The Enemy Without

I NEED to keep a drink diary and a mood diary, I have decided. This should show how wonderful life gradually becomes once the evil substances are flushed down the metaphorical loo.

The best advice I got came today from Jess the Mistress of Mischief and chimes in exactly with my doctor: CUT OUT ALL DRINK AND DRUGS FOR THREE MONTHS. Only after three months clean can they possibly tell what is you and what was and was not drink or drug-induced. Focus on the practicalities of life and the fact you're a problem drinker with a drug problem. In other words go to NA, go to AA. Frequently.

Hey it's past 3pm and I'm wide awake. No sleep last night. My sleep pattern is in tatters and I used the wonders of caffeine to get me through the morning. It did make me very fidgety in the chemists and I'm convinced they thought I was on drugs. Well I was. Black coffee!!! I don't normally drink coffee and barely drink tea. I buy milk that goes off before it ever gets finished, unless I glug it down. I need to switch to tea anyway ~ as a substitute for alcohol. Soft drinks remind me of strong drink too much as I used the fruit flavoured ones as mixers (yes on white cyder ~ makes a budget alcopop, highly addictive!)

I spoke to my Mum today and she said something I thought very perceptive as it highlights the biggest problem I have. Forget any drug or medical terminology it's THIS more than anything that has turned my life into the ruin it is today. And the drugs made it far, far worse. It impossible to explain why I do this and I know junkies get this a lot. My Mum remembers it going back to when I was about four and calls it "autistic". I'm not sure that's the word but what do I care. To be frank I'm amazed she was perceptive enough to notice it's going on, considering she doesn't live with me and it's this:~

I live my life on a constant loop. I have things I do every day and these things I do without too much trouble. The loop is like a railway line with only a few stations. The train goes round and round and only stops at those stations, so I only do the stuff that's in this loop. Anything out of the ordinary involving planning or going anywhere unfamiliar or meeting someone new brings on the worst stress, in fact for a long time I basically avoided ANYTHING out of my limited routine. This includes good stuff as well as bad. When I got sent a parcel I only just made it to the post office in time to pick it up before it got returned to sender. I wouldn't blame my family for being offended at this seeming Don't Care attitude. But it wasn't not caring, it was... something I cannot explain. You can call it laziness if you like. Bear in mind though that nobody who knows me in real life has ever called me lazy. I've been called a lot of things, lazy ain't among them.

So this nameless thing, my dear readers, "autism" or whatever it is, is what I have to work on. The whys and wherefores are immaterial: I need to make it to go away. I didn't used to be that bad. But my Mum thinks it's a lifelong characteristic. This does not however mean that there's no hope.

I spent my entire adult life consciously working on changing myself ~ until drug addiction changed me beyond the point of self-help. I don't despair that this is insurmountable.

With the right degree of motivation and patience, anything is possible. Remember, I specialize in things that require unusual amounts of these qualities. You need them to write a book. And I have written books, even though they were crap. You need them to learn a foreign language. And I've learned a few (badly). All you need do is keep on and on and on in the correct direction no matter how discouraged you may feel, no matter how irrelevant to that particular day the activity may be, you still do it and you go on doing it every single day without fail. And then, in maybe not too long, you'll look back and realized you've done something you never dreamed possible.

*******OK really these links are for other people. Once you've read around this topic, as I say it gets stultifyingly boring. I skimmed through every one and got no real answers. Yeah I got symptoms that match bipolar ones. Bipolar isn't about "mood swings" between "happy and sad"; it's about extreme swings in energy that affect the mood. I'm tired of this subject now. I'm writing for myself as an aide-memoire. My private notes are open for anyone and everyone to see, which makes me slightly circumspect in what I say. I'm fed up of thinking about something that happened that was so immensely powerful it was worse than being hit by a truck. I literally did get hit on the head by a truck some years ago and was so concussed I didn't know what I was doing all week. And yet I was able to count fingers, so I got instant discharge from hospital. What I couldn't do was tell the time, the day or sometimes even where I was. I knew I was forgetting things but obviously couldn't remember what it was I'd forgotten! So at the doctor's office I was at something of a loss to explain myself. My point being whatever happened to me whacked me even worse than that. I felt more badly jolted and jarred than I've ever been in my life from anything. Considering the length of time it lasted, it was the most intense mental state I've ever been in, on or off drugs, including acid, ketamine and crack. Everyone who met me that week thought I'd been piping because that was how I was acting. All hyper and paranoid, unable to calm down. Now I've had enough of talking about this I really am bored with the entire issue. As I say I'm only posting these links in case they help some other person, I glanced through and once you know the basics of coke, and what can go wrong, you'll know this stuff. The video is posted because it's funny.




