No News Good News

I HAVEN'T WRITTEN anything here because not a lot has gone on. I didn't have a good Xmas, really. Or a happy new year. I don't know, I must have been depressed, or sick, or something. I don't know.

Hey I just got a comment saying I was delusional because I thought I could get in print. Well... maybe I am, maybe not. Fiction writing is not like blogging. Everything goes through at least two drafts, if not five, six or seven. Here I just tap it in and press publish; there I weigh every word. Fiction is about characterization and dialogue. Blogging is just me reporting every turd I've done. My fiction, you might argue, is just a literary turd ~ and a real steamer of a sloppy one at that! They have almost nothing in common, so you can't really assess my ability to write novels by reading my blog. 

Anyway I haven't written anything for about a month. I finished my first (short) novel in computer-ready form and almost instantly spiralled into depression so bad I couldn't focus enough to weigh up two versions of the same short passage, to work out which should go into book two. I don't know why I got like that. My GP wanted to up the meds by another hundred milligrams, but I don't want even more antipsycho tabs. The ones I'm on are causing enough side-effects as it is.


Er, I don't know what else to say. I feel like I'm under seige. I have this feeling that I need a guard dog. I saw the most beautiful doggie on the Australian Animal Rescue programme. At first glance I thought she was a St Bernard. She was really cute, but she had been bitten by a snake and they couldn't save her. So she died. And she was one of the most beautiful dogs I have ever seen. And she wasn't a St Bernard, she was an Akita. I have always wanted an Akita puppy but have never seen them for sale. I have this daydream that one day a stray will come looking for me, and that will be my sign.

An akita puppy. See how cute it is..?? Though I think this one, with the sawn-off legs look, is something of a crossbreed...

I must go. Hope everyone's all right...

Hachiko monogatari: the tale of Hachiko, the faithful dog who never stopped looking for his master...

New Furniture New Home!

 FINALLY MY FLAT IS FURNISHED!

I got a brick red 2½ seat sofa, a large bookcase, a film director's chair, an occasional table and a TV and DVD stand. All for just £60. ($93.34). The furniture was free. £60 was the cost of hiring a van + 2 people. On reflection the two people weren't probably necessary but I was freaking out so badly about this furniture getting stuck on the public stairwell then a huge fire breaking out and 200 people burning to death because their one escape route was blocked by my flambeéd couch. And I was thinking "but I don't even own an axe to break it up!" Not that I'm totally neurotic or anything...

Last night, around the time I was delivering household rubbish and recycling to their respective bins, my mobile phone somehow went walkies. I felt totally lost without it. The bastard who found it switched it off. Eventually. Giving false hope for several hours that it might merely have fallen into some long-forgotten enclave of my home, only to rouse me with its cheery chirping next time someone chose to call...

What with severe furniture stress, the missing phone was the last straw and I went into a miniature psychotic episode with mental confusion, voices laughing and echoing twisted speech through the sinuous rills of my head and everything. Ultra-luminous bizarre thoughts pinging through my mind, echoing back and forth in an auditory reverberational kaleidoscope. So I took a stonking great dose of quetiapine, the antipsychotic, but still woke up at 5am. (By which time the voices had vanished.)

Binky has been such a good friend to me. Amid much exclamation at the depth to which I'd allowed my living conditions to sink (I had spent weeks camping on a stained concrete floor on uncovered duvets with no furniture to my name except a pine dining chair covered in rubbish). She cleared ALL the junk within the space of ONE single hour. That's absolutely amazing. Do you know it could easily have taken me TWO DAYS, pottering constantly all day, to achieve not even that much of a feat. In the Rubic's Cube of the human genome, the "cleaning gene" somehow passed me by.

All I need now is a fridge-freezer, a cooker and a washing machine. As much as anyone "needs" a nonessential like a washing machine I do need one. Handwashing clothes isn't really ideal and our local launderette charges £4 ($6.10) for 1½ domestic washloads and their dryers are CRAP. 50p (76c) a pop and they barely dry at all!

I'm not bothering with fitted carpets. Never thought particularly much of 'em anyhow. What I'm going to do is collect rugs about the size of a single bed. And just put ten or more of those down. Rugs look très bohème. I used to share a house with a girl who decked out her room au style bédouin what with Indian wallhangings threaded in gold, wooden chests and incense-burners galore... I'm not sure I'd go that far. After all I am a 41-year old man not a 25 year old girl. But it's a good sauce of inspiration...

