A Wonderful Day!

I FEEL BETTER TODAY... but only because I have "used" ~~ yet again. My feelings have been all over the place. And painfully so. On Monday afternoon I was wondering about crying. I'm doing a group therapy thing called Mentalization, which is really difficult to explain in a nutshell, but it's about not assuming what others think and mean but to ask them. That way, the world might be a More Understanding Place.

Anyway there's a girl with Borderline Personality Disorder (not Binky ~ she has it too) ~ who can talk coherently and cogently about her inner emotional incoherence. It seems she comes from a similar place I do. Where you cannot think, see, emote or feel from any fixed point but are so constantly in flux that you never know where you are (and others just assume they know where you are). I'm not at all sure I would ACTUALLY have Borderline Personality Disorder (which mostly affects females anyhow) but when I took the online personality disorders test (my biggest fascination in psychology is what makes us Individual and what makes us Different) I scored highest on "Schizotypal" (about 86%) and "Borderline" (about 82%). Each time. More than a year apart. ("Normal people" score about 35-40%) You can see my Personality Test result toward the bottom of my sidebar.

My GP has totally done my head in. Sitting there shuffling through a wodge of papers from the methadone clinic, he seemed to be saying, in effect, that I was just a scheming, manipulative junkie piece of shit who had probably just hoodwinked a shrink because both times he saw me, 3 weeks apart, I seemed "pretty OK". (First time my mood WAS as normal as it ever gets; second time I was definitely depressed and I'm NOT flattered when anyone, least of all a dr thinks that depressive person is somehow the "real" me. Come on! I think there's a bit more oomph and jizz to me than that!

My druggieworker, who says this GP "is a good doctor", doesn't want me to do it (which makes my paranoid side feel they're somehow in cahoots) but I'm writing this GP a letter. It's far FAR easier for me to explain the inexplicable in writing than by answering somebody else's questions which cast me adrift more than anything else!

But what really gets me is that that doctor, among all of them, is supposed to have a "special interest in mental health"! Well he doesn't seem too interested in me! Barely looked at me. Didn't seem to be listening either. What I got, was that he was trying to be a smart-arse, asking the same questions twice. If a person does try and catch someone like me out, who tends to get lost in a billion viewpoints from a trillion details at a quadrillion nanomoments then of course he's going to get different answers. Because I never feel the same way twice. And like I say, I cannot hold on to anything like a single, fixed position. Heroin really SEEMED to help sort out the chaos in my mind and emotions. But without it, I'm cast adrift. Even when I do take it these days, it doesn't seem to "help" the way it used to. (Yet another reason to stop... of course!)

On a much better note, we went shopping this afternoon and Binky was so lovely. She bought me new boots, new jeans, five new pairs of socks, two teeshirts and a new jacket! Jacket and jeans were second-hand. The rest were brand new. How kind of her is that! She wanted so say thank you for the way I looked after her when she was marooned in hospital...

OK it's getting late and I must dash. It's a bank holiday weekend so I hope you all have a good one, wherever you are in the world and even if you DON'T have a special Holiday Monday like we do! ("Bank holidays" are British public holidays.)

MOZART'S TRANCED-UP LACRIMOSA

This version is clearer

And this one (arguably) "funkier"...

Calmer...

Wanderer's Night Song II

Over all hilltops

Is peace,

In all treetops

You sense

Hardly a breath;

The little birds are silent in the wood.

Wait, soon

You shall rest too.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

I'M STILL in rather a negative mood. But I'm a lot calmer than yesterday. They say:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy ~ think on these things.

~ Philippians 4:8

Chinchillas. They're beautiful and lovely and of good repute... doncha think..~~??!?

How furry and cute!! 非常にかわいいです。

Hijō ni kawaī desu ~ as they say in Japanese.

CAUGHT LYING!!!

