The Bluster, Guff and Parping Scandal!

WHAT BLUSTER AND GUFF was I parping on about yesterday? Did I actually say that I thought my family were somehow pretending to be worried I was going to drop dead from a heroin overdose? How patently ridiculous can you get?

I think what I would actually have meant was they were using the saying "you might kill yourself!" more as a turn of phrase than a literal truth. 

But even that is ridiculously self-absorbed and narcissistic. In the phrase of my old psychodynamic counsellor I would be "denying their reality". Of course they were worried about me. Worried sick. Just when they should have been coasting comfortably towards retirement I brought a dark shadow into their lives. For all they knew, whenever I failed to call for a couple of weeks or more I could have been lying dead on a pile of rotting mattresses, cockroaches scuttling in and out of my open mouth, in a rat-infested, rain-drenched squat somewhere. I can't believe I could be so self-centred ever to imply I didn't think they weren't worried to death about me. [That was never what I thought. Sometimes I genuinely don't know what I believe. I mean, I know I think a lot of things, but I don't know what to believe... I HAVE KNOWN ~ for a long time ~ that I was never going to die of an accidental drug overdose. Not ever. But who else can "know" that too... you know?...?

I had a lovely blip of Elevated Mood yesterday. All evening. All night. By 1am the Polish techno pop videos were blasting out whilst I "cleaned the house" (ie danced around with hi-tech ultra-trendy blue rubber broom in hand). Some fantastic traxx came on the channel (which is known as "Polo TV" and freely available via the Hotbird satellite at 13°E). I've noticed in the international scheme of things that Russian and Polish pop stars seem quite old, whereas South Korean boybands look living manga cartoon characters. Barely 14 years old and prettier than most girls. I have a Favourites List named "Hotbird Collection" comprising nearly 150 channels from everywhere where I do, or would like to speak the language. Or find the country interesting. In other words gerzillions of countries. Somaliland state television (the midnight folk songs are particularly entrancing.) Ethiopian and Eritrean TV with funky runic writing (they do believe the Amharic script is descended from ancient Yemeni runes). Afghanistan state TV. The American State Department International Satellite Feeds (about 40 of them, though I only saved 1). Three channels in Thai, including a gameshows/soap opera channel and a round-the-clock Buddhist chanting station in heavily accented Pali. Press TV ~ Iranian station in English which is probably what President George Bush feared Al Jezeerah would be like ~ antiestablishment, antimonarchist... etc. Hispan TV (Iranian movies and telenovellas dubbed into Spanish.) Italian QVC. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

I just bumped into the NA guy who thought I was high on crack a couple of years back when I was having my funky psychotic manic episode. We exchanged numbers and he promised to ring me in order to meet up for Monday Night at the church where Greg Arious and his GF go. (I'm avoiding Greg because he went into rehab where he kicked methadone, heroin, crack, and alcohol. But guess what..? No drugs left (according to his girlfriend). But STILL DRINKING. If things were the reverse, I wouldn't mind so much ~~~~~ but heavy drinking in the manner of Greg Arious ~ and his drinking really is completely out of control... that I cannot handle. Constant constant textmessaging basically trying to bully me into bringing gynormous bottles of ultra-strength white cyder. Three litres gone in not much more than an hour, then he's begging for more and trying to guilt trip me for having taken sensible precautions like having left a half packet of 10 ciggies at home. Making out I'm stingy because I smoke 30 ciggies a day derived from 10 long ones ("Superkings") rolled into 30... oh you know what people are like. Well NA Guy says I'm welcome to come and he doesn't waste his time or energy on no-hoping timewasters. ~~ Unlike me. ~~~ Which I take as a real compliment. It means he's looked into my eyes and seen Light.

I hope he doesn't think I'm "high" today because this is my second day HEROIN-CLEAN. I took 1.5x my script. Tomorrow I'm gonna try to live on my scripted methadone dose alone so wish me luck with that~!!

I know I probably do seem a bit high to the outside world but really I'm fine... I was up most of last night but really was too hyperactive to sleep. Eventually, just by staying still, I did manage to chill enough to slip into unconsciousness but it took hours and hours and hours to really feel like I'd achieved "proper" sleep and even then I was waking up at least twice an hour. So I slept from maybe 6am to approx 1 or 2pm. Which sounds good ~~ 8 hours. But it must certainly wasn't eight hours solid. It's only because I know enough about "insomnia" to recognize that time spent lying down relaxed with your eyes closed when time passes easily probably are periods of sleep. Just not amazingly good sleep... That I accept I got very much sleep at all... So I wasn't in a particularly good mood this afternoon and didn't want to go out. But Binky, very kindly, bought me a brand new pair of trainers (those are sneakers to you Americans) and she wanted to ceremonially give them to me. My mentalization group was cancelled anyhow (teacher sick) so after collecting my 30mg of highly addictive gloop I tubed it down to Bink's. Spent ages hovering on the doorstep only to be reprimanded by an African nurse who didn't even open the door. And yet she was insisting that Binky had just departed the premises.

Eventually Binky heard my desperate doorstep wailings. Blew her top and severely reprehended the dredlocked Ghanaian nurse. Because she's got Borderline Personality Disorder it took Binks a good half hour to calm herself down from all the Reprehending. I, on the other hand, was trying not to cackle too much! Then she ceremonially presented me with the Trainers. Dark Grey. Brand New. "Boxfresh" (as the kids say nowadays). Luuurverlyjubbelly! Binky commanded me to wear my brand new boots in temparate and cold weathers and the trainers in hot and I ceremonially agreed.

I was going to write something about how I felt. Why is that..? O yeah because of my "mood diary". Hypomanic blips all over the place. I'm really hoping for a good spell of Elevated Mood as that could hopefully mean that I manage to kick that nasty Killer Drug Heroin FOR GOOD ~~ how brilliant would that be??~?~!~?~~~

Well that's about all for today. Public toilets. Lavatories> pillories and stocks

 

Above: a neat and tidy pillory. This is NOT the stocks. A person sentenced to the stocks had the luxury of sitting down and his or her hands were ordinarily free, allowing some measure of self-defence; a pilloried person, on the other hand was forced to stand like this, head and hands locked into a wooden fram, a picture of helplessness. The pillory was for far more serious crimes (eg fraud, perjury, sedition, homosexuality) than the stocks (petty theft, drunkenness, etc). Baying crowds turned out in vast numbers to torment the unfortunate criminals sentenced to this form of torture. People sentenced to stand one hour in the pillory were frequently maimed or even killed.

 

 

 Housebreakers, muggers, child-abusers and retailers of low-quality or adulterated heroin should be pilloried and pelted with horse-shit like this ...

 PS can I point out that I heavily disapprove of pillories and torture...

