OptiConfusion and Great Literature

I GOT SOMETHING IN MY EYE today. Literally there was a black dot on my iris and my eye felt weird and dry (not hurting or streaming with tears) but there was definitely this black speck literally stuck on my eyeball and no amount of finger-on-eyelid manoevring would persuade it  to go. So I spent £4.26 ($6.60) on a bottle of Optrex (I only needed the plastic eyebath as I've got two bottles of Optrex at home from when I last had to go to Moorfields eye hospital in central London for another "mote" that was stuck (inside the lid) for about 18 hours and I couldn't stop crying. That time, the lady turned my eyelid inside-out, poked it with something like a posh cotton bud  and said "this is the offending object" and it was TINY. This one was even smaller ~ but how weird that it should be stuck ON the eyeball. And literally refused to move. I kept thinking I had been speared by some non-painful miniature thorn. I don't know. It was really doing my head in. Of course the Optrex made me cry like a baby and everyone was staring at me when I came out of the public bathroom at the doctors' surgery where Binky had to get her dicky legs looked at. She needs TWO knee replacements and they say she's now old enough to go through with the operation. Because fake kneecaps only last twenty years they'll make sure you're nice and old before they put them in. Then when you reach the stage where those fail too and you completely lose the use of your legs you're hopefully decrepit in so many other ways it hopefully doesn't matter as much.

Anyway I decided to follow Handy Cotton Bud Lady (to those of you on American shores, a that's a "cotton swab") ; went into the toilet cubicle, rolled toilet paper into a twist and stuck this on my eye and hey presto the unmovable "nonexistent" black dot came straight out.

Well I've been in a VERY FUNNY MOOD  recently.  I wake up mulling thoughts of suicide in a fairly distant type of way .... then  I'm hyperactive and can't stop talking IN A VERY LOUD VOICE~!!!

O and by the way, Doctor Lovelace, my GP who I kind of fell in love with ... well she kind of looks like a more beautiful version of Myleene Klass. Just thought you should know that.

Errrr, I don't know WHAT I came here to say but that's about it. Don't worry  or get too excited; I'm not about to commit suicide . I just meant I have been feeling pretty crappy. Some of the time.

And I'm still in a piss about this Turkish television connexion. I'm thinking of turning up the heating to maximum, buying a load of kebabs in and inviting everyone I know round for a Turkish Evening ~ complete with bloody TURKSAT TELEVISION that I get but don't want .The council man wrote back pretty much telling me that if I wanted TV in German and French (for educational purposes) I should just stick a dish up. Oooo that's very naughty . The council won't like that. But I AM thinking up ways of fixing illicit television reception equipment to the back of garden chairs or on poles fixed into giant plant pots ~ then the dish hasn't been "installed" . It just happens to be sitting there. As for the bloody great hole I have to get drilled in the wall to line in four "LNBs"  ukh I don't know. But in readiness for this Bullensheiße I've taken to learning how to line up a satellite dish all on my very own . Which is extremely complicated seeing as said apparatus must be pointing at precisely 19.2 degrees east of south (which somehow works out as an "azimuth" of 155.8 and precisely 28 degrees off the horizon. Well I don't bloody know and what the MotherF is "azimuth" when it's at home..??? Well I'm determined to learn this shyte. Hey did you know you can hide a satellite dish in a binbag and it will still work ? Wow the possibilities are endless. This is for "Astra 1". Hotbird is a totally different satellite (at 13 degrees east) and Hotbird is what we're supposed to get but no it's bloody Turksat. I can't believe I am ranting on this subject yet again. It just winds the living crap out of me whenever I turn my television on. What am I saying? I barely ever "turn the TV on" . I'm one of those people who has it blaring out 24-7 (yes even while I sleep)  .Hence my severe irritation at the Turksat Scandal. Yes I do do other things apart from listen to television (  I don't actually deign to watch it THAT  much...)... in combustation of this I bought a whole load of books this afternoon. Classic texts . They are:

 Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway ~ no idea what this one's about but it's supposed to be good. Virginia Woolf, by the way, is the ONE SINGLE FAMOUS PERSON I can think of  who had full-blown psychotic bipolar 1 disorder with florid auditory and visual hallucinations, like me (rather than the Trendy Celebrity Version  of Bipolar , which is type 2 ~ that means a person might become very severely depressed, but their manic episodes are never severe enough to make them totally lose the plot. Anyway...

