My trousers are getting smaller and I put this phenomenon down to washing powder or going out in the rain too much.

It’s the waistband that seems to be affected part so acid-rain or some weird shit must be reponsible.

I have a pair of trousers that fit better than the most. When the doctor misfitted the canula in my arm the other day he apologised because some of my blood had squirted down my trouser leg. So what?

I wouldn’t let them go into the washing-machine because, for me, they are a badge - if you like.

Maybe with trousers like these I’ll be made an honorary member of some biker club or maybe, when the laser eyes get turned up, people might leave me alone.

Tomorrow is day 365.

I’ll hit the day in scuzzy trousers, see Doc Holiday, take a deep breath and start waiting for my trousers to fit again. I do weird things; if it doesn’t feel right I simply WILL NOT do it. BUT, if it does feel right I WILL do it no matter what.

Get a map out, go on. See Land’s End? See John O’Groats? Well, I walked all of that. See Perth and see Pitlochry? Well, I walked all of that in one day with a pack on my back.

See that wanted armed-robber put his hands in his coat pockets while you face him, all alone, in Atlantic Road?

I did that, all of that, all by myself with no one to help me. I did all of that.

See, these are just some of the things that I have done, all alone, like we all are, and I will do it again.

I WILL.

One day I will get it badly wrong but until that day I WILL keep getting up and getting up again. I will continue to wake, no matter how badly my brain is misfiring, and I WILL keep going.

Today I will wear clean undies, a clean shirt, blood-stained trousers and some old boots.

Today I will take a boat out and do it better than anyone else. [edit] and I WILL do it.

Tomorrow is 365.

Never forget, I tell myself, the message:

IT’S IN YOU.

READ THIS

There’s no point in hanging about and phoning is easier than cleaning.

Do you know that one of paintings KEPT falling off the wall. It’s true; ask Trouty if you think I’m a liar. It was the one that was very much about illness. It kept falling off the wall. So I’ve stuck it under the bed and replaced it with the ‘Death of Icarus’ that seems so popular at the moment and with a picture of how I see traffic.

Mark my words, one day these will be worth more than houses.

I discovered some cooked chicken in my stupid new bag so I had to eat/clean that out.

Then I bit the bullet and phoned up the Money Scrounging Agency.

‘Hello’, said I, ‘It is me, Mr MoneyScrounger, and I want to know if I can do voluntary work?’

Well, yes, it appears that I can do up to and less than 16 hours or work, paid or unpaid, as long as I let them know. Wish I was a plasterer; I could be on 2400 quids for two days work PLUS benefits.

THEN I phoned up the Trust to offer my services , FOC, as long as I could work with new Trev who I like and respect.

First they wanted to offer me forms to fill in (one day a week FFS) and then they said ‘oh well, just go and talk to Trev’.

If this sort of stuff carries on much longer I’m going to invent a land called Oz and stand behind a curtain pulling levers and shit.

Everything I try to do goes wrong.

Regular readers may remember the daft bit of piping that was put in around the communal stairwell here at Thirst Hall. It sure was daft.

I can’t be bothered to find the links for the original photographs so, if you never saw them, you’ll just have to go with me on this one.

GRRRIND GRRIND GRRRRRR. GRRRIND GRRRRRR etc.

Well what the flying frying pan was all this noise about?

Regular readers will know, all too well, that the (well, ONE of the things) thing that I CANNOT stand is noise. I put up with it for a bit and then, when I wanted to go to the shop I descended the communal staircase. At the bottom of the stairs who should I see but the same gormless twat who had put in the mad pipeline in the first place. He must have had a bollocking because he was trying to drill through the concrete of the stairs.

Oh dear.

If he he had had a royal sceptre with a big fuck-off, enormo-diamond on the end stuck in his chuck he would never have got through the concrete. One of those squirrels that are clever at getting at peanuts could have told him that the whole adventure was a mistake and that the plumbing should have been carried out from the inside of the building. But, oh no, the silly twat was trying to drill through a a reinforced stairwell.

GRINDGRINDGRINDDDDDD - ‘Oh, heh heh’ he said when he observed my devilish appearance.

‘Oh. Ha huh’, was my reply.

This evening I took a picture of his handiwork:

He’s filled in the hole that he must have bust a few bits trying to drill.

When I walk past the pipework my steel-capped boots sometimes slip and damage the pipes and maybe that’s why he’s been called back to do something about the leaks and whatever.

The sooner that the whole world learns to ask me what to do and how to do it, the better.

Here’s my advice: ‘Matey, this project would never have worked from the start. You should have run the pipework through the adjoining property and you would never have got permission so you should have said “NO” rather than holding your hand out for the money. There IS actually a drain to the NorthEast that you could have dug into and all the grey water you need to dispose of could have gone into there.’

As usual, no one asks me so fuck them.

Except with compluters (which, as everyone knows are impossible) I know so much about everything just by being sensible. I can mend central-heating systems for fuck-all when shaven-headed scummers come round, suck their teeth, and phone up my landlord in a bullying tone and ask him for three grand.

I’m GREAT me!

