Exceptionally Unexceptional

IT'S HOT! Summer has arrived and everybody else's muscari is in bloom while mine looks at death's door.

Well I'm doing very well at Spanish. On unit 19 of 30 (what was I on last time I wrote?...  o dear lesson 18. Well it's slow going ~ all these imperfect tenses, subjunctives and "moods" (a mood is a thing like an imperative where you say "do this!" or "don't do that". In Spanish you use the subjunctive for negative commands. But the tú and vosostros forms are different. Ie you'd say ¡no vueles! (do not fly) but ¡vuela! Meaning do fly. Or something like that. I'm sure I just got that wrong but hey. So I'm drowning in information and I've found out if you go over the same thing for too many hours per day some law of diminishing returns kicks in. Which is why I've started learning Italian as well. So as not to get confused in all this, I'm translating the Italian sentences I learn into Spanish. Eg Italian: un pacchetto di sigarette per favore ~ Spanish: un paquete de cigarrillos por favor. The word for "packet" is pronounced nearly the same in both languages ~ "packetteh" vs "packetto". This is what I have to pay such close attention to. Cigarillos in English are things you only come across in customs declarations ~ you're allowed 200 cigarettes or 200 of these (sinister little cigars of the type a cat-stroking James Bond baddie might smoke). But in Spanish, cigarillos are just ordinary cigarettes.

I have had several traumatic experiences lately. All involving people turning up at my house. And I didn't want them there anyway. One time the gas man came and I just felt really weird. It was "too early in the morning" for me (actually about midday, but I'd woken up feeling just odd). I said "oh do excuse the mess" but I was so ashamed of the legion carrier bags spread everywhere on my bare concrete floor (which I sleep on) and he looked at me all pityingly. I knew I was acting mentally ill but just couldn't help it. My druggieworker says I'm in real danger of spiralling downhill fast and I absolutely have to get another antipsychotic prescription. I've been wandering around feeling unreal. The other day the book I was reading started "weeping" that is the ink ran off all the pages all over me. Of course it was just an illusion. But I was stuck on a bus, everybody in strange stage makeup feeling stuck in some surrealist dream. Also I don't feel that great physically. My eyesight is flickery, as if migraine is coming on. My worker said I should ask the dr about my vision. I did have a GP appointment this morning but I turned up ten minutes late. Loads of people were in the waiting room. Everybody seemed to stare at me. I was wearing far too many clothes for the hot weather. Sweating and feeling terrible. I know I was giving off a strange vibe as several people said offish things to me in different situations. Eg security in the pound shop enquring whether I hadn't just slipped some unauthorized item into my baggage. I pointed out that said bag was full to the brim with my own discarded clothing and showed him a handful of pound coins (change I'd just been given) and said "with everything costing £1 here you'd have to be pretty desperate to resort to shoplifting". That seemed to appease him and he left it at that.

Anyway back to the doctors. I just couldn't face anyone asking whether I was OK. Or talking to me. Or looking at me. So I skulked out of there and walked home feeling terribly guilty for wasting an NHS appointment. If they have a go at me for having to rebook I'm going to say I felt ill and had to go outside to get air. Well that is kind of true. I don't know whether I should be popping psyche pills at all. I know some people I know have hinted not. I do take the prescription, but since I moved house my dr's surgery has changed. Because I'm a new patient I can't just come in and fill out a repeat prescription request. The doctor has to actually see me. And it's paranoid shyness that's eating me up. I was meant to see the nurse a few weeks ago but was so depressed I couldn't get my head around showering or getting ready so I just phoned and cancelled. I'm not depressed now. (Not manic either.)  I just feel like I need a brain scan. I've felt like there was something wrong with my brain for years but consoled myself that if it indeed was a tumour, it should hopefully kill me. If I did have a tumour, surely I should be dead by now...?

Bloody hell how did I get on this morbid subject..? As usual. Well this IS my diary. Other things: BINKY ~ STILL confined in hospital. She's not feeling well at all. Sounds very vague on the phone, as if she's fading away as she talks. She has some drastic mood problems too. Of a different flavour from mine though... I came to see her today. Had to take her money from the post office ~ hundreds of pounds of it ~ and pay it into her bank. She has about a half dozen home shopping catalogue accounts going so she always owes something. That's how she got that 50-inch+ TV that dominates her room blaring out Dog The Bounty Hunter all afternoon. 

Personally I try and avoid watching TV in English. It's not "educational" enough. I've got a new German dictionary and I'm using it to decypher police dramas in German.

Other stuff I've caught includes Arab Idol (I kid you not ~ I know it's called this; the writing was in English)... oh, and the Armenian version of the X-factor (Armenian has a very distinctive script ~ which bears a closer resemblance to Thai than Russian). There's also an Indian talent show called something like "Little Masters" ~ kiddies dancing. Some are very good... Also last week, I caught the Afghanistan Music Awards. Difficult to know who had won as I don't speak their language and cannot read Arabic script... Some of the performances were endearingly unpolished. I know it was from Afghanistan and nowhere else as the EPG told me so... I actually get about 2- or 300 channels in Arabic. Arabs seem to watch a hell of a lot of television! I don't spend all day glued to the box, by the way. I'm more likely to spend the day glued to Spanish. (Can't believe it's taken me a whole week to get through two units though...) I got stuck on the bit where Señor Muñoz tells his plane sick to pop a travel sweet and let it dissolve in her mouth". The bit "let it dissolve" was really confusing... (To my ears, at least.) 

Back to Binky I don't know WHEN she's going to get out...

I haven't got any little parrot birdies. I'm thinking more of getting a ferocious attack dog instead. (A really bushy-furred cute one, of course.) I'd really like a female white Akita. I'm feeling increasing need of a bodyguard after something untoward happened to me...

O damn and blast I'm running out of time... have to go. Take care everyone!

Illustrated: Armenian X-factor...