Mood:  celebratory

CLOSE TO THE CUSP of New Year’s Day; I am tempted to go out begging the revellers for change. But that would be going backwards a few years.

   Sad as that may seem, I can’t do it. Also my gut feeling tells me to stay inside. I have my methadone. I’ve drunk quite some quantity in advance to prevent that nasty phenomenon of waking early feeling sick, like I did this morning. I was barely over the cusp of withdrawal — just a bit under the weather…

Posted by gledwood at 11:59 PM GMT

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HI PEOPLE

Please read this carefully: I am moving my blog to a blogspot address. I am trying to move ALL of this blog but they're not playing ball. PLEASE BEAR WITH ME and BEAR IN MIND IMPORTANT.

[I'M NOW WORKING FROM THE URL YOU SEE IN MASSIVE TYPE BELOW.]

If I have continuing problems with that address then I'm going to have to use it as an archive blog and open yet another one. IF THAT IS THE CASE, I SHALL GIVE THE NEW URL HERE. So please DON'T update your links/etc yet, please... this is winding me up so badly I marvel I haven't got concussion from BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL.

 Yes I had continuing problems.

 So please note because this has changed again; the new-new blog url is:—

MY NEW BLOG - WITH THE NEW POSTINGS - IS AT

http://gledwood2.blogspot.com

both new blogs will be linked together. Assuming they allow me even that...

ANY MESSAGES ABOUT MY NEW BLOG(S)/ADDRESS(ES) I WILL LEAVE HERE. If nothing seems to change at the above url, there will most certainly be a new one. If I need to, I will give it here.

I don't know what else to say. I have a new blog open and I cannot post on it because I've transferred so many old postings, google assume I'm spamming (who? myself??) and won't let me post tonight. I could go on but promised myself not to swear. Okay? So that's the problem. Hopefully tomorrow all will be up and running. If not I'm opening a new blog and shall give the new url below.

SO LOOK HERE AND I'LL KEEP YOU POSTED.

Many thanks for your patience. You've probably got more of it than me.

Gledwood

Posted by gledwood at 9:09 PM GMT

Updated: Sunday, 21 January 2007 6:40 PM GMT

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Mood:  special

Okay, folks: if you're wondering why no new post for today it's because my blog is moving:—

The new url is...

http://gledwood2.blogspot.com

This will be my ONGOING BLOG WITH NEW DAILY POSTINGS etc.

I've also opened an archive blog on blogspot which is http://gledwood.blogspot.com but they will not let me post any more aparently I've exceeded their "dumping" quota... Please don't mix these urls up as I don't even know whether I can redirect you from the archive to the main one, it's being that strict with me about new postings. And I know it's not full......... 

Please bear with me while I load up a "best of" this old one, get the settings right, &c &c &c.

Got fed up of this one being 1 too slow, 2 absolutely no instructions on how to paste a nice little sitemeter 3 it's getting full.

Okay then, see yers at the new address.

Posted by gledwood at 12:42 AM GMT

Updated: Sunday, 21 January 2007 12:25 PM GMT

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Mood:  d'oh

Okay: this might turn out to be a bit of a nonentry. But I'll try. I have not been feeling too fantastic the last few days. The only fun I've had has been talking to people I know through these blogs-boxes (you know, the commentboxes).

As I said below, I slept in late. Went round supermarket after I posted that: no beef sausages thanks very much. All along was really killing time as tyke dealer not ready. (I call him a tyke: to the best of my knowledge he's 22.) I know these people well enough that when one in particular says "half an hour" he means in 2 hours' time when I've got me a driver". Was in no hurry. Why hurry when you're not sick? It all goes — all gets used up pretty quick. Having said that I took half of it. Had kept cooking on for an hour and a half by now. Gauwched out again (maybe "slept", when you've been on the stuff as long as I have the drugs and one's normal state become so intermixed it's hard to tell which is really down to which...)

Well I've gotta go again as it is getting late. I will try and post something "proper" 2morrow.

Laters, peeps.

