A Real Pen!

HEY SOMEBODY BOUGHT ME A PRESENT! YES, finally I'm the proud owner of a real ink pen again! I lost all my old pens when I turned into a raving heroin junkie nearly 14 years ago (don't even know where they went: I certainly didn't sell 'em). I love a good ink pen, with a liberal nib that splurges ink all over the paper (before it sinks in, you can see the wet writing sort of standing up on the paper). So I'm really happy with this pen. It is for writing great literature with. Well... editing the "great literature" already written. I've so far revamped 5000 words and have "only" 25,000 to go! (Which is not that much prose: Liz set a goal to pen 50,000 words this month alone! A shortish adult novel would be 80,000 words and that would occupy about 200-300 pages, depending on typesetting.) So my 30,000 words isn't that much at all. When I'm in a good mood I do think (or hope, more like) that they're 30,000 pretty amazing words, it has to be said. (Well someone has to believe in this book~ it's my job to!)

WHY AM I SUCH A MISERABLE BASTARD? I should be happy. I have everything going for me. I have written draft one of this book I keep banging on about. Including illustrations it would comprise a 150-page (or so) volume.  So it's not that long. But at least I achieved something ~ so why am I so bloody miserable? Ukh, I have no idea.

I told my methadone worker about all this and the new life I was hoping/intending to start up, you know, as a worthy writer and all and she said "what about your mental health?" (my drugs worker thinks I'm really nutty, last time when I came in looking particularly scruffy she said I looked "very community care" (community care is what they call it when you see a person going barking mad at the traffic lights. It means there's not enough room in British mental hospitals). Oh I saw a TV prog t'other day on Channel 4 called Bedlam. The episode I saw just happened to feature 3 bipolar people. The theatre studies girl happened to have been slapped with the same horrible label as me ("schizoaffective")... but I couldn't help but notice, when her manic episode wore off and the meds were working she looked completely and utterly sane ~ I mean, even saner than I am. There was a big black guy who the nurses said was being "horrible" (you have to be REALLY horrible to get that label from a mental health nurse!) and lastly a bloke who'd come in after a "suicide attempt" looking really chirpy and not at all depressed. Supposedly bipolar, but it turned out to be a misdiagnosis. The new doctors decided he was personality-disordered, promptly withdrew all drugs and chucked him out of hospital! Yeah so anyway, my future mental health. Well I've never expected to feel any different in the future from how I do now, and it turns out that was a most pragmatic move on my part. Because I've "achieved a life goal" and yet I feel practically the same as before! Every morning I wake up feeling miserable. Every time I stop thinking, moving, speaking, writing~ the misery floods back. Like a sinking ship, when you cease bailing out. Swamped all over again. Oh I dunno!

Hey I just had a really nice pineapple-vanilla ice lolly split. I do love a good lolly in the autumn. Inspires the mind to greater things.

OK I've got to go. Noah I will get back to ya tomorrow. I'm about to be timed out by this ******g thing. Can't swear. Now that I'm a children's writer ha ha!

AND TO THE MYSTERY PERSON: THANK YOU FOR THE PEN!!

Illustrated: Lamy Al-Star ~ a fountain pen for writting intellectual books; Liz Hinds jailbird extraordinaire (she's a prison chaplaincy adult literacy counselling assistant. Or something... Authoress of This Time Next Year, available on Amazon! The last photo shows Liz's dog George having an "issue" over a twig with a Northern Spitz. Nothing to do with anything really. Just liked the picture!