A Friend in Need (of more booze) is a friend indeed...

BINKY CAME ROUND first thing in the morning hollering and screaming, her voice echoing and clashing all around our housing estate, neighbours coming out asking "what's wrong?" and "WHO did you want?" I was hoping she'd just go away because my house was in a mess and I didn't want her to see it but eventually I let her in just to shut her up (I was going to get drest, wait till she was walking off muttering at the top of her voice and swearing because what kind of a friend was I pretending not to be in ~ and then catch her up saying "O, were you really knocking and making a scene in front of my scandalized neighbours for a full half an hour? I  didn't notice. Anyway I'm going to the shops why don't you come with me?" (to keep her out of my house)). But none of that worked. I asked whether she'd slipped and fallen in a vat of vodka because that's what she reeked of, but she insisted upon having drunken nothing at all (as if). She had just got back from being in casualty (which is what we call the ER over here because ER means Elizabeth Regina (the Queen)). She was in casualty because she took a deliberate pills overdose yesterday but said the drs said the symptoms didn't concur with the amount of tablets she said she'd taken (which were all the "Pams" (stuff ending in -azepam; temazepam, clonazepam, etc). 

But anyway I ended up getting drunken with her and asked whether she thought her way of dealing with her emotions is different to mine. She seems to feel hers so very strongly she doesn't know what to do except follow them right through by acting them out. I pretend mine don't exist so I don't have to feel them. And she said yes, my explication of her feelings was bang-on (but not mine; she's never been me for the day, so how can she possibly know). Then I said I felt dreadful and ashamed of my cruel words on xmas day when we ended up having a multi-phonecall and vicious text message shouting match in the mid-afternoon. To my eternal shame, during this episode I actually ended up saying things I didn't even mean, and KNEW I didn't mean at the time. I know probably a lot of people do that. The type of people who end up on the Jeremy Kyle show. But I superciliously look down on such types and would sneeringly label them as rough and immature (well, if unsympathetically critiquing my own behaviour, I might phrase it this way).

I thoroughly enjoy feeling separated from myself, whereas Binky seems far far far too in touch with herself most of the time, hence the constant trips into psyche wings to be punished for her schizophrenic borderline personality disorder. Oh and then she did start saying what she thought my problem was and I said "well what then?" and she said "schizophrenia!" She said "when you're manic you're not just manic you're more schizophrenic." I don't know where she got any of this from, so I asked, "is there any similarity between me and Penny?" (the girl I met in the nut unit who I asked out but she said no) and Binky said YES! So I said well what then? And gave my impression of Penny, when Penny has been really ill. That is, that she's a bit elevated and excited but much more scattered, scatty and off the wall, kind of like a completely non-joined-up person, as if all in separate bits that might function independently but don't seem to cohere. (Hard to explain Penny any better than that.) And Binky said yes like that. (Penny did seem to be in a very familiar state when I met her, but I couldn't pin down precisely why ~ THEN Penny told the label they'd given her, which just so happens to be exactly the same one as mine. So maybe there IS something behind all this psychiatric bollox after all. I don't know.

So anyway, because we got roaring drunk together today, Binky and I seem to be getting on far better than last year. I took her home and Genoustable the Mauritian support worker (who speaks French as well as a mysterious French creole as well as at least three Indian prakrits. + I think she also speaks fluent Tamil, which is a highly mystical Dravidian langauge from the Indian South with an alphabet that looks like a load of stylized ampersands ("&&&&&&&&") (it actually looks like this: திராவிட மொழிக் குடும்பம் do you see what I mean about the ampersands? I once went to Madras, better known now as Chennai, just to meet the Tamils and found them a peculiar lot (I fell out with the lackey in our guesthouse about a broken teapot lid and am convinced to this day that he poisoned my food). 

So anyway I said "oh Binky's not drunk!" and Genoustable kept saying "how much has Binky drunk?" and "has she eaten anything?" So I microwaved her a frozen pannini. Then Binky kept saying "don't you want any more cans [of cyder]?" and I kept saying "no". (When I drink, I never get into that thing of wanting more and more and don't really understand people who do. Once I've had so much I start feeling nauseated and only want to drink water and that's what I was doing this afternoon, after only a couple of cans. Even Binky started drinking my water.) So I told Binky I didn't want any more and that I was afraid that if she did keep indulging she'd end up puking everywhere. (What I was more afraid of was her going into emotional meltdown.) But neither thing happened because I distracted her with cups of tea and she put on a show on Pick TV about British police arresting people; then Binky fell asleep so I left.

So that was my exciting day. And how was yours??!


ABBA VIDEOS!
When I'm trying to name this song I usually call it "no more ace to play" but it's really called
WINNER TAKES IT ALL
~about Anyetta and Bjorn's 1980 marriage breakdown


THE DAY BEFORE YOU CAME
little known final song
about the "disappearance" of a Russian dissident 
sorry about the (brief) bit of German voiceover: it says that when they split up there was no final tour, just a slow dissolution and fading out... and then Bucks Fizz came along...

♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♫♪♫♪♫♫♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♪♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪

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...