Posted by gledwood at 1:44 AM GMT

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Mood:  blue

THIS HAS BEEN a singularly unsatisfying day. Was battered out of bed by a phonecall at midday. Had to visit my friend who "had something for me". Was dog-tired and not up for scurring up the road like I normally do. Bumped into Marilyn on the way back from her eye hospital appointment: she had that alien-sleep extruding from the corner of her eyes (those fluorescent drops the eyedoctors drip in). She also had massively dilated raver's pupils. This was just the result of eye-drops as well, she informed me, but she was in a suspiciously chatty good mood...

Mother Hubbard and I went round the market because Mother Hubbard wanted some kidneys for her "old man" Mr Dodger's pie. Then I went to the chemist further up for fresh works.

I got home and threw out a sackful of rubbish (mostly empty cyder bottles and cans) that had "accumulated" over the past days....

Also: stairs in darkness; someone's exchanged the hallway bulb for their own blown one, yet again...

Oh and how exciting this all is! And how was your day??!

Posted by gledwood at 5:25 PM GMT

Updated: Wednesday, 17 January 2007 5:41 PM GMT

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Mood:  flirty

NAOMI CAMPBELL has just been punished in a New York courthouse (for the second time) for "injuring" (how badly? I ask myself. I think "victimizing over the full course of one's employment" is more likely a charge to bring) her "maid". Due to a plea bargain that, according to the British press involved her doing no community service that was "unpalatable", she will now be punished indoors. She will pay a $400 fine. She will have to undertake her second anger mangement course in the last couple of years.

Do you know what? I don't know what to say about this. Is it one law for the rich and one for the poor? Loads of "celebrities" (not to mention a speeding (in a car, folks— not on drugs) Princess Ann) seem to get scandalously lenient sentences, over here as much as anywhere else.

"Poor" Naomi Campbell has been in the papers so many times for her, frankly, dead skunk-stinking attitude to all those she no doubt considers her inferiors. I actually like Naomi. She was always more "super" than the other models. And the only one who seemed truly fashionable+sexy at the same time (the 2 are extremely different things— I point this out to my female audience). Oh and by the way Naomi Campbell is not "African American", never has been. She is black British. And if you want to be politically correct about it, the term we tend to use over here is Afro-Caribbean (though I've not seen or heard that one lately). British people of African or Caribbean origin usually just call themselves "black". And are justly proud of being it, too.

And, as Loony Tunes say:— That's All [for tonight] Folks!!

Posted by gledwood at 1:01 AM GMT

Updated: Wednesday, 17 January 2007 1:06 AM GMT

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Mood:  loud

AM I EVER GOING TO GET CLEAN? Good question.

I somehow have this feeling my blog has become junkier & junkier these past few days. Dunno how; it's just a feeling.

Heroin has had me in its grip full-time since the last week in January, 2001. (Though I'd had a baby habit the year before.) I remember that date precisely. Because that is when my ex-ex flew back from India (we had to take separate flights: long story). I did my few days without her clean, though I certainly knew where to score. As soon as she came back: WHAM!! Back onnit.

Fighting a battle with heroin is fighting a battle with yourself. (I was going to put "like fighting with yourself"; but there's no "like" about it.) Heroin hooks its claws into its slaves well and truly. It is pharmacological superglue, bonding the average user for 14 years. It hijacks brain and body, forcing you to do its bidding. Of course, as a responsible adult, you answer for all you do. And there's the rub...

How can anyone fight a war on both sides? Good question. It's one drug counsellors ought to ask themselves a little bit more before they start playing their usual stuck-record loops. Because that's the situation opiate addicts are in. You love the very stuff that's destroying you.

Some people eventually get bored of heroin. Others, to coin a phrase heard many times at NA, "get sick and tired of being sick and tired".

Others stop because they simply can't go on.

I heard a story of a friend of a friend just turning down free gear brought in for him in hospital. He'd just lost a leg to it. He wasn't interested any more.

I know three people who've lost legs to heroin. (All, as far as I know, due to femoral injecting (in the "groin").)

Where I fit into all this, I just don't know.

