest-time too)... she chased my fingers about, seizing her moment to bite when Itchy went pinging across the newspaper so Bashful panicked too and their tubby bums were struggling against the corner entrance to their "secret burrow"... where they ping away in peace...

OK I must admit I posted the above paragraph yesterday, before I spent nearly all day wallowing in bed in a pit of despondency. Then when I did emerge outside the thought hit me powerfully: I've been here too long. Time to move on...

(Give it another five years and perhaps I'll get round to it...)

I wished my Mum happy Mother's Day... she said she has an allergy and is covered in blisters... who does THAT sound like..?

My time now is up; so:~

See yous all tomorrow...

***

PS a personal message/plea to MALLORY
Many thanks for your comment.
I'm pretty sure I managed to reply ONCE at yours but now I'm having great troubles leaving any message at yours...
So I'm having to say HI here... please tell how/where or leave the link for how I DO communicate with you chez toi... your blog is quite something!

Blog pixx of the day:
Guildwood Gardens
Fantastic Alpine-Fresh Airiness...

Laundretta: Who Upset Her?

POOR LAUNDRETTA*. Throwing a massive tantrum on the stairs at around 4:30 am. Oh yeah, and our front door is swinging open 24-7, too. Probably thanks to her.

I found her half-asleep by the bathroom with vodka bottle and orange juice. Unfortunately my presence seemed to perk her up and when I returned from the shop with my mushrooms, peppers and cyder (fry-up ingredients (didn't fry the cyder though)) she took to tirading the purplest of blue language up the stairs at Matran who, she claimed was "having sex with another girl IN MY BED"!

I don't know what else to say except that as Gattina perceptively observed, my robos living on newspapers as they now do, are indeed the best-read hamsters in London.

*ps following a couple of "no comprendo" comments, perhaps I should point out that LAUNDRETTA is my 28 year-old drinking, crack-smoking working-girl neighbour. The toddler illustration is "symbolic"...

BLOG POST OF THE DAY:
Bimbimbie: Baby Aussie Rainbow Parrots + Morning Kangaroo...