In fact I am SO great that I look at the usage stats for my blog and sometimes I can even work out where all the stuff I create has been pinched to. But sometimes I can’t work out where it goes. There is a girly on MyFace who has used one of my paintings as wallpaper and she hasn’t a CLUE what the painting is about. But, just recently, someone has had a go at another one, this one in fact:

As you can see it is rather rubbish and innaccurate. Icarus died in the sea and not slumped over a sea wall as I chose to draw him. The usage stats show a lot of interest and I can’t really understand why. The painting is fourth-form crap style, classically WRONG and was painted in 20 minutes in an art therapy class. So why the bloody interest? The original is under my bed if anyone would like to buy it.

The most popular image that has been pinched is the one of me dressed up for my pirate style birthday party which people think is some kind of spacker sad pic and post it as such. I’ve caught it flying, particularly in Amerikaland, where people don’t seem to understand the notion of JOKE. I can’t be bothered to post the link for it.

The point I’m making here is that once you release something into the interwebular-superhighway it’s just that. Released.

Fucking Hell.

Oh, and in case you’re interested, Operation 365 will start (for me at least) on Friday 21st when I have an appointment to see Doc Holiday. (he’s always on holiday - Geddit?) but I’m glad to see that the notion has caught on already.

Perhaps you were wondering why it’s called ‘Operation 365′ instead of ‘Project 365′ - Well, to me the word ‘project’ is too weak.

That’s it, really.

Oh dear.

Having written this pair of words so often it’s becoming a bit of a joke, isn’t it?

What I’m banging on about this time is the start of Operation 365.

So this time I’ll give it a year but THIS time I’ll do it the way that I think fit. It means no more diazepam which does me no good at all. It means no more help from the Windmill Team (SOMETHING be its name) and it means no more alcohol. No fags. It means no more anything from anything external. It means no more being told what to do and just a simple reliance. A reliance upon something I was told 30 years ago.

After 18 months or more I crashed and when I say that I mean I crashed and burned. 18 months of sobriety disappeared right up my own crack when I went to the shop and bought (as I recall) a litre of Famous Grouse and a large bottle of port. What a mission; what an OMISSION. IT had got too much to bear. IT was too much for me. The particular disease that I have is a killer and, just like a shot down plane, I went for it. Hurtling for the ground with no amount of tugging at the controls to save me. No parachute because I had no support whatsoever. The wind was screaming and I was on my way down. All that time my sobriety had come entirely from within; everything had come from within me and suddenly it was gone.

As an allegory I would say it was like a surfer who just lost the wave. I tumbled and there was no new wave for me to ride and I floundered. Out at sea with no wave to ride.

Of course, I could blame all manner of things. Problems with this and that and the noise and the blah, blah, blah, blah. But I won’t. I won’t because the blame lies squarely with the man I see in the mirror.

This is a difficult piece to write but at the same time it’s so easy because it’s true. I spent the last 3 months fucking up my life. And THAT is the truth of it.

If I have a quick review I could tell you that I have lost my dearest friend, my access to the river, the respect of people who I value. I’ve spent more money than I should and I’ve smoked a couple of packets of fags. I’ve been what is called, in polite society, a bit of a see you next Tuesday.

On the other hand, the sky hasn’t fallen in, I haven’t been arrested since 1986 and the only time I spent in A&E and hospital wards recently were NO FAULT OF MINE. I’m still the funniest man. Walking along I can make myself laugh. A kind man and largely a good one too.

So, there’s the rub. It sure ain’t good but it ain’t too bad either. The lights are still working and I can listen to the radio. No rock-bottom but still a general whiff like when I empty the chemical toilet. It’s not actually that bad but it could be better. A lot better. Loads of people round here have cars and houses and holidays and they don’t have to walk down the road filled with fear all the time for when cars filled with scummers shout WANKER out of the window for no reason.

So I must have been getting something wrong.

A constrained and agoraphobic life that was turning OCD and could only be soothed by a daily consumption of 40 units of alcohol a day is not much of a life. So I must try something different.

Here comes Operation 365: Shave off beard - clean teeth daily rather than weekly - bath daily rather than monthly - stop shouting at people - move to the countryside - walk ten miles a day - do voluntary work - see if it’s remotely possible to study Industrial Archaeolology - get out of bed in the morning instead of the afternoon - lose weight - test blood/sugars - eat… Oh, the list goes on.

Oh, and the thing that happened, 30 years ago? At the risk of boring everyone to death what happened was that I had a message (it ‘felt’ external but might not have been) and as far as I can get it this is a picture of where it actually happened…

The message was: “It’s in you".

Now that’s something I can’t forget and it’s all I have to rely on. Honestly I don’t hear voices or anything like that and this happened 30 years ago. But it really happened.

OK, so I fucked up my 18 months sobriety but not that badly. I’m really wondering if anyone might be interested in my Operation 365? It could be really important or it might be a load of rubbish but I’m desperate now and I’m going to give it a try.

It’s worth documenting in more than just a crappy blog but I’m going to go for it anyway.

All I need to do is work out what the message meant. I’ve a nasty feeling that it might just be the secret of my life and if it’s the secret of MY life it might well be yours too.

