imagine, if you will, the pitch on the roof of a boat. try balancing a pot of flowers on the apex of a shed roof, a moving shed. it will fall off.

i popped into see stuart at the chandlery and blagged some bits of wood off him with which to build a sort of miniature table affair to go on the roof of the boat to provide a stable, horizontal platform to put our flower pots on. i gave him 2.5 quids to buy himself a beer and off i went to assemble my super design roof-levelling pot plant display feature.

what i SHOULD have done is drill located holes through the ply top surface and used brass screws to attach the two batons. then i should have sealed the joints with a silicon mastic, primed all surfaces and then applied two coats of exterior use paint.

what i DID do was use the towpath as a workshop and stick the batons on with the devil’s toothpaste, ‘no more nails’. then i balanced it on the roof and off we went and i thought i would finish the job next time i was back on the boat.

YESTERDAY i got the knock with constantly being disconnected by aol. i phoned them, listened to recorded messages, grew a long grey beard down to my knees, produced fingernails a la howard hughes and finally got through to a man who told me that i should be using my PRIMARY phone socket because broadband traffic is too much for extension cables to cope with. very well. i would move all the furniture round so that i could use the primary socket.

when i moved the heap of junk that my computer lives on there was a lot of dust so the vacuum cleaner would have to be applied. i bought that vacuum cleaner myself. let me give you a couple of scenarios and you pick which one you think is the true one:

SCENARIO ONE. (in a specialist vacuum cleaner emporium)
ME: i wish to buy a vaccuum cleaner.
SPOTTY YOUTH: how about this one, the ‘dyson’?
ME: it certainly looks sporty and modern; look at those primary colours and space-age lines.
S.Y.: yes, and it has a ‘no-bag’ see through crud collector. you can see it suck up all the hair (thinks, in your case ‘pubic’ rather than ‘head’) and crumbs and flakes of skin that we call ‘human ash’ and all the other muck that are the ingredients of what you refer to as your carpet.
ME: sounds wonderful! how much does it cost?
S.Y.: just two and a half thousand pounds. would you like an extended warranty?
DOORBELL: ting
DOOR: bang.

SCENARIO TWO. (in messrs. tesco)
ME: (to self) that little bastard looks cheap.
TILL PERSON: twennynine pahnd. ‘ave you got a clubcard?
ME: thank you, cheerio!

well, the ‘hishiboshi 150′ or what ever it was called was deployed. but it wasn’t because its human ash collection bag was full. i’ve seen larger teabags. after a maddening search a replacement was found (of course, the old one was not reusable) and i tried to insert it. well, i TRIED. the vacuum cleaner may have been designed by mr. rubik as a most fiendish puzzle. so i tried HARDER. in fact i tried so hard that fragile plastic bits started to snap off. i tried so hard that i smashed my bargain cleaner into several million pieces. i murdered it.

the reconnections were then all made after i had taken several trips to the communal bins to chuck all the things that i had found and no longer wanted and/or smashed. i was ready to compute. and guess what happened next? it kept fucking disconnecting again.

i called aol once more and in bright tones discussed my problem. my case was elevated to level 2, whatever that may be, and i spoke at length with mr. declan byrne who i regard as something of a saint. he explained that the chip in my pc was designed 8 years ago while the magic thing in my broadband thing was designed 7 years ago. using his mystical powers he read my mind and my computer’s mind and told me exactly what to click and what to untick and all that jazz. tears of gratitude coursed down my cheeks. he explained that there was also too much noise on my bt line although just within acceptable levels and he would make bt jump to it and de-noisify my line. and now my pc works and does not keep disconnecting me. he also told me that this burned out extension cable thing was 100% lie and that you should plug into the primary socket because a visiting bt engineer’s responsibility ends just there.