If anyone out there is clean and can tell me how they did it, I'd most certainly like to hear from you.

Posted by gledwood at 9:24 PM GMT

Updated: Tuesday, 16 January 2007 9:53 PM GMT

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Mood:  rushed

I AM VERY STRESSED. TRYING to open a new blog. Computers drive me up the wall. Specifically: because they're meant to be logical and yet you cannot bank on EVER using commonsense to get you anywhere!!

THAT is what really GETS TO ME about computers.

Have you noticed? I am being so extremely restrained?

I never pointed this out, but I have, so far, stuck completely to my no bad language rule. And man, I feel so tempted to speak my ordinary gutter English sometimes...

Well let's lighten the subject.

Mousey Scalextrics at 9am yet again. This swine is such a scurrulous scurrier. At one pont he appeared to dart under a discarded sock. I slammed my hand down over said sock as assertively as one could do with one's living 10cm-long pet under it. Mouster was nowhere to be seen!! In that split-second he had pinged... somewhere.

Five minutes pass. He reappears. Same scenario again. Ppph-chaaaaao--!! Gone!

Next time I back him into a corner. Put hands over the darty swine (no point even attempting an immediate pick-up; he would surely hop outta my hands). Carefully and slowly grab him and swiftly remove about 300ft (in mouse-feet) from the floor. Ears down, heart beating harder than I've ever felt it, he peers up at me as if to say, "I was only playing". Yeah— and I'm the Queen Mother. What if I'd have propped open my door and left it? You wouldn't have pinged outside? Oh no, mumbles Mousey, looking at the floor.

Of course I had to have a big shot of heroin to calm me down. Thankfully cyder was already in the house so I was knocking this back through the whole Furry Scalectrix escapade... & I've finally spelt the name right there... Scalectrix is an electronic grand prix game where you assemble track in a figure of eight (or whatever) and the cars go hurtling round. But I'm gonna have to stop playing the unsupervised Mousey version. It is too stressful on us both. I think he would prefer the live locusts.

Oh and that's about all I'm in the mood to tell. I will answer my commentary as soon as I'm placid enough to sit through the inevitable going-in-&-out of pages waiting times...

Posted by gledwood at 6:36 PM GMT

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Mood:  accident prone

FURRY SCALEXTRIC?? Yes indeed: I woke up between intermittent sloom between 5:30 and 6:00am and sure enough the Mouster has escaped my bedroom sleeve and is playing Furry Scalextrics full-on having a manic dart in all corners of my room (and it only takes a matter of a split couple of seconds surely for him to ping from one corner to the other).

It's a stressful day. I lay down and slept in the late afternoon but when I was up I was well and truly up. I hate being over-busy: I feel like everyone wants a bit of me. Their own personal chunk of flesh.

Craving a drink, a bath, a cigarette all at once I "darted" round Sainsbury's — though sadly at nothing approaching Chinese Mouster speed — fresh wholegrain tagliatelle, cod in parsley etc. Even my toothpaste had run so totally out I didn't want to talk to anyone today without putting my head in a plastic bag.

Rode bus. Backwards. Which does nothing to put me in a good mood. Innerly growling at the driver not to stop anywhere except my stop and yes just run down the pedestrians I don't care. Get me home NOW.

At home was just seething so much like a pan boiling over when the phone rings. I hit the roof. It is Pascal to do with 2 dealers with the same name and which one would I have seen this morning. I didn't really have time for this kind of talk but ever so politely I bore with him. Thankfully all my cooking was at least on the hob and bubbling merrily by now.

Pascal got cut off (not my doing. Don't laugh! No! Honestly!!) so I darted downstairs and ran hot bath. Meanwhile I miss his call back. Grrr...

Have rapid bath. Feel so much better for it. Also my teeth don't feel like bits of ten-year-buried ballpoint pen any more. Seeing as I cleaned them with 49p Sainsbury's own "total care" (totally careless in my case) „Zahnpasta“.