I'VE FOUND THE BREED I WANT for my ferocious guard-puppy. Like I said, it has to be threatening and agressive (in a totally non-legally-challenging way) to would-be muggers. As for any burglars fool enough to break into my pad, it can feel free to savage them to death, as long as it doesn't ruin by Bedouin rugs with bloodstains. I think housebreakers are scum of the earth. Apart from fierceness, the main characteristic on my bodyguard-puppy wishlist is cuteness. It must have pointy-up ears and bushy fur... In other words what I need is an akita-tosa cross.

Usually when I talk about akitas, people assume I mean the tosa 土佐犬 fighting dog (something like a Japanese pitbull). The akita 秋田犬 is actually a Japanese police dog ~ much more similar, in character and looks, to a German shepherd.

Mix the two together, however, and you get a massive dog who is very cute + very fierce-looking indeed!

Being regulated under the UK 1991 Dangerous Dogs act, I think it slightly unlikely that I'm likely to come across a tosa able to breed with an akita. Which is such a shame. Binky has been driven to the edge of distraction by my ceaseless "attack puppy name brainstorming". Top of the list so far are Qleddebber and Boddlemmer. Neither really "means" anything. I just like the sounds.

If I got a terrifyingly scary, ginormous female akita-tosa I might call her Bloodwin (after the Welsh name Blodwen, which means "white flower"...)

Oh and by the way, if you're wondering what type of inadequate person I must be to want such a horrendous dog, YES I AM. I also want a friend. Dogs are far more trustworthy than any people I've ever met. Also I'm dead set on having absolute control over this baying wild beast. When I click my fingers she rolls over, sits and gives me a paw. She will never pull on the leash. She won't go wild jumping up at strangers (which really annoys me in other people's pets and would embarrass the hell out of me if my attack puppy did the same). She will be intensely stand-offish, just like every akita I've ever met. And she will have a gorgeous bushy coat.

Because the regulations say I'm only allowed ONE dog or ONE cat (not even one of each) ie if she did have puppies I couldn't keep them, I'm not quite so bothered about getting a female now.

Binky says I wouldn't want to be bothered feeding or walking this gigantic beast. But I live minutes away from one of the biggest open spaces in London, where doggies are allowed to ramble freely (no leash laws here).

Hey wouldn't it be fun to rehome a retired police sniffer dog? Then every time I relapsed back on to heroin we could play "hunt the baggie"... Of course I'm not relapsing on to heroin... it's just an entertaining image...

AS FOR MY SOBRIETY I'm not posting anything about being "clean" (ie on methadone but not heroin) until I've managed two weeks flat. I've been told you don't even out until you've done that time... (Which I have, on many occasions ~ only I never counted days and so I never really thought about how long I'd gone "clean" (never really thought about heroin use either. 

Because I've only ever gone clean because I didn't want to use. If I did, I'd use. Simple as!

ANYWAY, it's a cheery, bright weekend here in London. I hope y'all have a great weekend too!

Illustrated: red sofa a bit like mine, tosa-inu, akita-inu, akira-tosa cross, sinuous rills, dirty drug "works"...

video

funky houses
love this



frantic/hardhouse academy 2004
don't know the name of this tune, but I like it...



tony de vit djing at trade club

The "Cookie Crumbs" Scandal...

WELL, I have spent the last day or two feeling like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards. This is all my "brain's" fault for making me "elevated" all night the night before and unable to sleep. Either that, or the mystical rivers of my Energy Sphere have been overflowing. I'm not sure which. I tend towards the mystical energy explanation nowadays ~ the world is full of mystical energy that scientists aren't even able to measure. I once found a Chinese medicine leaflet on the bus that explained how every "illness" I have ever suffered resulted from a deficit, excess or misalignment of vital energy.