DH Lawrence: Sons and Lovers  ~ we did this at school. His best prose is lusciously poetic  but his worst is absolutely terrible...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment ~ this seems to be the only really good novel Dostoyevsky wrote. O and by the way he was heavily in debt throughout most of his life ~ and got paid by the page . Which should be ravingly bloody obvious to anyone who 's had the unpleasant experience of reading this guy 's worst crap .

Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons  ~ absolutely no idea what this one's about , but it's meant to be an alltime classic of Russian literature. (I love Russian books.)

Tilly Bagshawe: Friends and Rivals ~ can I say in mitigation that this was only 50p. I hate chick lit but for some reason the cover grabbed me.  I'm going to give it to Binky. Also her novelist sister Louise WAS probably the best-looking Tory MP in history. Before she went and retired prematurely... akh. The Dr Lovelace of politicians and she too had to go!

John Keats: Complete Poems ~  it's such a shame this guy died young. He could have been one of the greatest poets of all time. Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the greatest lyrics in English. And yes, Ode to a Nightingale was supposed to have been composed in an opiated daze....

Yeah that's my books. The whole lot cost about £14.50 ($22.46) . Brand new.

Well that's about it. Gotta go and FIND SOME CARPETS for my echoing concrete shell of a home....

Ukh and can I also say YES I DO SEEM TO HAVE MOVED INTO AN EX-CRACKHOUSE.  Everestine piles of red bills ... Bailiffs' cards pushed through the door. Two drunken junkies turned up at 7am yelling for the previous occupant  and when I said he no longer lived here she just yelled "LIAR!"  and a loud crashing noise echoed up the stairway...                                    

By the way if there are unwanted spaces here  , it's just the computer throwing a fit  . I don't know why......

ACEN OPTIKONFUSION: CLOSE YOUR EYES

I used to love this "song" ....

 Close your eyes... forget your name... forget the world ... forget the people... close your eyes and go insane...

Illustrated: Kurdish national costume; Myleene Klass ; Turkish national dress (Turks and Kurds are DIFFERENT don't ever mix them up!! ~ Kurds come from KURDISTAN, part of which lies within current Turkish frontiers...!), Louise Bagshawe aka Louise Mensch...

Unblocked Drain

I HAD a terrible problem with the bathroom sink. If you swooshed in enough water seemingly to go round the U-bend, then down a bit, it all backed up and said sink remained full for over half an hour. As water slowly, very very very slowly trickled out.

So I made up caustic soda in the right proportion. And that scared the crap out of me as the first time round I used a drinks can which went HOT as the Frightening Fizz did its sinister work. And then SMOKE CAME OUT!! But still no joy. I was supposed to leave it there for half an hour, but in half an hour it had trickled away and when I tried it again the sink was still as blocked as ever before.

Suffice it to say I used up the entire bottle of caustic soda, diluted in about five litres of water. Nothing seemed to change... Until...!

The next morning. Suddenly sink unblocked!

 Now I'm living in guilty terror that no sewer rats were harmed in the "treatment" of this Unruly Drain. I'm so glad I didn't have to go as far as 96% sulphuric acid (strongest drain cleaner you can get ~ AVAILABLE OFF THE SHELF HERE! ~ caustic soda was scary, what with the heat and smoke, but Vitriol scares the shit out of me!

PS Ignore what I said last time: no sleep and emotional overwhelm-ment will do that to a person...

 UKH AND I HAVE TO FIND A NEW GP. I REALLY DON'T WANT TO BUT I HAVE TO. TOLD OLD ONE I WAS MOVING HOUSE. AND IF I DON'T CONFIRM MY NEW ADDRESS I'LL NEVER GET ANY MAIL FROM THEM... (WHICH COULD BE IMPORTANT)...

Illustrated: caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) VERY SCARY STUFF. Not the brand I used. Mine was very cheap and nasty looking... (and about 100% pure!) if you don't believe that caustic soda goes hot on contact with water then I challenge you TRY IT YOURSELF!

