HELLO EVERYONE. I'm moving house! Tomorrow I sign a 12-month tenancy agreement on a one-bed council flat. It's in just about the nicest location I could ask for; not "inner city", yet close to everything. Providing all goes well and I'm not antisocial (never have been in the past) this will be transformed into a lifelong and permanent tenancy ~ I can even leave it to my next of kin. Far as I know, I get from tomorrow afternoon until next Monday to move all my stuff out of the old place and to get gas, electricity, etc turned on (I have no idea how to do this: at the present house the amenities were running anyhow).
Once they take the metal anti-squatter blinds off my windows, I'll have a much better idea of what's going on. Basically I'm moving into a completely unfurnished concrete box with no carpets, nothing. I'm not even sure the old tenants left the curtain rails up. So I'm in a flap about furniture: what to get from where and how. I did find a beautiful 3-seat beige sofa for £60 + £10 delivery but of course it's sold. The charity shop has another one just as big but nowhere near as nice and it's £10 MORE. I so hate second best I'd rather go elsewhere... if only I knew somewhere, ANYWHERE selling used furniture. Apart from food and essentials, I haven't really gone shopping in London EVER. I never had money for luxuries. (I never had a LIFE! (And then of course I ruined what life I had with Heroin)...)
Well I'm really excited to be moving and I so wish I could find a nice long sleep-on-able sofa like that one that has just been sold. Of course it's still there in the shop, staring me in the face. I can't bear to go in there and look at second best.
As for this ridiculous bath situation, nothing is happening about that, for now. I'm trying to fix the problem myself, by investing in stuff that SHOULD keep me properly clean in the shower. Many months ago I ended up shopping with Valium Marilyn for a new flannel (washcloth if you prefer) and NOWHERE we looked had them. Well yesterday I furnished myself not only with washcloths but a giant sponge + professional back-scrubber. I'm determined to get a grip on this ridiculous, embarrassing issue of "self-care". I have a psychiatric condition known as CBS ~ childish bathing syndrome (or nonbathing syndrome). With this £3.50 ($5.53) investment in professional accoutrements, I SHOULD be able to get and keep my rotting body fresh.
I think the council were just being picky when they said I wasn't even allowed to PAY to get a bath in until my tenancy goes permanent. I looked into the costs nonetheless and the nearest bathroom shop to me sells baths from £70 with installation costing very little. I have to come back with precise dimensions. The standard bath lengths are 120cm, 140cm and 160cm. Got a feeling mine's gonna have to be 120. I don't MIND paying I just want that bath PUT IN.
I'm very excited to be moving. To be getting a place of my own. Finally. Where PETS ARE ALLOWED. So I can have my Baby Chirper without fear of eviction.
Well I have to go soon. I'm exhausted because yesterday evening Binky had to go back into the mental hospital for the FIFTH TIME in 12 months. We rode there in a cab, 3 of us, including the support manager at the halfway house where Binky lives. She was very confused, talking about a very upsetting paranoid experience she keeps having. She had seen a psychiatrist that day, so it was arranged that she should present herself at the Emergency Clinic. At first the clinic were very accommodating: a ginger nurse fully au fait with the matter assured her she was being admitted with a 98% chance of going where she went last time, where she knows everyone.
Three hours passed and the evening shift appeared. When Binky eventually asked what was going on, the very surly African nurse who had control of the airlock-style door which we had to ask permission to be opened so we could go for cigarettes said through the plate glass (for there is no window, no hatch through which you can talk to the staff; they don't WANT to hear anything you have to say) "well you seem to have got a lot better than you were when you turned up here". On hearing which Binky flipped her lid. The new shift started saying they were waiting for assessment by the Home Treatment Team. Which they weren't, because the HTT had already stated that she needed to be admitted. But she still waited until well past 11:30 until the bed manager could come up with something.
I left at 9:15 on the pretext of shopping for takeaway. But I just couldn't handle the stress any more.
Talking of stress I don't know HOW I'm going to move into this new flat. My Mum is right in the middle of moving house herself. I rang my present landlord's henchman and asked whether he'd be willing to give me and my stuff a "lift" in his van and he said hopefully he could, that I should phone back tomorrow. It's up to his boss to say yes. They have no reason to help me... but hey, miracles do happen.
One last thing: DRUGS. HEROIN. I wanna keep the new place DRUG-FREE, which means no celebratory hit as soon as I'm all unpacked and free, leaning against my new front door. No drugs. Just the horrible methadone until the bitter end.
I think I'm going to be OK. Last week, it has to be said, I was feeling pretty horrible a lot of the time. For the last couple of days I've felt a lot better. I'm just really really tired and have to conserve my energy for house-moving. Wish me luck! ☺
PARROTLET TRICKS
This is the type of bird I want. A parrotlet is basically a posh lovebird...
PARROTLET TALKING
I think the high-pitched voice is very amusing...
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THE OTHER DAY I found an old Bird Book I must have bought from a second hand shop. So I started learning all about Birds. Then I got a more modern bird-identification guide. Yesterday I took it out and went bird-spotting (without binoculars or any special equipment) and I saw ~ literally all these birds lined up in a row ~ a baby herring gull, a magpie, some Canada geese, a duck that was probably a male mallard in eclipse plumage (ie it looked like a female, only had a yellow bill) and this duck keeps diving a lot. Every time I see it, it's disapearing. 2 coots. And a (male) grey wagtail. If it wasn't a grey wagtail then it was a yellow one, but the birdbook said the grey wagail appears bluish on top, which this one did. Wow how exciting is that.I actually identified some real birds. I was hoping the baby herring gull was a giant skua (known in America as a jaeger) but no such luck. And that the mallard duck was a teal. But no. But grey (or yellow) wagtails are pretty rare so how cool is that? Also, I saw a pied wagtail near the wheelybins by the post office where it likes running along the ground picking off ants. Oh, it's a bird's life!%20L.JPG)
But I didn't sleep that well at all. I was up all night copying Italian Linguaphone dialogues into my mega notebook. Then I had to get to Binky's for 7:30 or 8:00am to lend her £50 ($78.25) I "need" to lend her that money as having blown so much on furniture I know I'll be Stoney Broke by next Monday, which is precisely when said debt is due to be repaid. I think my Druggieworker is in a bad mood with me for having thoroughly avoided her clinic for two weeks solid. Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis Nutter Club lady, who specializes in Nutter Junkie work, invited me to a Drama Therapy Group. Much as I love Naomi (because she calls me "amazing") and do enjoy acting from time to time, I cannot think of anything I'd less rather do when Seriously Not In The Mood than strutting across a public stage in the midst of angry public paranoid depression!
Oh, I forgot to say about my {inadvertant} "cruelty to pigeons" scandal! Yes I finally managed to keep my errant electricity cabinet shut only to discover, two days later, that a poor desperate pigeon had been locked in there all that time! It's true I DID hear intermittent desperate flappings at the door and yet every time I peered inside, said cupboard appeared to be bare. Until a good two (if not THREE) days into this saga when I finally opened the door only for a surprisingly healthy and rainbow-plumèd pigeon to make an instant flap for freedom the minute the door was ajar. Anyway, I opened my back balcony door the other day, it being a sultry summer's day and all. The door blew my door wide open and when I reached over to shut it, I noticed a brand new nest of long grass and a poor desperate-looking pigeon sitting on this nest. Yes! I have a pregnant pigeon living on my balcony! I know she is "pregnant" because yesterday morning, when she went for a flap across our estate, I could plainly see the gorgeous pair of pigeon's eggs left behind in her wondrously made nest... 
