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!!

"Eviction" Scandal

THE BLOODY COUNCIL (who are my landlord) have had the cheek to write to me saying I'm some pennies over £50 ($77.66) in rent arrears and that they're chucking me out on the street!! I phoned them up and said, "If I pay off this £50 next week, will you still want to chuck me out?" (No point paying it at all if they're booting me out anyway, is there?) But they said no. I won't get chucked out. So I rang my Support Worker in fury. He says they won't chuck me out either. Then I pored over my rent receipts and it turns out I'm about £2.50 ($3.88) in ADVANCE. No arrears at all. So I don't know where that £50 figure comes from at all. They did say a few weeks ago that housing benefit had failed to cough up £30 ($46.60) that they owe and had the cheek to tell ME to ring Housing Benefit to sort this out. How can I argue with whatever computer tells housing benefit how much to pay. No! If the council is paying the council and part of the council is in arrears, that's for the council to sort out. Not me! So I'm apparently not getting chucked out. (I'm not entirely sure though.)

I'VE JUST COME out of the mental hospital, visiting Binky and my head is ringing with the voices of craziness. Well, not so much utter madness. Just lots of women talking talking talking. Often at cross purposes.

Binky has no idea when she's getting out. I've been telling her she's entirely back to her normal self. Whereas she was having a psychotic episode a few weeks ago. Hearing the voices of the dead and everything.

TOMORROW I have another appointment to see the GP. Well I know which one NOT to ask for. The evil Dr Benderson. So I asked reception to tell me the name of a doctor in this massive practice I'm registered with (biggest dr's surgery I've ever joined ~ about 15 drs) which one is most interested in psychiatry. As I have to find myself a Consultant. (All these psychiatric meds they want me to take and I don't even have a psychiatrist!) Hopefully by tomorrow my notes WILL have appeared on screen and my entire life and existence won't be one Surreal Blank.

Anyway my back is a bit done in, so I need to see a dr just for that.

I'm terrified of doctors. Never know what they're going to think. I mean look at Binky ~ sane as a daisy and they still won't let her out!

My Spanish is coming along really well (unit 22 of 30). I'm keeping a Diario Secreto (yes it really is called that) in Español.

The local charity shop has just taken in a box full of books in French and Persian. So I raided the French. Got a hoary old (colour) coffee table book about Brittany, a book of verbs, and a book about culture all in French. And an ancient Spanish phrasebook. I can understand Spanish much better than I can speak it. (Nobody to speak it WITH!) Binky kept saying she wanted to learn French and I kept saying "why don't you do Spanish or Italian with me?" ... but no she still wants French. I warned her that the written language is fiendishly difficult ~ all those silent letters. I've "known" French for years and still don't know exactly what is and is not pronounced!

The weather here in London is charming. Picture postcard perfect.

And Holland has a new king! The first one in 132 years. Did anybody watch the ceremony...? What WAS Camilla wearing on her head...?!??

Illustrated: the new King Willem of the Netherlands; a sapling in the snow (don't know why the idea for this came to me, but isn't it pretty?) no my secret Spanish diary is NOT pink!!

Nearly Moved In

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

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

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

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

Too Hot (And Too Cold Outside)

BLOODY HELL I AM SWEATING like a pig-fucking swine {how rude of me!}. Why do other people turn up their heating so high? And BRITISH GAS ~~ SOUTHEAST ASIAN CALL CENTRES... GET YOUR STAFF TO LEARN ENGLISH. The man I spoke to got my address totally wrong, telling me I lived at house number one, when I'm actually number 64,987,436 (if you think I'm giving my real door number on my blog you're very much mistaken).

I'M DEAF I'M DEAF I THINK I HAVE A PERFORATED EAR DRUM. ALL I DID WAS STICK MY LITTLE FINGER IN THERE AND ~~BAM! I think a hobgoblin or a gnome has been sneaking up to me in my sleep and shoving half packets of crunched up Pringles down there.

WELL I CAN'T BE MANIC. Because I slept HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS last night.

FUCKING HELL I HAVE TO GO DOWN THE DR'S SURGERY. (WHY DO THEY CALL IT THAT? WHEN DID THEY LAST PERFORM AN OPERATION DOWN THERE?) AND THAT FAT, PATRONIZING, CONDESCENDING, DEMEANING, JUDGEMENTAL NURSE (well she does look at me funny) WILL TELL ME HOW DIRTY I AM AND READ THAT IGNORAMUS OF A BANNER HEADLINE THAT APEARS EVERY TIME THEY LOG INTO MY NOTES SAYING I'M A COMPLETE PSYCHIATRIC BASKET CASE WITH "SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDERS" ~ plural. Like a whole array of cuckoo clocks along the mantle-piece of my psyche.

Well I've got to go. I'm going to terrorize the temp agency tomorrow and shall report back.

