i wrote out a super blog. but then it got disconnected and all the writing bit is lost forever.

as i can’t be arsed to write it again all that is left are the pictures of my ears with magnets in. like acupuncture but with three tiny gold-plated magnets stuck in each ear.

click the piccie to enlarge it.

i hate it when a blog gets lost. oh well. happy new year.

do you know? i’m feeling rather better.

only a week of the programme left to go and i get booted out on the 7th of january. a new year. new things…

one of the new things is a revised bus timetable which meant that my bus left seven minutes earlier than expected. so, even though the violent tempest raged, i walked all the way to the hospital and arrived five minutes early although a bit sodden and squelchy. it was over four miles i should think. i got the bus home though. it was still raining.

but it seems to be working, this programme. i’m enjoying it.

now then. i was looking for my hoard of golden prizes because there was to be an award ceremony this very weekend when simong arrives to claim no less than three of them. but the prizes were nowhere to be found.

sharp-eyed readers may like to study this police photograph and see if they can work out where the prizes might be…

send your answers on a postcard to:

‘it was trouty what et them all competition’
thirst hall
surreyshire.

happy new year, everyone.

hello there!
see that up above? that’s the card that simong drew and sent to me to celebrate my incarceration. so, for the benefit of those who haven’t seen it yet, i reproduce it here without the artist’s consent and in strict breach of copyright. so sue me.

i think you will agree that the whole thing is rather spookily accurate and that he has me down to a ‘t’. i think you will also agree that my photography is rather crap and not a patch on stu’s works (more of him later). oh well, i have to read the instruction book i suppose. still, the spirit of the thing is carried i feel.

my hard work in therapizing continues apace. i just finished week four of a six week programme (plus detox) and get released into the wild on the 9th of january. provided that nothing else has dropped off the boat and it hasn’t sprung a leak, this should give us plenty of time to head off up the thames to the simong meet-up in oxford on the 28th. if all goes according to plan a bed could be available for two* and the wiles of oxonian b&b owners thereby foiled. but before i do THAT i have to finish doing THIS.

there have been tears (unfortunately mine) but there has been laughter too. the whole thing is so bloody INTERESTING. and only a fortnight left; where does all the time go? i know i take the mick out of some of the programme but most of it is marvelous. and it’s free. seven weeks worth of grim food is nothing if i get my brain mended.

see that? see that pile of grot in the foreground? well all that grot had been placed in an abandoned tesco trolley used by harassed commuters as an ad hoc wastebin. and then along came someone who thought he (whoops! sexist assumption) might improve things by emptying the trolley and then picking it up and throwing it over the fence. sharp-eyed readers may remember that this is not the first time this feat has been accomplished. the whole thing makes me wonder if there is some local league table for makers of mess and trolley throwing. i walked past it when it was full of rubbish and not thrown over the fence but i didn’t feel like expending valuable calories in the aforementioned way. but then i’m not normal.

now we get to the meat of the act. see them up there? that’s right, the golden prizes. well, it turns out that the distribution of these precious awards has been hampered by a few factors:

item 1) i have forgotten who i have awarded them to. i think it goes something like this…
one to omally for omallyising my life on a regular basis.
one to stu for telling me how to unsmashify my blog the other day and it acksherly worked.
one to simong for doing something or other but i forget what. oh, alright then, he can have two.
one to trouty for being trouty.

item 2) they are not available in helium flavour thereby nixing any attempts to enrichify myself by claiming negative postage.

item 3) as they can only be claimed directly from me (because of item 2) they have to stay here. here in my flat. here in my flat near trouty.

that’s quite a dilemma. all i can suggest is that you get here as quickly as you can; i cannot vouch for their future safety.

instead of recommending a book i haven’t read, like what i did last time, i shall recommend a book what i have nearly read. i’m up to page 221 0f ‘in the heart of the sea’ by nathaniel philbrick. “the epic true story that inspired moby dick", it’s rattlingly good.

merrie humbugs to you all and, as tiny tim had it,

god (who does not exist) bless us, every one!!

*if your name begins with ‘o’ you may get a shoo in on this one. no hutters, i was NOT talking about osama bin laden

see what i did there? that was both technermological of me and very cunning. ‘ride a white swan’ by t. rex playing as you read.

keen readers will remember that we last left myself in a state of , um, not kind of knowing what i was. as mort’s mom observed in her comment i may still be a swan or maybe a henry. how to find out? we must climb the cosmic rainbow for the next thrilling installment in the land of relaxation. now read on, dot dot dot

cue the bloody panpipe music playing mutedly, aaaaaaand ACTION!