But sometimes I do think that for the abovementioned crimes ~ especially housebreaking and child abuse, maybe the pillory should be brought back. The only style of unBritish justice I could possibly approve of would be Singapore-style caning on the bare backside (how demeaning for a grown man to be beaten on the bum like that ~ and it's supposed to be agony). Only if they did bring it to Britain it must be for BOTH sexes... and the stocks and the pillory. Otherwise I'm totally anti-torture. I'm pro-death penalty, however. I believe that for many human beings in many cases the death sentence would be kinder than life imprisonment... 

Yes I KNOW how funny my writings on such matters must probably sound. I can frequently reduce entire room fulls of people in group therapy sessions to gurgling, side-splitting roaring cackles of laughter and that's by telling the TRUTH of what I really think!

Ho Hum!!

Too High to Die!/Parlo italiano! Etc ...

SI, IO PARLO ITALIANO MA SOLO UN POCO.

Yes I'm learning Italian. And yesterday, because I had taken DRUGS (benzoated heroin) I managed to stick with it till one in the morning. I wonder how I'm going to manage without heroin in my life any more. Because I've officially dropped it. (Yes I know, yet again.) Only this time it really is THE END. I'm telling myself over and over that if, having experienced the horrible thoughts and feelings (depression, despair, suicidality, extreme cognitive dissonance ~ not to mention the horrible fact that my scripted methadone doesn't really "hold" me properly... That if, having gone through all that + a miniature nervous breakdown and crisis of confidence and self, if I go back to Life Ruining Heroin yet again then that's it. I'm officially a HOPELESS CASE.

I mean, it got so bad a couple of weeks ago. My worker DEMANDED a clean urine. I could not give one. What I went through over this supposedly simple point (I mean I don't even know how many days clean you have to go for your pee to be clean. I've never really "tried" to give clean urine before... Never really cared)... I was suicidal. I came really close to just telling the drug clinic to F OFF and going back to heroin for good. Except there is no "for good". It's all for bad. I'm never going to die on heroin. Never. It kind of annoys me when my family express this fear because I think they know as well as I do IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. If I die as a drug addict, it will be BY MY OWN HAND. ~ DELIBERATELY. I'm never ever going to get the luxury of dying by accidental overdose and have always known this. Everybody knows this, and I do find it slightly irritating when they affect not to.

So I was going to dump the methadone and just go back on heroin. But seeing as I'm NOT GOING TO DIE and part of me always has wanted to clean up I'm only going to end up back where I am now. So might as well take things forward. Did I really want to get off HEROIN? OFF ALL DRUGS? Well actually, yes. And being as heroin is the ONLY illicit drug left, once I've kicked that, that's the problem licked.

My GP did amuse me last week, by repeatedly asking when I last had a drink. That's so badly missing the point. Alcohol was only ever a side-order for heroin. Everything else was a side order. The other stuff was like butter to heroin's bread or sugar to opiate tea. On their own, butter and sugar are useless. What I mean by "benzoated heroin" is that some mysterious crap is IN the heroin (not mushed up pills }~ neat rohypnol (which is active in a 1mg dose) or something like that. I don't want it. But when that's all there is, what can you do? O and as for crack, I gave that up years ago! 

So me and heroin are separated. I know I shouldn't be writing this on my blog. It's far too premature. But hey. I took a stonking great dose of methadone today. Three times my prescription. (You can buy it quite easily ooff certain crackhead junkies who aren't even trying to do the programme....)

IGNORE the paranoid-sounding drivel of yesterday. I was writing about FEELING lied to by the druggieservice. Whether their lying fits some giant Kafkaesque government-fuelled agenda which is all about Me... that is another matter entirely.

As for mood stabilizers and wanting to be "high". I'm talking there about my own natural moods. Surely there's nothing at all unhealthy about wanting to be on your own natural high?

I have been exceptionally moody of late. The other night I couldn't sleep because I felt like I'd consumed a fishtank full of black coffee. I hadn't drunk any and my coffee is decaffeinated. About an hour later I found myself pacing and thought "I'm manic!" Then I told myself "don't be so ridiculous!" Then I put on Russian and Polish technopop at about 5am and really WAS feeling high. It's wonderful to be that way NATURALLY. Anyway eventually, over a few hours, the mood faded and I slept excessively a night or two later. That's not any type of "episode" that's a "blip" and I get loads of those (though never particularly when I want them).

By the way, talking about death, does anybody know what to do when you want to make a contract/agreement/understanding with your doctors that in the event of life-threatening illness you just want nature to take it's course? I've tried googling and got nowhere. Binky, who affects to want to die, never ever takes me seriously on this point (which makes me question her psychology, not mine). Well being as my GP is trying head games with me I can put him into a real checkmate with this one. Ie (for various reasons) there's no way he can get out of agreeing to what I want. If I'm ever seriously ill I just want palliative care and that's it. Because I have a horrible mental diagnosis I have to get this on the record sooner rather than later, as some complete bastard could argue that my wishes mean I'm out of my senses and keep me alive against my will. I would be BEYOND FURIOUS if that happened. All I have ever wanted is to die by fate or accident (so morally, it's not suicide) if some doctor cheated me out of that I might kill HIM instead!

Uk why do I end up on these morbid subjects. I went up the Support Workers place and sorted out my poll tax today. I'm repaying the last place I lived at at the rate of £40 a month. That's quite a lot, but at least I'll be cleared.

I still want my ebook but my attention span is waxing and waning like the moon.

I was watching that Nothing to Delcare on Pick TV last night and did you know a modern-day heroin smuggler looks like a respectable foreign granny. 'Cept with 700g of mystery white powder stuffed into her shoes. Yes A-grade China white! Why can't they give it to me. I'd destroy it for them. Eventually. What I'd do is mix it with tapwater and shoot it up a bit at a time. And eventually it'd all be destroyed and I'd be ready for the next batch! What am I saying: I'm off the drugs aren't I? Ho-humm.... I'm in such a good mood though, considering I'm clean. Was in such a BAD one this morning. O and by the way my red bucket is exactly the same size as the silver one it's trying to replace... I'm sure you're fascinated to know that.... Well I must dash.

Oh back to Nothing to Declare on Pick TV, have you noticed ~ in Australia it's heroin and food they smuggle in. Here in the UK ~ cocaine and cigarettes. Does that say anything about the collective vices of our two nations? Or only that heroin smugglers in Austalia are small potatoes and ditto cocaine and ciggies in the UK. Here, our heroin is brought through in multi-hundred kilo loads by truck and THAT is why you never see UK airport seizures of heroin. Yes, the trade is too professional! Cocaine, on the other hand, is a different matter. I heard on the news a few years ago that when they did a clampdown on flights from Kingston, Jamaica, they found one particular flight where 50% of the passengers ~ and I'm not kidding ~ were muling coke!