Ha! Just caught out my "friend" Binky 

She has a poem on her wall that goes like this:~

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin."
I'm whispering "I was lost,"
Now I'm found and forgiven...

etc. Says she wrote it herself. She thinks I was copying it down just because I liked it. I did think it was suspiciously well-written. And no surprise BECAUSE IT'S BY MAYA ANGELOU!!

I can't believe Binky would lie about this. But I'm sooooo soooo glad I've finally caught her out on something tangible. She's the one who tells me basically to ham up or fake symptoms if I want more medical help for my "issues". I don't see why I should ever need to do that and frankly I don't care eg if I feel depressed and some dr thinks I don't look depressed enough. What am I saying. Actually I DO care. It annoys the living crap out of me that my depressed self is taken as the real me while any hyperactivity is automatically put down to drugs or mania. I AM naturally slightly hyper some of the time ~ and the "manic" style of thought, where you leapfrog topics and are conversationally hypertangiential ~ some of that is the "normal" me too... I never experience my thoughts as truly "racing" when I HAVE been manic, until they're threatening to race totally out of control. (Which they have done. They can go so fast, I literally cannot tell what I'm thinking. And eventually they've just broken into bits, into random syllables. And then I get stuck on the same syllable whirling around with extreme velocity. Yelling this out at the top of my voice. That has been the top of my psychotic mania, and it happened several days in a row, lasting (as far as I know ~ how can you possibly have any true sense of time in such a state?) for several hours at a time. I felt at the time as though I had completely lost my mind and my senses. At the very peak of it all, at the very worst time, I was taken over completely by an extreme roaring noise. Nothing was in my head but this noise. I had already gone through the incoherence and syllables stage and now there was just this noise, a super, super mindblowing-loud noise, that had completely taken me over. I was screaming at the top of my voice. That to me is utter, utter insanity. And people wonder why I seem so obsessed with my mental health. When I had severe mania there were many times when I just could not understand or follow what people were saying right in front of me. I totally lost the ability to read. For hours at a time. I once opened a book and the words flew straight into my face, in a cartoon-like text explosion. THAT is how bad it all got. I have been having flashbacks for years because part of me feels completely traumatized (even though my mood was higher than ever before or since ~ higher than heroin and crack speedballs. Higher than anything else I had ever experienced. Like a road-drill of extreme elation going off in my head. I could feel it streaming incessantly through body and brain. Billions and trillions of volts of it. And as I say, I completely lost my mind. It was super, super intense. At least ten times stronger than any panic attack. If I HAD panicked in that state I don't know what would have happened... How the hell would YOU feel if such a thing happened to you?

I didn't even know what it was called. But google came back with "delirious mania" and "catatonic excitement". Meaning I had gone as extreme as psychosis can possibly go. And of course a "normal person" who is not bipolar cannot possibly conceive of what I am talking about. Most manic episodes ~ I gather ~ do not go to that extreme. Not even for a few days. (I was like that for less than a week.) 

And I was NOT on drugs of any kind, except my prescriptions for methadone and zopiclone. Without zopiclone I really would not have slept AT ALL. I was completely hyperactive and yet unable to calm down. I couldn't stop talking (babbling out loud, kind of "talking to myself", as it were). Spent nearly every waking hour either pacing or dancing or sitting in a chair swaying from side to side.

Why am I saying all this? Because I think I need "closure". Some kind of inner acceptance, that's all. And the "validation" you only get when somebody ~ it just has to be one single person ~ can say "I know that" ~ or better still "I lived through that too, and I survived". But I have yet to find anybody who has...

But I eventually DID FIND SOMETHING LIKE IT in the literature of bipolar disorder. Here from An Unquiet Mind, p79... 

The chaos in my mind began to mirror the chaos in my rooms; I could no longer process what I was hearing; I became confused, scared and disoriented. I could not listen for more than a few minutes to any piece of music; my behaviour was frenetic and my mind more so. 