TODAY i sent an email of fulsome praise to mr. byrne’s managers, saying how absolutely marvelous he is. credit where credit’s due, that’s what i say.

later i went to see that fab cache ‘weyside wander 2′ because i have had reports of the numbered tag being missing from the tree. well, it won’t be missing again because using the ‘mertool’ universal mender i screwed the bastard into the bark with brass screws.

i went to look at the boat and noticed with some dismay that the top layer of ply had started to peel up like a very old sandwich. graham, the mooring warden, wanted to borrow a paint roller. we went back to the charley rose and so i had a witness as i took my piece of not-handiwork off the roof and one of the battens fell off.

so what? i spoke to two nice visiting boat crews at new haw lock and earlier when i went to west byfleet to fork out enough to pay either for my gas bill or a national i.d. card system that won’t work, i went into the hospice charity shop and bought a brand new, black, asics puffa jacket for 6.25 quids.

they might have a plastic trough on little legs in the pound shop and i’ll just burn my disasterous attempt.

ho hum. onwards and upwards.

what a day! but things actually got DONE for a change.

but here’s a thought that cheered me through the trials and tribulations of the day:

until recently, my dad (of dadblog fame) had a harley upon which he used to used to zoom sedately.

very recently he acquired a kilt and wearing this he embarked on a tour of places various in welshland and hertfordshire (birthplace of the gods).

should he have combined zooming with kilt wearing the naked rambler would have been bounced into second place and the postman would have needed an industrial strength wheelbarrow to deliver all the summonses to chateau dad.

more news tomorrow regarding broadband and the unfortunate demise of a vacuum cleaner…

yawn. nighty night.

i have been falling out with my pc for some time thanks to its mean-spirited nonworkingness. apparently someone or something who exists in ‘local area connection 2′ has pulled out a plug and thus provides me with ‘limited or no connectivity’. honestly, it’s like that HAL out of 2001. “I’m sorry Dave, but I will have to boot you into the outer darkness".

no one on earth knows where ‘local area connection 2′ actually is, nor do they know how to put the plug back in. now, i rarely bathe (on religious grounds) but even I know where ‘local area bath 1′ is and how to put the plug in. if i didn’t i would simply click on the ‘make me niffy’ button; i wouldn’t start to shout and swear and want to kill everyone with a big gun.

last night i gave up entirely, blaming the atrocious downpourings of late, although these problems have been going on and getting worse for quite some time. this morning i awoke refreshed and decided that action must be taken and feared that i would have to employ a spotty, whey-faced youth to come round to non-thirst hall at great expense and watch him click on ‘make everything better’ and then give him many quids.

so i telephoned those great people at aol helpline. fortunately i’m a big fan of “if you are a marsupial, press 1; if you have tried using tipp-ex on your monitor to correct an error and spoiled it, press 2; if you made your own keyboard out of smarty lids, press 3….

eventually my call was answered by someone in, i think, northern ireland. he may well have been wearing a balaclava for extra muffling effect. anyway, i asked him if my modem that lives in my magic box might have explodified but he said that broadband doesn’t do that. the broadband thing lives in a different galactic spiral arm and is TOP SECRET. then he asked me whether i was using the primary phone junction box and i said i was. but then i realised that i wasn’t, for the primary junction box is conveniently located near the cupboard under the stairs. apparently broadband burns out these extension cables. so i thanked him for his advice, said goodbye, turned everything off and started moving things around.

amazingly, things seem to have improved somewhat and thus i risk writing what may possibly be my last blog should defenestration occur later in the day. one con is that the compluter will no longer be where it was and where i wanted it to be. one pro is that i will in future have a proper computer type chair which will also have a pine seated commode style facility. i suppose i could go and buy a longer piece of the electrical string that knits all the bits-and-bobs together but i’m far too cheap for that.

on lighter notes:
last friday there was a monsoon. i wanted to get to pyrford basin to get some diesel on board. i would have stayed drier if i had jumped into the cut and pulled the boat along with the forward line clamped in my teeth. when i got there they told me to go away because it was late and there was a monsoon and they weren’t stupid. later i tripped of the side of the boat under the influence of diazepam and fell right into a paddling pool full of mud a.k.a. the towpath. here’s a tip; if you ever want a ton of sand delivered to your house for building purposes don’t bother to get it delivered in one of those cubic metre canvas things as a chunky jumper can hold more earth/sand/dogshit by far.

