I STARTED CYCLING in an antidrug meeting yesterday. In case that brings to mind imagery of me circling the group on a bike, that's not what I mean. I got the expression from Anna Grace,
who's also bipolar. I mean my mood became exuberant and hyper and I became very talkative and went shopping for DVDs. That's how I ended up with five Orbital albums for the bargain price of £16. I didn't really think I was anything more than very slightly hypomanic.
Night fell, however, and my mood went shooting up. I found myself doodling sentences in Japanese till past four a.m. At one point I got very jittery and anxious, so I went down the shop for a cyder. Glugging it back I managed to relax, which is just as well, because I continued going up higher and higher. By five a.m. I felt exactly as if I'd just got home from a night clubbing on Es and whizz and that the drugs were still going full-on.
Of course I had no luck sleeping. Lying in bed helped me relax, but sleep was nowhere on the horizon. Eventually I did end up conking out intermittently. I had to get up at eleven to pay my friend Pinky £40 she needed back today. My mood has gone down a bit, but it hasn't switched poles. I was very jittery earlier, but now I just feel weird. It's five to three and fatigue has caught up with me. It's too early to sleep and too late to do much with the day.
Has everyone been watching the Olympics? I should be very excited about them, being as they're going on in this fine metropolis. I heard they had twenty-four Mary Poppins aerialists at the opening ceremony. Was it any good? Did we put China's Spectacular to shame? I've yet to connect the satellite dish to my television. It seems a cable TV installer cut the wires, so I need to reconnect them. The hole in the wall through which they trail is big enough for a baby mouse to set up home.
I don't know whether I need to see a doctor: I felt really ill this afternoon. Physically done in.
I know I was manic last night because when I walked to the shop I felt like someone ws pushing me all the way there, like when you have a strong wind backing you up from behind...
CANCER RESEARCH FEATURING EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD This is the only TV advert that's ever made me cry...
EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD
Diagnostic & Statistical Manual: Psychiatry’s Deadliest Scam I foundout about this from Madinsanecrazy's blog. But she didn't post the video up, saying it wouldn't fit for some reason. Maybe it's something to do with Wordpress..?
TODAY I met an old beggar who I hadn't seen for years. He used to raise change across the road from me back when I was a beggar too. I have to say, the years have not been kind to him. He has gone grey and haggard, and more to the point, has gone down with alcoholic dementia! He's the only person I've ever met who seemed proud and pleased to be Demented.
In his teens he said he beat up his games teacher and so was incarcerated for several years in a mental hospital, diagnosed with a personality disorder. I quizzed him closely on this and it turns out he was an Antisocial Personality Disorder. So I kept saying "O wow! You're a real life Demented Psychopath!" to which he eventually started to take exception (and of course he was drunk) until I pointed out that I'm a manic-depressive junkie. And then he was laughing at me.
We sat for over an hour on the high street as people breezed past throwing disparaging glances. Especially when Ronald (for that's his name) was glugging more alcohol down his neck (which seemed to be the large marjority of the time.)
Then a drunken Pole came and joined us with a fire extinguisher sized bottle of white cyder, telling us in very broken English, that the electricity in his one-bedroom flat cost £20 a month. Which is more than double what mine costs. I also have gas, which is costing £5 a month at the moment, though I have an overdue bill (which the neighbours had tossed in the bin, along with about 500 parking ticket notices and court summonses for the deadbeat upstairs) requesting payment for more than three times the amount of gas actually used. Estimated bills are a real pisser.
The police drew by and gawped at us on several occasions, but we never got reprimanded. The local shops are a "Controlled Drinking Zone", which means streetside supping is banned.
Then it was too late and I was starving.
Well they say a man is known by his friends and one of mine is a True Life Demented Psychopath ~~ so what does that say about me~??
???
!
*******
MUSICAL BREAK:~~~~~~~
ORBITAL: MIDNIGHT
I got five Orbital albums today for £16 ... this is a beautiful tune. I used to play it every night to make me sleep...
YES I FEEL FINE on 20 mg methadone! A miracle has happened! How amazing is that. Once upon a time I needed more than a hundred to feel even borderline OK. But it holds me well enough now that I can leave it till 3 in the afternoon before bothering to take the next day's.
+ I went to NA last night. (+ left before the group hug ~ ukkkhhhh. I keep forgetting about the group hug. If I did remember, I'd never want to go...)