OK the 50% figure might be my own confabulation but OFFICIAL figures estimated that, in the early 2000s, one passenger in ten on Kingston-London flights was carrying cocaine internally. That's a LOT of coke, when you think about it. And an awful lot of sad people wasting their money on it. Why PAY for paranoia, anxiety, depression and a pathetically weak manic feeling? No idea.

OK gotta run. Don't go getting diarrhoea now will you!!!

Don't know why, but this tune (or rather the idea of it) is whirling round my head...

Is it because only last week I was watching Casino starring Sharon Stone and Robert DeNiro with Italian voice-over (when I very rapidly got bored and switched back to English)...

BANANARAMA: ROBERT DENIRO'S WAITING (TALKING ITALIAN)

CHINESE TRANCE MIX

Couldn't find any decent Russian stuff. (Not saying this is decent either.)

The Depressing Red Bucket Affair

COUNSELLING: IS IT A GOOD THING? As regular readers might know, I'm currently undergoing group therapy towards an end known as "Mentalization". (Aka MBT.) But mentalization involves not just jumping to conclusions regarding the thoughts, feelings or motivations of others and "mentalizing" ~ ie thinking them over and, in many cases asking. Eg: "What is it you meant when you said that? Could you explain?"

Well I'm starting to think that if NOT FEELING is my coping mechanism, and if THINKING TOO MUCH is a personal fault in many people, not just me, then undergoing this group is going to achieve nothing except a persistent erosion of my mental health. I mean: are they actually TRYING to send me nuts? It's a question worth asking. I've been wondering just WHO I can trust in the world. Friend. Family. Anyone. It makes me really sad to think this way and maybe I am extraordinarily narcissistic and self-centred but I do feel certain people out there ~ namely doctorly-type people and employees of drug clinics are DELIBERATELY trying to do my head in. All saying different things that I cannot thrash my way out of.

Eg my druggieworker keeps saying she's worried about me and that if I'm not careful I'm going to have another mental breakdown. And she says I should see a psychiatrist again. I'm much more straight and open with her than I would ever be with a GP. But my (new) GP who has only seen me twice, says he thinks I'm totally OK. I didn't feel at all OK when I last saw him. I was very upset that day. Binky says I should "bring my feelings into the room". But how can I possibly do that? If you go around appearing as OK as possible (like any normal person who isn't a teenage girl with emotional problems would) then suddenly act out in a dr's room isn't that self-indulgence bordering on fakery? She also said that in answer to his question what could a psychiatrist do for me (which I took to mean I was beyond help. Because I don't actually believe he thinks there's "nothing wrong" I think he wants me to think that's what he thinks (mind games again) ~~ in answer to his question I was meant to say "to get a proper diagnosis and the right medication". Well I don't want yet ANOTHER diagnosis, which, knowing my luck would be added on top of and not replace the existing one. And as for even more pills. No I don't want MORE. I'd rather be off everything!. The absolute last thing I want is something that's going to completely block any "high" moods and "higher" states of consciousness. Obviously I want to be ("bipolar") high all the time. I just don't want to lose my mind as well. If I could break the light barrier again I'm hoping I will never ever ever come down. I'm talking about mind and body sublimating to a Higher Level. But I obviously DID come down. I just can't believe that I had to... Why does life have to be SO SHIT~~??

You see the great thing about blogs. Because nobody supposedly knows who I really am I can speak what I actually think and mean. No way in hell would I say something like the above to a friend, let alone any doctorly person.

I told Binky some weird ideas I had had when I did have a mad episode and she laughed until it looked like her sides were going to split. She said (hopefully jokingly, as nothing involved potential harm to self or others) that if I ever told a dr anything like that I'd get sectioned and never come out again. (To those on foreign shores: a "section" means involuntary commitment and it's REALLY HARD to overturn a British sectioning under the mental health act.)

I NEARLY had a "nervous breakdown" just now over picking a bucket to wash my clothes in. I'm still feeling ridiculously depressed. (Ridiculous, considering it's JUST A PLASTIC BUCKET~!!) I DID used to own a bucket, but it got filled with paint after I took dodgy heroin some time ago and kicked dregs of a can of paint over in my hallway. I need this new bucket to wash my clothes in, because it's cheaper than going to the launderette. But the launderette costs £4, whereas this bucket was £3. For £2 they had a round black bucket, but that one doesn't have mop-squeezy-out attachment. Then I looked at this bucket after purchase and it does look RIDICULOUSLY TINY. I don't know how many clothes I'm going to be able to wash at a time, but not many.

Well it's been raining most of today. It matches my mood. All weekend through Monday we had spectacular weather but I stayed in to avoid it. I really wasn't in the mood. Then one night, completely at random, I did start feeling "high" and couldn't sleep at all. But I made up for it by sleeping most of the day yesterday. Plus 2:30-6:30am. Then methadone (eventually) sent me off from 8:30 to about 11:30.

My life is so depressing. I know nobody wants to hear this. I just don't know how to get out of it all. Giving up drugs is very much JUST a first step and it never really helped that much in the past. It wasn't as if I stuck to methadone and was miraculously OK. Oh but the drugs clinic NOW say if you have other issues or health problems, methadone isn't even supposed to help with those (even though heroin does ~ it makes just about any affliction of mind or body feel better). This OF COURSE SUITS THEIR AGENDA. Which is all about deception and lies. They can't handle it when I tell the truth unvarnished. Now they don't just WANT to, they NEED to believe I'm nutty because otherwise time has shown them out to be LIARS. Ie "if you stop crack you won't be paranoid any more" (I've been way more paranoid months and years after stopping it than I was on it). And "alcohol is a depressant so that's what is making you depressed. If you stop drinking you'll feel better". Well lots of ANTI-depressants are also CNS depressants (eg dosulepin (Prothiadine), mirtazapine (Remeron)) and I certainly did NOT feel better after kicking alcohol. I've felt just as bad, if not worse off it than on it. I could go on but this is the gist of their lies. Of course they want to conveniently forget the times eg that a floating duty worker snapped at me that if I stopped heroin I would "feel much better". (In what time-frame? I was certainly NOT OK before I got addicted to heroin age 28. And I don't think I'm that unusual. There are LOTS of people using methadone clinics who feel permanently run-down (as a symptom of hep C as much as anything else, suffer from constant or recurrent depression. And have terrible presents eg involving imprisonment or the threat of it, and children in care (often both). Plus horrendous pasts (very often involving sexual abuse) they still want to escape from. I think, compared to people like that, and there are a LOT of them out there, I've got it easy.