Now those links. I don't really want to post these I'm so sick of words like "cocaine". But maybe someone somewhere will get some enlightenment from 'em:~

This explains what a mixed state is and isn't. If it can be established that a drug (or drug withdrawal) caused my cuckoo episode then it's called a "substance-induced mood disorder with mixed features"
Substance disorders.
Substance-induced mood disorders.
How much cocaine required to cause psychosis?
Cocaine hallucinosis/psychosis.
Mixed bipolar state: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11195&cn=4
Hypomania: a natural state to be in. Euphoric hypomania, which just means mild mania, is NOT an illness, it's merely a medical condition, like having three nipples. On its own it means nothing except that you're blessed with energy, charisma and creativity. But it does unfortunately tend to develop into full mania which is very different. Or to snap into depression, as this link explains: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11194&cn=4
Mixed episode, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_episodes

Illustrated: beer; trainset, just like my life, running in circles; Chinese character for money; cocaine as I barely ever took it ~ in "rails" (I love that Americanism)

PS HERE for comparison is the same woman, Trisch, totally sane. See the marked difference in her composure and behaviour. I love her look and the film exposure, doesn't she look amazing:

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

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

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

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

Let me tell you my reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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












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

Waiting for da man

MY MUM SAW ME YESTERDAY.

Note the phrasing. I didn't see my Mum. We were there together. She saw me. She said I reminded her of when she first saw me on the gear, about 5 years ago. Lank hair. Pushed self into shower. Probably nowhere near as clean as I'd have liked to think. Pinpoint pupils. The B ain't that good, but it's chock full of benzos. (I know this because I tested my piss.) I felt Valium'd out of my brainbox.

It's interesting that she rang my druggiworker in despair. I do not feel that she forced my hand in this, as I was planning to steam in and tell the unacceptable truth about me and my addiction and this crappy methadone ANYHOW.

This is me on methadone. No showering. Barely bothering to do anything, unless absolutely essentual it's done NOW.

Endless depresssion. Aged 10 I was depressed enough to believe I was dying. I have never felt the same, ever again. Parents' divorce. Parents' remarriage. Both parties wanted me to live with them. I loved my Mum. But my Dad's was the place to be. Had I insisted on going with Mum I would have torn my family apart. How selfish would that be?

I am still depressed. Clinic barely ever ask why. I could go on. Suffice it to say, if this is "therapy" it ain't working on me. I do WAY better on heroin. Sad, you may think. But true. Absolutely 100% true.

I wish it weren't that way. But that's how it is.

The could-be's, should-be's, ought-to-be's. All these I have pondered and indulged. I "should" feel some other way. "Should" do it that other way. I have tried and tried. It just does not work.

If only somebody in power would put forward a therapy that actually works. I'm not talking 1 and 2 year habits where methadone might work. Subutex might well work. I'm talking decades lost to ineffectual methadone. And every spare penny STILL going on gear. If methadone worked so well, no-one would feel the need to use on top. Ever.

Such drugs are out there. The government just do not have the balls to give effective Therapy. Injectable diamorphine. Morphine tablets. Morphine and hydromorphone (dilaudid) amps are also available. Somebody, somewhere, use some imagination. PLEASE!

Rant over.

I despair. I look like a homeless. Lank, greasy, dirty. Haven't been near a laundrette in over a month. Yes a lot of this is down to me. But a half-decent therapy might push me half-way to "normality". The other half would of course be up to me.

Opinions, please! Just say what you think. I'm sure a lot of you disapprove anyhow... :-(

:-) I'm waiting on da man for a G. He's taking ages.

VELVET UNDERGROUND: I'M WAITING FOR THE MAN

Keeping Mum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

IT WAS 5AM when I first thought of writing this... somehow an hour has flown by. I am dipping Turkish chockie biccies (Ülker Biskrem Duo ~ they have chocolate creme inside) in hot tea while the birds tweetle and chirp like crazy in the trees outside. On my road just now I saw a giant tubby pigeon. It flapped away the second it saw me. I don't know much about pigeons but there seem to be three types round here: gutter street pigeons (equivalent to me, a gutter street junkie); posh loft pigeons (equivalent to The Queen) these are kept by owners with whistles who race them or do whatever pigeon fanciers do... and finally, the type I just saw, which appears to be a different type, with white sash round the neck. These are wild birds of exquisite rareness. The supermodels of the pigeon world ~ Linda Evangelista or Naomi Campbell. And all I could think as I trotted down the street, chocolate biscuits in hand and spotted it was "that would make a nice pie!" (I must've been hungry.)