Also I met an NA member on the street yesterday evening (that's what prompted me to go). He said I had changed beyond recognition. No longer having hair running alive with cockroaches. That'll always do the trick. (Also the first time he ever saw me at NA I was in a full-on manic episode; EVERYONE assumed I was high on crack ~ the suspicious bastards!) By the way when I died me barnet white last year it got rid of all my dandruff? I also heard hair dye kills nits. Which I caught about 3 or 4 times during the course of my heroin "career". I might even have caught body lice (off the local Crusties) (can't they (the lice, not the crusties) infest the hair too?) but I never would have known it because back in the 90s I washed my clothes every single day. Yep I was Washing Machine Man. Even today I don't use a laundry basket; I put everything that's been worn straight in the machine.
Yesterday I got rid of a huge Murderer's bloodstain (it did look like I'd been doing home butchery) from the left leg of my jeans. I soaked it in a lake of Easy washing liquid plus spray-on stain remover, until the brown blood was curling into the yellow (lemon flavour liquid).
Well I have to go now. Time's running low. I think next time I go down the druggieclinic (Monday) I should test heroin-free. That will be a first. (Not that I've never tested clean. By the way my first EVER clean test, in more than 7 years of continuous methadone prescription, was LAST YEAR!!) I haven't tested clean since I've been back at my old clinic, that's all.
RIGHT I'VE GOTTA GO.
Have a charming weekend Everyone...
*******
AND NOW FOR SOME MUSIC
SUGABABES: SHAPE This haunting tune is actually by Sting. But I think the Babes sing it better...
I AM WATCHING High Society. I wasn't well enough to watch it yesterday, so it spent all night on pause. Somehow I have managed to lose my DVD remote control. Being as the player cost only £17 and has its foibles, I might as well get a new machine as pay £10 for a new remote.
I was in a strange mood yesterday. The type of mood where the thud of doors, the clatter of pans, forms words, so that inanimate objects speak to me. They never say anything particularly interesting, by the way, apart from the odd obscenity. So much for quetiapine 300mg. All it does is make my mouth as dry as the bottom of a birdcage.
Oh by the way that film has just finished while I was writing and I still don't know who ends up marrying whom. The picture quality was absolutely amazing. And the colours. How come 1950s films had such brilliant colour? Is it to do with the Technicolor process?
By the way, I notice by reading the DVD cover that Ted Turner owns the rights. The only truly successful bipolar person I can think of. He bought the entire back catalogue of MGM Pictures for $1.5 billion in the 80s. Exactly what I would have done, if only I'd had the money.
Grace Kelly was like a more glamorous Audrey Hepburn. She's the only woman I can think of who managed to get drunk on screen in a ladylike way. No wonder she became a princess.
Apart from Fank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and Grace Kelly, the best thing about this film is the Technicolor interiors. If you get bored of the dialogue you can always just gaze at the background.
By the way I bet Louis Armstrong got paid less than the white actors. Racist bastards. Hey I'm jut watching the extra features. Did you know High Society cost $2.7 million to make in 1956. That's a lot of money. (It grossed $12 million later that year.)
And I'm still in a funny mood...
**********************************************
HERE are the two stand-out numbers from the movie. If you get bored of the songs, just bathe in those brilliant collours...
WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE FRANK SINATRA and CELESTE HOLM
IT'S BECAUSE OF ANTIDEPRESSANTS: THIS article explains more...
*******
AND NOW for some music.
This Bedtime Story remix, including the specially made video, was played on giant screens at her concerts, while her Madgesty smoked a fag in the back room. Or did whatever she does in the intermissions... I think the mixing's by Orbital.
I DON'T know what to say. I don't feel as crap as this time last week... but that doesn't necessarily "mean" anything. I long ago noticed that my mood (whether high or low, or both) inevitably follows a
wavy line; that is, if you imagine a piece of paper with a line through the middle, denoting "normal" mood, as well as fluctuating each side of normal ("high and low") it has been known to stay high, above the line of normality, and to still follow the wobbly line, or, more commonly, to remain low, always below "normal" but still endlessly wobbling on and on. Does that "mean" anything...? Probably not. But does that happen to anyone else? If so, please tell me.
I told one of my doctors about this donkeys years ago... then the shrink at the drugs clinic, who I used to see every week, some years ago, noticed it herself and proposed LITHIUM..!! The last thing I wanna take! All it's good for (so I hear) is for breaking open and sprinkling on your chips (and British chips are like really fat French fries)... with vinegar. As for other mood stabilizers, my GP prescribed carbamazepine (Tegretol) about 18 years ago... I never did know why. I took it, then gave up on it. Then took it again, as a one-off, when I couldn't sleep and it brought me out in a terrible rash. My skin looked like wax. Never again.
