Beauty and Bipolar Moods in London Lovely London

IT'S A CHARMING SPRING AFTERNOON IN LONDON... 

I went into Town on Sunday. The place was fresh and twinkling all over in the golden morning sun...  it was as if someone had waved a magic wand over the city and teleported me to New York or Paris ... except this was LONDON, my own gorgeous lovely and adorable town. I'm always pleased to see tourists in great numbers coming to see my own private and personal territory. It's really flattering. And London is such a wondrous place. I walked from Holborn station all the way along Oxford Street past Bond Street and Selfridges.

I had a poke down New Bond Street, which is where all the designer stores and diamonds and ultra-high end stuff is to be found: Tiffany, Cartier, Harry Winston, Boucheron, Boodles, Bulgari etc etc. There's nothing like a nice 17 ct blue diamond on a Sunday morning twinkling it's head off in the London sunshine as far as I'm concerned. I wish I had someone to buy all these blue diamonds for. Come to think of it, I wish I had a couple of hundred million or so — y'know, to purchase all these blue diamonds to begin with.

I WASN'T on psychedelic drugs last time I posted; just very very tired and my brain feeling very UGHKHkkkhhhhy indeed.

Did you know Binky thought I was a crackstable still? "Crackstable" is my nice word for a crack smoker. Of course I'm not on crack. She did admit I was probably hypomanic  on these supposed "cracked out" occasions. LOADS of people have accused me of being on coke when in fact I was on nothing at all, except a naturally Elevated Mood. It IS possible to BUZZ on nothing except one's own private neurotransmitter collection y'know!

Talking of ELEVATED isn't this an effing fantastic track....




Hey I have great news I shall be BACK ONLINE before very long at all as I'm hopefully getting my OWN COMPUTER BACK. Not the same one as b4 but a wizzy new and improved version...

Did anybody see the bipolar documentary on Channel 4 last week? They showcased 3 sufferers. Paul, who was in the luscious grip of psychotic mania, a Welsh lady called Siân who had "bipolar 2" the supposedly "mild" type (it just means you don't hear things or see things or get delusional on the manic phases, which are labelled "hypomania" meaning "below mania". Lastly we saw Ashley, who was pingponging rapidly between "hypomanic" and "depressive" symptoms.

Philippa Perry, the psychotherapist who presented the show, said she believed the term "bipolar" to be a little too wide to encompass all that's crammed under its gargantuan roof these days and I agree. Ashley to me seemed more like a borderline personality disorder case than truly bipolar. True bipolar swings aren't usually triggered by comments a person might make. In fact when you're being really bipolar you can often feel totally insulated from other people's shit all together.

I've seen borderline personality disorder up close. It shares with bipolar an extreme instability of the emotions but that IS the difference. Borderline is an emotional condition; bipolar is a mood condition. Moods underlie emotions. In depression, emotions can become paralysed; in mania a person is extremely reactive and yet, paradoxically, there's a huge "don't care" component when it comes to the feelings of others.

I do reckon that there's more going on than the mere throwing of a genetic switch. And I think a bipolar state is more than just a drought or surplus of dopamine or serotonin. They sometimes theorize about a "manic defence" (and she alluded to this in a rather oblique way). The Manic Defence hypothesis theorizes that in order to avoid being slayed by negative feelings, a person instead becomes manic, grandiose and euphoric. I believe this may very well be true. But what the theory doesn't explain is why only one person in a hundred will ever experience full-blown mania during the entire course of their life. Why is it that some of us become manic, yet the overwhelmingly vast majority of us never do?

In the 1980s, when I was a teenager, I remember the term "manic depressive" being used amongst ordinary non-medical folks to denote a person who was (or had been) extremely depressed. The concept of pathologically elevated moods was quite alien to the public consciousness back then. Perhaps the younger and more chemically "enhanced" or "altered" generations have more experience of their own mood elevations to be able more easily to sympathize with maniacs and hypomaniacs... I don't know. But going back to "manic depressives"... the big irony is that all the worst cases of depression I've known or known of were without exception people with ordinary "unipolar" depression (ie these people had never in their lives been hypo/manic). Bipolar CAN involve episodes of extremely intense depression. The difference between "unipolar" and "bipolar" depression is said to be that bipolar depression tends to be shorter-lasting and when it does go away the person isn't necessarily "well"... they could well be on the way up to mania.

Anyway I'm more interested in computers of the silicon-&-plastic type than the vagaries of the human biocomputer at this point in time... I have some tech-related questions to anyone with an answer...
1. what package do you usually use for wordprocessing? Is Windows Wordpad any good?
2. what software do I need for audio/video editing? I'm talking about simple stuff, eg if I record myself giving a speech and want to chop out the boring bits, or use parts of a take-2 interspersed with take-1, that sort of thing... what package would I use for that?
3. if I want to make "photoshopped"-looking video (ie to put in surreal special effects) what package would I need then?
4. can anybody recommend a good printer for printing out text in black and white? Are lasers still better than ink jets? Because they always used to be. Laser printing always used to be waterfast, which is an advantage when you're an inveterate cocoa drinker like me and get runny ringmarks on everything...
5. what advantages, if any, do MacBooks have over PCs?
6. if I think up a 6th question I'll let you know
12 MAR 2015:
YES QUESTION 6 I'M LOOKING AT THE LENOVO M30, has anybody got any comments on this laptop?
THANX FOR YOUR HELP!

Celebrity Big Brother Addict

I'M ADDICTED TO CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER... Yes! To those of you on foreign shores who may have seen local editions of the show many moons ago I have to inform you that Big Brother is STILL showing in the UK, 15 years after first airing. Celebrity Big Brother is in its 15th series (showing twice a year now).

Back in the day, I and most of my friends were glued to the first couple of series of "normal" Big Brother... but for me at least the novelty of that show has completely worn thin and I wouldn't watch it even if tied down and forced. It's full of wannabes and talentless weirdos.