Apart from a few crumbs found wrapped in a cigarette paper (which I wasn't entirely sure didn't come from an old digestive biscuit) I have not touched heroin for something like four days. (I'm not sure as I don't count days "clean". I think it's unhealthy.) The "crumbs" could have been 1/100th of a gram. Not very much. The methadone is holding me again and I don't need any more than the prescribed dose. But I am taking it in two goes. Half around 6am; the second half around 4pm. It seems to work much better that way. I feel really sorry for Americans and people from other countries where methadone seems only to be available on Supervised Consumption. It's not so much the "supervised" bit I disagree with (although it is rather demeaning to have to drink it in a public pharmacy in front of althelete's foot sufferers, bachache pensioners and pregnant women) ~ it's the compulsion to drink an entire day's dose at once. It just doesn't last 24 hours. If I drank my entire dose once a day I might need 1.5 or x2 as much. And I would still probably wake every day feeling crap. My dose has gone UP to 30mg a day now. At least 30mg works. A few months ago I was down to 14mg and I didn't exactly feel brilliant on that little. You know methadone is more addictive than heroin?! (Which the clinic never warned me, by the way. I think that would make an interesting court case, don't you?) More to the point though: how on earth am I ever to get off that crap??! I asked not one but two workers at my present clinic could they exchange my dose to one of (far less addictive) morphine instead and they said no. (Without explanation.) When I pointed out that on heroin I was able to drop directly from £80 or £100 a day (this was years ago) straight down to £20 with no withdrawals they looked confused. (My point being if morphine's easier to titrate down then I want morphine.) But it's not in their interest to understand common sense when they're a methadone/suboxone clinic and hence blinkered to every more effective treatment option.

At the peak of my habit, by the way, 100mg would barely hold me. Even when I gave it four or five days in a row. So my dose went up above 130mg. I'm not very proud of that...

I really need a savage guard dog/bodyguard. I'd like one like this from the Pedigree Chum advert.

Really I'd like an Akita (of course). They look really ferocious when annoyed.

I HAVE BEEN reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Age 13¾

Here's the TV adaptation starring Julie Walters as mother and Beryl Reid as Grandmother. None of the male actors seems to be famous, except Chris Gascoygne (Nigel).

When I say I want a dog, I mean one like Adrian Mole's. With scruffy fur. Except mine needs to be savage and ferocious. I need a guard dog/bodyguard too.

Oh by the way, I found out why Korean boybands look like girls. It's because they dye their hair ginger...

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...?

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

Down Time of Year

WINTER is drawing inexorably closer. My house feels exceptionally chilly, clammy and damp. I daren't use the central heating any more after testing it out the other day and running up a bill of nearly £8 in eight hours (I'm sure I read the meter right).

Like a lot of other people I know, I feel run down, sickly and miserable and the time of year, surely, is a major factor. 

As I said yesterday, my friend has what sounds like a badly behaved less-than-year-old Alsatian/Akita cross in need of a good home. I would really like to take her on but Binky says it's a terrible idea as I wouldn't be up to the responsibility. One of the dog's behavioural problems is chewing things up in her owner's absence, which really wouldn't endear her to me. But on the other hand, the fact that she's big and furry with pointy ears would endear her a lot. I forgot to ask whether she pulls at the leash, because that really annoys me. If I'm going to have a dog I want a really well-behaved one. I've never seen a badly-behaved Akita but there's a first for everything.

I've been feeling down for a week or two now. This past weekend, in order to "regulate my mood" (my GP's expression) I tried taking my pills one in the afternoon and one at night, like I'm supposed to. Usually I take the entire dose at night in order to avoid daytime drowsiness.

So by five pm I was whacked out unconscious. I woke again at midnight, in time to take pill number two. And then slept all the way round till 9:30 ~ just in time to drink my methadone. Was awake for less than an hour... and slept round again... eventually rousing myself after two pm, making a grand total of twenty hours' sleep. Now that is ridiculous. The next night (Sunday) I slept badly, only going to bed around two and waking at 7:30, freezing cold. But last night I was unconscious for twelve hours in one block. So my sleep's all over the place. They do say winter depression is a kind of human hibernation response with the hypersomnia and carbs cravings. I've been packing on the pounds lately with all the Mr Kiplings Country Slices, chocolate limes and other stodge I'm consuming every day. So I'm trying to give up the sweets and stick to cottage pies with "country mixed vegetables". And supermarket Chinese chicken curry and beef in blackbean sauce. Not that I'm obsessed with food or anything. I haven't got the true Seasonal Affective Disorder ~ I know I haven't, because the most hyper and manic I've ever been was also in midwinter. My Mum says she gets winter depressions though ~ every single year. When I'm a famous writer I think I'm going to move to the Bahamas.

OK well I've gotta go home to microwave Sainsbury's Chinese Beef in Blackbean Sauce and I'll tell ya if it's OK.

I hope y'all are OK. Especially those of you in Continental Northern Europe or the northern United States or Canada... places where the climate's even worse than here.