pirate omally, king of all the swedes, fetched up on saturday and we had wizard fun. we magged the lock at newark priory. he chucked the magnet in right up by the lock cill in the middle of the lock. what a marvelous ‘jack hargreaves invisible pipe-sucking moment’ that was. ‘he’ll find nothing there.’ i thought. second chuck and up came a windlass. a million curses! out-magged with my very own magnet!

the water in the canal is so low that the guildford boat festival has already been cancelled (that’s 3 million gallons of water saved) and if the water level goes down another 2 or 3 inches they will close the whole canal. so we went back to our mooring yesterday so as not to get stuck somewhere. so, be like me; don’t bother to have a bath, especially if you can’t find where to put the plug in.

wish me luck with my movals and removals and reconnections.

cheerio!

i adopted the cunning plan of having a haircut this morning before the morning, weekly ward round. my beard was trimmed and my hair reduced from ‘wild-man of borneo’ to ‘number one’ stylee.

my psyschiatrist said that i could go home today although i have one day of de-tox to go before i should have been set free. all the medications (disgusting phrase)had been thrown away and it took the pharmacists six hours to replace the wastage. then the taxi said that they would take two hours to pick me up, from a hospital. i ask you. my sister came and got me and took me home. i had wanted to go to the boat but that was not to be.

CONFESSION TIME
i went straight to to the pub and and also bought some swig and ten fags. so now you know. i don’t tell lies. have spent two weeks in a sort of prison where you are not allowed through the locked doors and when you are you are followed by ’staff members’. everything you eat or spread on your toast is recorded and often inaccurately. so sorry but iwent bonkers when i eventually got out. i wasn’t in a de-tox ward i was in a psychiactric unit but i am not a nutter. i don’t regard this as a waste of anyone else’s time or of of mine. i did the timeand obeyed the rules and got up early and made my bed and said and said please and thank you. the whole thing has been a shock to my system and i’m not daft enough to think that this is the alpha and omega but it has been a shock. addiction will never go away by banging it on the head with diazepam because if it was there would be no more trouble in the world ever and we would all live in happyland. alas, this can never be.

FUTURE STUFF
i’ve spent a measly fortnight talking with desperate people who are far madder than me and they were of far greater help than the misprescribers of sedatives. they would be far better than anyone else because there is an affinity between the mad and the sane. what have to do now is to replace my old behaviours (to which i returned like a rabbit to its warren; i knew no better) with new things, things which arent prosaic but actually MEAN something. two ideas on the back-burner are to do voluntary work at a hospice and to see if i can get disabled/disadvantaged children onto the water. this will take a great deal of doing but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. it is what i want to do. you read about this kind of stuff in the papers all the time; person cycles the great wall of china to build a leukeamia ward and all that. well, i can do that, but i can’t do it pissed so here comes the change. forgive me my little holiday from blake ward. forgive me upsetting trouty with my bit of swig and my ten fags. i have a bit of iron in my soul now and i realise that people that people actually need me. so i can’t give up.

THANKS
in no particular order:
to nigel, for the letter and photos
to to pett for the card and message
to trouty for the lovely card
to carol for thehandmade card
to trouty for the huggy card
to stu and sarah for the card and support
to gottle for the lovely boaty and lovin card
to and fo the great looking book and yop message and top messsage
to dad, lovely card, lovely message
to jane. lovely card, lovely message
to jg and ned. great card, great understanding
to andy et al. one of my fave van goffs. cheers
to dad for the other card and the flowers whish are doing well and will soon b on top of the boat
to dad for the card.

WHAT NEXT?
two weeks in prison might not stop you being a bank robber, but it might just make you think.

i have been shown a great deal of love and support over all this. addition may well be the fault of the individual it may be genetic, it may be a selfish weakness. whatever, it’s payback time. please forgive me my little holiday. if there’s anything i can do for you i’ll do it if it’s in my power.

my sorrow, my strength and all my love…

h.