Celebrity Big Brother is a different matter because even though more than half of the housemates are unknown to me, the people who go in are used to the limelight, know who they are and what they're about. They don't have the same "pathetic factor" as so many ordinary BB wannabes. So paradoxically, the "celebrity" contestants come across as more "real". It's a little bit like if you imagine assistants from the local shop, the lady from the post office etc took part. You don't really "know" them, of course, but you know more about them than a perfect stranger. This is the attraction of Celebrity Big Brother to me. It's not starry and fake. The contestants clash constantly and fight (verbally). They are anything but glossy and false.

This year we have the famous blogger Perez Hilton up against "Britain's most hated woman" ~ Sun newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins. Patsy Kensit (who has done so much more than just been former wife and mother of the children of Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher ~ I like her; I really think she's something special) and Nadia Sawalha (TV presenter here in the UK, big sister of actress Julia who played the uptight daughter Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous) have been evicted.

Ken Morley, who played the hilarious supermarket manager Reg Holdsworth in Coronation Street was chucked out for "wholly unacceptable and offensive" comments. Poor fellow. I think the older generation find it hard to navigate the vagaries of today's politically correct world. He was deliberately trying to be irritating/entertaining/controversial but crossed the line ~ and got the axe. I kind of feel sorry for him.

The biggest "star" in there is Katie Price, former glamour model aka Jordan, who has toned down considerably (except for her skin, which is a fake tan shade of mahogany orange: she slavers on dark brown face cream every night). I'm sure she's had a nose job. She looks far prettier now at 36 than she was 10 years ago at the peak of her fame. Of course a lot of people don't respect Katie Price, saying she has no talent etc etc. Well she must have a talent for something because she's at the top of her game with an estimated fortune of £45 million ($67,799,250 US). From what I've seen of her on CBB I quite like her. She's no more vulgar than the average girl on the street (talking about sex etc). Most normal girls do that, in far more graphic detail than boys ever use and anyone who's shocked by that, I think is a bit naïve.

I think the most drowned-out personality, which is a shame, because she's one of the coolest people ever to go on the show, is the American singer and TV and radio host Michelle Visage. She's fascinating but I don't think we're going to see her shine because it's so much the "Perez Hilton Show"...

Perez Hilton caused a stir by winding up "soul legend" Alexander O'Neal, who ended up walking and Katie Hopkins rather unconvincingly, I thought, made a huge deal about how anyone who crossed "the big man" (Alexander) had also made an enemy of her. I just think she was sucking up to the soul legend and trying to position herself centre-stage. And it worked. Ever since he and Katie have been at loggerheads and it's been very entertaining. Perez is also hated by Cami Li, who is some sort of American tattoo model who dated a reality TV star from TOWIE (big wow) ie she's not a real celebrity at all but she's entertaining to watch. Other people in there are 90s pop star Kavana, 80s kids' TV presenter Keith Chegwin and 2000s "playboy" model Calum Best (son of famous socker star George Best). Yeah so that is what has been grabbing my attention over the past week. Watching celebrities at their undignified/entertaining/heartwarming/pathetic best and worst. It's gripping viewing!

Illustrated: most entertaining CBB contestants this year (note the female-heavy bias) from top: Katie Price, Perez Hilton, Katie Hopkins, Ken Morley, Nadia Sawalha, Patsy Kensit, Calum Best, Michelle Visage ...

PATSY KENSIT SINGS PET SHOP BOYS
This is the only song of hers I remember... it came out in 1988
I'M NOT SCARED
It's a great tune...

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...

A Real Pen!

HEY SOMEBODY BOUGHT ME A PRESENT! YES, finally I'm the proud owner of a real ink pen again! I lost all my old pens when I turned into a raving heroin junkie nearly 14 years ago (don't even know where they went: I certainly didn't sell 'em). I love a good ink pen, with a liberal nib that splurges ink all over the paper (before it sinks in, you can see the wet writing sort of standing up on the paper). So I'm really happy with this pen. It is for writing great literature with. Well... editing the "great literature" already written. I've so far revamped 5000 words and have "only" 25,000 to go! (Which is not that much prose: Liz set a goal to pen 50,000 words this month alone! A shortish adult novel would be 80,000 words and that would occupy about 200-300 pages, depending on typesetting.) So my 30,000 words isn't that much at all. When I'm in a good mood I do think (or hope, more like) that they're 30,000 pretty amazing words, it has to be said. (Well someone has to believe in this book~ it's my job to!)

WHY AM I SUCH A MISERABLE BASTARD? I should be happy. I have everything going for me. I have written draft one of this book I keep banging on about. Including illustrations it would comprise a 150-page (or so) volume.  So it's not that long. But at least I achieved something ~ so why am I so bloody miserable? Ukh, I have no idea.

I told my methadone worker about all this and the new life I was hoping/intending to start up, you know, as a worthy writer and all and she said "what about your mental health?" (my drugs worker thinks I'm really nutty, last time when I came in looking particularly scruffy she said I looked "very community care" (community care is what they call it when you see a person going barking mad at the traffic lights. It means there's not enough room in British mental hospitals). Oh I saw a TV prog t'other day on Channel 4 called Bedlam. The episode I saw just happened to feature 3 bipolar people. The theatre studies girl happened to have been slapped with the same horrible label as me ("schizoaffective")... but I couldn't help but notice, when her manic episode wore off and the meds were working she looked completely and utterly sane ~ I mean, even saner than I am. There was a big black guy who the nurses said was being "horrible" (you have to be REALLY horrible to get that label from a mental health nurse!) and lastly a bloke who'd come in after a "suicide attempt" looking really chirpy and not at all depressed. Supposedly bipolar, but it turned out to be a misdiagnosis. The new doctors decided he was personality-disordered, promptly withdrew all drugs and chucked him out of hospital! Yeah so anyway, my future mental health. Well I've never expected to feel any different in the future from how I do now, and it turns out that was a most pragmatic move on my part. Because I've "achieved a life goal" and yet I feel practically the same as before! Every morning I wake up feeling miserable. Every time I stop thinking, moving, speaking, writing~ the misery floods back. Like a sinking ship, when you cease bailing out. Swamped all over again. Oh I dunno!

Hey I just had a really nice pineapple-vanilla ice lolly split. I do love a good lolly in the autumn. Inspires the mind to greater things.