Remedy Transcendent Rapturous Sublime Life Is So Meaningful Why Was I Ever So MEANINGLESS For So Long...?

 I AM HAVING A PAKISTANI chicken pastry poof for breakfast. And it is a real poof. Every time I gnaw into it it exclaims "oh really, dearie ~ must you bite in so hard?!" etc. Makes me feel like a real lesbian. I decided to have a Glodemer Breakfast since leaving Binky at the gates of the mental hospital. I gave a nearly Brand New pair of shoes to another inmate called Lulille, who is a sweet old lady who got dragged in there for threatening her neighbours who she said were intertwined in a torrid Black Magic Plot against her. But at size 8s they're too gigantic for little old Lulille. I told Binky to give them to Manic Girl instead, but Manic Girl has disappeared. Probably pinging round the heavens on a magic carpet. Then I told her to give them to Bo Peep Little Miss Wrist-Slasher Borderline Personality Disorder but she's vanished too. She might get a place at Binky's house. Bloody hell, the two of them together. Alternately idealizing and demonizing one another plus everybody else. Emotional chaos 999.

I feel overwhelmed by emotion. Binky can't handle me this morning as I spent all night up listening to music and feeling manic.

Well life is going swimmingly up at 79 Pancake Towers. I've been watching South African soap operas on Oh TV (Sky 199) and Edge/Loaded/Controversial TV (Sky 200) (all about UFOs and Big Brother Girls slagging off Katie Price) but I'm tuning in with my German TV box so I get absolutely everything you don't have to pay for. Including QVC's "mosaics" and a feed seemingly into Sky News's back room where you can hear random people arguing on the phones. Oh bloody hell I forgot to watch Footballers' Wives last night (CBS Drama: Freesat 134, Sky 149) . I must really be losing the plot.

There is so much beauty in the world. I am dying of so much splendour, drowning in transcendent light. Olympian, angelic, astral, beatific, blessed, divine, elysian, empyral, empyrean, eternal, godlike, hallowed, holy, otherworldly, immortal, seraphic, spiritual, sublime, supernal, supernatural, transmundane.... oh wow. And raptures of delight!

And Beverlybabe and Anna Grace and Bugerlugs WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU ALL..??!?

Bloody hell listen to this tune. It is transcendently beautiful.... Like being in paradise.

ARMIN VAN BUUREN: SERENITY
The 2nd one down ~ original mix ~ is particularly impressive...

VIDEO ft VAN JAYNE



ORIGINAL MIX



LIVE ORCHESTRA



And last but not least
THE CHILLOUT MIX...
... you can never have too much of a good thing

Hey I saw Doctor Lovelace yesterday. For the last time ever. Trust that to happen. First time I find a doctor who likes me, who is younger than me, who wants to understand me. Who is sexy. And I have to move out of her catchment area. She found out, by scrolling back through my notes, that I was on methadone and I said I hadn't wanted to tell her because I'd get treated different and she said "but I wouldn't treat you any differently" and I said I know. And now I feel so sad I want to cry. She also told me it is normal for bipolar people to feel high and low in the same day.

There!

OK: I'VE NOW OFFICIALLY MOVED HOUSE! 79 Pancake Towers, Walford, London E20 9LP. OK if I were an EastEnders character that would be my address, but they say you shouldn't give out too much personal info on your blog. Which means I'm pretty f*cked, what with my heroin confessions of yore and all... Well I'm TRYING not to use it. And not entirely succeeding. Hey and guess what? My mood, for the last several days has been almost entirely NORMAL. Not high as a kite, and not too depressed either.