Trouty here . . . . . . . . . again !

Have just had a phone call from Henry to say that he has decided to stick it out for a few more days.

No doubt the fact that he received a big sackful of cards from you all today had more than a little to do with it.
He wants me to tell you all how grateful he is and that you have given him a real boost. Good friends are priceless.

Now I’m off on the bus to visit him. Fingers crossed everybody !

Trouty here :
Henry has been in hospital since last Wednesday. He had been so ill and he went in, desperate to give up alcohol in the hope of leading something like a normal life again.

The hospital has been unhelpful, unprofessional, unco-operative and downright neglectful. He has stuck with it for more than four whole days, in which time he has been rushed to A&E three times because his blood sugar level had gone through the roof. I believe it went up to 30. The ideal is 6. This is a very dangerous situation.

When he was admitted, they took his insulin away from him and they dish it out as and when they think fit. They continue to give him what he believes to be the wrong dosage. As far as Henry’s diabetes is concerned, HE is the expert. They give him meals which are not suitable for diabetics and when he points this out, they say ‘Well, leave it then’ !
They will not listen to him and, on the odd occasion that they seem to be making a compromise, everything goes back to square one as soon as the next lot of staff come on shift.

This is the uncaring face of the NHS in 2005. What is he to do ?

He is threatening to discharge himself. We have waited so long for him to be admitted to a detox programme and he went in with all the intentions of making it work. But what’s the point of saving him from the alcohol if they insist on killing him via the diabetes ?

We are at our wits’ end.

(Trouty here)
Henry has asked me to top up his blog.
I’m not used to this. What to say ?

Well, he is VERY appreciative of all of your support for him. So am I.
For those of you who haven’t actually met him, he’s a lovely, lovely man and deserves every chance to get better.

He’s only been gone a couple of hours and, already, I can’t wait for him to get back.

Unfortunately, I have to be in Farnham for the next five days but, in any case, he will probably be so sedated that he won’t even know where he is so he won’t miss me but I will surely miss him. Lots.
Luckily, he has a very supportive family so they will be a great help.

For anyone who might like to send a note or a card, Omally has the address. (I’m reluctant to publish it here).
Many, many thanks for all of your good wishes. Love, Trouty x x x

anyone want a flat to burgle or a boat to steal?

the reason i ask is that this afternoon i go into a psychiatric ward to be bonked on the head with valium for about a fortnight.

now i have to decide which of my meagre possessions i want to take to be stolen.

hoorah! i’m going into the loony bin!

wish me luck.

lots of love from me,
h.

so the pervert got away with it.
marvelous.
but i still haven’t smoked a fag.
goodnight.

check out this really mad guy.
igor is SO funny.
and on that note i’ll leave you.
goodnight.

just of late i have been rather ill. the doctor came to see me and gave me some advice. which i followed and now i feel a bit better.

psychiatrist on tuesday and gawd only knows how that will turn out. but i can do this; i have already cut down quite a bit. and PLUS i haven’t smoked a cigarette for weeks and nor do i want to for some mad reason. understanding how this has worked is not something i can do, yet it really has worked.

the boat needs a visit in the morning; the flowers on the roof will be all dry.

so, until the next time,

goodnight.

i think i only mentioned this in the rubbish chatroom before.

you know silly sailing simon. you know he had his boat called the ‘wey tamarisk’ that he dearly loved.

he sold his boat for 3 grand.

that must have nearly killed him because a boat is not like other things. it’s like selling your grandma.

so the ‘wey tam’ got sold. and then guess what happened?

they fucking sank it.

boats are odd because you fall in love with them. they live and they breathe and they can be a right old cow most of the time. and then all of a sudden they will work so well and then you love them even more.

poor simon. it’s bad enough when you have to sell your boat but when you find out that it has been sunk within weeks it must be horrible.