OK I've got to go. Noah I will get back to ya tomorrow. I'm about to be timed out by this ******g thing. Can't swear. Now that I'm a children's writer ha ha!

AND TO THE MYSTERY PERSON: THANK YOU FOR THE PEN!!

Illustrated: Lamy Al-Star ~ a fountain pen for writting intellectual books; Liz Hinds jailbird extraordinaire (she's a prison chaplaincy adult literacy counselling assistant. Or something... Authoress of This Time Next Year, available on Amazon! The last photo shows Liz's dog George having an "issue" over a twig with a Northern Spitz. Nothing to do with anything really. Just liked the picture!

Feeling Better: not so depressed/still writing "great literature"

FINALLY the fog of "depression"/whatever you wanna call it (feeling unamused + sleeping 12-16 hours per day EVERY day... yes THAT is lifting. O and when I did get up "early" (eg 8am) thinking how well I was doing, not only did I feel absolute stygian gloom, barely able to function at all, but I'd flop down on the sofa, maybe a couple of hours later, after I'd done all I had to do for the day ~ getting methadone, buying shopping in etc, so the rest of the day was comparitively "optional" then BAM!! straight to sleep and catching up on every single hour "lost" plus EVEN MORE! ~ meaning I just couldn't win. I told my GPs (both of them) and they nodded understandingly. They certainly didn't try and imply if only I had more mettle and forced myself to stay awake I'd somehow be all right because I wasn't all right. The less sleep the LOWER my mood went. It was horrible. ANYWAY this is all finished now and I'm currently on 9 hours. My mood today has actually gone UP. I'm really excited because I found some yummy blue soft cheese (Cambazola) to put in my French baguettes, which I eat nearly every day. Or is it because I'm busily writing the most amazing children's book of all time? I don't know!

Ukh. As for my brilliant writerly idea... I REALLY need a good "literary agent" with whom to discuss this stuff. My family are good, but really just as clueless as me when it comes to the wherewithalls of publishing. I haven't the faintest idea how that industry works and I need someone I can bounce ideas off who is NOT my publisher, because I feel I should produce (and hence publish) my stuff in a certain way, in a certain order of appearance. Maybe I'm sounding a bit mysterious here: what I mean is, I have so very many ideas for stories it'd take me at least the next five years to write them all. That's if I took up writing full-time. Currently I'm only writing ~ really ~ part-time I haven't the physical energy to scribble away at this hobby of mine full-time.

(Most of the time when I'm "writing" I'm actually watching True Movies 2 on Freesat!)

I was watching French television last night (as you do when you're supposedly writing an intellectual novel) and this brilliant prison drama came on called Unité 9 ~ far better than the present-day rehash of Prisoner Cell Block H they're calling Wentworth. I also saw a good courtroom-cum-prison drama Anybody's Nightmare, starring Patricia Routledge (Hyacinth Bucket) on True Entertainment. The real-life story of Sheila Bowler, a middle-aged, middle-class music teacher falsely accused and then convicted of the murder of her frail and elderly aunt. That was really good too.

You know as I'm getting older and becoming an accomplished intellectual novelist, I can watch TV drama and think "no that's a cheap shot; they should have focused more on that character, added an establishing scene here, rejiggled a bit there, done it this other way". + when I read other people's books I'm constantly blue-pencilling other writers' prose  (I do it enough to my own). I got Sharon Osbourne's latest memoir Unbreakable from Morrisons for £10 (Binky thinks this is the biggest self-indulgence, spending £10 on A book!) ~ no ghostwriter is credited, but some of the prose, at its best is top-drawer. Paul Burrel's book A Royal Duty doesn't credit a ghostwriter either and that's amazingly well done, considering the lengthy, convoluted story he had to tell and, in the words of her brother, Earl Spencer: a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds. 

I once tried penning my own memoir ~ a "misery memoir" as my own tale would be labelled ~ and I can tell you it is NOT easy ~ not just recalling your own life in brutal close-up, but detailing precisely HOW and why one thing led to another, what was said by whom and how it made you feel. The misery of my own memoiring made me so depressed that  I gave up in favour of fiction. Then I gave up writing for grown-ups because I was so fed up of the shitty world I would have to portray (+ too uninspired to write anything approaching a full-length book), and, in the end didn't even want to feel obliged to reproduce swear-words in print, that I finally gravitated to children's fiction, perhaps the one single arena of innocence left in this dark and nasty world ...

Ukh, every time I post I seem to be writing the same thing. Yes I'm writing a story. By £1 shop pen, on WH Smiths lined refill paper. But I can't tell you what it's about! It's not finished.

OK I've got to go now. Hope you're all OK. Take care y'all...

Illustrated: (upper) WH Smith's "wide-ruled refill pad" ~ what I use for the composition of great literature..! (middle) Cambazola ~ soft and spreadable blue cheese (lower) Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It, to date, the most successful "misery memoir" of all time...

VIDEO: AGATHA CHRISTIE

Most successful author of all time with agglommerated sales of (allegedly) 2,000,000,000(!!!)
Her detectives Poirot and Miss Marple are still on British TV every single week. Mistress of the "whodunnit"! Her books seem incredibly "creaky" by today's standards but she's very popular on television. Her detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple can be seen on British screens every week, and new productions based on her 66 mystery novels  are still being made.
Her play The Mousetrap is the longest-running stage production in recorded history. Opening in 1952, it's STILL GOING after SIXTY-ONE YEARS!!!

AUDIO: ENID BLYTON INTERVIEW
She was the most successful children's author of all time and one of my favourites. When I want "inspiration" I read her Famous Five books, which are delightfully PI (politically incorrect!)
Her prose might be rather plain, but it's really readable.
Americans seem not to have heard of her, but she's a pillar of British culture. Very famous indeed within these shores!

. 

VIDEO: BARBARA CARTLAND (WITH JAR JAR GABOR (WHATEVER HER NAME WAS))

Barbara Cartland is supposedly the second-bestselling British writer of ALL TIME

(Have YOU ever read one of her books? I haven't!)
In her final years she was knocking out one slim historical romance per fortnight ~ publishing 24 titles per year, each of which would sell a million copies around the world. Frequently appeared on British TV extolling the virtues of vitamins and reprimanding the modern proclivity to sex before marriage!