I have found the German equivalent to Coronation Street! (A lower-class soap opera. British soap is always working class. I wanted to make a new soap, a kind of modern Dallas-Dynasty combined set in London-Paris-New York (well you'd only need to shoot a few minutes of exteriors per season, most could be improvised in a studio garden anywhere). It would star an ageing Larry Hagman as evil patriarchal billionaire with Joan Collins as his bitchy matriarchal billionaire wife. Roger Moore would come in as Joan Collins's luurve interest. I would do all I could to get Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Sean Connery, Lauren Baccal and the Hollywood old guard to put in guest appearances. The younger generations are all classless so I'd get some dogsbody to cast them. I would ensure that an international cast of actors with followings across the most important television markets of the world got parts, to boost foreign sales and ratings.

The German soap is called Lindenstraße, "Lime Street". Launched in 1985, it was the first ever German soap opera and was modelled on Coronation Street. I would say it is more similar in spirit to the British daytime soaps about doctors surgeries, or Australian soap, than British prime time TV (and this goes out 18:50 hours Sunday on Das Erste ~ which would put it up pretty much against the dreadful Larkrise to Candleford ~ a truly awful piece of British costume drama. I also had an idea for a costume drama soap, but trust me, it would be nothing like Larkrise! More Anna Karenina ~ all aristocrats and ballgowns, laudanum parties and duels. Not chatteringly dullard middle classes. Anyway, the episode I chose to watch on Flashplayer was called Schnee ~ "Snow". I thought "how lovely, a German winter wonderland on TV"... little did I realize the "snow" in question comes in little white lines for application straight up the nose! Of course when I realized it was drugs I was riveted. A butch lesbian dealer had an argument with her femme girl who has a motorbike helmet haircut. If I were her I'd worry about my hairstyle first and sort out the druggie girlfriend later, but that's TV for you.

My Mum has cancer. It came back. I saw her Thursday. I could see she was ill. I went out and bought a gram of heroin after that. My counsellor says I have to talk to my mother. She also says I see heroin as my Saviour. (How did the counsellor know that?!) But now the heroin has less appeal. I can't say why, but it does, and I say that sober. Usually junkies only want to be clean when they are high. Bring them down to earth and all they want is more drugs to get back up to la-la land, where they can look down and convince themselves they want to clean up yet again (but not now: "tomorrow") and on and on the cycle rolls. Eventually they give up on giving up and accept "I am an addict. I am powerless over my addiction, so I will simply go on using". Then they realize addicts DO have a choice and the choice is to STOP. (Using isn't a choice, using drugs is automatic to a drug-addict) ... eventually they might come to a place like NA where they say "I am powerless over my addiction, so I surrendered to a power greater than myself"... This is the mysterious "higher power" these 12-step groups talk about which "restores us to sanity"... I believe only God can save me now. But God would not be interested in someone who loves heroin more than him. (What a Catch 22!) My higher power is God Almighty. For me, no other power is high enough or powerful enough!

As things are, I have left it with the clinic that I'm not interested in reducing my methadone dose any more. That I would rather go on as I am and use several times each week and let nothing change.

I didn't tell the druggieworker this, but I thought, having such a great track record at breaking every resolution and promise I've ever made since Heroin Addiction, perhaps if I promise mediocrity and inaction ~ I might break THAT one too, and all for the best!!

... And you wonder why a mere AVERAGE length of heroin addiction is 14 years..?!


View Lindenstraße

PS I THINK the pigeons I keep seeing are WOOD PIGEONS ... they make the famous coo-coo you hear on hot summer days that is not a cuckoo... (they are musical cuckoos)

ILLUSTRATED: "DOUBLE UOGLOBE" is heroin from Burma's Northern Shan State; other pictures refer to Heroin Assisted Treatment, a scheme which might well have got me off drugs long ago ~ and would certainly have severed my connexions with dealers... but as it is ~ miserable methadone or street heroin. Or go through hell trying to stop (probably to use again at the first opportunity ~ let's be frank). What fine choices!

