Gledwood TV!

I GOT ON TV LAST WEEK!!!! Yes!!! I was waiting at the bus stop, minding my own business when the police drew up. I noticed an exceptionally dodgy paedophile-looking person in the back looking very miserable. I wondered what on earth he'd got nicked for. Suddenly the car screamed to a standstill, police jumped out and the paedophile escaped from the back! A dodgy looking man was being wrestled to the floor and suddenly the paedophile had whipped out a camera and was pointing it straight in the homeless drug addict's face.

The police were yelling and screaming about a "machete" the homeless man was supposedly carrying, though I couldn't see it. All I did see was splinters of matchwood flying all over the place (probably from the invisible machete).

So the police got him to the floor in handcuffs. The man seemed to go exceptionally woozy. I now know, from watching too many of those reality cop shows that a full 25% of arrestees feign illness once nabbed and all I can say is that this one looked really ill. Next thing I knew they were yelling at him: was he on any medication for seizures?

A huge crowd gathered around and the paedophile-looking guy filmed us all. Instead of bundling their prey into a van and roaring off as per usual, police kept this man handcuffed, legs akimbo for a full ten minutes yelling back and forth and reprimanding the surging crowds to go away. (Even though the entire set-up was obviously being played out on their part as dramatically as possible.) Eventually my bus came but I was so excited! I'm going to be on one of those docu-dramas! On Sky or Pick TV (I think). Looking like a fool in the background! How amazing is that!!


Illustrated: various stills from British police reality series...

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...

A Death in the House (and a New House and a Baby Chirper)

THE LANDLORD'S HENCHMAN phoned me yesterday asking could I knock on the room next to me to see whether the man answers ... and would I phone back with the result so I said I would ~ and no answer. I said "Why, is he OK?" and he said no. They think he's ill or something. So someone from the agency was going to come round and open the door just to see that he really IS all right.

This man is pretty old and very friendly. He gives the impression of not having a nasty bone in his body ~ yet somehow without that "gone-out," dodgy vibe some people have when they're so "nicey-nicey" they seem to have a screw loose. Perhaps one reason he always seems so cheerful is that every time we have met, either outside the house or in the hallway, in the few weeks since he moved in, he had obviously been drinking. I never have seen him sober. But he is so old and unsteady. You can always tell it's him coming in because the shufflings between front door opening and the scrabbling of his key against his door and that door actually opening seems to take a good five minutes every time. He is very unsteady on his feet, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had some type of Alzheimer's or alcoholic dementia.  He seems somehow to be able to attain the same level of drunkenness every hour of the morning or night ~ he's in a perpetual blur. So it wouldn't surprise me if some other factor were involved. I've seen alcohol dementia, and that ~ or just general old age ~ would seem better to account for his general un-together-ness than drink alone. As I say, you'd need to be putting a lot of drink away, on a constant basis, to be that doddery and compromised...

THEN I CAME BACK HOME today to find the front door open and a policeman in our hall. "Is everything all right?" I asked. The policeman gave me a steady look, and said no. It turns out the elderly Carribean man downstairs has DIED. I heard the policeman saying into his radio that this man was SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD. So why on earth somebody that feeble and confused and obviously in need of help was living on his own in a house like mine, I haven't a clue. I don't want to think about it, because it will only make me angry.

I had only been into his flat the once, and that was when he said his heating was broken down last week. The boiler was working for hot water, and was set to warm up the radiators. Yet his radiators were stone cold. It has been absolutely freezing the last few days with snow settled everywhere. And this old man was living alone and confused in an unheated flat. He said the landlord had refused to look at the boiler. He was so out of it, he couldn't tell when the radiators were switched on or off. And now he's dead. Great, isn't it?

Oh and I'm supposed to be moving out and into a permanent place of which I have absolutely no details ~ this is according to my Support Worker, who won't give me the new address. I want at least to be able to check out the new place from the outside before going on an official visit with a council housing bod. Then I get to say yes or no to this new home ~ depending whether it's wonderful or otherwise. You're allowed to pick and choose between a maximum three places (which are offered one at a time) before it they say "right, if you WANT council housing, you have to take the next offer, or drop off the list". ALL I want is separate living room and bedroom, a bath, and a south-facing aspect to put up a satellite dish ~ otherwise I won't be able to watch German television, which makes all the difference to quality of life. And ideally, if it's a flat (which it probably will be) I'd rather NOT be on the ground floor ~ for security. So I'm in a bit of depression and stress over this, knowing that if I do move I'll find myself in a place that's completely unfurnished ~ not even curtains. And will have to get washing machine, fridge, bed and furniture all myself. I know I should sound a bit more grateful ~ but I just want to know what I'm being grateful FOR. Some of these council places are notoriously bad. I just WANT TO KNOW THE ADDRESS. The promised letter has failed to come. If I don't hear anything by Monday then I'm calling my housing manager. The idea of moving is really stressing me. Yes of course I want to move. But moving itself is horrendous. So most of the time I'm dealing with this in my own characteristic way: by not thinking about it at all.

Does this sound really terrible? I'm not in a bad mood. I've actually been feeling rather good. I'm still, most of the time, higher than normal. It's just that when I'm like this, every feeling and emotion is more vivid, so I'm VERY easily plunged into a whirl of confusion. I just want to know what is happening. And then, perhaps, I can be whirled up in a better-informed kind of way..(!)

Hey you know the best thing about moving into proper accommodation? Pets are allowed! I am in talks about ordering a baby parrotlet online (they are very difficult to get hold of in this country)... but no commitments have been made yet...

So that's it ~ wow! A death in the house and me (hopefully) moving out with a Baby Chirper!

Dodgy Callers

WE GOT REPRIMANDED by the police yesterday for having our front door swinging open. It was only wide open because somebody had forced the lock. The lock had been forced (I believed) because the landlord had changed it the day before and not everybody appeared to have got the new key. So she took my details as I stood there all bleary in my pyjamas (horrible red tracksuit bottoms full of cigarette holes). Though I did have yellow Marks & Spencer cotton rich socks on, so that completed the designer look. I heard a sharp tapping, right on my door, and police-type radio sounds and talk. You can always tell the police, even before you set eyes on them.

Then TODAY when I was just leaving yet another policeman accosts me saying did I know next doors got done yesterday and did I know anything ...? Well yes I DID because this evening some timewaster turned up banging on the windows and moving the wheely bins around. I know me moved the bins because I heard them. This one was doing the "I used to live here and I'm expecting a letter" number and I was too dozy to say "what's your name and I'll check for you". Because the kind of house I live in nobody usually WANTS to break into. They want to break out!

So he seemingly checked through his post and took a letter and pissed off. Why do I have to deal with these people? Someone else can answer the door next time.

Which reminds me, just in case somebody does break in, I need to invest in superglue, padlocks and chains. So after I've knocked him unconscious he wakes up chained to the radiator and stuck to the floor!