I'm only popping the quetiapine (Seroquel) 300mgs out of desperation. If I ever feel like I want "out", I need only pop 150mg during the day, and daytime slumber is assured. And in case you're viewing that as borderline drug-abuse, it's actually prescribed as 150mg twice a day. I only take 300mg at night for convenience. Because ordinarily I don't like being knocked out during the day. I don't know what else I wanted to say. Nothing really. I'm OK. I'm OK. OK. Don't worry about me...
THIS TUNE HAS BEEN GOING ROUND IN MY HEAD...
DON MCLEAN: THE GRAVE
WANT SOMETHING LESS MORBID?
MADONNA:~~
"...I'M GONNA RELAX
IN THE ARMS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS..."
THE LIBRARY BOOK I have been reading,Madness Explainedby Richard P Bentall, outlines four common approaches to dealing with depression.
They are 1 Rumination or brooding on one's problems 2 trying to solve the perceived source of one's difficulties 3 distracting oneself away from depressive thoughts or feelings and 4 engaging in potentially risky or dangerous activities that raise the mood.
People sometimes seem to mistake my explanatory style of blogging for my habitual thinking style. Which it is not, at all. Usually when I'm depressed there's no straightforwardly simple change I can effect in the short term that will get me away from the consequences of my problems. So my usual coping style is most definitely number 3 ~ DISTRACTION ~ and this is why I've been known to spend such ridiculous lengths of time pinging about the internet, thinking about anything except that which bothers me when I'm offline!
As I say, people tend to assume that the rather ponderous or analytical way in which I tend to express myself to others reflects my personal cognitive style. A couple of years ago (probably 3 years ago: before the psychotic manic episodes and schizoaffective diagnosis) the mental nurse down at the methadone clinic, on hearing me out for several hours, seemed to assume that anxiety lay at the root of my problems and gave me factsheets on how to deal with obsessively worrysome thoughts that were basically addressed to the person I used to be nearly 20 years ago!
I saw a psychologist when I was 24, who gave me a formal mood test that revealed high levels of depression coupled with low anxiety. By this time I had given up caffeine and the constant anxiety that had plagued my young self had already mercifully vanished...
So Wow! Distraction is good ~ and ~ Wow! For once in my life, I'm actually doing something RIGHT... !!
But Dr Bentall did point out that the Distractional Style that works so well against my depression is one of the very worst possible ways of dealing ~ surprise surprise ~ with bipolar mania! And is likely to make the manic state, marked as it is by extraordinarily high levels of distractability, even worse.
SO NOW IT'S YOUR TURN: CONFESS!
How do you deal with depression? Do you fit neatly into any one of the four coping styles?
1: Ruminating and Brooding
2: Trying to directly solve the perceived cause of your bad feelings and low mood
3: Distraction away from depressive thoughts
4: Engaging in potentially high-risk activities to raise your mood...?
Come on, answers in the comments box:~ PLEASE CONFESS NOW!
PS: 21:30 hrs. I've just realized that just about everyone is going to say they try to solve the root problem first, if they can. So please answer assuming that step has been taken: option 1, 3 or 4...
PPS I also realized that committing suicide could be interpreted as taking option 2.( However misguided that may be...)
I SLEPT for hours and hours and hours yesterday. One thing 300mg quetiapine has done is let me catch up on lost sleep. Every time I woke up, the bleakness of the day forced me back under the covers. I only got up after 3:30pm. And even then it took me an hour anda half to put on jeans and shoes and get out the door.
There was a knock knock knocking I couldn't ignore. The landlord's henchman was there asking questions. I tried not to look like I was in the mood I was in. All around me people say useless things. I am so glad I live on my own. Which should mean at least that when I'm home I have nobody to answer to. Nobody for whose benefit I have to twist my face into grotesque shapes in the name of social acceptability. (I call it false smiles and fakery.) And I shouldn't have to do it at home. Except when the landlord comes round uninvited. Once he had gone and the forced cheer of my farewell was fading from my ears I just wanted to scream and bang my head on the wall. Why does he have to turn up when I feel that bad?
Well I have nothing else to say and I'm not reading through this crap again much less editing it. Every time I post these days I walk away with various dumb-arse comments or phrases running and re-running through my head; thinking WHAT did I say that for??!?