All this time I was gulping down cyder. It did eventually make me feel better. Except my veins behaved so badly for my "calming" hit I have one "works" half-full of blood. And the hit I did get in, went in partly in my left ankle (playing up so I removed it) and finally in my right foot. Which is not particularly pleasant. Injecting an acidified mixture right there.

So I'm not so much hitting the roof (trust me, if I were, I don't know I could handle computer foibles enough to be posting this now. Know what I mean?)

My wonderful heroin overdose story is posted below. I'm still in the process of cleaning it up. Rephrase: it's incomplete at the time of writing so bear with me. But have a pleasant time reading it anyway.

Okay, kiddos:— just keying this down's giving me renewed stresses. So I'll see yers later then,

—Gleds...

Posted by gledwood at 8:50 PM GMT

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Mood:  incredulous

THIS IS THE (UNFINISHED) STORY OF MY DRASTIC OD SOME 7 YEARS AGO. 

Okay well VERY briefly (bc to post this up as a proper story I have to properly think it through so's not to miss bits out) I knew the local junkies pretty well for a year or two before this happened. So I'd done crack with them etc. People had scored gear for me b4. No-one really knew whether I did or didn't have a habit, though I didn't realize this at the time.

I had £5 on me. The others had £15 between 2 of them. So I went back to a flat on a horrible housing estate with which is most famous for some riots a few years ago. I chipped in my £5 so we could get a £20 bag between 3.

They cooked up the gear. I had mine last. While waiting, not being used to handling a syringe I accidentally squirted a tiny bit out the end. Looking back I wonder whether this little bit was the difference between life and death...

1st guy took his. A big Irishman. He took £7 worth and ended up on the floor, crouched down "gauwching" out. (Nodding out unconscious.) I remember thinking "that's really good gear". Held out my arm, injection went straight in the mainline. I vaguely remember mumbling aloud confirmation of what I'd just thought: "That's really good gear" I remember it felt strong. Immediately I faded away. Literally next thing I remember is waking up under a striplight next afternoon. I had been asking What's wrong? What's happened in a dream, I do remember that. And being told (a little bluntly) you overdosed on heroin. I kept getting off the trolley looking for my bag. My bag was not with me. It had London A-Z (vital+it had all my friends' addresses in), addressbook etc etc and I felt literally lost without these 2 things. And you know how obsessive you can get on a high. Have you ever spent hours doing something half aware? High as a kite? That's what I was doing then.

They had given me narcan or naloxone (aren't they the same thing?) to bring me round but still I didn't wake up till next afternoon. They kept me in that night as well because of my breathing (aparently I'd totally stopped). I was covered in sensors...

I was very upset about this afterwards because despite having spent years depressed & having suicidal feelings now I'd come point blank to death not even trying— it messed me up BADLY in my head for quite a few weeks...

That's the crux of it... Oh and by the way when I was in hospital my "friends" robbed me (or more technically, my bank) by stealing and fraudulently signing against my card. I couldn't prove exactly who had done it. And anyway I got all the lost £200 back. But that's the kind of "friends" those people were.

So there you have it...

Posted by gledwood at 8:49 PM GMT

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Mood:  down

Sleepy Sunday — Mouster Awakening

HI I AM INDEED depressed and sleeping a lot. At least Chipper got back in touch (thank you). I'd begun to think that was one Christmas card list I'd got well and truly struck off. I'm glad he is okay. He seems to do more travelling than I'd imagined. That must be a knackering life, though.

Mousey cheered me up at an undignified hour of the morning. I shoved him up my sleeve in the night where he slept. Then at 6am he decides to get up. Not just awaken & wash his ears, but go pinging up and down my arm at a manic rate of knots. I closed right hand round left sleeve to prevent escape. He pushes at this with his nose: nudge-nudge-nudging. Eventually I let him out. He will not sit still. Madly he scrambles all over my hands. Eventually I had to put him in his proper house as I was scared I'd fall into a slumber with him tearing around my bedroom like a furry Scalectrix.

This afternoon my French American friend Pascal came round. He said I want to take Mouster to the vets because his balls are too big. I said no that's what they're supposed to look like. They are the size of hazelnuts, which, let's face it, on a Chinese mouse is not that small. I'm not wasting money for a vet to tell me that.