French and Saunders on Andy Warhol

I WAS GONNA put this up at the time, when I went through a "poring over Andy Warhol's Diaries" phase. But here ya go now:

FRENCH AND SAUNDERS: ANDY WARHOL SPOOF

New Television Laughter Mockery

BINKY, my mentally challenged schizoaffective borderline personality friend, was laughing and laughing her head off when I told her all excitedly doing an "I'm going to piss my pants any moment!" voice about my gigantic new television. How big is it? she said. Twenty-one inches! Then she nearly pissed herself laughing so I said so how big is your telly then? And guess what it is FIFTY TWO INCHES. No wonder the screen looks blurry up close. And how come if it's HD it doesn't do the Freeview HD channels? That's a bloody rip-off. And it is capable of crisp visual production because when you change channels the bit that says "BBC1 ~ not in HD you fool!" is really nice and you can't see any dots in or around the perfectly smooth lettering.

But my TV has a really crisp picture all the time and I will not be laughed at!! It's the best kind of telly you can get, with a perfectly flat GLASS screen (so you can stub cigarettes out on Moira Stewart's face without danger of a permanent mark obscuring one's enjoyment of Downton Abbey at 9pm on Sunday night. But unlike a modern telly, which is like a picture in a frame, it has a GINORMOUS cathode ray back, meaning measured back to front it's deeper than it is wide. Anyway I love my telly. And I've got to go. Oh we laughed and laughed this morning/this afternoon/whenever. Then she said to me "say something really loud in a Scottish accent when you go out" this was to meet the drug dealer for her but I'm not using any (seriously). So I did the only

Scottish voice I am capable of, which sounds like a nest full of baby eagles with Jimmy Krankie squarks being molested by a psychiatrically disturbed jackal. Very excitable indeed.

Here is Jimmy Krankie's Susan Boyle impression.

O yeah and I forgot to end the story. A very flustered Australian member of staff (in the halfway nuthouse where Binky lives) was down by the front door saying what's wrong what's wrong. Thinking a giant argument had broken out. Ukh.

And anyway ~ back in the 80s 21" used to be as big as tellies ever got!



Jimmy Krankie back in the 80s at the library...



Illustrated: A manic smiley because I'm still in an elevated mood; Not Pinky but a Chinese girl in a pink dress displaying a 52" telly; back in the day ~ Moira Stewart along with a guy with really terrible bus driver's glasses like I used to wear; the venerable Downton Abbey... featuring Dame Maggie Smith and if you're American by the way, you have to watch it on PBS ~ how patronizing and demeaning for such a classic show! Far as I know, PBS is a channel for programmes that are too foreign, worthy and irrelevant to everyday American life to be shown on the proper networks!, which in my opinion, Downton Abbey most certainly is not!!! It features Shirley McLaine as the Countess's mother for one thing... And maybe they should bring in Warren Beattey as an ageing, libidinous gardener to knock off Lady Mary...?

Hey, and then they could bring in an episdoe featuring an edwardian clap clinic! (not because I think Warren Beattey has the clap but his character would do... o yes and syphillis... did you know tertiary syphillis of the brain used to make a person die deliriously happy, according to an old psychology text i once read...

By the way, why don't manufacturers of computes make up new keys featuring question and exclamation marks with commas underneath? Because they are certainly needed...

Great Big Free New TV!

THIS AFTERNOON, when I finally woke up after four, I found a huge old TV set outside our house. So I got my methadone then dragged it into our house, plugged it in and... the flickery screen was covered in random red and green lines and the top of the picture wasn't there. But it warmed up to display a full screen of snow. So I plugged in the satellite box and ~ presto! ~ a beautiful 21" widescreen picture appeared (in letterbox format. I can't see the point of shelling out for a 16:9 telly if you can get that anyway on an old 4:3 set). The visual quality is far better than Pinky's ginormous 40"+ HD telly, when standard definition pictures look like they're being viewed through a fine mesh, as if the pixels don't line up properly.

And to think I was going to waste £150 ($238.96) on an HD TV/DVD combo. Which would have had to been FULL HD ~ 720 pixels are not enough ~ hey so now I can spend all that money on drugs!!!

Just kidding. Like I said yesterday I'm intending to buy a blue camera. Is 5x optical zoom enough? The best I could find for under £50 ($79.71) was 14 megapixel with 5x optical zoom; 7.2x digital zoom. For 10x zoom you needed to pay nearly £100 ($159.31). Do all digital cameras do macro close up mode? I really need that function because when I had a camera phone I was always photographing tree bark and moss. I would really like to get a close-up of a furry great bumble bee.

O yes and I was a bit manic all day yesterday. Pinky seemed to think I was completely nutty. Which is a bit like the pus calling the maggot white (differently politically incorrect way of mentioning a pot calling a kettle black because that's o so racist!) We were watching Donny Darko when I realized Real Housewives of New York were on the screen. It was because she had switched the film off because I was talking too much.

My elevated exuberant hyperactive mood lulled deceptively in the evening. Then I went to bed and had this constant feeling like I was rushing on Ecstasy. Which was really nice, just not very convenient. Finally I went to sleep after 6am and woke at midday and didn't want to get up so I drowsed all afternoon feeling most louche. And when I got up, my mood was still elevated. I find myself chuckling over nothing.

O and my legs ache. Because I was pacing pacing pacing full of a million ideas for great literary creations which I duly noted all over several sheets. Only to wake up and find my ideas weren't quite as distinguished as I'd thought...

Hey hum. I have to go because I'm going to be timed out but ~~~~~

FREE GIANT TV!!!!! WOW!!!!!

It's Daewoo, by the way? Don't they usually make cars?

What a Grey Day...

IT IS nearly 4pm. I have been up since 10 or 11am. I go to bed relatively early and get up late because I'm sleeping 12 hours solid. Between 7 and 9am I nearly always wake up. Then I drink my methadone and fall back to sleep. Drinking my dose a good 2 hours before I get up means that once I am up, the methadone is working full-on and I'm far less tempted to use the alternative.

I had a horrible dream that my Dad, who doesn't even like taking headache pills, had a couple of ounces of very low grade, dark brown heroin.