Results of Dutch supervised trial of injectable heroin hydrochloride or smokeable heroin base (for "chasing the dragon" though I have never heard ANYBODY except a journalist use that expression ~ most people either say chasing, or when they get old and can't be bothered to sound cool just call it smoking. Smoking or injecting.

www.opioids.com/heroin/holland.html

Sickness...

MY MUM IS ILL. I think it is serious. I can't go too far into it as she doesn't know I'm posting and it's not fair.
I am very unhappy. I don't want her to die.

STOP PRESS: IT IS CANCER (CONFIRMED) ~ RE-EMERGENCE FROM A FEW YEARS AGO.
I POSTED THAT TODAY (SAT). BUT THE POST ISN'T ABOUT THAT BECAUSE I WOULD RATHER THINK ABOUT GERMAN SOAP OPERA THAN CANCER %;-/...

Vegetarian Vomit

ME MUM had high tea but I was starving so I had vegetable lasagne. I don't usually go for vegetarian options these days but used to when I was younger. I have found in general that vegetarian cooking is of a higher standard that non-veggie ~ and with a less-inspiring ingredients-list, let's face it, it has to be!

The lasagna was OK. I'm no expert on cooking but if I'd made that myself I'd have labelled the flavour "empty" and poured far more tomatoes and seasoning into it. I don't know whether this place was having boiler trouble but oh my days! It was Vesuvian in there!! Conkers of sweat dripping off patrons and increasingly bedraggled waiting staff alike. (OK slight exaggeration but I was feeling increasingly queasy.)

Then when I got outside I was sick EVERYWHERE... thankfully Mumzy and I had gone separate ways by then.

These are the Siberian hamsters I was talking about yesterday. I had two about six years ago, but one died after about three months ~ and I suspect through old age. The other ESCAPED and never came back ~ the only one of seven hamsters I have ever lost that way.

If you look closely at the weary swine here, you might just be able to see the furry soles to his feet.

On a lighter note the vomiting had gone by just three outbursts (next to but sadly unable to aim IN the tiny opening on London's bomb-proof rubbish-bins)... And by this morning my appetite had come back with great avengance. I trotted down to Sainsbury's where I got a huge selection of own brand falvoured whip-ip-up desserts. Chocolate and strawberry are just 8p each. Butterscotch is always the best and costs 30p against Angel Delight (the market leader)'s 38p. I shake it up in a special disused coffee jar. My top tip to avoid lumps is add powder a bit at a time...

And I can't believe this, but having start-stopped "learning" Japanese several times (for learning, read glancing idly over books and dictionaries, thinking, "I wonder how you say such-&-such" and brainlessly transcribing roman-lettered Japanese sentences into proper script, which is a by no means straightforward occupation... I actually seem to be getting somewhere!

When I was irritatedly waiting for a bus the other day I went through the list of Japanese animals I know in my mind and it's more than ten. Including the words for bee, wasp and hornet. That's not bad for a beginner.

The rate I'm going I might be semi-fluent by 2026!

Here is a really good Japanese "cultural link" www.japandemic.com (it's not academic at all)...

High T

I'M SPOSED to be meeting up with my Mumzy in town for high tea (or something). I'm sure scones will be involved. In some olde tea shoppe place somewhere obscure... somewhere I don't know... help me I'm falling down a black hole!!!!! Never to escape. Argh.

But I look really presentable. For once.

PS: though they look extraordinarily cute, I might have to give the chinchillas a miss for now. They are too big and need too much care. And don't like muggy English summers. My former Russian hamsters of yore looked literally about to expire on our hottest July and August days and I had to give them ice packs, which these creatures, native to Siberia, walked upon quite happily with their fur-lined paws... chinchillas have similar heat sensitivity... and apart from providing stone cladding and marble blocks (and ice packs) what else could I do... when we hit 100 degrees!??

PPS: just like chinchillas, Siberian hamsters also require regular dustbathing to keep their extraordinarily thick fur in best condition...

Public auction

A Northern Saltwater Croc ~ the biggest in the world (unlike the Nile, as stated on Saturday...) Be careful of those riverbanks in Australian Northern Territory... (The one part of Aus, apart from Sydney and Brisbane and Cairns, that I'd really like to go!)... knowing my luck it's full of mouse spiders too!


I HAD the humiliating yet truthful experience today of having to see a free lawyer at the druggieservice, who phoned my "creditor" (ie the nasty local council), who put her in touch with the bailiffs (the poor girl answering the bailiffs' phone sounds really nice ~ what on earth is a delicate flower like that doing working for scarface heavies like "them"?... and the lawyer told the evil council tax people (thanks a lot Margaret Thatcher) how badly in need of help I was and unable to deal with their ridiculously high demands for proof of identity, address, income/etc etc etc. They needed at least three things I haven't even got. Like heating bills. Because the landlord pays the bills. I have an out of date passport and that is about that.