I don't think I had any period of adult life, and probably not teenage years either when I was "OK". Growing up I had almost zero self-esteem or self-confidence. And almost no "social skills" either. And I do mean almost NONE. Everybody, friends included, thought I was a "weirdo". I was prone to depression but wouldn't characterize myself as depressed all the time. I managed to catch what was then called CFS or ME and is now known as CFIDS. I was not "on drugs" when I came down with that particular condition in late 1995. In fact I became intolerant to alcohol and wasn't well enough to dance all night at raves (only types of drugtaking I was interested in back then). I never knowingly tried heroin until 1997, although I may have taken it once in 1993 ~ I don't know for a fact that actually was heroin (not knowing what to do I snorted and ate the greyish powder that looked like it had bits of demerara sugar in it). Whereas the 1997 stuff looked like heroin, melted on to silver foil just like it, smelt like it and had the effects generally ascribed to heroin so I'm pretty sure that stuff WAS it.

O am I ranting again..? I don't know. I have to go. 

I've given up on Spanish and am now learning Italian. Very very very very VERY slowly!!

(Molto molto molto molto MOLTO lentamente.)

BTW: I've just found out MBT (the therapy I'm doing) is for BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER. I keep wondering whether I've got that and now they've somehow got me into therapy for it without even telling me!!!  (They just told me they thought it might be good that I did it.) 

Yesterday Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady, called offering me a place in a drama therapy group she's doing. So hopefully I shall be doing both. Surely you can't have "too much therapy"...? CAN YOU~??!?

 

WISHING YOU A PLEASANT DAY!!

A Wonderful Day!

I FEEL BETTER TODAY... but only because I have "used" ~~ yet again. My feelings have been all over the place. And painfully so. On Monday afternoon I was wondering about crying. I'm doing a group therapy thing called Mentalization, which is really difficult to explain in a nutshell, but it's about not assuming what others think and mean but to ask them. That way, the world might be a More Understanding Place.

Anyway there's a girl with Borderline Personality Disorder (not Binky ~ she has it too) ~ who can talk coherently and cogently about her inner emotional incoherence. It seems she comes from a similar place I do. Where you cannot think, see, emote or feel from any fixed point but are so constantly in flux that you never know where you are (and others just assume they know where you are). I'm not at all sure I would ACTUALLY have Borderline Personality Disorder (which mostly affects females anyhow) but when I took the online personality disorders test (my biggest fascination in psychology is what makes us Individual and what makes us Different) I scored highest on "Schizotypal" (about 86%) and "Borderline" (about 82%). Each time. More than a year apart. ("Normal people" score about 35-40%) You can see my Personality Test result toward the bottom of my sidebar.

My GP has totally done my head in. Sitting there shuffling through a wodge of papers from the methadone clinic, he seemed to be saying, in effect, that I was just a scheming, manipulative junkie piece of shit who had probably just hoodwinked a shrink because both times he saw me, 3 weeks apart, I seemed "pretty OK". (First time my mood WAS as normal as it ever gets; second time I was definitely depressed and I'm NOT flattered when anyone, least of all a dr thinks that depressive person is somehow the "real" me. Come on! I think there's a bit more oomph and jizz to me than that!

My druggieworker, who says this GP "is a good doctor", doesn't want me to do it (which makes my paranoid side feel they're somehow in cahoots) but I'm writing this GP a letter. It's far FAR easier for me to explain the inexplicable in writing than by answering somebody else's questions which cast me adrift more than anything else!

But what really gets me is that that doctor, among all of them, is supposed to have a "special interest in mental health"! Well he doesn't seem too interested in me! Barely looked at me. Didn't seem to be listening either. What I got, was that he was trying to be a smart-arse, asking the same questions twice. If a person does try and catch someone like me out, who tends to get lost in a billion viewpoints from a trillion details at a quadrillion nanomoments then of course he's going to get different answers. Because I never feel the same way twice. And like I say, I cannot hold on to anything like a single, fixed position. Heroin really SEEMED to help sort out the chaos in my mind and emotions. But without it, I'm cast adrift. Even when I do take it these days, it doesn't seem to "help" the way it used to. (Yet another reason to stop... of course!)

On a much better note, we went shopping this afternoon and Binky was so lovely. She bought me new boots, new jeans, five new pairs of socks, two teeshirts and a new jacket! Jacket and jeans were second-hand. The rest were brand new. How kind of her is that! She wanted so say thank you for the way I looked after her when she was marooned in hospital...

OK it's getting late and I must dash. It's a bank holiday weekend so I hope you all have a good one, wherever you are in the world and even if you DON'T have a special Holiday Monday like we do! ("Bank holidays" are British public holidays.)

MOZART'S TRANCED-UP LACRIMOSA

This version is clearer

And this one (arguably) "funkier"...

Calmer...

Wanderer's Night Song II

Over all hilltops

Is peace,

In all treetops

You sense

Hardly a breath;

The little birds are silent in the wood.

Wait, soon

You shall rest too.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

I'M STILL in rather a negative mood. But I'm a lot calmer than yesterday. They say:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy ~ think on these things.

~ Philippians 4:8

Chinchillas. They're beautiful and lovely and of good repute... doncha think..~~??!?

How furry and cute!! 非常にかわいいです。

Hijō ni kawaī desu ~ as they say in Japanese.

CAUGHT LYING!!!

Ha! Just caught out my "friend" Binky 

She has a poem on her wall that goes like this:~

When I say... "I am a Christian"
I'm not shouting "I'm clean livin."
I'm whispering "I was lost,"
Now I'm found and forgiven...

etc. Says she wrote it herself. She thinks I was copying it down just because I liked it. I did think it was suspiciously well-written. And no surprise BECAUSE IT'S BY MAYA ANGELOU!!