Usually when I wake up after a dream like that, I just want to use. But today it never even crossed my mind.

I got up, got tomorrow's methadone (because I pick it up a day in advance) and for some reason, youtubed up the Prisoner Cell Block H theme, which made me so sad I nearly cried.

I have felt lousy all day. I never even bothered showering until ten minutes ago. I have been stuck in a chair, staring at television, not wanting to move.

Yesterday, I suppose I managed about 900 words of this children's story, which is supposed to be ridiculous comedy. I was going to force out another 600 words (2 manuscript pages) last night, but had taken my medication too early and just wanted to sleep.

I'm only on 300mg (quetiapine). My friend is on 750 mg quetiapine (Seroquel) plus TWO antidepressants ~ mirtazapine and venlafaxine (Remeron and Effexor). What the doctors are trying to do in her case is medicate the very changeable moods of borderline personality disorder (her quetiapine is for schizophrenic psychosis) but I'm not sure this can ever work.

The BPD is sometimes considered to be on the "bipolar spectrum" but the mood swings in BPD ~ swinging from OK (not euphoric or high) to very angry, frustrated or sad ~ are totally different from bipolar moods which in my case have, at the extreme, alternated between highest exaltation and deepest despair, although I can get extremely irritable at both poles, especially mania.

Anyway I am not and have not been even hypomanic for several weeks. I am now getting more and more depressed.

Under normal cirumstances my moods aren't very much more extreme than those of Stephen Fry as filmed for the Secret Life of the Manic Depressive documentary, although when I'm hypomanic I'm probably more hyper, more cheerful and prone to laugh uproariously  over practically nothing. My attitude towards the "illness" is similar to his. He was taking no medication and I don't want any more than I'm on. The last thing I want is a mood that's pancake-flat.

I also agree with the man who says he's seen angels in psychotic mania ~ that it's worth any amount of misery to go that high. [I didn't see angels: I felt trillions of volts powering through my brain and went into outer space.]

But I agree with Carrie Fisher too ~ eventually I'm going far too fast. Thoughts are racing totally out of control. Then they all crash into each other and become completely garbled. The whole world is in ridiculous slow motion. So that when the computer asked me for a password and then spent what felt like months considering my answer before allowing me in, I very nearly sent it crashing across the room, on many occasions.

Someone once asked me how, if I was in such a mess, I managed to put up posts with pictures. The answer is, I very nearly didn't. The pictures only appeared hours later and the effort of finding them put me into near-meltdown with yelling and swearing and the computer was lucky to survive at all.

In mania the symptoms vary widely over the course of a day. So when I was in complete confusion ~ which lasted for hours ~ I never posted at all. I couldn't even speak coherently, let alone write, And there were many occasions when I literally could not read at all.

As for "liking" being bipolar, if my mood continues to fall, ask me the same question in a couple of weeks and you might get a very different answer.

(I'm not trying to say, by the way, that I enjoy losing my mind, just that I love the extremely high moods... And why does the world have to be so crap that the only "illness" that makes you feel better than anything else is the same one that shows you utter hopeless bleakness and despair?)

Over the last couple of days, I took to wondering, if I ever did achieve success, how I would possibly cope. The answer is, if I ever made any serious money (how would I do that anyway?) I would be extremely stressed by it. But would still far rather be rich than poor. The only thing it could pay for is a change of scenery and I would use it to insulate me from the world as much as possible. And I don't think I will ever find true happiness. Never, ever.

I have just been watching, with one eye, a documentary about the Baader-Meinhof gang and Stammheim prison. I love TV programmes about the Cold War era, the Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc. That's one reason I so like watching telly in German.

My house is getting more and more untidy. I don't mind cleaning sinks, surfaces and showers ~ what I hate is clearing, sweeping, scrubbing and mopping the floor ~ and it requires all four. So most of the rubbish is on the floor now, uncleared up.

The Great Bathroom Stench, by the way, has temporarily gone. I know if I call the landlord, the bad smell will hide, only to return with avengeance once he's left.

I should end on an inspiring note ~ weeks before that man made the 128,000 ft leap from space to earth, another guy in America, constructed a gas baloon with a camera that filmed the whole ride up right into the stratosphere. When it fell to earth with a GPS, they found it and you can watch the film here.

Fastforward 2 mins 15 in to see the launch...



And here's that Prisoner Cell Block H tune...



*

Multi-Scart Selector (!!!)

CAN'T STOP... in too much of a rush... I'm on the way back from Argos (the shop that sells everything ~ I have even bought heroin in there (when the dealer happened to be shopping for an electric blanket) with a little gizmo that will let me plug in two tellyboxes and a DVD player and select which to watch by means of buttons.




Must go: I'm so excited I feel like I'm gonna piss myself!

Bugerlugs' Secret: How To Make Clothes Smell Ultra-Fresh...

BUGERLUGS, my fellow heroin-addicted blog-friend gave me a tip on how to make my laundry reek overpoweringly of Fabric Softener. Add an overdose of this to the powder-drawer during the last rinse; then it will reek overpoweringly of "blue". True to her word, the only brand that really works is Blue Lenor. My local Sainsbury's sells "x4 freshness" and x"7 freshness". Only the first of these was on 2x750ml for £3 special offer but I invested in the allegedly stronger one anyhow. I had to sit through the entire rinse-cycle with pen, paper and wristwatch, timing and numbering each spin so next time I can know exactly where I am in the cycle.

Because I was so paranoid, I ended up adding two capfuls each to the second and final rinses. The recommended dose is only a half or one cap. But I want everyone in the vicinity of my specially-treated garments to go into near-anaphalaxis, so I didn't mind wasting a bit on a second-last phase that was only going to rinse it out. You have to be absolutely sure you're tipping it into the very end of the wash, otherwise it'll only get drenched out leaving barely the faintest aroma behind.

True to Bugerlugs' word, only Lenor is potent enough ~~ and it absolutely must be blue Lenor. She has experimented with every other colour and nothing else works. By the time the final mind-blowingly extended nuclear-strength spin was done, it was too dark to creep into the yard to peg them out, and I was terrified that fresh air might blow all the artificial "blueness" away.