I did have some gear today so I'm not depressed because of that situation. Methadone Sundays are always miserable days. Mother Hubbard didn't want me round her house, as I said earlier. I found out this was because she had family round (about 4 grandkids + adult kids) so there wasn't enough Sunday lunch to go round (fair enough). I had dry old chicken shop Tenesee thighs instead. Boo-hoo! No I'm joking I love surthern fraahd chiihken. Me and Pascal called round quickly on our mutual friend Lucky then I saw Valium Marilyn briefly so it's been a busy day in that sense. I still feel down in the dumps though. I'm glad I have the mouse to amuse me. He is more entertaining than a giant cactus and Homebase were doing them on special offer at the time. If you're thinking £10 is expensive for a mouse it's because he's a special desert Chinese one with pouches (ie a hamster) who's supposed to eat live locusts (did you see that answer below?!?) and garlanded vegetables. I don't know about the live insects but I'm going to get him a giant stack-&-store box or something of that ilk to reside in. That should be big enough to kit out with branches &c for climbing because "Chinese hamsters love to climb" as Jennifer the expert reminded me.

The smallest pet I've ever had, by the way was a £2 aquatic frog. (I have to mention the price as he was such an entertaining bargain.) He lived in a tank full of tropical fish and was just big enough to be able to span a 5p piece (about the size of a 1¢, our littlest coin) with his undignified widespread legs (like a gold-toothed gypsy woman I once saw on the bus, they go wide open). He was about 1½cm long fully grown. Dark green—nearly black. He hid at the bottom for half an hour letting air bubbles out of his mouth at 5minute intervals. Then he'd frog to the top, gulp an air refill and plunge straight down again. Like a mini diver (not to be confused with the actress: Mini Driver) in the tank. He loved attacking dried tubifex worms. Yeah, he was cool my frog. And we had a colour-change fish that looked like a stealth bomber. Flew around the tank like a ribbon. Used to stick to the glass like a snail. (A Borneo sucker.) She was called Nubia: the only fish I've seen who could swim vertically down the bubbles stream.

I'd love to get tropical fish again. Everyone said the tank was beautiful, like the pictures in the books. All banked up properly with an underwater forest. An aquatic Garden of Eden. (I also get told my dinner looks like a serving suggestion; I'm a bit of a perfectionist that way.) 

Just realized how many things I have not posted you. Like my monumentally bad 4-at-once 1st time acid trip. My cold turkey detox at my Dad's house. The one I wouldn't even confess to what was wrong until day three... My massive OD. And so on & so on... Many things I do not wish (to be honest) even to recall right now... But I will post them all up in good time, my friends. I promise you. Okay then, I'm knackered; I gotta go so good morning/afternoon/evening/night/bye—Gledsx

Posted by gledwood at 9:37 PM GMT

Updated: Sunday, 14 January 2007 10:25 PM GMT

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Mood:  vegas lucky

html nervous breakdown... 

I did well to intone my mantra yesterday I am sinking down down again I feel it I'm sleeping hours and hours again all the signs.

Got a phone call from American friend saying other friend Mother H, says "don't bother coming round": I found this slightly rude but there you go.

On a lighter note, I tried my hand at html pasting a supposedly "difficult" javascript sitemeter counter on to a dummy blog I set up. So glad it was a dummy, for counter successfully transferred: whoopee! However, in doing so, I did some grave damage to something inside the programming. The site doesn't work at all. But the counter is faithfully recording visits and page views. (If you click on it.) If anyone really wants to laugh at my folly go to http://gledextra.tripod.com/blog.

Bear in mind that this was an up and running blog with side picture, full colour scheme and random old postings loaded up. Now it's just a toolbar.

If anyone does understand how Tripod's blog system works just explain to me please where I'm mean to paste this eejut code?? I'm trying statcounter next time on another dummy blog. Because the 1st is so badly messed up by my random pasting (well I thought I was pasting between the body tags obviously I got totaly the wrong part of the body). I don't get how yous lot seem all to know about this stuff. Where did you learn it? They never taught me html at school (it didn't exist). Anyway answers please, if you do have any comments. Sincere thanks...