I can't believe Binky would lie about this. But I'm sooooo soooo glad I've finally caught her out on something tangible. She's the one who tells me basically to ham up or fake symptoms if I want more medical help for my "issues". I don't see why I should ever need to do that and frankly I don't care eg if I feel depressed and some dr thinks I don't look depressed enough. What am I saying. Actually I DO care. It annoys the living crap out of me that my depressed self is taken as the real me while any hyperactivity is automatically put down to drugs or mania. I AM naturally slightly hyper some of the time ~ and the "manic" style of thought, where you leapfrog topics and are conversationally hypertangiential ~ some of that is the "normal" me too... I never experience my thoughts as truly "racing" when I HAVE been manic, until they're threatening to race totally out of control. (Which they have done. They can go so fast, I literally cannot tell what I'm thinking. And eventually they've just broken into bits, into random syllables. And then I get stuck on the same syllable whirling around with extreme velocity. Yelling this out at the top of my voice. That has been the top of my psychotic mania, and it happened several days in a row, lasting (as far as I know ~ how can you possibly have any true sense of time in such a state?) for several hours at a time. I felt at the time as though I had completely lost my mind and my senses. At the very peak of it all, at the very worst time, I was taken over completely by an extreme roaring noise. Nothing was in my head but this noise. I had already gone through the incoherence and syllables stage and now there was just this noise, a super, super mindblowing-loud noise, that had completely taken me over. I was screaming at the top of my voice. That to me is utter, utter insanity. And people wonder why I seem so obsessed with my mental health. When I had severe mania there were many times when I just could not understand or follow what people were saying right in front of me. I totally lost the ability to read. For hours at a time. I once opened a book and the words flew straight into my face, in a cartoon-like text explosion. THAT is how bad it all got. I have been having flashbacks for years because part of me feels completely traumatized (even though my mood was higher than ever before or since ~ higher than heroin and crack speedballs. Higher than anything else I had ever experienced. Like a road-drill of extreme elation going off in my head. I could feel it streaming incessantly through body and brain. Billions and trillions of volts of it. And as I say, I completely lost my mind. It was super, super intense. At least ten times stronger than any panic attack. If I HAD panicked in that state I don't know what would have happened... How the hell would YOU feel if such a thing happened to you?

I didn't even know what it was called. But google came back with "delirious mania" and "catatonic excitement". Meaning I had gone as extreme as psychosis can possibly go. And of course a "normal person" who is not bipolar cannot possibly conceive of what I am talking about. Most manic episodes ~ I gather ~ do not go to that extreme. Not even for a few days. (I was like that for less than a week.) 

And I was NOT on drugs of any kind, except my prescriptions for methadone and zopiclone. Without zopiclone I really would not have slept AT ALL. I was completely hyperactive and yet unable to calm down. I couldn't stop talking (babbling out loud, kind of "talking to myself", as it were). Spent nearly every waking hour either pacing or dancing or sitting in a chair swaying from side to side.

Why am I saying all this? Because I think I need "closure". Some kind of inner acceptance, that's all. And the "validation" you only get when somebody ~ it just has to be one single person ~ can say "I know that" ~ or better still "I lived through that too, and I survived". But I have yet to find anybody who has...

But I eventually DID FIND SOMETHING LIKE IT in the literature of bipolar disorder. Here from An Unquiet Mind, p79... 

The chaos in my mind began to mirror the chaos in my rooms; I could no longer process what I was hearing; I became confused, scared and disoriented. I could not listen for more than a few minutes to any piece of music; my behaviour was frenetic and my mind more so. 

Slowly the darkness began to weave its way into my mind, and before long I was hopelessly out of control. I could not follow the path of my own thoughts. Sentences flew around in my head and fragmented first into phrases and then words; finally only sounds remained.

The author, Kay Jamison, is a world expert on manic-depressive illness and this is her own account from her own memoir. Strikingly similar to what happened to me, except I was liable to tip into anger ~~ sheer psychotic fury ~~ and not fear. There was no depression woven into my highest mania.

ANYWAY!

O think, think.

Please think on...

Think on whatever's good and beauteous. Think on these things. OK: I'm thinking, I'm thinking...

Lots of people in life have gone through perilous places. Lived beyond the extremes. I just don't feel I've completely come back together again. More than anything else ~ except creative writing ~ I would LIKE TO GET MYSELF AN EDUCATION. I don't even have a Bachelor Degree. I am qualified to do nothing and when I was little I never ever looked forward to an adult life of idleness (through whatever cause). I don't WANT TO BE LIKE THIS. Maybe I SHOULD do the German and Japanese degree at Birkbeck.

My problem is, I was trying to read Keats's poetry in the doctor's waiting room yesterday and I couldn't focus on more than a few lines at a time. I felt too agitated internally. I don't know why...

I saw my druggieworker yesterday. I was so upset I was almost in tears. She had this really concerned look on her face. I have used heroin again. Another dirty test. And once you know you've dirtied up your piss you might as well continue using. All I want is to be able to stop ~ one day at a time ~ and to feel OK. Because I really don't feel OK now. 

They say in sickness and injury things are out of alignment. Well something is mis-aligned, injured in my soul. I feel wounded and full of grief...

Anyway, nothing lasts for ever (EXCEPT ETERNITY)...!

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Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think on these things.

Mozart: Requiem ~ trance mix

I luuuurve this track...

Battle of the Clinics

MY (GP) DOCTOR  really did my head in this morning. Questioning me on and on about schizophrenia and did I really think I had it. Well being as I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS I can't know, can I? As for his other question "what could a psychiatrist do for me?" I answered "don't know" to that one too. As in my experience they do F-All.

Bloody hell I get so pissed off when people assume the depressed below-par me is the "real" one. This is what Dr Bastard seemed to do. Oh but if I'm even slightly Elevated then it absolutely has to be drugs or the spark-off point into real "Mania". The real me is the "hypomanic" me. That is the word Binky uses. That's what, as far as I know, the drs also say. I've already been asked by medical personnel when I was completely stone-cold normal whether I was "hypo" and I said NO. Because I WAS NOT. So what I believe and what drs believe appear to be at complete divergence. As for what is the real me, it's absolutely the "hypomanic" one. I know that means I'm disinhibited, indiscreet and prone to making jokes in poor taste. But that is far more me than the white mouse depressed boring suicidal version.

He also tricked me into admitting I wanted to kill myself and that I definitely thought I was more likely to die from suicide than any other way. Which I am afraid I do.

So then I go down the OTHER clinic (this time the druggie one), bump into my worker who says I don't look OK at all. So I go from seeming completely OK to not at all OK in the space of an hour.

Then, somehow, I got into talking about how terrible I feel. Completely druggie fuckup of a person I am. Using gear again and again and again. My heroin addict standards it's not very much. But it's still too much. Any gear is too much gear. I so much wish I was able to live without it.

As for all this mental shit and what is normal. Well that is the crux of exactly what does my head in. I believe in psychiatry about as much as I believe in Roman Catholicism. I happened to be watching a fascinating discussion on the Roman Catholic universe last night on a channel named Erde und Mensch. About "no human being being holy" (so why is the Pope titled "His Holiness" and "The Holy Father"..?) So while I understand Christmas and why people do it, I don't "believe". Likewise I don't believe in schizoaffective disorder. Or bipolar disorder. And really not inasmuch as they pertain to me.

I did reread the famous memoir An Unquiet Mind at one point and it's weird how the author Kay Redfield Jamison, during her time as a raving manic-depressive, came up with numerous reasons/excuses not to take lithium. But never one towards what I think: ... well maybe you feel that way because you're MEANT to feel that way. Maybe it's just natural and life really is that shit. She said that never even in her darkest hours, though she longed for death, did she regret ever having been born. Well I frequently do wish I had never been born. When I see such evil in the world, I wish I had never been born to know about such horror. I cannot take it in or comprehend it.