I started keeping a mood diary, where I rate the highest and lowest I felt that day as well as various other factors such as manic feelings: racing thoughts, hyperkinesis, etc. It's something I'm supposed to fill in every day, though many days I don't. Takes about half a minute to scrawl out the answers, then every week or so, I plot my highs and lows on a graph. Very interesting. At the beginning of the year I was hypomanic and suicidally depressed on the same day for more than a week. A complete basket case. Then we see clear-cut euphoric hypomania with no depression. Then the hypomania declines and depression appears in a characteristic wedge shape. With me, the mania usually looks like a shark's fin (peaking very soon, then gradually declining, though you may see two or three sharks' fins in a row). The depression gets steadily worse day by day, hits an all-time low; then suddenly, the day after, I'm almost better. Interestingly the letter S for "suicidal" DISAPPEARS when the mood plummets past a certain point. Anyway the rest of these notebooks are full of the most drivellous rantings possible, usually composed while manic and to be honest I'd like to burn them. What I like the most about being hyper and high is that when I'm right up there, my old neurotic self almost entirely disappears. Also in depression beyond a certain extreme, I'm not neurotic either. But my normal boring personality is so insecure and neurotic I irritate the pants off myself, so what effect I have on other people I hesitate to guess at...

By the way, the whole point of the mood chart is to correspond one's state of mind with whatever shit life has thrown at you that week. Weirdly the news that I'd been offered permanent accommodation actually set off depression with suicidal ideation. I kept thinking of this flat and telling myself: Now I know where I'm going to die... (Which might well be true; because I ***should*** have lifetime tenure. And if I don't die in hospital, the odds are I WILL die at home. That's just statistics for ya. (But of course when I'm really desperate I fantasize about dying in other ways and places. Don't think I'd ever have the guts to put that into operation though...)

Binky is STILL CONFINED TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL for the FIFTH TIME IN LESS THAN A YEAR. I don't even know what is "wrong" with her. She seems completely "normal" to me... But! She was severely punished this morning for calling the doctor the C-word and isn't allowed outside. A 49-year old woman grounded for having borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia and being in a bad mood. Which has me running all over the place purchasing cigarettes, paying off her multiplicitous catalogue bills... etc. Being as my new place is two miles from the nuthouse I can't get there every day any more. Hey last Saturday we had an interesting ride in Manic Girl's car. Bloody hell. I had just remarked how "normal" Manic Girl appeared and why on earth were they keeping her in hospital for so long... Then we got in the car and I realized. I don't think I have ever whizzed through the sinuous streets of London at such extreme velocity. When we got to the post office, Manic Girl said "I used to work there but it was so boring I jacked it in and travelled the world for three months". I wish I could be that spontaneous, but I'm very cautious and boring at heart.

Of course I have heard back NOTHING in my great fight to get keys for all my doors and windows and non-Turkish satellite TV.

I'm living on cheese coleslaw sandwiches. It's that posh multigrain malted bread, so I feel most bourgeois nibbling on these whilst viewing Abu Dhabi TV (formerly sky 796 now you must tune to Astra 2 28.2 east 11662 or 11623MHz horizontal) or Horse and Country (Sky 280 not on Freesat) or The Peace Channel Urdu (Eurobird 1 28.5 east, transponder F1 upper, 12559.67 mHz horizontal (not on Freesat or Sky). Yeah I had a go at tuning my German TV box ~ the one that made me hit the roof when I tried to get Hotbird 13 east and was instead deluged with hundreds of irritating channels in BLOODY TURKISH ~ into the Sky/Freesat satellites at Astra 2 28.2 east. You get about 300 channels free-to-air, most of which aren't on Freesat, some of which aren't on Sky either. I do love my satellite television, hence this massive gripe with the council over negligently miswiring my Hotbird feed and giving me F*CKING TURKISH TELEVISION INSTEAD!! Don't get me wrong. I love most things Turkish: cheap under-the-counter tobacco, large lamb shish kebabs with all salad loads of garlic sauce bit of chili sauce for £5.50 and jewellery that is far nicer than anything else you'll find in the low-to-mid price range (though Indian jewellers are also good). But I DO NOT WANT TURKISH TELEVISION!!!

Ukh, all this ranting... am I going manic again? The mere fact that I think about mania, or remember what it's like at random points of the day, is often (weirdly enough) the first sign of its return. That and fantastic adrenaline rushes lasting hours on end, woven into the psychedelic fabric of life's rich tapestry...

" /> Bloody hell I'm hungry. I'm going to have to run to Iceland for something to shove in my sandwiches. Good job it's winter: because I have no fridge, I'm just stashing stuff out on the balcony. Where, by the way, a pair of pigeons keep mating. First thing in the morning and right in front of my face.