PS Kate and Wills and the Third in Line to the Throne, due next June ~~ wahey!!

Beady-Eyed, Bushy-Furred Akitas and other Doggies Including Anna Grace's, who is Recovering from a Doggie Breast Cancer Op... Plus My FabMag

ANNA GRACE, my online cyberspouse, has been worrying herself ragged because her tiny pet porkshire terrier, Elle (short for Eleanor Rigby), has been diagnosed with doggie breast cancer and went under the knife at the weekend.

I just left a comment telling Anna the worst thing her doggie will now have to endure will be wandering about Green Bay, Wisconsin for the next week or so dressed as a furry light fitting. Doggies get just as embarrassed as we do when they think they look silly. Our late dog Glodemmer, who looked like a silvery furry seal, once had such bad "diredalls" as we called it (diarrhoea) that she had to have a fur-cut around her backside to get rid of all the "cagal" ~ as it's called in Welsh. (As far as I know there is no English word meaning "dried dung on animals' backs".)  

Poor Elle has had to have the surgery all down her chest ~ with dogs having up to ten teats it all has to go. I told Anna I don't think Eleanor will be in that much pain, especially by now, as the surgical invasion is superficial as operations go. (Less than a centimetre deep ~ surely?) My friend's landlady once had a quadruple heart bypass and that was agony, but only because they'd gone so far in, and to get in had to saw her ribcage open. So every time she breathed post-surgery she was in agony... Eleanor Griggsby's surgery is superficial in comparison and I reckon that by now she'll be fine.

When I went to buy my lemonade from Sainsbury's this morning I saw a cute scruffy terrier with beady chocolate drop eyes tied up by the automatic doors. This doggy's eyes were so beady you couldn't see any whites to them. I so much wanted to kidnap the shaggy swine and take it home. But alas an old lady who looked like her name was Marge appeared with pats and kisses and yummy tripe dinner ~ and that was just for me! When she saw Chocolate Drop's lead in my hand (because that's what I'd renamed him) she started screaming like a wicked witch passing a kidney stone and security chased me right down the high road. No I'm just kidding. I always fantasize about taking the little doggies outside supermarkets for a walkies all the way home. And sometimes the great big ones. One time I came across this giant akita with the bushiest white fur,

but there was no chance of making off with it. The dog was so enormous I'd have had to drag it away. And being an akita, the most faithful of all dog breeds, her eyes were fixated ceaselessly where her very bourgeois owner was gliding up and down the smoked salmon and bagle isles. And I do think she was a "she". That's what I've always wanted. A gigantic female akita with really bushy white fur. Or toitoiseshell brindled fur. Or brown fur. Or grey fur. Or black for that matter. Or any kind of fur, really ~ just as long as it's ultra bushy and she has slanty kindly caring faithful Japanese eyes. My business model in owning an akita was to make sure she did NOT get spayed. And I was going to make sure I got to know the whereabouts and walkies habits of every male akita in the area. So when she did come on heat ~ hey presto! A basketful of snaggling, wailing, baying bushy-furred akita puppies! Which cost anything up to £1000 ($1597.50 each these days (which is why I can't afford one). I have looked in the local animal shelters' sites but they NEVER have akitas. Basically these shelters are running (and barking and baying and whistling and groaning) over with STAFFORDSHIRE BULL TERRIERS and I really don't want one of those. They've always been "a bit common"... and now just about everyone seems to have one. And more to the point they DON'T HAVE BUSHY FUR. I want a doggie with really thick shagpile-style fur. And it must be enormous with Japanese eyes and a tail that piggles up on its back. In other words it must be an Akita!