Slowly the darkness began to weave its way into my mind, and before long I was hopelessly out of control. I could not follow the path of my own thoughts. Sentences flew around in my head and fragmented first into phrases and then words; finally only sounds remained.

The author, Kay Jamison, is a world expert on manic-depressive illness and this is her own account from her own memoir. Strikingly similar to what happened to me, except I was liable to tip into anger ~~ sheer psychotic fury ~~ and not fear. There was no depression woven into my highest mania.

ANYWAY!

O think, think.

Please think on...

Think on whatever's good and beauteous. Think on these things. OK: I'm thinking, I'm thinking...

Lots of people in life have gone through perilous places. Lived beyond the extremes. I just don't feel I've completely come back together again. More than anything else ~ except creative writing ~ I would LIKE TO GET MYSELF AN EDUCATION. I don't even have a Bachelor Degree. I am qualified to do nothing and when I was little I never ever looked forward to an adult life of idleness (through whatever cause). I don't WANT TO BE LIKE THIS. Maybe I SHOULD do the German and Japanese degree at Birkbeck.

My problem is, I was trying to read Keats's poetry in the doctor's waiting room yesterday and I couldn't focus on more than a few lines at a time. I felt too agitated internally. I don't know why...

I saw my druggieworker yesterday. I was so upset I was almost in tears. She had this really concerned look on her face. I have used heroin again. Another dirty test. And once you know you've dirtied up your piss you might as well continue using. All I want is to be able to stop ~ one day at a time ~ and to feel OK. Because I really don't feel OK now. 

They say in sickness and injury things are out of alignment. Well something is mis-aligned, injured in my soul. I feel wounded and full of grief...

Anyway, nothing lasts for ever (EXCEPT ETERNITY)...!

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Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think on these things.

Mozart: Requiem ~ trance mix

I luuuurve this track...

Battle of the Clinics

MY (GP) DOCTOR  really did my head in this morning. Questioning me on and on about schizophrenia and did I really think I had it. Well being as I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS I can't know, can I? As for his other question "what could a psychiatrist do for me?" I answered "don't know" to that one too. As in my experience they do F-All.

Bloody hell I get so pissed off when people assume the depressed below-par me is the "real" one. This is what Dr Bastard seemed to do. Oh but if I'm even slightly Elevated then it absolutely has to be drugs or the spark-off point into real "Mania". The real me is the "hypomanic" me. That is the word Binky uses. That's what, as far as I know, the drs also say. I've already been asked by medical personnel when I was completely stone-cold normal whether I was "hypo" and I said NO. Because I WAS NOT. So what I believe and what drs believe appear to be at complete divergence. As for what is the real me, it's absolutely the "hypomanic" one. I know that means I'm disinhibited, indiscreet and prone to making jokes in poor taste. But that is far more me than the white mouse depressed boring suicidal version.

He also tricked me into admitting I wanted to kill myself and that I definitely thought I was more likely to die from suicide than any other way. Which I am afraid I do.

So then I go down the OTHER clinic (this time the druggie one), bump into my worker who says I don't look OK at all. So I go from seeming completely OK to not at all OK in the space of an hour.

Then, somehow, I got into talking about how terrible I feel. Completely druggie fuckup of a person I am. Using gear again and again and again. My heroin addict standards it's not very much. But it's still too much. Any gear is too much gear. I so much wish I was able to live without it.

As for all this mental shit and what is normal. Well that is the crux of exactly what does my head in. I believe in psychiatry about as much as I believe in Roman Catholicism. I happened to be watching a fascinating discussion on the Roman Catholic universe last night on a channel named Erde und Mensch. About "no human being being holy" (so why is the Pope titled "His Holiness" and "The Holy Father"..?) So while I understand Christmas and why people do it, I don't "believe". Likewise I don't believe in schizoaffective disorder. Or bipolar disorder. And really not inasmuch as they pertain to me.