Exciting stuff, eh?

Let me know if you’re interested.

Never delete a blog. Never say that you are sorry (because you are never sorry, never truly sorry).

So, take a lesson from old Henry here, the pipesucker of the waterway.

Look carefully at what you write and look carefully at what you draw. Extend this to what you acually do.

Do you know, I talk to EVERYONE. Expecting scintillating conversation would be a major mistake BUT WAIT.

Someone I know finds it difficult to talk to people whereas I just charge in. Ask questions all the time and you will hear the most amazing stories. People in general aren’t really interested in your crap but they love an opportunity to offload theirs.

You have to have an idea how to do it. If you need to know a way to get from A to B then ask for ‘the BEST way’. Asking in this way invites the askee in and you get the real gen. The askee becomes part of your mission and you get sucked into some rubbish sometimes but you will have made friends all along the way.

When in doubt, ASK.

There were some interesting typos yesterday but you know me well enough - it was the zopiclone and diazepam that I’m not too used to; I can type well on just the swig.

That link’s funy though and there’s loads more ‘History Today’ on YouBoob. And check out Rob Newman playing Jarvis.

Oh Gohhhhd!

Watch this….

And if you don’t, I’ll lill you.

Mo. I#lll kill ypu’

So thrtr.

Well, the first mistake that they made was refusing to accept that I know slightly more about diabetes than the highly-untrained staff at Windmill House (cursed be its name).

A ‘nurse’ there actually forcibly removed a banana from my possession saying that it had sugar in it and that diabetics should not eat bananas. Funny that, I always thought that diabetics SHOULD eat bananas but then I’ve only been a diabetic for eighteen years so what do I know?

They refused to believe that the two different types of insulin that I use are, amazingly enough, DIFFERENT and, as a result, did not want me to take both types. As a result of this I missed out on two consecutive day’s worth of glargine insulin totalling 120 units because they took everything of mine that they considered to be ‘medication’ and locked it away where I couldn’t get at it. I like to have glucose tablets with me at all times in case a hypo comes upon me and I need to boost my sugar levels. They insisted that this was medication and said that the doctor had not written up that I was supposed to have it.

The doctor had also omitted to prescribe me a quarter pound of coconut fucking ice either because the glucose sweets are, weirdly enough, SWEETS and not ‘medication’ but they still locked them in the drugs trolley.

Insulin dependant diabetics should have their insulin before meals but in Windmill House (cursed be its name) you get your meal an hour before you queue up for meds.

After a few days of being fucked about like this I was trying to struggle on with my cheese-paringly rationed diazepam detox when…

Sunday morning I was ILL. And I mean ILL. I was puking, my blood-sugars were over 20 and my stomach felt like an alien was about to hatch out from it.

The staff tried to fob me off with Gaviscon but then eventually had to call an ambulance and have me taken, alone, to A&E where I was left on a trolley for a very long time wishing that I was dead.

The consultant suspected that I might have gall-stones or pancreatitis. Having been presented with two soothing suppositories which I had to shove up my own arsehole I was rushed away to a Surgical Evaluation Unit. When I got there an attractive woman doctor wanted to shove her finger up my arse. God only knows what she thought I’d been up to - maybe trying the tell the time with a lit candle poking out of my anus to see which way the shadow fell? - and she asked me about a thousand questions. Surgeons came and prodded me and asked if it hurt (it DID) and then I was attached to a saline drip, a potassium and glucose pump and an insulin clamp which is like a massive syringe full of insulin that gets pumped in through the canula in your wrist at varying speeds depending on what the hourly, round-the-clock, blood tests say.

It took two days attached to all this machinery for my blood-sugars to get back to normal. During these two days I decided that I would not be going back to the Windmill (cursed be its name) to continue my detox which still has four days to run.

The doctor a the hospital wrote a letter discharging me back to the Windmill and included a list of the drugs I should be given to take away with me.

At the Windmill (I had to be escorted back) I made it quite clear that I was not staying a moment longer and started to pack my paltry possessions away.

I was made to speak to my psychiatrist on the phone who accused me of acting in anger (yeah, like it’s ALL MY FAULT) and I told him that I wanted nothing further to do with him or him team of banana-thieving know-nothings ever again. When asked what I intended to do then, I saidI would sort myself out - I will do it all myself and I will.

Note to smug keyworkers: when sending patients you have nearly killed to A&E in an ambulance do NOT give them the pack of lies you have written about them in your pathetic case notes because they will read them as soon as no one is watching them.

Do you think that my keyworker said a warm goodbye, wished me luck and sent me away with all the medications that the hospital doctor had ordered in his discharge letter?

No, the self-righteous fucking smug little tit gave me two 10mg diazepam tablets and told me to see my GP in the morning about continuing my detox.

Do you know when I can next see my GP? That’s right! In thirteen days.

Aaah, you’re thinking - I bet he went to Tesco straight away to commence a home-retox plan of Port and Brandy shandies!

Well, I didn’t. I wouldn’t give those miserable shits the pleasure.

And I want to be able to think straight in order to have them all struck off.