Posted by gledwood at 1:10 PM GMT

Updated: Sunday, 14 January 2007 1:46 PM GMT

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Mood:  party time!

Sleepy Saturday — Acid Dreams

I WOKE UP about an hour ago after having slept for SEVEN HOURS — that’s 7 hrs on top of the 8 hrs or so I slept last night. In fact I know I slept well last night as I woke at 10:30 which is really late for me. Usually I’m up at 5:30… Hang on, what’s “usual” about my sleep? It goes round in cog-like circles. You never know which little cycle it’s going to pass on to. I know I’m often awake at 5:30 because that’s when BBC World Service passes over to Radio 4 on the analogue transmitters and shortly after handover a programme called Farming Today comes on, all about prime steaks and winegrowing and cheeses— not so much “boring” as yummeee!!

    Yes I did meet a person of doubtful provenance on a mountain bike at about 11:30 this morning and this may explain part of my drowsiness. But today’s big sleep came on too late (at about 2pm and it doesn’t take me THAT long to get a vein) and lasted too long. The drowsing effect of heroin does indeed last the 4-hrs specified in certain textbooks. (How do you think I know the little bits and pieces I scatter throughout this blog? I used to own a mini drugs books collection…)

    I’m not getting depressed though I’m not getting depressed — my mantra.

    There’s not a huge lot to say today. Maybe I ought to mention the nightmares I keep getting. Also (more infrequently) some ultra-farout acid dreams. Brainfrazzlingly weird ones that I couldn’t describe in any meaningful detail. You know (if you’ve taken it) when everything goes like a computer game. And then the game gives way to the abstract codes behind it? Well some of that. Plus imagine you’ve been at a rave all night. It is now late… too late for you, you’d rather be in bed but it’s midday, the party shows no sign of stopping, daylight is burning in your head: and,more to the point your brains are frying so bad you’re like the experimental spider in the 1960s that stopped spinning beautiful orb-webs on acid and just span a dirty great blob of stickiness as the microgram-count eventually got too high. I often bear that spider in mind when I think of hard acid. True or not (and I think it is) the spider story is a damn good metaphor for what LSD can do to the mind.

    On that note I'm saying goodbye goodnight, folks.

    Okay, timezones: good evening/afternoon/morning/night...

Posted by gledwood at 12:02 AM GMT

Updated: Sunday, 14 January 2007 1:43 AM GMT

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Mood:  blue

To Those On The Slope

An Open Letter To Chipper & All Those Many People Like Him

THIS IS MY HEARTFELT MESSAGE to all those of you who are dabbling with heroin. I  know there are many of you. To use Chipper’s words (the title of his blog) you are playing with fire.

    Heroin is not called a hard drug for nothing. “Hard drug” means an addictive one. Heroin feels remarkably soft and mild. And warm and friendly and strangely fulfilling. That’s where its deceptive nature lies. Hard drugs are hard precisely because they feel so soft. Because you can (in the beginning) use pretty much as frequently as you choose without feeling many ill-effects. This “use me, use me — use me more” should set off alarm bells. Life on heroin isn’t living. Heroin eventually replaces life.

    If, say, you’re doing 2 days out of every 3 clean (my friend Chipper’s 72-hour rule) you’re living two-thirds of your life clean. Are these clean days any less valuable to you than the ones you use on? Are your clean days so very intolerable? If so, the heroin is getting to you already. Trust me, you don’t want it to get to you any more.

    Until it truly “got” me, got right under my skin, hooked me with its formidable chemical bonds, I honestly had no idea quite how addictive this stuff really is.

    Quit Smoking clinics often compare nicotine to heroin. Frankly, this is just to make tobacco smokers feel better about their habit. For there is no comparison. Ever seen someone with their head down the toilet because they need a cigarette?

    Well, then!