So they've been on my Ikea indoor hanger. They smell OK, but next time I'm adding ten capfuls, just to make sure. I want people's eyes to water when they go near me and I want my entire flat to smell like Valium Marilyn's place. She spends the twilight of her days in a beautiful top-floor apartment reclining chaise-longue-style in front of panoramic HD cable television. I keep warning her not to fall out with her son, who pays the cable bill, because without National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet, life as she knew it would be over...  And her flat reeks of fabric softener too...

By the way, Bugerlugs: there is a most unpleasant warning on the bottle saying never to use Lenor on bedlinen or children's clothes and never ever to add it direct to fabric, as anything treated with their product becomes highly flammable. Offputting or what? ??~!?

I'm still sleeping marathon hours. I was in bed by two last night and woke up midday-thirty (I spend no time lying in bed awake ~ that is just too depressing ...) So I got straight up, put something on German television that I couldn't understand. Felt pissed off. And was back in bed within twenty minutes. This time I dreamed a lot. I don't like dreaming. I went back to Park Meadow in Hatfield, where I grew up. Then I was up again by three, not at all happy to be awake. I always think: if you have nothing to write then write nothing ~~ and yet this is a daily journal. So that is my non-diary for today...

Next time, maybe I'll have laundered more clothes. So wow. Maybe there will be something exciting to add to the record...

*

MUSIC
JEANETTE DIMECH: SPAIN'S BEST-KEPT SECRET
When I was ten and my Dad got remarried, he and my new step-Mum brought two of her tapes back from their honeymoon...

SOY REBELDE
"I'm a rebel"... this time with English subtitles...




EL MUCHACHO DE LOS OCHOS TRISTES
"The sad boy of eight"...




✔ ➝☨+*✔✔ ➝☨+*✔

Not a Good Mood

I HAVE BEEN not in a good mood all weekend. Every time something stresses me (and doing anything at all, or even thinking of, or worse, trying to think out something in stages does my head in) ~~ I flip my lid. And if someone else happens to be there I start yelling at them.

Today I am trying to stay calm. My druggieworker is not in. Duty fobbed me off by saying my script was not printed, said I couldn't make an appointment to see my own worker tomorrow but instead should phone first thing and ask for one then. I am trying not to be blazingly annoyed about this. I'm kind of starting to feel bad about everything but I'm not that depressed. I can still put on a Great Big "I'm OK" Act. So that's good:... ¿isn't it?

This morning I ended up googling "depression". I mean: what am I possibly going to find of any use over the internet except that exceptionally irritating quoted-to-death list of DSM Diagnostic Criteria that are no help whatever to anyone who has been depressed for more than a few weeks. The depressive state very quickly begins to feel normal and the "sufferer" will start to believe that their low mood is a justifiable reaction to a life of failure and in no way an illness of any kind. Even if they have been depressed before. Or had previous bipolar episodes. When I was at the lowest I've ever been I remember claiming not to be suffering; and yet I felt so bad that even the memory of my thoughts and feelings that week (and it was only about a week) left me traumatized for months.

I gave up drinking for about four days(?)~ or so until yesterday, when I decided to test it with one can of strawberry cyder (4% ABV: 2 alcoholic units) and a one-pint can of Skol, which I found unopened on the trek back home (3% ABV: 1.7 alcoholic units). I felt nothing, partly because I was so averse to the taste of beer it took over an hour to sup it. I used to get a yen for cold beer on hot summer afternoons. But this hasn't happened for years. I detest the taste of alchol and don't like the feeling it gives me, which nowadays seems to be a fatigued and heavy-limbed state with mild drowsiness. No "high" of any kind. Getting a "high" from alcohol, which is a cocaine-like feeling I had never experienced until last year and nothing at all like feeling "drunk", when I was already manic, is most likely a warning that (hypo-)mania is crouched in hiding around a very close corner. Or that I'm (hypo-)manic already. A small amount of alcohol was enough to set this off, and it never gave me the craving for more, because twice the drink never makes me feel twice as good. Simple law of the jungle, that one. And another reason why I don't think my drinking, which began as a side-order to accompany heroin, has ever rendered me a true dipsomaniac. I'm not sure alcohol has ever intensified feelings of depression, but when I do feel depressed, drink usually seems to do very little. Or nothing at all. I don't like it. Don't need it. And want to live a life without it... Mint n Lime is much nicer. Except the shop has already run out because I've bought every single carton from their fridge. So I tried Lemon and Lime, which was right next to it. And it's absolutely gross: with the artificial citrus flavour you got in the cheap 1980s-version of granulated "lemon tea".

I wanted to get rid of the following paragraph but may as well keep it in. Hey maybe somebody, somewhere will get a really good laugh out of it.

Yesterday I nearly blew my top because the ridiculous voice over on a tellyprog called "Planet Earth Live: A Lion's Tale". It was patently NOT live and if you tried to film wild lions live you would probably get lots of shots of golden furry ears poking out above distant tufts of grass, so I'm thinking of writing a sarcastic letter to Points of View over that one. And the voice-over overdramatized everything: "hyenas are the NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL; if this hunt is not successful, mother and baby may STARVE TO DEATH" it's a bit like giving a running commentary on a person trying to catch a train saying ONE TRIP, ONE SLIP OFF THIS PLATFORM and a HIGH SPEED TRAIN may SLICE HIM IN HALF!!! Then I took issue over the phrase "mortal enemy". Because it is "too Latin" and I thought "deadly foe" sounded better. I just checked the etymology of my own expression and sure enough it is Anglo-Saxon. Yeah yeah yeah and I should probably get a life yeah yeah there is nothing else to write about except that I'm freezing cold too much of the time and I have no idea why (being on methadone might well have something to do with it.) I wish I could think something else to post but I can't, so I'm going now. Bye.