I did reread the famous memoir An Unquiet Mind at one point and it's weird how the author Kay Redfield Jamison, during her time as a raving manic-depressive, came up with numerous reasons/excuses not to take lithium. But never one towards what I think: ... well maybe you feel that way because you're MEANT to feel that way. Maybe it's just natural and life really is that shit. She said that never even in her darkest hours, though she longed for death, did she regret ever having been born. Well I frequently do wish I had never been born. When I see such evil in the world, I wish I had never been born to know about such horror. I cannot take it in or comprehend it.

And as for suicide. I'm in absolutely no doubt that the present government would prefer me dead because I would save them money money, NHS money, other money. Money money. Better off dead. Absolutely.

ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

I can't believe I am posting this CRAP. Oh who cares. What else is there to post..??

Anyway: to my last post:~~

Are there really 300 language groups in London against "only 200" in New York..? I don't know. How could anyone know. Far as I know London is actually MORE of an international air-hub than New York, being more strategically located. I really don't know if there are more foreign people in one city or another.

Ebooks. Got no idea which one to buy. I'm going to look into that one right now...

What was I babbling on about here..? Can't remember. O well gotta go.

I think my methadone's going up AGAIN by the way.....kkhhhkhhhhhhhh ☹

Oh by the way I've started writing poetry. I've decided to become a great poet. Only written four lines, over 2 pages of scribblings, that seemed any good but ho-hum it's a start...

Ukh I sound like I'm all over the place. Pffffffff.... whatever.

O, and I AM taking the motherfcking medication. Whatever good that's supposed to do me... 

5:53pm THIS IS A REAL MESS OF A POST. IT doesn't explain my flow of thought which was to do with SOMEBODY ELSE ~ 2 somebody elses who already have killed themselves. And the horrendous aftermath of THAT. which is what i was talking to my druggieworker about as people drifted in and out...I am NOT DRUNK I have not taken any illicit drugs for 24 hours. And that's another thing: people always seem to see the On Heroin Me as MORE TOGETHER!!!!! would you BELIEVE THAT!!

My Odd Neighbour

I MET the guy from the end of my corridor today. Again. He was ranting into his phone about "******* lesbians". Then he KNEW I was downstairs and yet insisted on spitting over the balcony. Which I chose not to take open exception to. But I thought that was a very rude thing to do.

Binky is all up in the air because somebody dipped her I-Phone out of her pocket. Luckily she followed advice and had at least copied a few numbers for safekeeping. Otherwise she wouldn't even have been able to phone me to tell me she was incommunicado. THAT is why she wasn't talking to me. And Penny says she does like me very much "but not in that way" and so romance has withered and died before it even had a chance to get started. Penny is obsessed by some bloke who I'm not entirely sure even knows her. So one day her Dad drove her to his work ~ in order to make some sense of the issue. But on that particular day the guy hadn't come in and I told Penny this was yet another sign that it was not meant to be. (Not that I have a vested interest or anything but of course I do.)

I found my Penguin Book of German Verse for £4.50 ($6.85) from Skoob (only decent 2nd-hand bookshop that I know of in London. It's between SOAS (University of London's Oriental and African Studies Institute) and University College London and so you get loads of brilliant literary and academic texts in there. The other main purveyors of ancient books in London these days appear to be antiquarian booksellers and that's not what I want at all. I buy books for the content. Not the posh paper or binding or the fact that it might just happen to be a first edition.

I nearly spent £20 ($30.44) in Foyles on a gorgeous harback edition of German poetry from the year 1200 to the present day. Then I remembered that downstairs they're selling an e-reader called a "Nook" for £29 ($44.15). So for £9 ($13.70) extra I can get all the out-of-copyright poetry, novels, and foreign language books that my heart could possibly desire. So I asked the staff for advice and they said e-readers are not cross-compatible and that the Kindle, for example can ONLY load stuff from Amazon's official website and that out-of-copyright stuff on Kindle might not necessarily be free. She said it might cost 20p (30c) or something and that I should exercise extreme care in picking an e-reader if I'm primarily interested in old texts in foreign tongues. So I don't know what to do. And I did think the screen on this Nook thing was a bit tiny.