    Kicking heroin, well and truly stopping for good and turning your back on it, the world you took it in and everyone you know is just about the hardest thing anyone could ever achieve.

    That is why that angry guy Jamie keeps shouting on your blog, Chipper. Because being “clean” is a hard-won state to be in. You’re two-thirds of the way there, yet you don’t seem to appreciate this.

    There’s nothing glamorous about a helter-skelter ride that ends in the pits, believe me. An addiction to hard drugs is about as much fun as a bus ride along a main road — with a five year-old child at the wheel. You’re putting your most base and childish instincts in control. But the grown-up you must face the pain and the consequences and the wreckage this causes.

    If you CAN stop now, you MUST.

    If you CAN’T, you must at least admit that you do have a problem.

    Otherwise you might just look back to this time and see this new direction you’re hurtling along in as the worst wrong turn you ever took in your life.

Posted by gledwood at 11:18 AM GMT

Updated: Friday, 12 January 2007 11:33 AM GMT

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Mood:  d'oh

OKAY I've just flicked down this page. Full of hamsters and poems, hmm... I really need to put this stuff in another blog. This one's going crazy. Do you want to hear about drugs? I slept in till 2:30pm today. 2 dealers tried to phone me up "telesales"— do I want their wares? Well no. Because one's is weak and the other not too bad but it goes foamy in the spoon (yeah, right!) which is kind of offputting. So I'm going to the one I saw last night next time.

Place yer bets folks: how long will next time be?? When I have the dough and the guy's one street away?

Get outta here, Einstein — you're not required!

Posted by gledwood at 3:23 PM GMT

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Mood:  d'oh

I AM IN ONE OF MY QUANDRIES. I want to score again. The money's in my pocket. I am trying to distract myself by listening to the radio quiz mentioned below as I type, but it just ain't working. The cash is ready and waiting. The man is no doubt close. I feel like I'm going to. Aaargh! I don't know what else to say. What's the point of posting this when the outcome feels like a foregone conclusion. Let me talk to this guy.

Okay, I spoke to him, he said Come straight out. I went direct to the specified street-corner, called back to rub in I'm here and waiting. "He'll be with you there in under seven minutes," the surly dealer intoned. Grrr. First time we spoke, he'd been making it sound the guy was right there already. But this is typical.

Sure enough, on time, guy appears on bike, produces blue lump. On eventual inspection it turns out to be a (plastic-wrapped) lump of heroin not much smaller than a small sugar cube with a corner crumbled off. Which is not bad for £10. You seriously cannot tell a substance's quality with just the naked eye; an experienced junkie, however, can make snap—usually accurate— judgements. And this to me looked okay quality (better than his usual rubbish; that's why I don't phone him that much).

So, having cooked my gear up, I cooked up some of the shopping I got earlier: Sainsbury's cod in parsley sauce with “seasonable” vegetables (who am I trying to kid? They were frozen “farmhouse” cauliflower, broccoli, peas etc) on a bed of fresh wholegrain tagliatelle (well worth the indulgence at £1.17 for 500g) all liberally sprinkled with Parmesan. Mmmm. Yumm-mmeee!! And a vein on the back of my right hand behaved well enough to add genuine bon appétit. (I've not 100% “recovered” from that heroin food “problem” I described a day or so ago.)

Now it's late and I'm dead tired. And I'm gonna try & not touch that bit of gear left over till morning...

Speak to yous L8R,

Gleds—xx

Posted by gledwood at 10:25 PM GMT

Updated: Thursday, 11 January 2007 1:12 AM GMT

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Mood:  special

DOES ANYONE KNOW & LIKE "JUST A MINUTE"?

It's a radio panel game. A topic is announced. One selected player must speak on said topic for one minute without hesitation-deviation-repetition.

Which is far easier said than done.

(Repetition, for example, means repeating any word more unusual than that/which/and/I etc...)

If you want to hear it, you can click http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/justaminute.shtml and select Listen Again. (Just a Minute, BTW, = not to be confused with Jest a Minute.)