And as for suicide. I'm in absolutely no doubt that the present government would prefer me dead because I would save them money money, NHS money, other money. Money money. Better off dead. Absolutely.

ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

I can't believe I am posting this CRAP. Oh who cares. What else is there to post..??

Anyway: to my last post:~~

Are there really 300 language groups in London against "only 200" in New York..? I don't know. How could anyone know. Far as I know London is actually MORE of an international air-hub than New York, being more strategically located. I really don't know if there are more foreign people in one city or another.

Ebooks. Got no idea which one to buy. I'm going to look into that one right now...

What was I babbling on about here..? Can't remember. O well gotta go.

I think my methadone's going up AGAIN by the way.....kkhhhkhhhhhhhh ☹

Oh by the way I've started writing poetry. I've decided to become a great poet. Only written four lines, over 2 pages of scribblings, that seemed any good but ho-hum it's a start...

Ukh I sound like I'm all over the place. Pffffffff.... whatever.

O, and I AM taking the motherfcking medication. Whatever good that's supposed to do me... 

5:53pm THIS IS A REAL MESS OF A POST. IT doesn't explain my flow of thought which was to do with SOMEBODY ELSE ~ 2 somebody elses who already have killed themselves. And the horrendous aftermath of THAT. which is what i was talking to my druggieworker about as people drifted in and out...I am NOT DRUNK I have not taken any illicit drugs for 24 hours. And that's another thing: people always seem to see the On Heroin Me as MORE TOGETHER!!!!! would you BELIEVE THAT!!

My Odd Neighbour

I MET the guy from the end of my corridor today. Again. He was ranting into his phone about "******* lesbians". Then he KNEW I was downstairs and yet insisted on spitting over the balcony. Which I chose not to take open exception to. But I thought that was a very rude thing to do.

Binky is all up in the air because somebody dipped her I-Phone out of her pocket. Luckily she followed advice and had at least copied a few numbers for safekeeping. Otherwise she wouldn't even have been able to phone me to tell me she was incommunicado. THAT is why she wasn't talking to me. And Penny says she does like me very much "but not in that way" and so romance has withered and died before it even had a chance to get started. Penny is obsessed by some bloke who I'm not entirely sure even knows her. So one day her Dad drove her to his work ~ in order to make some sense of the issue. But on that particular day the guy hadn't come in and I told Penny this was yet another sign that it was not meant to be. (Not that I have a vested interest or anything but of course I do.)

I found my Penguin Book of German Verse for £4.50 ($6.85) from Skoob (only decent 2nd-hand bookshop that I know of in London. It's between SOAS (University of London's Oriental and African Studies Institute) and University College London and so you get loads of brilliant literary and academic texts in there. The other main purveyors of ancient books in London these days appear to be antiquarian booksellers and that's not what I want at all. I buy books for the content. Not the posh paper or binding or the fact that it might just happen to be a first edition.

I nearly spent £20 ($30.44) in Foyles on a gorgeous harback edition of German poetry from the year 1200 to the present day. Then I remembered that downstairs they're selling an e-reader called a "Nook" for £29 ($44.15). So for £9 ($13.70) extra I can get all the out-of-copyright poetry, novels, and foreign language books that my heart could possibly desire. So I asked the staff for advice and they said e-readers are not cross-compatible and that the Kindle, for example can ONLY load stuff from Amazon's official website and that out-of-copyright stuff on Kindle might not necessarily be free. She said it might cost 20p (30c) or something and that I should exercise extreme care in picking an e-reader if I'm primarily interested in old texts in foreign tongues. So I don't know what to do. And I did think the screen on this Nook thing was a bit tiny.

Those e-books really are popular these days. Last week I noticed the woman on the seat in front of me on the bus reading a novel in VIETNAMESE. Well this is (supposedly) the most cosmoplitan city on earth (not to mention Centre of the Universe.) According to official figures, over 300 languages are spoken in London ~ against a mere 200 in New York.

Anyway back to the books. Does anyone know which is the best one to go for? Also you can call me weird but I WOULD like one with a book-sized screen. And can't you get ones that open out like a real book so that languge students like me can read a text in parallel translation? Information and advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

I CAN load out-of-copyright stuff into them free, SURELY... can't I...? But how do I do it.... Jeepers Creepers I'm about to be terminated by this internet shop so I've got to go have a happy weekend everyone! EBOOK ADVICE PLEASE!

Friday not the 13th...

I THINK I'M FEELING a little more clement and moderate than when I last posted. Not quite so excitable. Binky kept saying she thought I was going up into a "manic" one. But I just thought I was a bit moody. I have been very moody indeed these past few days going into weeks. Each and every evening I find myself peaking up on a "slimming pills" type buzz. At least that is what I'd imagine slimming pills felt like. Like I've had a cheeky line of speed. Except I don't like speed, do not indulge, and think drugtaking for the purpose of elevating the mood is sad. Why make yourself "high" when the natural "high" is so very very much better?

If you're wondering why I always say I've just come out of the nuthouse (visiting Binky) when I post, that would be because this internet caff is just around the corner from the psyche unit.

Well everyone in there seems pretty much with it these days.

The other week I saw a lady with one leg in plaster lying flat out on the smoking area green, her NHS Employee Card on prominent display. I thought "bloody hell, they don't half overwork the staff in here!" Turned out she was just a patient who had come by said ID via some nefarious means or other...

I really don't know what the weather's like here in London. Yesterday I was suffering from chills of Siberian proportions. Today I was boiling my head off. Oh I don't know. 

Binky was in a bad mood because I'm falling in love with another patient who I brought in a long traily black hippie skirt I found on the street. She was so annoyed she skulked off to her room and switched her phone off. So I said goodbye to everyone except her and left.

I've been watching stuff about Japanese Quantative Easing on NHK World. Aparently the rest of the Economists think that to DOUBLE the number of printed yen in circulation (thus defleating deflation) and deliberately devaluing the strong yen will get them out of the econcomic doldrums. Well how would I know whether that's a good move. Far as I know "quantative easing" just means "printing more money" and dumping money into the economy causes nothing but inflation, hyperinflation or megainflation depending how much new money is dropped into the system. That's one reason why currency forgery is considered such a great crime.

A couple of weeks ago I read The Wild Swans by Jung Chang. Has anyone else read that book. It's an absolutely horrendous story about what it was like living in mainland China under the Last Emperor, the Warlord Governments that followed, the Chinese Civil War, the Japanese invasion, World War 2, more Civil War (this time Kuomintang Nationalists vs Communists... and then Mao Tse Tung... not pretty. Anyway I've got to go. Internet time about to run out. Take care and have a great weekend everybody...