I did find the bailiffs' letter amusingly overoptimistic. It said something along the lines of "please let us know a suitable time when we can bring a removals van round so your goods can go for sale at PUBLIC AUCTION ~ alternatively you may wish to pay the outstanding amount in full..." Ridiculous!

What on earth they thought, when they saw my boarded up house and trash-filled front garden (complete with armchair in the mud) I would love to know!

Anyway, she is supposed to be getting a hold put on "further action". Thanks very much!

With all this in mind, I have arranged yet ANOTHER psych assessment ~ this one for tomorrow. Maple Syrup, my much loved ex-druggieworker, disbelieved that anything was wrong with me. She didn't know I had a 15 year history of "low mood"/being a weirdo (or whatever you want to call it) PRIOR to any significant drug addiction. And I never told her because she didn't ask. I think this is partly what Jesus had in mind when he talked of "casting pearls before swine"... know what I mean?

Loads of other people I know, who are no worse off than me, have social workers and all manner of other help and I want a bite of that pie for a change. All I have managed to do, for months and years, so it seems, is to slip through just about every safety net (apart from methadone prescription) that there is. And the methadone clinic staff are appallingly uninformed. They think in terms of drug addiction and nothing else.

This afternoon I go back to see MORE computers. We don't have this computer shop, but we have ones like it. Back where I used to live in Nowheresville I, next door to Lidl, the fantastic discount food shop, there were no fewer than THREE stores selling laptops. So I'm going to go in there...

I see my mother tonight! She is in town, and not in France! Wow! I'll tell ya how it went tomorrow...

State Visit

MY MUMZY came round this afternoon. By the time she arrived my place looked like a bomb had gone off in an Oxfam shop ~ scattering piles of ragged clothes/etc to the corners. I also put oven cleaner on the enamel hob. And then panicked. And quickly got rid of it, using carrier bags on hands because I'd no rubber gloves and the instructions make it sound like a more noxious version of nitric acid crossed with rycin. I still wasn't sure I'd got it all off after three goes and lots of water. Half expected to find a dirty great smoking hole when I got back ~ with a baby gremlin's eyes peering out from the rust... Anyway it was nice and clean when they got there. Except the floor looked like someone had thrown an illegal rave in a barn. Mopped-up mud everywhere (from where~??!?) And so on...

Do you like the Queen's picture. Look at those emeralds! Not just round her neck, but on her head..!

Did you know HM the Queen is supposed to have a jewellery safe 14 feet high in her Buckingham Palace bedroom, full of countless pieces belonging to Queen Mary, the Queen Mother... and so on and so on down the line... only a tiny fraction of which she ever wears (what a waste on the ones that never see daylight ~ that's what I say!) When Diana married Charles, her jewellery was only given to her on loan, on the basis that when she became Queen, she'd be custodian of said pieces anyhow... I do like a good bit of jewellery, me ("jewelry" if you're in the United States of America). Never wear it. Jewellery on men, when it's not sharks' teeth or rave beads etc looks distinctly dodgy at the best of times. But it's lovely to look at. I was into doing jewellery design at one time. There's more to it than meets the eye ~ everything must be carefully sized and measured for one thing... It was fascinating. Jade Jagger does it for a living. Not, I am sure, that having an international rock star for a father gave her a bunk up that particular career ladder... I'm sure not!

Anyway, back to today, we had a charming Greek dinner and she bought me some chocolate and museli and I'm going to post up Pingu at the Dentist if I can find it ~ hope y'all had a cheery weekend. My novel's coming on swimmingly... Goodnight all!

"Diana, Princess of Wales" (as she was "supposed" to be titled...) lovely sapphires...

"BANNED PINGU"... Can't find Pingu at the dentist; but "at the hospital" (see under Penguins, yesterday) is similar... whyever this was banned I'm not quite sure... and why the Scandinavian subtitles I've no idea (we never get subtitles in English, do we and they're gabbling BabyFinnish...) this one's trotterdonkey enough...

... o I get it. The jokes here are in the Swedish/Danish... e.g. "get me your strongest whisky" etc. I can just about make some of it out...

... o no they're not.

o how rude! One of them's peeing on the floor now!!...!!!