O and Binky is going to get me my free Bus/Tube/Train pass so I can GO ANYWHERE. Because the government say I'm mentally deranged. Bye.

Ear Infection Gone//etc...

I SUPPOSE I had better write something. I saw a nurse yesterday. A nurse empowered to prescribe. Who looked in my ear and said the infection had gone. She then queried whether I had ever had a perforated eardrum. Which is precisely what I had suspected LAST time (in June) when 2 doctors told me no it definitely wasn't perforated. Even though the thing that eventually cleared the deafness was me burping/hiccupping/whatever with my mouth closed. Which cleared my eustacean tubes (mysterious piping leading from ear to throat) and BANG! ear is totally clear. Which implies the source of the problem was on BOTH sides of my eardrum. So yesterday I popped my ears deliberately and there was a slow whoosh and about 90% of my hearing came back. No way can you clear an external ear problem by doing that, unless the eardrum is perforated. Or, possibly, that popping your ears causes the eardrum to bulge out so far that it actually clears a space in the outer ear canal. Which I consider highly unlikely. The tinnitus is getting quieter and quieter. I have had constant pinnng-piiiiing-pIIIIIIIIng!~~ in my ears since age 17. So I don't let it bother me.

All that is bothering me now is that I feel so down. Kind of physically down. That I have given up drinking all together. Yesterday I had one can of wussy strawberry cyder. About 4% ABV in half a litre is only 2 units. So it's hardly hardcore drinking. And that made me feel heavy-limbed, stomach-achey (because strawberry cyder was breakfast) and generally crap.

Plus my friend Pinxx is confined to a mental unit. Where a blonde Polish schizophrenic got really obsessed by me I'm kind of regretting ever giving her time of day. She says she can tell I am bipolar by the way I move my body (too fidgetty). Also that my parents split when I was very young and I have never got over it. Although it was Pinky who told her I got "really manic" (I would beg to differ; Pinky has never seen me "really manic". When I'm "really manic", which I haven't been since spring 2011, I'm usually too incoherent to leave the house.) Anyway that second bit of information: WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? Is she demon-possessed? Or just very perceptive. I once read somewhere that Schizophrenics are extraordinarily perceptive. Just as many manic-depressives are said to be abnormally creative and clever.

My Mum is on the phone. We are talking about Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Did you know the character of the State Prosecutor Porfiry was the inspiration for Colombo? The way he says "can I ask you just one more question: a simple man like me wouldn't understand this, but HOW DID MUD FROM THE SCENE OF THE CRIME GET INTO THE TREAD OF YOUR SHOES?" blah blah.

Well I've got to go.

Does any of this have any consequence? When I read back through my terrible blog, it all seems dastardly dull beyond words.........


Illustrated: tinnitus (I've never tried this product but I seriously doubt anything would work, except possibly ginko biloba); Fyodor Dostoyevky ~ a cheerful soul...



IF YOU THOUGHT all German music was techno and Ozzy Osbourne headbanging crap, you'd be wrong. What the music channels actually advertise is like this: Alpine Folk Music. Which is far catchier than Anglo-American folk. Don't ask me why there's a windmill in the background: windmills are mostly from NORTHERN Europe ~ East Anglia (in England), Holland (of course) and Northern Germany ~ where it is FLAT. The Alps are MOUNTAINOUS. Akhkkkkk....

.

Drowning in TV

EUROPEAN TELEVISION has arrived at last! They finally turned up yesterday, one day and three hours late, put a whacking great dish on my house, drilled yet another hole in the wall ~ there is now a spaghetti junction of wires behind the TV set from 2 satellites, telephone and cable (I don't subscribe to cable). I get so many new channels it took eight sides of A4 to list them all. About 200 in German, 22 in French, 12 in English and a scattering of others in mysterious Eastern tongues. Remember the other day I was moaning about foreign stations not subtitling in English? Well I now do get Chinese documentaries and Korean soaps with English subtitles. I didn't know what to expect from German telly before I got it, but it's better than I thought it would be. Basically I get for free the type of programming you'd have to pay for if you wanted it in English. Lots of diving with the fishes, ice-cave exploration and documentaries about Madonna. Years before we actually had the digital switchover I remember a British government spokesman proclaiming how British multichannel TV would be the best in the world. Well he's a liar. He failed to mention back-to-back Judge Judy,

Coronation and Emmerdale repeats (terrible British soap opera) and endless Jeremy Kyle (famously rude and bigoted talk show host whose programme consists almost entirely of lie detector and DNA tests for rowing lower-class families. I even found a German equivalent to my favourite programme which is called Judge Barbara. She's a criminal court judge with dyed red hair and the witnesses say "Scheiße" a lot. (It's not reality TV, it's actors.) In fact Germany seems thankfully largely devoid of reality TV and what they do have involves far more interesting perpetrators (eg the animals of Frankfurt zoo). I do miss Judge Judy though. If she hadn't been a lawyer, she should have been a hand-model. She has the most beautiful hands in television.