Well that's about all. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered posting today. Does anything at all that I say here mean anything to anyone? Help anyone? Amuse anyone? Even ring true to anyone? I'm not so sure it does. Well I've got to go. I said I would come down that mental unit again and that place is starting to piss me off. One nurse in particular, and it has to be the one who opens the locked door for me, has a towering attitude problem. The other day she said "If want to leave now please hurry up. I'm supposed to be doing a one to one and..." blah blah blah. I should have told her if she's doing one-to-one care on somebody she shouldn't be going near the door anyway. Perhaps another nurse should get off her great fat arse and leave that goldfish bowl of a nurses' station they like to hide out in. Avoiding doing anything that might fulfil the definition of "work". I think a lot of them choose mental nursing over physical because they think it's easier. But when your patients are mobile plus raving mad, nothing is ever easy. Except, as I say, hiding in the nurses' station, avoiding them...

I have a doctor's appointment first thing on Wednesday. Maybe I'll actually tell her how I really feel, instead of putting on my big "I'm fine" act. Not that there's anything she can do except propose changing the medication to olanzapine (Zyprexa) which I don't want. Particularly as the stuff is notorious for causing the unfortunate patient to balloon out with weight gain. She could try and get me an appointment with a shrink, but I doubt it. Last time I ended up in General Psychiatric Services I saw a new doctor every single time. Not even a proper psychiatrist, but a doctor-in-training only there to work off their compulsory stint in a psychiatric clinic so that when they do get out of that place they can turn their back and never work with mental patients again.



Illustrated: horrible granulated "lemon" tea; the DSM IV etc., books for psychiatrists quoted ad nauseum in websites designed for patients; Fizz strawberry cyder, a nonexistent nurses' station in a nonexistent hospital (this is supposed to be the nuthouse in the Bronx, New York, but somehow I doubt any mental unit anywhere looks quite that shiny and clean... an ad for would-be psychiatrists on the issue of street drugs. We used to have a notorious doctor in this area who loathed druggies and routinely discharged them from hospital and/or chucked them off his list. There is no question that he contributed to my friend's death by treating her so badly last time she was on his ward that she refused ever to return. Then was found dead, having overdosed on every bit of medication she could get her hands on...

***

MUSIC
Not at all in the mood for this, but what the hell...






***

Zao Ice Monsters (etc!)

HERE is a beautiful picture of "Zao ice monsters". Zao is the name of a mountain range in North-Eastern Japan. The ice-monsters are frost and snow-covered Aomiri firs. It's a combination of these trees' particularly dense needle coverage, and the fact that moist air flows over one mountain range, discharging itself then reaches Zao with exactly the amount of water required to turn the local trees into thickly covered snow-statues. I know all this because I saw it on Japanese state television last night. The English version. By the way the biggest city on that bit of coast is Fukushima, site of the famous nuclear disaster. So next winter, they'll probably have radioactive ice-monsters.

I GOT SO DESPERATE to sort my infected ear out that I've gone back to using the Otomize antibiotic spray I had in June and that I didn't like because it made me MORE deaf, not just for a few minutes like water in the ear, but all day long. The old infection was worse because it felt like I'd gone to sleep in a forest and a pine seed had fallen in my ear and sprouted, growing a fucking great pine tree right through my head!

Every day, when I wake up in the early afternoon, because I'm so exhausted, I feel like living crap. Today (and I'm writing this on Saturday) I had to rush to the post office before it closed. I could not run. But the entire walk there the world appeared to be swaying, the way it does when you've been on a boat for a week and haven't got your land legs back. It's not an inner ear infection, which could affect my balance. It's in the outer ear, on the external side of the eardrum. The nurse-practitioner said I was very yeasty. And covered in dandruff. Well that's as may be but the dandruff isn't that severe. It doesn't leave white frosting all over my shoulders, like in the stereotype. Anyway I told her I was going to get rid of it by dying my hair. She said it would have to be very strong hair dye to get rid of dandruff. It is: it's ammonia-peroxide ultimate platinum A001, the lightest you can get. Last time I put it on my head was burning. And the dandruff disappeared for about six months. My hair actually seemed to be in BETTER condition after the dye. It was nice and plasticky and dead straight. Not soft and wavy, like my hair is naturally. I asked Valium Marilyn, who also dyes her hair nearly white, whether it's normal for dye to make your scalp burn and she said yes. My friend Pinky who dyes her hair mid-blonde also said that type of dye also kills nits far more effectively than any nit shampoo. So that's worth remembering. If your kids have intractable nits, turn them platinum blond. They won't be scratching any more.

I've pruned my television channels down from about 550 to "only" 200. I did this by sorting through by language, getting rid of adult and shopping channels and adding the remainders to three favourites lists. Before I did this I was drowning in so much television that whenever I found anything that looked good I quickly lost it again and could never get it back.

By the way I know why German telly is so much better than British. It's because in Germany there is a compulsory €213 television licence fee (that's about £200 or $320US) they even have a €79 internet licence fee! The BBC waste their money on NINETEEN regional versions of BBC1 purely to broadcast less than an hour a day of local news, and to make very occasional regional programming that could just as well be shown nationally. Germany's ARD, the German BBC, have seven regions showing entirely different programming. My favourite is Bavarian TV. I kid you not, they really do have programmes full of middle-aged men in lederhosen and people wandering the Alps in traditional costume singing ancient songs! You only have to do the maths to see why German television is so much better. In a population of 81,859,000 they have just over 40,000,000 households paying £200 each, a total budget of £8 billion. With 63,100,000 inhabitants, Britain has only about 30,000,000 households paying just under £150 each, a total of "just" £4.5 billion for the BBC's coffers.

This crap they shove down our throats about the BBC making the best television in the world is just complete tosh. The first thing I would do if I were in charge of the BBC is to close down local news except for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and then I would shove all the broadcasts on to one dedicated channel, to save money. The BBC are so cheapskate that BBC3 and BBC4, their new digital channels, share frequencies with CBBC and Cbeebies, the kiddie channels. You can rent satellite space for less than £70,000 a year, so I don't know what excuse they have. Surely £4.5 billion can streth far enough to fill four full-time stations? With such a massive archive, why don't they show more repeats? We have all paid for them over the years. We ought to see them again. Well this is my TV rant over. I'm getting bored of television I'm going to go back to books for my diversion. I have gone years without watching TV at all. Because I didn't own a TV set. Most of the time I don't even "watch" it. I just listen to it, while doing something else. By the way, if you just want to watch catch-up services over the internet, you don't need a TV licence at all in this country.