your arms and legs are feeling very heavy and relaxed, close your eyes etc (get on with it!) you are walking towards the top of a set of ten broad marble steps, stand at the top of the steps and concentrate on your breathing. in through the nose, and feel your stomach inflating (!! crivvens! is this nurse qualified to read out this piffle? i hope we have to breathe out through the mouth instead of somewhere else, hem hem) and out through your mouth. (phew, that’s a relief) i shall count you down through the steps. with each step you are feeling more and more relaxed. you are moving easily and lightly (apart from den you mean? he’s got a broken ankle and is using a crutch) down we go, five, four three etc relaxed blah blah until we reach the bottom and find ourselves in a (go on, guess) beautiful (go on, have a guess) SUNKEN GARDEN. (honestly, the number of cosmic gardens i’ve been in lately) you can feel the freshly mown grass beneath your feet (having remained a swan is now a distinct possibility then) which stretches as far as the eye can see. (really? well seeing as how i can see betelgeuse that’s one fuck of a lawn. i’d not only like to see the gardener bump his trusty atco mower down the ten broad steps towing a thousand tankers of two stroke but i bet he’d be dead before he got much mowing done.)

you move towards the beautiful plants and flowers, they have the strongest fragrance that you have ever known. they are of the most vivid colours that you have ever seen and (wait for THIS one…) the flowers have no pollen in this garden as the air is so fresh and pure. (i see. hang on, let me compose myself before we continue) you see a winding path which you KNOW will lead you to a beach. (throws GPS out of window, no longer required then) you follow the path and find yourself on the soft sand and you kick off your shoes and (whoah! easy tiger. if i am a swan then how come i wear shoes? and if i am a henry how come i can feel the newly mown grass beneath my feet?)

you wonder at the vastness of the sea in front of you (estimates vary as to how far across a sea it is possible to see from about 9kms to 15 miles at sea level. am i at shoeburyness gazing in wonder at the thames estuary?) and then do a bit of paddling blah blah blah… the sea is cold at first but soon becomes warm (that’s one cosmic immersion heater, mine takes about half an hour for a measly bathful) and then you see a sunlounger that you just KNOW is for you. blah blah warm sun blah blah relax relax, there is a bottle of (what? tell me, tell me!) cold, (pusser’s rum? advocaat?) refreshing, (what? what? is it worthington ‘e’?) mineral water. (booooo! you stink! isn’t it time to wake up from this nightmare?)

blah blah, blue sky, blah blah, sailing boat, blah blah blah blah blah…………

anyway.

the sharp-eared amongst you will have realised that i did not post ‘ride a white swan’ by t.rex for you to listen to, although that would have been good. the reason for this is that 24hr record dealers winMX have been busted, limewire caused a trojan to enter my inner compluterly sanctum and wreak god knows what havoc in my emails and all the other p2p thingies are now demanding money for downloads so i just had to pick one from my extensive back-catalogue.

so you got ‘debris’ by the faces. why? because i like it, that’s why.

crimbo card thanks to:
the blessed kim et al
ned and JG
andy and mel
carol
and pressie ta’s to omally and tammy

and if you’re wondering what to buy yourself this merry humbugtime, may i recommend:
‘is it just me or is everything shit?’ by steve lowe and alan mcarthur.

byeee, we’re off to watch a snide vid-to-cd copy of ‘the bargee’ with harry h corbett in the title role.

see, that’s me up there. that’s me demonstrating the kind of whacky things the locals round here get up to while i’m not around to make sure they do things properly. just look at that; they moved the bin from there (indicates with left hand) to there (indicates with right hand. please feel free to click on the piccie to enhance your viewing pleasure.

and then what they do is get a curtain-sider lorry from ‘kite glass’ (7.5 tonner, minimum) and try to drive it under the railway bridge. i saw the glass and immediately examined it. aha! 10 mm toughened, so this was no ordinary bridge-strike. by coincidence trouty had heard the bang, early evening last friday. the sound of explosion was very loud as you might expect if a shop window size bit of toughened had gone bang. then, by another amazing coincidence, when i phoned my brother to make sure that it was not him what had done the deed in HIS glass van (glass delivery van, his van is not made of glass) he told me that he had seen the much shortened kite lorry looking very sorry for itself indeed. i thought that perhaps before they gave the driver his p45 they should give him a dustpan and brush and make him sweep up all the mess he has made.

what’s that i hear you say? what on earth is that lovely song what is playing? well, perhaps i should have put a warning in at the top for readers of auditory sensitivity; the tuneful ballad is none other than what john peel (RIP) called “the most horrible song ever written". it is, of course, ‘heroin’ by the velvet underground.

while john cale tortures his viola, let me explain why i chose it.

i have never had to mix with skaggy, smackhead junkies before or people with a 300 quids a day crack habit (where do you get that kind of money? - don’t ask) and i don’t really like them at all. let me explain further.