I went and bought some glossy magazines for inspiration. I have always wanted to own and edit a magazine since my teens. Yesterday I got Vanity Fair. Today I got GQ and i-D (which used to be a lifestyle magazine, but has transmogrified into a fash mag. But it's cutting-edge fashion. Not the kind of dull fashion-victim crap British Vogue seem to specialize in).
I also got a title called Hero which seems to be men's fashion. But this is ultra-cutting-edge, with arty paper and ideosyncratic text layout. Whoever is head of ad sales for that title should get shot between the eyes with their head on a plate for apart from the back cover, there was not a single ad to be seen throughout the entire publication. For my magazine I want cutting edge photography, artwork and overall layout. It needs to have a real "picture book" style to it, so you can just flick through and be transported into a different world. But then you flick back and the text is in-depth and full of the intriguing details we all wanna hear. I will specialize in really really long features about fascinating things and people. I can't be more specific than this as I don't want Condé Nast nicking my ideas! Some of my concepts are fabulous. Eg I thought of doing a society magazine for the rougher elements of the lower classes. I was going to call it Second Class Socialite. And I'll cover the social scene in places such Essex, Coventry and Manchester's Moss Side ~ don't you think that would be a massive seller?! We'd be over-run by ads for Ratners Jewellers, herpes creams, pound shops etc. Our restaurant reviews would focus on KFC, McDonalds, Burger King and the like ... hey what am I saying ~ KFC's far too "posh n pricey" for my readers! And we could do "Crack House Couture" "The World of Council Flat Interiors" and fashion spreads of stuff stolen from the charity bins. O, I can really see this taking off...

Now I MUST GO I never slept last night and my mind is bleary. Any submissions ~ text or artwork for Second Class Socialite are gratefully accepted. You can save money on wages by just taking on loads of interns, all desperate to work in "the media" who'll slog their guts out for free! Each month we'll put all contributors' names in a bucket and the winner will get a £5 ($7.99) Argos voucher! How does that sound...?

Talking of fashmags here's Linda Evangelista ~ the most Superbly Superlative of all Supermodels in her time...

  Illustrated: Anna's Porkshire Pooch ~ the original Eleanor Rigby; beautiful white akita pup; Hero magazine...

♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧

X-ray Day

I HAVE JUST COME BACK from the breast clinic. I walked all the way so I am exhausted. I had two x-rays taken of each side. They squeezed my nipples quite violently into a class contraption and then the woman ran away to hide behind a screen. I wasn't allowed in the women's waiting room, where I hoped I would pass as a lesbian. It didn't work. So I waited in a room with a couch and a screen until a nurse turned up informing me that a doctor had looked over my results and no ultrasound was necessary. Does this mean they know I'm so riddled with cancer I'll drop dead before another appointment is possible??~! I'm just kidding. Surely, surely this is a good sign..? But what on earth does it mean? And why wouldn't they tell me? I didn't even think of asking till I was halfway down the corridor and the nurse was gone. I doubted she knew much about my case anyway. I'm going to have to wait till my consultant appointment in June ...

I was really upset yesterday because I went to the laundrette and that stressed me out and tired me out. I felt so decrepit I nearly cried.

I could have slept at 6pm, but stayed up late. Next thing I knew it was past 1:30. I got into bed exhausted and didn't sleep for at least an hour. Then I woke up, freezing cold and dying for a cigarette at 6. Eventually I went back to sleep and got up at 10 . I was getting confusing racing thoughts all day and I think it was them that kept me awake.

Oh what a mundane day! I wrote out a really long post yesterday about how upset I was to be schizo. But that's going to take days to type in.

The Calorie-controlled diet is going well. I'm still at approximately 1500 Cals per day. Ironically I don't need to eat very much less than usual to achieve this, so I don't think this alone is going to make me thin. Exercise comes next. Now that might make a difference...? Problem is, I've never done any type of formal exercise programme in my life. The only sport I like is swimming. So I was thinking of forcing myself into three sessions of that per week. I was going to take it up last year, but laziness, shyness and body issues got in the way. I felt far too fat to wobble my near-naked portly frame in front of hoardes of strangers!

As far as I know, I've never gone over 220 lbs, 15 stone, 100kg. Currently I am around 14 stone, 200 lbs, 90kg. I haven't weighed myself since the diet began. That's partly because I judge myself not on what the scales say, but on how lithe I feel. My target weight is 11 stone, 154lbs, 70kg. I don't want to go below 10 stone, 140 lbs, 63kg.

I really wanted to see the chirpies in the birdery, but the old man seemed to have shut up shop and gone home. Wikipedia describes lovebirds as miniature parrots and that's why I want them . What better bargain can you get than mini parrots at less than £30 ($50) each?!??

Soon as I get a council flat (that means permanent public housing) I'm getting roborovskis, a massive furry American akita or lovebirds or all three!!

And last but not least: best pop performances of all time:

MICHAEL JACKSON: BILLIE JEAN, MOTOWN 25, 1983





MADONNA: "DANGEROUS LIAISONS" VOGUE, 1990 MTV AWARDS

 

Interestingly enough, both are lipsynched..!