I listen every week. There's probably some good plays there too, if you take a look. (They're not all full of middle class people sighing... honest.)

(BTW does anyone remember Just a Minute back in the early 80s with Kenneth Williams on board?... Those were the days...)

Down the Line is another one that's good. It's a "unique" phone-in prog that must be heard to be believed, believe me... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/comedy/downtheline.shtml. This one attracted loads of complaints on its 1st airing from listeners who'd grabbed the wrong end of the stick!

One more — then I really shall go — is the World Service magazine programme Outlook (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/outlook.shtml). This one's not comedy but I like it. It's often playing when I'm wide awake and Mousey's out for a 3am ramble...

Right. I'm off!

Posted by gledwood at 10:06 PM GMT

Updated: Thursday, 11 January 2007 1:35 AM GMT

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Mood:  special

OKAY, MY DIARY FOR TODAY: Hey, before I start, I was going to start up  a new blog and call it "The Thoughts of Gledwood" — and I'd just leave it all blank... wah-waaah!....

I'M FIGHTING A BATTLE WITH CRACK. It's not like I take loads of it, (though I have done at certain times that are hopefully long gone never to return)— but when I do have a tenner spare, that's automatically what it goes on.

I want to be able to say (truthfully, of course) that I've turned my back on that stuff for good. Because I don't really like it. I don't like people who take it. (I do like the way it makes me feel in the short term, but that doesn't necessarily contradict the above: think about it.)

I could have posted earlier that I'd suffered and beat that craving. Because I turned down the opportunity of scoring. Then, idiot that I am, I got itchy feet and did end up going up to a certain park. No-one was there, so I rang the dealer. Turns out police had come and grabbed his stash-bag (and presumably his runner too, though of course he didn't say that on the phone), so "nothing's happening for a little while" (which means, no doubt, all afternoon). So I hared off home and scored in the next street from me. Bigger "rock" but quality not nearly as good.

And so the battle rages on...

Posted by gledwood at 7:01 PM GMT

Updated: Wednesday, 10 January 2007 7:14 PM GMT

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Mood:  suave

Another poetry book I found is a dull-looking schoolbook. Longman English Series Poetry 1900-1965. (A lot of these collections contain only British and sometimes "Commonwealth" writers but not American. Which irritates me. We all speak English and one of my favourite poets was American (Sylvia Plath)— I particularly like her Insomniac click http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1402 I'm sorry about all the ads around it.

Another favourite (who I consider a great poet, not just a great war poet — Wilfred Owen. Two of his best are Dulce et Decorum Est (click http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1543.html) and Futility (click http://www.poemtree.com/poems/Futility.htm). As I said (somewhere) I'm going to start a poetry blog. Maybe I'll post on it all my faves as well as my own dubious & uneven works. Sometimes I've found stuff by myself and thought "wow — did I really write that?" It doesn't seem possible. Other times I just read stuff back and cringe. It's taken quite some willpower not to remove certain past postings (or bits of them).

But, talking of execrable verse, did no-one like my William McGonnagal? It's difficult to pick out single quotes that sum up the full grandeur of this man's prowess. But these lines out of Jottings of New York (http://www.taynet.co.uk/users/mcgon/jottings.htm) give a good idea of why people say of him "he's so bad, he's good":—

And Brooklyn Bridge is a very great height,
And fills the stranger's heart with wonder at first sight,
But with all its loftiness, I venture to say,
For beauty it cannot surpass the new Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay.

(He loves his bridges on the "silvery" River Tay (http://www.taynet.co.uk/users/mcgon/disaster.htm). He also wrote some lines on The Tay Bridge Disaster, and a lovely work on the railway's replacement http://www.taynet.co.uk/users/mcgon/railway.htm...)

And, believe me, the morning I sailed from New York
For Bonnie Dundee, my heart it felt as light as a cork.

Wow!

Mr McGonnagal said his best time of year for public readings was Easter, as the crowds seemed to have less spare supplies of eggs to hand...

Posted by gledwood at 2:00 PM GMT

Updated: Wednesday, 10 January 2007 2:55 PM GMT

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