Righty-ho. Better leave it there. Hope y'all have a chirpy weekend...

(And if it can't be chirpy, then may it be chirrupy instead...)

Link: my right to satellite television under EU law http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-01-913_en.htm?locale=en

Illustrated: these apartment blocks are far too pretty to be anywhere in London ~ what you see is Neukölln in Western Berlin...

MUSIC: DOLLY PARTON ~ THERE

I used to listen to this when I was very little: it was on the album New Harvest First Gathering

Nearly Moved In

I AM SO EXHAUSTED. I spent the afternoon trundling even more boxes along multiple landings, up and down lifts, to get to my "apartment" (as I like to call it; I mean, this puts me in company with the Queen, who also lives in an apartment (in Buckingham Palace...)). I'm SO GLAD I invested in this trundling trolley: it can hold three fully packed boxes at once. Saved me a hell of a lot of time and back trouble. That's probably the best-spent £20 of the entire year!

As for the television: the Freeview is appalling ~ so bad the BBC won't tune in ~ but a whole load of adult channels would. But I don't watch that anyway, I watch Freesat. CBS Drama, True Movies 1 etc aren't on Freeview. The Freesat signal is 100%. Then we come to foreign language TV and the council promised us two community dishes, one to be pointed at Turksat 42 east which seems to have services ONLY in Turkish (and possibly Kurdish) and comes through irritatingly loud and clear and Hotbird 13 east, which is mostly in Polish and Arabic but has a rag-tag selection in a host of languages including German, French, English, Tamil, Italian, Somali, Kurdish, Farsi, Romanian blah blah blah. It seems the bunglers at the council installed a system that can only route one foreign satellite at a time (so what happens in a household where a Turk is married to a Pole?) meaning the cable to my flat must be rerouted at rooftop level. I have a feeling I'm going to have fight on my hands to get anything done. But I've always won battles of the legalistic kind where, as in this case, I just have to point out that I'm paying (via a weekly service charge) for a service I don't get (Hotbird) and therefore my landlord (the borough council) are duty-bound to act. I may have led a mostly braindead life for the past decade-&-a-bit, but I can still fight for my rights. I also think it's execrable of them to have prioritised TV for just ONE national group over scores of others, but I won't make this point unless the fight gets really dirty.

Apart from that, once this place is done up it will look really nice. Presently I'm living with home-made curtains in the form of coloured bin-liners stuck to the windows and I made a beanbag-type thing out of three quilts on the floor. There is no furniture, no central heating (which isn't required even in this cold weather: I get so much heat from downstairs I never feel cold). The shower does work, because it's electric. I found the switch. The gas people have yet to send the promised top-up card. I'm thinking of doing the living room as a rhapsody in blue with blue carpet or lino against pale blue walls with dark blue furniture and chests of drawers etc painted blue. The colour blue makes me feel excessively happy, when I'm in the right mood... I just don't know how long I will have to wait to put any of this in operation...

Erm, there's nothing else to say. I'm just fed up of having to complain about so many points. Doors and windows left unlocked and no key provided, blah blah. I hate complaining (though I'm actually very good at it, when I put the complaint in writing, I'm normally good at pointing out my rights and their obligations. My head feels like it is turning to mush, what with STRESS over a million little things. And my body is exhausted. I keep getting dizzy spells (does that mean anything? I always thought it just meant you were weak and neurotic. Or at least, that if you told a doctor, that's what they'd think you were...) Anyway I have to go, this computer is running out of time...

Partially Moved and lots of repairs

I MOVED some of my stuff into this new flat yesterday. All the annoyingly clunky stuff: bookshelves, 5ft high +-shaped Ikea clothes drying rack, television, microwave.

I stayed the night with no curtains, no furniture. Just threw my clothes on the bare concrete floor and used them as a mattress. Thanks to the wonders of quetiapine, I slept nearly 12 hours straight.