I haven't given up on English TV forever though. How could I when the most important event of the 21st century occurred last night at 9pm on Channel 5 yes DALLAS IS BACK. The only soap I ever watch. That Bobby Ewing is a loser. If you had TWO BILLION barrels of premium-grade crude under your house wouldn't you get drilling away? When brent crude is currently going for £114.55 a barrel? (And a barrel holds 42 gallons; 159 litres.) By the way I think Lorimar are really racist: premiering the series in America on 29 June yet making Britain wait till September 5 ~ as if we are some unimportant backwater when really America is in the middle of nowhere ~ both geographically and economically.

I can't wait till I'm emperor of London. The policies of my government shall be simple: rainbow streetlights and the tallest buildings and fastest trains and low taxes for the rich. I would get rid of the "Green Belt" that is strangling this city and have London expanded in size until the population tops 100 million. I would scrap restrictive building regulations and leave just 2. No tower blocks permitted of less than 150 storeys. No buildings, apart from houses, allowed to be less than 25 storeys. Everywhere would be mixed use. No zoning, which kills cities and leaves dead zones. I would get Boring green spaces like Hyde park transformed into stately formal gardens.

On a more serious note, I would love to study town planning. However my opinions on the matter are so strong (I'm in favour of high-density mixed use with residential properties built on top of businesses) I couldn't handle the powerless, thwarted feeling of having my views ignored. Which is why nothing short of the job-title "Emperor" will ever satisfy me.

I have infection in my ear yet AGAIN and I've just seen a nurse-practitioner who prescribed me antibiotic pills (I don't want to spray anything else into my ears. They've had enough of being tampered with). She also gave me a Seroquel (quetiapine) refill ten days before the due date. I had been taking half doses to make my supply last and already I'm feeling constantly excited over nothing (ie the manic feeling is coming through). When you look up my medical notes "SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDERS" comes boldly through (as if I've got more than one of them). Thankfully "raving junkie" does not. I'm extremely careful not to mention my drug habit, or the fact that I'm still knocking back methadone every day beause I don't want prejudice and I don't want them refusing me sleepers when I need them (I really cannot see a connection between addiction to heroin, which is an opiate and taking sleeping pills occasionally, which are not opiates, never make me high, and cannot substitute for them. And yet my old GP, who was snotty and condescending said "I am not prescribing drugs of addiction!" when I asked for humble ZOPICLONE!!)

Why did I steer all through the controversy on Anna Grace in my last post which was only there to say 1 she has put up Youtubes of herself and 2 she sounds like a cartoon character ~ really cute. And yet there I am ranting about personality disorder issues. Totally irrelevant. And I don't even think I was manic when I wrote that. (Mania being a primary cause of tangential expositions.) I hope Anna isn't annoyed with me. It wasn't meant to be a hatchet job, although it kind of looks like one. Also I insisted in calling her pet Porkshire "Eleanor Rigsby" after "Mr Rigsby" in Rising Damp. Knowing all along that Elle's actual name is Elean or RIGBY ~ after the Beatles' song...

Well I have ranted enough for one day. I really must get back to have Iceland Chunky Cod fillets with American Crisscross Fries and my very own Tomato Surpise (the surprise is that they're chopped up, doused in black pepper and vinegar and... well, that's that. Tomatoes in vinegar are much nicer than tomatoes on their own...)

Illustrated: Judge Barbra Salesch; Judge Judy being a rudy, as per usual; the Burj Dubai, also known as the Burj Khalifa, currently tallest skyscraper in the world putting London's tinsy-winsy 72-storey "Shard" to shame; a satellite dish on a German building; Anna Grace cradling her Porkshire...


VIDEO: JUDGE BARBARA





☆ ♬☮ ★✞☯❤ ☢ ➝✔☆ ♬☮ ★✞☯❤ ☢ ➝✔☆ ♬☮ ★✞☯❤ ☢ ➝✔☆ ♬☮ ★✞☯❤ ☢ ➝✔☆ ♬☮ ★✞☯❤ ☢ ➝✔

Satellite Television, Anna Grace, BeverlyBabe and "Cycling"...

THE SATELLITE shop down the road have just reconnected me for the cost of £40. The dish was already on my wall and the Freesat box plumbed into my television: what was missing was a few yards of coax lined up from A to B with "F-Connectors"

(and that's about all I know of the issue ~ I did invest in F-Connectors, pliers and a wrench some weeks ago, and I tried to line up a satellite signal where the cable guy had bodged it up, unscrewing two lines, adding a double connector where none existed previously (I think it was a double female lead ~ ooo Bev, that's like Lesbian Passion between you and Anna Grace!) ~ well, whatever. It never worked.