Leather Sofas and Disappearing Beds!

I'VE JUST SEEN a leather 3-piece sofa I really like. Real leather. Just apply shoe polish to improve that dynamic sheen... Charity shop said they'd do it without the matching chairs for £95 ($145.93)  (it's £195 ($299.54) with 2 matching leather armchairs...) I said I can't put down a deposit now. I spent my last 30p (46c) on a Spanish novel called El misterio de la cripta embrujada ("The Mystery of the Haunted Crypt") by Eduardo Mendoza.  With the aid of my trusty Collins Spanish Dictionary and copious notebooks plus an entire pack of blue biros with which to copy out every single word I don't know or cannot guess ~which will be about 20,000 words!~... but when I've done this in German, my vocabulary expanded by leaps and bounds. I'm also looking out for the defunct and undeservedly out of print Penguin Book of Spanish Verse. + I also want the German and French versions. Poetry, they say, is the very best way of picking up a foreign language. Great for improving the vocabulario and nice and succinct. These Penguin books come complete with prose translations, so the need for three hulking great dictionaries is obviated.

Oh by the way did you know the Spanish word for "dark" is oscuro ~ as in obscure. Never knew that one...

Well I've just come back from visiting the nuthouse. Yet again. My mind is humming. Also the loud Scouse House I'm listening to isn't helping. I was in such a bad, paranoid, irritable mood this afternoon. Effing and blinding at every little thing. Depressed this morning. Hyper in the evening> at least Binky says I am. She says she can tell when I'm going into a "manic" one by the sudden addition of liberal sprinklings of the word Glodemer into my conversation. Glodemer being the name of our late doggie who had the sweetest nature of any doggie I have never known and looked like a seal with mottled silvery grey and black fur. I was absolutely gutted when she died of status epilepticus ~ constantly fitting out for hours and hours until her body just gave out. (This was all brought on by puppyhood distemper.) My parents kept saying they might have to have her put to sleep, but nature took its course before human intervention and she died under the cherry tree in our massive garden. A snow of white blossoms against infinite blue sky. The Japanese say cherry blossoms symbolize the all-too-terrible briefness of life. It was very sad. I felt much more upset over the death of this dog than any of my friends. Except one ("Lucky"). Can't believe Lucky went and died. She just keeled over and her organs failed one after another. Like a power blackout in a big city where you see block after block going dark. So she died. Anyway glodemer is my name for "cute". Japanese かわいい kawaii.

Binky is talking about my going into the emergency psycho clinic if I don't come down soon. I told her when I did go into ultra ultra hyperacute mania more than 2 years ago now, it took a good couple of weeks to get from where I am now (just moody) into extreme elevation with auditory and visual trippings and full-blown confusionality. I'm not anything like that now. It does sound like my carrier bags are whispering mysterious phrases at me as they rustle, but that's just me living out a children's book. Where deep in the enchanted forest trees have great gnarled faces and steam trains puff out exclamations like "Ready to go! Ready to go!" Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name. And it feels like home.

That's Madonna, darling.

Eddy : "Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone."
Saffy : "That's lovely."
Eddy : "Yeah, I hear you call my name and it feels like home."
Saffy : "Who said that ?"
Eddy : "Its Madonna, darling."

(From Absolutely Fabulous, Series 2: Death).

I can't remember what else I was going to put. Oh yes the bed scandal! My Dad is trying to deliver me a bed and just as he was trying to text me a junk mail text came through offering "great deals on both, 3 for £20, 4 for £25..." which I promptly ignored (it having seemingly booted my Dad's text out of my phone) and so I missed the delivery. Of the actual mattress. Because I was two annoying minutes from my house. (I think it is a mystically self-inflating mattress malarky thingie...) Bloody ridiculous. My family are fretting that it might never get delivered and go pinging off into some hyper-conscious censorious vortex of hyperspace where all the missing full-stops congregate in a great H-bomb fusion of transcendently transmogrified unaccented unaccounted accumulated power. Something like that. You know, the space in the Twilight Zone where all the Missing Socks find their long-lost loves. You know: their Sock Partners... Something like that. But It Shall Come. It Will Be Delivered. All Shall Be Fine. Glodemer said so.

By the way I just Googled "where do lost socks go" and someone else was talking about a space-time vortex ~ you see??!? I know I'm on to something here...

Well the weather here in London Town is still lovverly... I don't know. It felt horrid and cold this morning. But this afternoon FEEEEELLLS about 85F. I don't know that it is really that hot but it's such a fantastic evening. Charming as a Chelsea Bun, sweet as a Danish pastry. Curly as an Akita's tail...秋田犬 And just as Glodemer Furry.

Well I've got to go. Knowing my luck UPS are trying to deliver my dhinghy-bed RIGHT NOW!!!

Hey isn't this London animation cool...?

*******************************************************************************************

Council Thievery Scandal and a New Hairdo...

I'VE CHANGED MY HAIR STYLE. The new one is slicked back with lots of mousse (courtesy of Poundland). I washed and moussed it in one of the mental hospital bathrooms when I was visiting Binky this afternoon. I really like the new style. It does make me look a bit public school (a public school in Britain means a very exclusive expensive posh one. I wish I COULD have gone to public school. A Level Japanese would have been right up my street... Ho hum. But anyway, the hair looks good. Quite dashing, if I say so myself. It's about as long as it can get and still count as "short". I'm looking out for a good barber who can "tidy it up" ie cut straggly bits off without really shortening it...

Yes Binky is STILL confined to a mental ward. Bloody hell ~ it's not as if everyone's raving mad. Mostly you can't tell the difference between nurse, patient, visitor and sundry NHS-floaty-through-type-person. But after a while the accumulated insanity does get to me. One lady who pulled most of her hair out and looked exceedingly confused before Christmas is still in there but sporting a healthy head of (short) hair (shorter than mine), wearing glasses, talking normally and looking pretty with it. I wonder when they'll let HER out... I noticed the coffee tables were littered with scraps of people's personal correspondence bearing details like "you are being kept here under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act because the doctors believe you need treatment and care for a mental disorder..."... ukh. My family say I should make some non-mental friends. But WHERE??! Everyone I know is mad or on drugs. Or both. What a life!!

I'VE FOUND OUT why I'm in rent arrears (paid 2/3 of the £50 ($77.73) off and about to pay the rest tomorrow, if the council insist... I was wondering how on earth I managed to get into arrears, having paid more than TEN WEEKS up front in advance... And it's because I had arrears from when I was in emergency accommodation, the council say it's written into our contracts that if we overpay rent for a new place they can take backrent to pay off another account. It's actually NOT written into anything I have signed and I intend to take them to task about this tomorrow. See if I can get 77 lovely US Dollars refunded to me. (Of course it won't be in dollars, it'll be pounds sterling but dollars sound so much more exciting...