Those e-books really are popular these days. Last week I noticed the woman on the seat in front of me on the bus reading a novel in VIETNAMESE. Well this is (supposedly) the most cosmoplitan city on earth (not to mention Centre of the Universe.) According to official figures, over 300 languages are spoken in London ~ against a mere 200 in New York.

Anyway back to the books. Does anyone know which is the best one to go for? Also you can call me weird but I WOULD like one with a book-sized screen. And can't you get ones that open out like a real book so that languge students like me can read a text in parallel translation? Information and advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

I CAN load out-of-copyright stuff into them free, SURELY... can't I...? But how do I do it.... Jeepers Creepers I'm about to be terminated by this internet shop so I've got to go have a happy weekend everyone! EBOOK ADVICE PLEASE!

Friday not the 13th...

I THINK I'M FEELING a little more clement and moderate than when I last posted. Not quite so excitable. Binky kept saying she thought I was going up into a "manic" one. But I just thought I was a bit moody. I have been very moody indeed these past few days going into weeks. Each and every evening I find myself peaking up on a "slimming pills" type buzz. At least that is what I'd imagine slimming pills felt like. Like I've had a cheeky line of speed. Except I don't like speed, do not indulge, and think drugtaking for the purpose of elevating the mood is sad. Why make yourself "high" when the natural "high" is so very very much better?

If you're wondering why I always say I've just come out of the nuthouse (visiting Binky) when I post, that would be because this internet caff is just around the corner from the psyche unit.

Well everyone in there seems pretty much with it these days.

The other week I saw a lady with one leg in plaster lying flat out on the smoking area green, her NHS Employee Card on prominent display. I thought "bloody hell, they don't half overwork the staff in here!" Turned out she was just a patient who had come by said ID via some nefarious means or other...

I really don't know what the weather's like here in London. Yesterday I was suffering from chills of Siberian proportions. Today I was boiling my head off. Oh I don't know. 

Binky was in a bad mood because I'm falling in love with another patient who I brought in a long traily black hippie skirt I found on the street. She was so annoyed she skulked off to her room and switched her phone off. So I said goodbye to everyone except her and left.

I've been watching stuff about Japanese Quantative Easing on NHK World. Aparently the rest of the Economists think that to DOUBLE the number of printed yen in circulation (thus defleating deflation) and deliberately devaluing the strong yen will get them out of the econcomic doldrums. Well how would I know whether that's a good move. Far as I know "quantative easing" just means "printing more money" and dumping money into the economy causes nothing but inflation, hyperinflation or megainflation depending how much new money is dropped into the system. That's one reason why currency forgery is considered such a great crime.

A couple of weeks ago I read The Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Has anyone else read that book. It's an absolutely horrendous story about what it was like living in mainland China under the Last Emperor, the Warlord Governments that followed, the Chinese Civil War, the Japanese invasion, World War 2, more Civil War (this time Kuomintang Nationalists vs Communists... and then Mao Tse Tung... not pretty. Anyway I've got to go. Internet time about to run out. Take care and have a great weekend everybody...

Leather Sofas and Disappearing Beds!

I'VE JUST SEEN a leather 3-piece sofa I really like. Real leather. Just apply shoe polish to improve that dynamic sheen... Charity shop said they'd do it without the matching chairs for £95 ($145.93)  (it's £195 ($299.54) with 2 matching leather armchairs...) I said I can't put down a deposit now. I spent my last 30p (46c) on a Spanish novel called El misterio de la cripta embrujada ("The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt") by Eduardo Mendoza.  With the aid of my trusty Collins Spanish Dictionary and copious notebooks plus an entire pack of blue biros with which to copy out every single word I don't know or cannot guess ~which will be about 20,000 words!~... but when I've done this in German, my vocabulary expanded by leaps and bounds. I'm also looking out for the defunct and undeservedly out of print Penguin Book of Spanish Verse. + I also want the German and French versions. Poetry, they say, is the very best way of picking up a foreign language. Great for improving the vocabulario and nice and succinct. These Penguin books come complete with prose translations, so the need for three hulking great dictionaries is obviated.