I have been in a funny mood since I don't remember when. But an Official Funny Mood since a doctor's appointment at an unearthly pre-9am hour Wednesday.

From days on end without sleep I have switched back to sleeping right round the clock, and thinking how to suicide without upsetting anyone. NB I did not just say I wanted to kill myself. All I said was I had tried to figure out how to do it without upsetting anyone. Two separate and entirely different issues.

I must have been at least slightly hypomanic when I last posted ~ all those Lucky Stars! ~ and didn't Madonna look as luscious as a newly plucked grape in that video. And my New Doctor looks luscious as a newly ripened Nectarine. Considering she's sacrificed her bet years to being a Medical Student she doesn't half look good. She kept alternating between my Christian and Surname. That's because I too look amazing for my age. Especially being a manic-depressive junkie and all.

I no longer feel like posting my every heartbeat to an ever fascinated world. I'm turning into Anna Grace in that respect. She goes days without troubling to post anything at all. Mostly because I used to think she was out mountain-biking, though she and her pdoc, (as Americans call a shrink (what is wrong with the simple term "psychiatrist"~? Why must you Americans complicate everything?))~ actually called it "cycling". In the United States, cycling means "having a bipolar episode". Well I don't know whether I'm cycling or not and/or if I am whizzing on my bike where on earth I am going!

Have a Cheering Weekend Everyone!!

At the Doctor's: 100mg Up

私は落ち込んでいます。
私は惨めです。

I DON'T KNOW WHY doctors' surgeries always insist on giving me early morning appointments. At the time Im' always happy thinking Well I'll get this out of the way then I'll have the rest of the day to myself. Then the morning of the appointment comes and I'm sleep-deprived and feeling very ratty. I had to force myself in the shower because I hadn't bothered washing all alst week so I was absolutely festering.

The doctor took one look at me and asked whether I was depressed. When I collected my pills from the chemist I noticed hehad put the dose up to 2x150mg. I somehow doubt this is going to work. I had intended to request a 100mg dosage increase anyhow, but when the time came, I felt too shy to ask. And when I do feel mentally sick I wouldn't venture to tell any medical professional because I doubt they would ever believe me.

I have a bad track record with psychiatrists. I have been chucked off their lists twice. The first time it happened a new doctor was taking over. I had never seen this new doctor before and probably I was raecting to his manner because I told him how dysphoric I felt and yet I was all smiles. I wasn't lying. But after this I began to second-guess myself, doubting I felt how I felt I felt and feeling my feelings, and any emotional condition they implied, were unreal.

When I got home I fell asleep on the couch. Later I retired to bed, hiding under the duvet. I didn't wake until past 6pm.

New Doctor!

I GOT A NEW DOCTOR just now. The kindly receptionist didn't glance too hard at my expired passport. If she noticed that it was 18 months out of date she didn't say anything. I had to write schizoaffective on the form because that is supposed to be a "serious illness". Where they ask for family illnesses I gave none, in case I ever want private health insurance. This will stop the insurers bumping the premiums up. (You have to think of these things.)

I have to come and see a nurse next Wednesday. Tuesday is the "turning into a woman" breast tissue scandal consultant. Thursday is the new methadone clinical evaluation. So it's doctors galore.

The new "surgery" (do they ever perform operations on site? Frankly the place does not look sterile enough ...) only asked for one proof of address, so my Mum's fake letter about training courses never had its moment. The old doctors were really strict, which was what made me so para. They even quibbled a bank statement for being too ancient ~ it was two and a half months old! The methadone clinic want two proofs of address, so failing any mail delivery my Mum's fakery will shine in all its glory then.

There's a bus strike in London today, which means I have a choice: ride four stops by train to get my methadone. Cost: £4.40 return. Or walk there. Some buses are running but they terminate early giving the worst of both worlds: a bus fare and a long walk...

Last night I still couldn't sleep properly. I started feeling over-excited again and chain-smoked in bed. Every few minutes I seemed to wake back up to continue smoking. I know this is no recipe for guaranteed unconsciousness, but I long ago learned not to worry about poor sleep. Not worrying entails never "trying". You can't "try" and sleep anyhow. So I end up pottering about all night. Or smoking in bed while listening to radio phone-ins ...

And when I had to get up this morning I was in a very bad mood indeed!

Of course after six am I did sleep a bit. But I was still awake before the alarm went off at 8, and then I didn't want to get up. So I slept between 8am and midday. Which is all very unhealthy, I suppose. But there you go.

Hey I GOT A NEW DOCTOR. WOW!!!


Illustrated: smoking in bed, the glamorous version... My old doctor looked just like this, only he wore fewer clothes... The practice nurse looked like this, but not quite as fusty ...