This is just a diary, that's all. It never has been the type of blog that's out there to show how cool or clever or fascinating I am. If it was, trust me, it would be nothing like this.
Maybe in years time I will read this over and wonder how I felt. Well I just feel sick and weak and feeble and not up for anything and my mood is sulky. Except I doubt I will ever want to know.
I DON'T KNOW WHY doctors' surgeries always insist on giving me early morning appointments. At the time Im' always happy thinking Well I'll get this out of the way then I'll have the rest of the day to myself. Then the morning of the appointment comes and I'm sleep-deprived and feeling very ratty. I had to force myself in the shower because I hadn't bothered washing all alst week so I was absolutely festering.
The doctor took one look at me and asked whether I was depressed. When I collected my pills from the chemist I noticed hehad put the dose up to 2x150mg. I somehow doubt this is going to work. I had intended to request a 100mg dosage increase anyhow, but when the time came, I felt too shy to ask. And when I do feel mentally sick I wouldn't venture to tell any medical professional because I doubt they would ever believe me.
I have a bad track record with psychiatrists. I have been chucked off their lists twice. The first time it happened a new doctor was taking over. I had never seen this new doctor before and probably I was raecting to his manner because I told him how dysphoric I felt and yet I was all smiles. I wasn't lying. But after this I began to second-guess myself, doubting I felt how I felt I felt and feeling my feelings, and any emotional condition they implied, were unreal.
When I got home I fell asleep on the couch. Later I retired to bed, hiding under the duvet. I didn't wake until past 6pm.
It started off with my having to drag myself out of bed, still drugged up on quetiapine (Seroquel) my antipsycho pill (antimanic, antidepressant, antischizophrenia) that I'm meant to pop every night but had stopped for a few days when I'd realized my emergency back-up supply was drying up and I'm unable to get a repeat script till tomorrow. And then I'm asking that my dose be increased from 200 to 300mg. Because 200mg just is not working. It doesn't stop the loud thoughts I hear in my head ("thought insertion"). Or the mood swings.
I had been very moody all last week. Wave on wave of depression. Plus little flashes of hypomania. Resulting in weird head-states where I stayed up half the night feeling high and low at the same time ~ it's a bipolar thing. When that simultaneous high-low gets more severe and more intense so that you're clinically manic and clinically depressed at the same time, it's labelled a "Mixed Bipolar State".
One day I went up the road to get clean 1ml drug needles. Not one but TWO ordinarily reliable chemists informed me they had run out of 1mls and only had the 2.5ml syringes that take on a detachable orange needle that is 0.5mm rather than 0.33mm thick. Too big for my fine veins. And it makes you bleed twice as much. So I stamped home in misery and anger, telling myself on the one hadn that I felt so bad because I was so disappointed, that it wasn't clinical depression at all. And on the other that I was VERY ANGRY that my antipsycho pills weren't stopping me feeling so bad, because I felt Terrible. I told myself it would just clear. Sure enough it did clear. My mood magically lifted, lifted up and lifted higher so that I whizzed round the supermarket at top velocity singing Barbra Streisand songs, manoevring the Ragu-stacked trolley like a boy racer on speed and pretending to be an aeroplane: "Papa watch me fly..!" I stayed high for hours afterwards.
Anyway yesterday was my appointment with my drug worker. He seems to be the most clued-up worker I have ever had. And he also happens to chair the Monday morning antidrugs group. Although I hate such groups, the people who run them always seem to like me, because when I'm on form, I don't exactly hold back from expressing my opinions.
Yesterday I was not in any fit state to face a room full of crackheads who I didn't know. I felt too paranoid to let anyone look at my face, let alone share any ideas with them. I let them know how displeased I was whenever they tried to coax me into speech. (There were not one, but two drug workers at this meeting.)
So I sat there all sullen, restraining myself from running out the door. They kept on trying to get me to talk. I wasn't having any of it.
I had already made a commitment to myself (not the group) to attend the entire course of ten or twelve meetings. But I don't think I'm going to see this through. At ninety minutes they're far too long. I told him afterwards that if I can't stick with a TV prog or a DVD that long what hope do I have in a rambling group session?
I've fucked up my treatment by using heroin ton top of the methadone and told him this afterwards when we were alone in a little room and he was asking what was wrong.
Alone in a little room was all I ahve ever wanted from keyworking sessions. I am not willing to reveal the secrets of my heart to rooms full of crack-addicted strangers.