R.I.P. the wey tamarisk.

see you.

while the missing blog sails forever in cyberland like the flying dutchman there is one part that i really must repeat.
i was sitting in the chinese chip shop waiting for them to cook 2.5 metric tonnes of chips for trouty. so i started to read the friday ad.
(for amerikalanders, the friday ad is a stupid publication where congenital morons try to sell rubbish. a bit like eBay but even worse)

here we go, here comes the ad that made me nearly piss myself laughing in the chinese chip shop. what i want to know is, do you think this is as funny as i do?
ahem *clears throat* here we go….

“IRONING BOARD
STANDARD size excellent condition, genuine reason for sale, £5, farnborough, 01252 693618″

there you go. what i want to know is this… does anyone else find this advert amusing to pant-pissing standards as i do? or have i just gone raving mad?

i typed out something else that was well funny in the lost blog but i can’t be arsed to type it all out again. it was something trouty said. it made me laugh for three days running.

meh. just come and see me and buy me a swig and i’ll tell you instead.

TOP TUNE:
i’ve mentioned this before but ‘in spite of ourselves’ done by john prine and iris dement has been played pretty constantly in my earspace.

not being a big fan of country music i’m surprised that i’m so chuffed with this track. it really is a love song. a real love song.

i won’t cut and paste the lyrics. you find it and have a listen. the 24hr record dealer will have a copy, i’m sure.

OTHER NEWS:
bollocks! still no letter from the hospital saying when i will be admitted. unless i drink i feel like death. i feel more ill now than i ever have and i was saying to trouty just yesterday that i just wanted to be dead and get it all over and done with because god (who does not exist) won’t even give me one single, measly, day off from being ill.

sometimes i wonder what the point is. and then i remember that that question was the last line in kenneth williams’ diary.

come and see me and i’ll tell you trouty’s joke.

goodbye.

fuck.
i wrote a whole blog and it just disappeared…

so fuck.

in fact, more than fuck. because my blog was good. so… fuckitty fuckitty fuck fuck fuck.

see, i did rude swears there. fuck.
i’m so cross because my blog was good. fuck.

fuck.

oh fuck.

i’m no musician but i think that jack johnson’s drummer is rubbish. he might not be. i might be wrong. but i think he is really crap and although i think this i am quite prepared to be called wrong.

so now we have the ‘is jack johnson’s drummer a load of shit?’ challenge.

so, if you think that jack johnson’s drummer is worse than a cartload of cack just phone 0123 456 789 and shout ‘YES’ but if you think jack johnson’s drummer is good just defenestrate yourself. i shall work out the totals at a later date.

obviously it will have to be at a later date because i don’t have a time-machine. or do i? you don’t know, do you?

eh? the title? oh yes, that one…

something has happened and i have stopped smoking. this is very odd because i never even tried and i wish that i could bottle whatever happened because it would be worth a trillion pounds.

there is a certain romanticism with smoking, especially on the cut. driving the barge about and just chucking a fag-end or roll-up in like you own the cut and it makes you look cool is all very well…

but it’s not all that funny. it’s horrible. and, do you know, i may have stopped smoking now? all of a sudden.

if i ever use dope again i will eat it. i don’t want to smoke tobacco again. all of a sudden that’s how it is.

if i can do this with swig it will be a good idea.

but the noise in my head goes on and on and i know it will carry on. for me there will never be any peace and that is what i crave. if i sat in a graveyard it wouldn’t be peaceful enough.

sometimes i want to kill other people, sometimes i just want to kill me. it’s the noise, you see.

but i haven’t had a fag for ages so…
fag industry: 0
me: loads

sounds?
petula clark: downtown
king tubby meets the upsetters
the cat empire

oh fuck this. i can’t even get out of my own flat in case i poo my pants.

but there is iron in my soul. i have resolve. so what if i am ill because i WILL come through all this. i will.

and like i said the other day i really can smell the change. oh, it will happen. and when it does the world had better watch out because i’ve been hiding indoors for too long.

so. there’s my challenge to myself.

anyone wanna fight?