My druggieworker was less than impressed with me after my testing positive for heroin and benzodiazepines. I promised her truthfully that I have NOT been pillpopping. The benzos were mixed into dodgy brown heroin. No wonder I'd been feeling so unaccountably sleepy after "using"... Sleeping during the day is just not my style, if I can at all help it. (It's depression that has made me sleep the most excessively. 19 or 20 hours a day, usually in two bursts, on my worst days. And if I try not to sleep so long I just end up dropping off in public places. And that really does make me feel like an old dosser. Depression is bad enough, without everyone thinking you're an old drunk to boot!

The weather here is still subtropical. I found a brochure of world and Asian cruses (would really like to go on one, now that I'm over 40 and OLD!... but why bother when the weather's so brilliant back home. I'm reading Freaky Dancing by Bez out of the Happy Mondays... A most interesting book, though I WISH the publishers would have translated his vernacular into normal spellings ...

On a benda in the Haçienda...

WHOOO! What a gaff. It feels like enterin a cavernous, cold storage room at the meat factory. I'm half expectin to see rows of headless animal corpses hangin from massive hooks above the dance floor ~ an yes it was that cold back in pre-ecstasy days...

(The Hacienda was a legendary Northern ecstasy rave club... People still rave about having "been there" to this day...)

Anyway I've gotta go and get my beauty sleep for when I REPRIMAND THE COUNCIL OVER THEIR SHAMELESS THIEVERY TOMORROW MORNING!!

TAKE CARE EVERYONE ☺

 

The Racist Drunken Dustbins Affair

I, AND ABOUT A HUNDRED other people on my estate were rudely awoken the other morning by a group of druggies tripping on something or other, shouting, laughing etc. Then my doorbell rang and I just got heavy breathing through the intercom. Just as things sounded like they were dying down, a heavily drunken bald man appeared on the private grass just below my balcony. He was ranting away to himself in the most obscene racist language, which I could hear with exceeding clarity, as when the weather is warm I tend to sleep with my back door open (it opens to a 30ft drop, so not too much of a security risk... (I hope!))

Turns out he had been mugged and robbed of his mobile phone by some youths of Afro-Carribbean descent. But I'm not sure most of my neighbours were listening intently enough to discern this. They would just have picked up on his attitude and his fury, which, at 6:30am on a weekend sounded very threatening. Next thing I knew he had kicked over three giant recycling bins. I could hear my neighbours pottering around above me and to the side, so I really hoped someone was ringing the police. The police did duly turn up and the man was "nicked". And suddenly the streets were full of dog-walkers. All awoken at the same crazy hour. And then I fell asleep. And slept and slept. And slept and slept and slept. And slept a little bit more. Eventually rising at FIVE PM. How very louche of me! But then I am a "schizophrenic". Even Binky was saying I "obviously had schizophrenia". I don't know. I wasn't acting weirdly but no fewer than THREE separate people on her ward asked me if I was "just visiting" (ie they're saying "you look like a patient from another ward"). Also manic girl #3 (there are currently six of them) told me I was very hyper the other day. That was the day of the Bulgarian sing-along. The Bulgarian lady is the most manic of all.

Were am I going with this..? Well FINALLY I MET A GOOD GP. I had to check their website choice of more than a dozen doctors to find one with an express interest in mental health, as Dr Benderson, the evil Brothel-Madam-looking cow, obviously has no time for all things Mental (which does beg the question of WHY IS SHE IN GENERAL PRACTICE if she doesn't like nutters..?) Anyway really I came for him to look at my back. It was really playing up, so I could barely lift my feet to wash them in the shower that morning. I don't know what happened. I took some Gear, for the painkilling effect ~ and that seems to have cured me ever since. Either that or it just went away. I'm Really Trying Not To Use Heroin. That's from a life gone by and I really want a new life.

I had to ask the doctor for a letter that I can have passed on to a furniture charity as my flat is still totally bare and I'm sleeping on a cold concrete floor. The doctor said that is probably NOT helping my back. (I thought people slept on beds to be middle class. And because in hot countries snakes, scorpions and other creepies like to cavort across bedroom floors...?) Anyway my letter says I have "schizophrenic disorders". So I read this and thought AM I REALLY SCHIZOPHRENIC? I don't know... I'm in 2 minds about the matter (wah waah). Binky is no help. I think she is too suggestible. The poor girl has been in there coming up 2 months now. Nobody knows when they're letting her out... I made friends with five patients on her ward. One, who really is schizzy, in a particuarly ditzy way, invited me to her flat for dinner. But she says it's infested with red spiders, so I'm bringing a can of Raid with me (just in case). Someone told me she has schizoaffective mania, which would be what I got diagnosed with. Bloody hell if I really was like that then no wonder I kept getting odd looks when I went crazy.

Anyway I don't think about psychology these days, I'm more into foreign languages. I'm learning five at once: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese. German and French via Hotbird TV. Spanish and Italian via Linguaphone. Japanese via the NHK TV programme Meet and Speak. But the language there is so very basic I'm actually ahead of them. It's my goal to speak seven languages fluently: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese (+ English makes 7). I'd also like to get at least A Level competence in 14 more: Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Thai, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Burmese, Hebrew and Greek and Welsh. This is a LIFETIME GOAL. I'm not planning to achieve it by next year. If you really put some welly into it, you can go from nought to A Level in 2 years, which means 14 languages would take me 28 years and I'd be 69 by the time I accomplished my goal.

By the way, if you're wondering how many I speak right now, I know something of eleven languages. English, German, French, Spanish, Welsh, Dutch, Esperanto, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Italian. I could write a basic letter in the first seven of these... You see why I feel in a sense that I'm a loser? Because if only I'd put in more concerted effort I might speak these eleven languages fluently by now!

The world is full of more cunning linguists than I. The world record for language acquisition belongs to Mr Ziad Fazah of Brazil, who apparently speaks some 59 tongues fluently. (But I saw him on Youtube and his English wasn't THAT amazing...)

They're saying he speaks and writes 58. So he's learnt one more in the time being...

Full Clip. (From Chilean TV)

ZIAD FAZAH ~ FLUENT IN 58 LANGUAGES

"HOW I BECAME FLUENT IN 11 LANGUAGES"

Alex from London.

Puts me to shame...

English, French, Greek, German, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Italian, Hebrew, Catalán, Spanish

Note how, apart from Greek and Hebrew, these fall into three groups

Germanic: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans

Latin: French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan

Slavonic: Russian

His accent in Spanish and German is pretty good...