Oh by the way did you know the Spanish word for "dark" is oscuro ~ as in obscure. Never knew that one...

Well I've just come back from visiting the nuthouse. Yet again. My mind is humming. Also the loud Scouse House I'm listening to isn't helping. I was in such a bad, paranoid, irritable mood this afternoon. Effing and blinding at every little thing. Depressed this morning. Hyper in the evening> at least Binky says I am. She says she can tell when I'm going into a "manic" one by the sudden addition of liberal sprinklings of the word Glodemer into my conversation. Glodemer being the name of our late doggie who had the sweetest nature of any doggie I have never known and looked like a seal with mottled silvery grey and black fur. I was absolutely gutted when she died of status epilepticus ~ constantly fitting out for hours and hours until her body just gave out. (This was all brought on by puppyhood distemper.) My parents kept saying they might have to have her put to sleep, but nature took its course before human intervention and she died under the cherry tree in our massive garden. A snow of white blossoms against infinite blue sky. The Japanese say cherry blossoms symbolize the all-too-terrible briefness of life. It was very sad. I felt much more upset over the death of this dog than any of my friends. Except one ("Lucky"). Can't believe Lucky went and died. She just keeled over and her organs failed one after another. Like a power blackout in a big city where you see block after block going dark. So she died. Anyway glodemer is my name for "cute". Japanese かわいい kawaii.

Binky is talking about my going into the emergency psycho clinic if I don't come down soon. I told her when I did go into ultra ultra hyperacute mania more than 2 years ago now, it took a good couple of weeks to get from where I am now (just moody) into extreme elevation with auditory and visual trippings and full-blown confusionality. I'm not anything like that now. It does sound like my carrier bags are whispering mysterious phrases at me as they rustle, but that's just me living out a children's book. Where deep in the enchanted forest trees have great gnarled faces and steam trains puff out exclamations like "Ready to go! Ready to go!" Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name. And it feels like home.

That's Madonna, darling.

Eddy : "Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone."
Saffy : "That's lovely."
Eddy : "Yeah, I hear you call my name and it feels like home."
Saffy : "Who said that ?"
Eddy : "Its Madonna, darling."

(From Absolutely Fabulous, Series 2: Death).

I can't remember what else I was going to put. Oh yes the bed scandal! My Dad is trying to deliver me a bed and just as he was trying to text me a junk mail text came through offering "great deals on both, 3 for £20, 4 for £25..." which I promptly ignored (it having seemingly booted my Dad's text out of my phone) and so I missed the delivery. Of the actual mattress. Because I was two annoying minutes from my house. (I think it is a mystically self-inflating mattress malarky thingie...) Bloody ridiculous. My family are fretting that it might never get delivered and go pinging off into some hyper-conscious censorious vortex of hyperspace where all the missing full-stops congregate in a great H-bomb fusion of transcendently transmogrified unaccented unaccounted accumulated power. Something like that. You know, the space in the Twilight Zone where all the Missing Socks find their long-lost loves. You know: their Sock Partners... Something like that. But It Shall Come. It Will Be Delivered. All Shall Be Fine. Glodemer said so.

By the way I just Googled "where do lost socks go" and someone else was talking about a space-time vortex ~ you see??!? I know I'm on to something here...

Well the weather here in London Town is still lovverly... I don't know. It felt horrid and cold this morning. But this afternoon FEEEEELLLS about 85F. I don't know that it is really that hot but it's such a fantastic evening. Charming as a Chelsea Bun, sweet as a Danish pastry. Curly as an Akita's tail...秋田犬 And just as Glodemer Furry.