O yeah I went out last night to buy elderberry-flavoured white chocolate and bumped into a crack-addicted prostitute I know. We ended up in an alley with people wandering past while she hit the pipe. Then she ran out and started yelling for this mad woman I see in the local shops. The mad woman has a habit of running up to anyone with a toddler, lunging dangerously close to the child while telling the terrified mother how cute it is. I spent about an hour wandering around with her saying hello to local drug addicts. I barely know anyone at all where I live. I probably have what Americans call "social phobia" because most of the time I feel no inclination to socialize. This, by the way, is supposedly a hallmark feature of schizophrenia (gradually losing interest in socializing). But what is schizophrenia? Everyone I know who has it believes they haven't actually got it!

How did I get on this subject. O yeah prostitution. My local high street happens to be an after-dark haunt of prostitutes, but how you're meant to know which woman are just normal females clacking home in their heels and which professional streetwalkers I have know idea. I asked Nikki how her punters knew what she was out doing and she said she didn't know. Real prostitutes where I live look nothing like the hookers from American TV dramas.

O bloody hell I've got to go. I hope y'all are having a most charming weekend. Don't drink too much (I have given up alchol). Don't waste your time on the internet. And don't watch too much TV.

Illustrated: ice monsters and skiers, ultimate platinum, ice monsters and cable cars, elderflower white chocolate

American-style Crisscross Fries

I COULDN'T FIND "American-style curly fries" last time I looked in Iceland ~ no I'm not a jetset food tourist: Iceland is the about the cheapest food shop in Britain. Especially if like me you have really chavvy taste. So instead of curly I went crisscross ~ and they are deliciously vulgar. I can really imagine eating them on the 18th floor of a towerblock in the flat next to a crackhouse. The type of block where the lifts stink of skunk and the only gold in sight (that isn't round the drugdealer's neck) is on packets of Benson and Hedges cigarettes. It's not all bad living in the sky. You do get really amazing TV reception up there.

(I don't smoke Benson and Hedges: they're too expensive for me. I smoke Berkley or Sterling Superkings, broken into 3 and rolled into 3 separate mini-cigarettes, complete with Swan mini-filters. This way I can go an entire 24-hours on just "10" cigarettes (made into 30).

When I'm really broke, I pick up dog-ends from the bus stop, but you have to be careful when you find what looks like a really juicy discarded roll-up. Several times I've imbibed cannabis this way. Cannabis is the drug I loathe beyond all others. It's like paranoid schizophrenia and Alzheimer's rolled into a skin. Last time I smoked it (and that really was by accident) I was hearing voices within about 4 tokes. It's nasty nasty stuff. Psychosis without the manic, elevated mood.

Anyway what was I talking about. O yeah crisscross fries. I eat mine with battered cod chunks and chopped tomatoes doused in black pepper and vinegar.

Does anyone follow Real Housewives of New York City? Yesterday I finally caught up with enough to be able to follow the story. Isn't that LuAnn a bitch when she's angry? Very beautiful though. How old is she? Does she have great genes or a great plastic surgeon, or both? She was having a massive row with Alex over some inter-housewife hiccup on their marakesh trip. She's the kind of girl you have to go several rounds with in the verbal fighting before you get to shoot every point she makes down in flames.

I just found out she was born in 1965, so she's about 47..?? Anyway I feel sorry for people appearing in those docusoaps. What it's easy for the viewer to forget is that whenever you end up in a fight with another character, you're not just interested in winning the fight. Your entire social standing and reputation could depend on the outcome. So no stress then.

American TV producers have a weird grasp of the word "housewife". Here it means a stay-at-home wife and/or mother who spends her days doing minor chores between tea and biscuits and turgid TV of the kind I watch...

Anyway I can't wait till I get foreign telly piped in. I'm so fed up of the English crap it's unreal.

I haven't touched heroin in days. 15 or 16mg methadone, whatever the dose is, holds me perfectly. I make sure I drink it in the early afternoon ~ which means there's little to no risk of waking in the morning feeling sick and not wanting to face the walk to the chemists plus an hour-+ wait after drinking to feel OK again.


☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚

Illustrated: crisscross fries; Benson & Hedges; Sterling Superkings used to cost about £2.96 for 10, now they're usually £3.15. I have never seen them on sale at £2.20 (far as I know they were only put on the market about a year ago); LuAnn de Lesseps ~ I have no idea what the subtitle means.

PS I just found out "to imbibe" means to drink in. I've never drunk cannabis (though there is a method of soaking grass into vodka) ~ what the hell; I like the sound of it so it's staying in...

VIDEO
MANIC STREET PREACHERS: DESIGN FOR A LIFE
THIS song is for you BEVERLYBABE and ANNA GRACE:~~ "We don't talk about love ~ we only want to get drunk..."
Usually I'm not that into this guitar-type music, but this tune is a classic.



    ♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚♫ ♬☮ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤ ♡ ☯ ☢ ✔ ➝✚

Flat as a Giant Pancake...

I FEEL flat as a French pancake (they are very flat). And kind of depressed. What am I saying? I probably am depressed. I wake up every morning hating the day. Then Judge Judy comes on various channels. Then various shows about housewives that I don't actually watch; they just come on anyway. There's nothing at all on TV tonight so I'm definitely going for German TV. At least that way, I can waste hours on end and tell myself it's all an education as I'm picking up the language.

There's little else to say. I wrote this about 8pm last night. Only thing I'm looking forward to is popping my 2 pills that wipe me out. Nothing to stay awake for.

Ha! Except, I found this OK but totally BO-ridden crackhead's jacket in the trash. I know it belongs to a crackhead as an old Martel pipe came tinkling out of the same bin. Anyways, I've washed it once yet it STILL reeks. So I've tried to copy Bugerlugs' technique by soaking bath towels in half a bucket of water and three capfuls of blue fabric conditioner. Later I'm going to add more conditioner and more water and soak this jacket on top to see if I can get it fresh again. Then I'm going to wash the whole lot with at least three times the recommended dose of softner. And see what happens. I've turned the spin off on the washing machine to try and save electricity...