Well what are you doing keeping a blog then? I hear you enquire. As I say I do not want people looking at my face and here you don't see my face, you see a tubby little Golden Hamster. Trust me, if I could show up to Group looking like a furry little Hammy, I would.
So that is yeasterday and I'm tired. I'm not sleeping properly. I spend all night propped up in bed, surrounded by Japanese courses and Barbra Streisand discs. I no longer try to sleep when I can't. The Nytol didn't work. The quetiapine has run out.
Sorry if this is intsnsively boring. Really I don't want people looking at me or even thinking about me. I just want to disappear.
初めまして。お元気ですか。
いいえ、元気ではありません。
Sorry sorry sorry. I'm sorry for everything. I'm feeling a bit better today.
Last night I cheered myself up a bit bywatching the Jennifer Anniston film The Good Girl. About an unhappily married woman in a dissatisfied life who mees an even unhappier loner played by Jake Gyllenhaal. And their adulterous affair brings her no happiness at all. I watched it twice.
Here is my favourite clip. "Ladies ~ liquid drain cleaner. Two for $5. Shove something clean and new up your filthy pipes..."
It's 5pm. I'm exhausted already. Is "depression" really an "illness" or just an Excuse? Or is it even a Disease ~ a Brain Disease ~ like some of the more offensive webites like to say?
And PS while we're on the subject what is this new slogan BIPOLAR IS NOT CRAZY I hear? I came across it two or three times while trawling bipolar blogs last week. Considering that the condition used to be called Manic-Depressive Insanity and that at the peaks and troughs of depression as well as mania, sufferers routinely become completely delusional, hear voices and see visions. Not to mention becoming over-excited to the point of delirium, or depressed into catatonic stupor. All I can say is if THAT isn't crazy then WHAT IS?
Kay Redfield Jamison, bipolar sufferer, famed psychological researcher and professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, described severe mania as "as crazy as it gets".
The list of bipolar sufferers who have made notable contributions to literature, music and other arts is too extensive to reproduce here. But there are barely ANY famous schizoaffective or schizophrenia sufferers.
But HERE is a story of inspiration:~~~~~~~
Eleanor Longden, 27, achieved the highest mark ever in her BSc Psychology from the University of Leeds last year... despite suffering from severe schizophrenia since the age of 18...
EVA AND HANS RAUSING, the billion-dollar drug addicts. Their love affair began in rehab and ended last week at their exclusive London address, where Mrs Rausing seemingly died of an overdose. Police found Eva's body on Tuesday while raiding her Belgravia mansion for drugs after her husband, heir to an $8 billion food-packaging fortune, was pulled over for erratic driving in South London and found to be in possession of Class A substances. It seems Hans had continued bingeing on heroin and crack for over a week with Eva's corpse still lying in an upstairs bedroom.
Of course murder is suspected, but it wouldn't surprise me if the poor man, who is now in hospital, was too frightened or confused or just too out of it to seek help.
The pictures tell the tale of their sad decline...
EVA RAUSING, 48 year-old wife of Hans Rausing, 49, heir to the £5 billion ($8 billion) Tetra Pak drink carton fortune, has been found dead at the couple's £50 million ($80 million) Belgravia mansion here in London.
Eva made the news in 2008 after she was busted attemptedly bringing heroin and crack into a reception at the American embassy in Mayfair. Their home was raided and about £2000 worth of crack cocaine seized. For this she was sternly reprimanded by the Metropolitan Police and then let off scott-free ~ a move that was roundly criticized at the time.
The daughter of a top American Pepsi Cola executive, Eva met Hans at an American rehabilitation centre in the 1990s. Despite giving millions to drug charities, the couple continued to be plagued by their own addictions.
Hans was stopped for bad driving on Tuesday night and found to be in possession of crack cocaine. His home was then raided, leading to the discovery of his wife's dead body in a bedroom. Police suspect that he lived with her corpse for over a week. It is expected that Mr Rausing, who is currently undergoing in-patient psychiatric care, will be charged with concealing the dead body.
What else can I say? What a sad, sad tale. Proof, as if any more were needed, that though it can pay for just about everything else, money cannot buy happiness.
THE URGE to be able to read, speak and write fluent Japanese has hit me again. I've always wanted to speak Japanese, since my mid-teens. Despite poor progress (in life as much as any foreign language) I never gave up on this goal, and it's one thing I want to achieve before I die...