Well I've got to go. Knowing my luck UPS are trying to deliver my dhinghy-bed RIGHT NOW!!!

Hey isn't this London animation cool...?

*******************************************************************************************

Council Thievery Scandal and a New Hairdo...

I'VE CHANGED MY HAIR STYLE. The new one is slicked back with lots of mousse (courtesy of Poundland). I washed and moussed it in one of the mental hospital bathrooms when I was visiting Binky this afternoon. I really like the new style. It does make me look a bit public school (a public school in Britain means a very exclusive expensive posh one. I wish I COULD have gone to public school. A Level Japanese would have been right up my street... Ho hum. But anyway, the hair looks good. Quite dashing, if I say so myself. It's about as long as it can get and still count as "short". I'm looking out for a good barber who can "tidy it up" ie cut straggly bits off without really shortening it...

Yes Binky is STILL confined to a mental ward. Bloody hell ~ it's not as if everyone's raving mad. Mostly you can't tell the difference between nurse, patient, visitor and sundry NHS-floaty-through-type-person. But after a while the accumulated insanity does get to me. One lady who pulled most of her hair out and looked exceedingly confused before Christmas is still in there but sporting a healthy head of (short) hair (shorter than mine), wearing glasses, talking normally and looking pretty with it. I wonder when they'll let HER out... I noticed the coffee tables were littered with scraps of people's personal correspondence bearing details like "you are being kept here under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act because the doctors believe you need treatment and care for a mental disorder..."... ukh. My family say I should make some non-mental friends. But WHERE??! Everyone I know is mad or on drugs. Or both. What a life!!

I'VE FOUND OUT why I'm in rent arrears (paid 2/3 of the £50 ($77.73) off and about to pay the rest tomorrow, if the council insist... I was wondering how on earth I managed to get into arrears, having paid more than TEN WEEKS up front in advance... And it's because I had arrears from when I was in emergency accommodation, the council say it's written into our contracts that if we overpay rent for a new place they can take backrent to pay off another account. It's actually NOT written into anything I have signed and I intend to take them to task about this tomorrow. See if I can get 77 lovely US Dollars refunded to me. (Of course it won't be in dollars, it'll be pounds sterling but dollars sound so much more exciting...

My druggieworker was less than impressed with me after my testing positive for heroin and benzodiazepines. I promised her truthfully that I have NOT been pillpopping. The benzos were mixed into dodgy brown heroin. No wonder I'd been feeling so unaccountably sleepy after "using"... Sleeping during the day is just not my style, if I can at all help it. (It's depression that has made me sleep the most excessively. 19 or 20 hours a day, usually in two bursts, on my worst days. And if I try not to sleep so long I just end up dropping off in public places. And that really does make me feel like an old dosser. Depression is bad enough, without everyone thinking you're an old drunk to boot!

The weather here is still subtropical. I found a brochure of world and Asian cruses (would really like to go on one, now that I'm over 40 and OLD!... but why bother when the weather's so brilliant back home. I'm reading Freaky Dancing by Bez out of the Happy Mondays... A most interesting book, though I WISH the publishers would have translated his vernacular into normal spellings ...

On a benda in the Haçienda...

WHOOO! What a gaff. It feels like enterin a cavernous, cold storage room at the meat factory. I'm half expectin to see rows of headless animal corpses hangin from massive hooks above the dance floor ~ an yes it was that cold back in pre-ecstasy days...

(The Hacienda was a legendary Northern ecstasy rave club... People still rave about having "been there" to this day...)

Anyway I've gotta go and get my beauty sleep for when I REPRIMAND THE COUNCIL OVER THEIR SHAMELESS THIEVERY TOMORROW MORNING!!

TAKE CARE EVERYONE ☺