in the great venn diagram of addicts as seen from my point of view (don’t for a minute think that i’m actually going to produce a venn diagram, you will just have to use the power of your imagination) there are three interlinked circles in a line. the left hand one is us alcoholics, the central one are users of prescription medicines, usually benzodiazapines, and on the right we have the heroin and crack lovers. and having given the matter due consideration i have come to the conclusion that i hate the latter set. i just don’t get them at all.

they are all bone-idle, lying, thieving, childish arseholes who talk in this weird druggie language ("she’s really clucking". eh? what?) but now, for the first time since i started the alkies outnumber the others. a few have discharged themselves or failed their urine tests or whatever.

and me? i feel i’m getting on fine. i had to do a sort of life story this week and yes, dear reader, i did have to resort to the tissue box. everyone does.

one of the most salient points of feedback was from a member of staff who said something like ‘you didn’t know who you were as a child and you started drinking so much and so early (three glorious decades of failure, disappointment and disaster) that you effectively are stalled completely and you don’t know who or what you are. and you have to find out’.

it’s a marvellous voyage of discovery upon which i have embarked and i love it.

on a lighter note we had a relaxation session the other day which is when you have to listen to sort of whalesong and panpipe music while a staff member reads out a story thing to guide you through your relaxation. the last one went something like this:

‘your body is all floppy, eyes closed, blah blah, you are going on a journey (don’t we always?) you can go wherever you want (voice from back of room, not mine, “thorpe park?") step towards the cosmic rainbow (snrrrrrk) and we shall choose the green spectrum, the colour of peace and tranquility, and we shall climb up towards to some white marble steps and find ourselves (where else?) in a beautiful garden (it’s always a bloody beautiful garden) then we see a big stone arch with a door in it (an arch with a door in it? surely that’s a doorway? look, it’s either an archway, a gateway or a doorway, trouty pointed pointed that one out through the tears of laughter) and there is a golden key in the door (yes, it would be gold, that most robust of metals, that’s why mankind through the ages has always used gold to make keys, as opposed to iron or brass) you turn the key and walk through and find yourself in a white room with many doors, in the middle of the room there is a white marble pedestal (naturally, if it’s a toilet) and on top of the pedestal is a white book edged in gold (yawn) and you open the book and sign your name (what with? a bic biro?) with a quill pen. as you do so one of the doors opens and you walk into the room that lies beyond and you find a mirror. you look into the mirror and discover that you are, in fact, (wait for it……) a beautiful white swan (yes, presumably the kind of beautiful white swan that can walk up cosmic rainbows, of which more later, turn golden keys with my beak and hey! where did that fucking quill pen come from? i hope it’s not my uncle derek’s) now it is time to return, we go back through the beautiful garden and down the marble staircase (flap flap slappity slap) to the cosmic rainbow. this time we go back through the spectrum starting at purple (?), blue, green, yellow (orange appears to be on holiday with indigo and violet and the temp agency could only get purple in at the last minute) a quick skip through red, blah blah blah, you’re back in the room.

anyway children, you can come out from behind the settee now, the nasty man has stopped singing.

more of my exciting adventures next time!

it’s taken nearly two weeks hard graft with the bendy plastic spoons that we are permitted to use as cutlery to eat our gruel to tunnel my way out of hmp prison windmill. now i am off detox i am allowed out if i arrange it and today i am free as a bird until i have to tunnel my way back in by 8pm.

so i am back at home (iceberg hall - the central heating still hasn’t been fixed) just for the day and i can play with my compluter and do a little blog for you all and have fun with trouty who is not allowed to see me otherwise.

so, just for today, nice food, hoorah! no junk monkeys arguing and making a mess and commandeering the dvd player to watch ‘evil slayer vampire 3′ or endless bloody football/i’m an aresehole get me out of here/x-factor/hollyoaks etc. and stuffing their faces with chocolate biscuits and quality street which i am strictly forbidden.

i suppose this is the hardest thing that i have ever done. but it is really interesting and i am stubborn as a mule so i will finish the programme if it kills me. excuse me not going on about it too much but i have been going on about this aspect of it and that aspect of it for the last fortnight and that’s why the only person i phone is trouty otherwise i feel like a cracked record (what’s a cracked record, grandpa?).

thanks are due for all the kind messages of support that i have received via trouty and for all the lovely cards (you have to open them in front of staff; they are particularly keen on the ones with afghanistani stamps on containing helpful gifts of talcum powder to speed ones recovery). one card in particular contributed by an amateur cartoonist made me laugh a lot lot lot and i showed it around.

in the meantime i’ve a run to tesco to perform and then, maybe, a visit to my beloved navigation.

ooh, i know what i meant to tell you. robert crampton writes a good article in the back of the times magazine of a saturday. a while ago i sent him an invite because i like his stuff. i%