Now I'm exhausted. And, to be honest, annoyed at having to report no fewer than SIX repairs, including one door (which fair enough opens to a 30ft drop) unlocked with no key, one window, opening to the landing unlocked with no key, terrible television reception and the Hotbird Euro-TV socket not working. (Though Turkish TV came through loud and clear, which pissed the living crap out of me. But I won't go on about THAT subject...) And blah blah blah blah blah blah.

I have checked the council's website and it appears I might be able to open the socket and rejiggle the satellite line-in myself...

Two thirds of my stuff is still lying in the old place. But I'm not sleeping there on principle.

When it is finally finished the place will look really nice. Now I have to go to buy coloured binbags to turn into makeshift blinds...

Cardboard Boxes

I'VE NOW got a gigantic heap of boxes in my living room (the old one). They are awaiting the time when my landlord's "henchman" says he can move them. I started moving in myself yesterday, thanks to my WonderTrundler, me and my trolley and my goods did the half-hour walk ourselves. Until we came to the stairs outside the flats (no wheelchair ramp) and clonk-clonk-TUNNNG!~~ something broke and suddenly the Trundler's not trundling any more. So I dug out the £19.99 receipt and thought about suing the shop and what I would do when they refused to replace these faulty goods. And I removed the missing part and bent it and bent it again and to cut a long story short, thanks to two McDonald's brown paper bags and lots of Chinese yellow parcel tape I think I've got the problem fixed. The landlord's man said he could probably move half my stuff today. If he does, I'm setting up home on the floor, on a pile of my clothes. (The only thing I brought was my clothes.)

I had to see my support worker this morning to sort out electricity and gas. The electric people are giving me an appointment next week to get a key meter fitted. And gas are sending me a card that will wipe out the £16 arrears on their prepay meter. Ukh my brain has turned to mud yet again; I'm so tired. I was up at two a.m., then the Sonny and Cher story came on True Movies. And then I spent hours thinking "WHY HAVE I GOT SO MUCH STUFF??!!" I can't wait till this is OVER AND DONE WITH!!!

Gas Chaos

I SPENT NEARLY £20 ($31.45) trying to ring the Gas and electric people to get new accounts activated. The gas is already on pay-as-you-go meter, which is £16 ($25) in arrears, so they have to clear that by sending an engineer round. The electricity is already running, but I want the meter changed to pay-&-go. The phone call took so long that my free minutes, free credit and top-up credit were all eliminated before anything happened.

The old landlord's man kindly said he would move me. (Last time it was two mini-vans full of stuff. Gigantic clothes-drying racks, bookshelves, enough bedcovers and duvets to start a Turkish hareem, etc...) I said I'd be ready by Monday morning and he said OK.

There's STILL repairs that need doing. There's a window opening on to the landing with no key, and it's unlocked. The back door (opening to a balcony 30ft up) is also unlocked with no key but it would take a pretty enterprising theif to get in by that one...

Ukh and the shower doesn't work! Have to get one of those pluggy-into-the-taps ones from the pound shop.

The television is surprisingly good, you get FOUR TV line-ins. Freeview, Freesat, Polish and Abyssinian. There are some German and French channels on the Polish satellite (very educational. Means you can watch exotic home shopping presentations at 4am and convince yourself you're not completely wasting your time. (Completely being the operative word.))

Do you think I need the front door lock changed? The door itself looks fairly secure. A Yale-type key to a dead-bolt with catches all the way up the doorframe. I had assumed the previous tenant was a disabled

old person, due to the sit-down shower, but on examination that shower is very old. And there are DSS letters on the floor for whoever lived there before. Last thing I need is hoardes of people banging on the door at all hours thinking this is still a crackhouse (well it could have been one). I'm too paranoid about home security. The front door keys I've got seem suspiciously unworn (as if somebody has kept hold of the old keys). Can you copy window lock keys? Do you think they might have kept the key to the bathroom window so they know it's break-in-able? Will the council fix it? He said they'd do the balcony door, but this was before I knew of the gaping security breach at the front. I've got the number of some tenancy support lady. I suppose I have to ring her on Monday. That's why I need to move in quick, because I need to be there for repair men, gas meter bods, paint deliveries etc. I'm starting to wonder whether lemon yellow was a wise choice but too late now... Well that's me. I'm off. Have a crazy weekend, kids...