Shopping with Binky

BINKY and I just went on the most marvellous shopping spree in Oxfam (for those of you not au fait with the British high street, that's a high-end charity shop) ~ where we both purchased new trainers (that's "sneakers" to you Americans) and I decided to buy myelf a book collection: The Perrin Technique: How to Beat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME by Dr Raymond Perrin; Nobel House by James Clavell and Fame by Tilly Bagshawe. Intellectual titles, all three!

Then we met a crack-addicted prostitute who had just been in a bitch-fight. This was Agatha, my friend Paddaddster's woman... Binky kept laughing because I've been "gauwching" today. Gauwching is junk-speak for "heroin-induced slumber" but it's not really as straightforward as that. I've not been sleeping all week. And every time I wake up, I feel like my stomach has been scrubbed out with liquid drain cleaner. I had to eat a 500g pot of fruits of the forest pro-biotic yoghurt this morning in order to feel better and it did work a treat. I can't believed I stooped low enough to take nasty heroin again. True, my knackered-out body feels some need. But my mood has been far too superior ever to require chemical stimulation. The natural highs of hypomania far outstrip any chemical substitute.

We went to the council offices to get my pensioner's bus pass. Binky kept telling me to keep still and not say too much. She's complaining that my ear infection manifests in a even louder voice from me than usual. Then she said, "Actually you should get up in the middle and walk around saying some stupid things. Oh no. You'll probably do that anyway...?" She says I'm still hypomanic, but not as hypomanic as yesterday. I think I had about six or six-and-a-half hours' sleep last night. Binky passed all my paperworks across the desk then said this is my friend who is really unorganized. Here's all the letters you need and the passport photos. He should have sorted this out a year ago." The lady who dealt with my claim said I ought to get a letter telling me to pick up my pass from the local Post Office in six-to-eight weeks' time.

It's taken more than a year to sort this Freedom Pass. Deshane, my old Support Worker told a bare-faced lie about having attempted to get me one last year and come up against the problem of my being housed by one London borough and yet resident in another. Having checked the present paperwork, there's no way that could have been an issue, because short of asking for proof of address, no other details of one's place of residence impinge on one's application whatsoever. This Deshane is the one who had the impertinence to declare to my psychiatrist that he thought I had obsessive-compulsive disorder, which he referred to as "COD" (surely "COD means "cash on delivery"..?) There was a real pregnant pause in the meeting, which Deshane didn't notice and then my shrink said "Well we're working under another diagnosis." Schizoaffective bipolar disorder being about as different from OCD as cheesecake from jumbo saveloy.

I should be eligable for this pensioner's bus pass on the grounds of "severe mental illness". When my neonatal-looking GP, Dr Lovelace umm'd and arr'd over the forms I pointed out that when manic last year I reached a point where I literally could not read at all (which was absolutely true: why do you think I feel so traumatized by the excesses of that "episode"...(?)) then straight away she said "leave the form at reception and I'll have it signed for you within a week. Do you understand now why my attitude to this disorder is so mixed? On the one hand it opens the door to undiluted euphoric, rapturous transcendent, mystical experience... on the other, it's really disabling and demeaning. And I'm particularly unimpressed by the prefix "schizo". As y'all know, I thoroughly enjoy much of my mania, so I don't want to give that side up. Surely at some time in the future they'll concoct a mood stabilizer able to eliminate depression and yet keep me mildly hypomanic all the time...? Because if "recovery" is going to mean years of mild depression with dragging tiredness, boredom ~ in other words a half-baked, half-cocked "recovery" then I'm not sure how much "better" I wanna get anyway...?

I just love this "bounce mix"; 17 minutes in it gets really bangin' (...)... and 50 mins 30 seconds... and 51 minutes.

I must go and eat a Jogobella raspberry yogurt 500 Calories in 500g ~ so I'm really eating good. This stuff settles my stomach like nothing else in the mornings... Well I simply MUST GO and do a Damn Great Gauwch as well. I've not been sleeping properly all week and I REALLY NEED TO CATCH UP...................






BANGIN' 3-HOUR SCOUSE HOUSE/BOUNCE/DONK-MIX NOVEMBER 2011...




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