So I phoned the Waterstones booksellers branch that serves the School of Oriental and African Studies in town and checked whether Teach Yourself: Complete Japanese was available. He said no, they only had Fast Track Japanese. If I wanted to make an order, I'd have to come in, hand over the cash, then wait however long it takes (three days to three weeks depending on availability and obscurity). So I told him I'd check that my local WH Smiths couldn't order it in for me.
An ordinary bookseller can order in any title in print in any language. WH Smiths, however, only order from a shortlist of titles they actually stock. So I seriously doubted they'd be able to help me. Imagine my shock when I entered the store not only to find Complete Japanese (1 book; 2 CDs) on the shelf, but that it was discounted £10 cheaper than the £39.99 recommended retail price. In American money I paid $45 for my linguistic distraction from the lure of the Devil's Drug Heroin!
Oh yeah, and a ghost tried to enter my head through my right eye last night. That's what happens when you're overexposed to computers. You hear voices and the ghouls try to get you. I'm very upset with my Seroquel for not protecting me from psychic apparitions. Also I'm still prone to extreme bad moods. Quetiapine is meant to even out the moods. But it doesn't. All it does is stop me going manic. It doesn't appear to defend against depression at all. Doesn't stop psychic voices coming into my head. Which don't bother me, except that I know that they're considered a sign of madness by the big bad world I live in. The only good thing about quetiapine is the lovely drowsy feeling it induces 1-2 hours after popping the pills. Then you get really nice sleep. But over time immunity develops to most of most drugs' effects. My friend Pinky is on four times my dose and it barely touches the sides with her. She's on clonazepam (Klonipin) for anxiety and zopiclone for sleep ~ on top of maximum dose Seroquel for paranoid psychosis. Seroquel, the drug that knocked me sideways the first weeks I was on it.
Well that's boring old me for another day. If anyone else has seen a ghost recently,
THIS is the only video I've ever seen that portrays bipolar mania even half-convincingly. When I first posted it on my old blog, I WAS manic and didn't see anything very extreme about her behaviour, which, if it's representative of her behaviour throughout the entire course of that day, seems to me like what a doctor would probably call a moderate level of mania (or severe hypomania) crossed with a strong desire to let off steam (she says she was going on a long road trip in a few hours time).
Most of the depictions of mania you'll see on TV tend to accentuate the grandiosity, high spirits and irritability of the condition but will totally ignore the extreme distractability, pressure of speech and thought/speech disorder (perseveration (repetition), tangientiality, "flight of ideas") etc which are the hallmarks of the manic state.
Watch this and you'll see why I'm scared of ever behaving like this in public. I once got taken to a mental hospital emergency reception when I was so manic I was yelling the alphabet at the top of my voice, throwing hand sanitizer up in the air and propelling myself on a swivel chair pretending to fly. I did most of this behaviour out of sight of the nurses. And nobody really gives a flying crap how any mental patient behaves in a mental hospital, as long as they're not making Hard Work for the staff. I went away with a long report written out against my name and a prescription for sleeping pills. I saw a consultant just over a week later, when that wave of mania was already waning (it came back and back and back again over the weeks)....
Anyway THIS is why I write posts I never post. Because I'm traumatized at how crazy I got nearly 18 months ago. And behaved such that I could clearly see the fear in other people's faces. I was far more deranged than the woman you see here. But I don't get it at all.
I don't understand WHY WHY WHY.
PS if you're wondering what happened to the star of this Youtube show, she gassed herself in her garage some years later. Suicide. I find it hard to believe the risk of death in bipolar depression is only one in five (double the rate in ordinary depression), but that's what the statistics say.
By the way I'm not manic now. More depressed, if anything. Memories of the manic state come back to me in flashbacks. I feel compelled to make some kind of sense out of them...
THIS IS ONE of my favourite meals. At least, it's one of the easiest to make. And that makes it my favourite...
Actually, mine is chunky cod and it's in batter. Same difference, I suppose...
I have it with
American-style curly fries. Do these even come from America? I get them from
And I round it off with
My contribution towards the five portions a day of fruit and veg we're meant to consume.
Well 5 tomatoes = 5 portions, does it not?
WISHING EVERYONE A BALMY AND NOT TOO RAIN-SODDEN WEEKEND!
And just to top it off, if you've ever wondered how "love soft as an easy chair, love fresh as the morning air..." sounds in French, here's Babs singing a Gallic "Evergreen":~~~
