Today's Post is brought to you courtesy of OMIGOD WHAT DID I DO TO MY WEAK LEFT SHOULDER LAST NIGHT, which is currently stopping me raising my arm above shoulder level and explains why my hair is currently a mess.

Long-time readers will know of the story of how I dislocated it twenty years ago – drunk, and falling off a toilet – and the muscles have never been the same since. I don't usually get any problems with it, except if I have to have my arms in the air for a long time. Since I've not recently done any weightlifting or waved my arms about at a Barry Manilow concert, I have no idea why it's hurting today.

[If I had been at a Barry Manilow concert, it wouldn't be my arms that would be hurting, but my legs from the fast running away I'd've been doing...]

There was the nearby-village Field Dance on Saturday night, but it's not like I did any dancing. To escape the nightmare of dosey-does and twirl-your-partners, I volunteered to help run the [unofficial] bar. That's not really a good idea – it's kinda like putting the Chief Rabbi in charge of Danepak Bacon; I had a mouthful of each of the ales to sample them and had to stop myself from pouring out pints for myself. Proof to myself  that I'm still recovering, not recovered: in different circumstances in different times with different people, I'd've drunk the whole sodding barrels dry.

Despite my dancing-avoidance, I did have a good time; the people of that little community are lovely – even the groups of teenagers. Despite a little alcohol, they were friendly, inclusive and didn't need to scream at each other. What's their secret?

Probably what did do the shoulder in was trying to sit comfortably on bales of hay reconnecting with my friends Paula and Claire, who I've shamefully neglected for too long, and who reminded me what bonzer people they are. But next time I see them I want there to be a proper sofa.

St. Paddy's Day.

A day in which the popular press has gone totally apeshit over a "new killer drug" which may have been implicated in the deaths of two teenagers somewhere obscure on the east coast of England, and then fills the rest of its pages with stories and adverts glorifying what has become the annual festival of copious consumption of the chemical which causes more death, disease, addiction, violence and vomit than all illegal substances put together.

Add to that, I'm not glorifying any bloke who drives snakes out of anywhere. Snakes are good things and I like them, even if I wouldn't actually go near them myself.

*picture of beautiful snake excised for the phobic*

I'm not a fan, as you can tell.

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One of the things that make being a "recovering alcoholic" so much fun is how it's seriously weird not to drink.

In "Bad Science", the worshipfully amazing Ben Goldacre hammers the point home that although popular reporting of health statistics on drinking always triumph "a little alcohol is good for you" this is actually caused by a statistical anomaly; non-drinkers are a weird bunch, small in number, and they muck up the stats on life expectancy because they often have their own major health reasons for not drinking [either they've had problems with it, or it clashes with some serious medication they're on for something else, or similar].

Not only are we statistically weird, we're also culturally weird. We're excluded from some of the major social events of society -

[- "why can't you  just come to the pub and have a lemonade?", she said. "that'd be kind of like inviting Pete Doherty into the crack den and expecting him just to have a sherbet dip", I replied. -]

- we're bombarded with propaganda from all sides, both commercial and cultural, that tells us what a bitchenly amazing time is waiting for us should we give in [but it's okay, because they put "Drink Aware" in a four-point font at the bottom, apparently that magic phrase will clear up all the social problems associated with]

- [at least Pete Doherty doesn't  have to pass ten "CRACK MAKES YOU SEXY" billboards on his way to Tesco's] -

- and even the most well-meaning of people are prone to telling you what "fun" you're missing out on ["ooh, got hammered last night, hung over this morning"] in lieu of polite conversation.

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None of the above will make me have a drink, although it helps ensure that every so often the idea enters my head and floats around for two seconds before being violently ejected as soon as I remember exactly why it's not a good idea.

It's just on days like this that the burden of "recovering" weighs heavier than others. Some days it is perfectly possible to go in and "just have a lemonade", whilst there are also days where I shouldn't be within four frogging miles of a pub.

Because at some point someone will say the magic words "Smirnoff Ice", and then…

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*picture of underwater baby hippo to reduce above moan*

Various Mini-Updates:

Job: The 20% deal is all done bar signing my name to it. Having got over the initial "omigod, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life living off fish fingers and 19p Aldi soup" phase, I've entered the second section of "coping with change"; thinking of how to construct the necessary alterations in a positive and constructive manner.

The main saving that needs to be made – and various bits of motivation including this are leading up to this – is that I need to give up nicotine.

This is not something I can do straight away – for various reasons I need to get medical permission before I embark on this – but it's certainly something I can work on at the minute in terms of getting my strategy and my mindset prepared for when it actually happens; say, a month's time.

This may all sound like a pathetic addict putting off the day of reckoning, but the fact that I'm seriously contemplating this change is, in itself, progress. I am, of course, no stranger to "addiction recovery" – it's now the best part of two decades since first realizing I had to stop drinking at some point – and I know that my way is the only way to do this. You can't force any addict to give up [unless you utterly isolate them 24/7 for years and years] – you can only set the conditions in which recovery can be allowed to happen. And I think the time may soon be ripe…

Stomach: Since the bout of food poisoning pre-Xmas, and the splurge of food which the festive season always brings, I've been a lot more careful about what I put into my digestive system. And it's paid dividends. Apart from a small tempestuous event on Saturday evening – which I'm putting down to some dodgy veggiesausages – things have been brilliantly quiet on this front.

The main "loss" has been that I've cut out curries. Yes, yes, I know, it's surprising that this particular addiction has gone unsated for six weeks, but it's actually been easier than I thought.

One particular aspect of the change in diet has been the addition of a daily "bio-yoghurt" pot. Opinions on these differ wildly, and of course my subjective perceptions of their effects are invalid as evidence; the fact that they've coincided with a calm period in my digestive system may be entirely accidental or placebo. Bottom line, though; if you're not concerned about the amount of sugar syrup put into the things – and, luckily, sugar is not an addiction of mine – I figure it's at least doing no harm to put a small amount of sickly-sweet yoghurt in my system every day.

Saucy Writing: Something is brewing. It's not ready yet, I can't even tell what it is yet, but I can feel it there…

February: Always the "joker" month – it's either brilliant or crap. This year, apart from that one "down" day, it's been good so far – although one never knows what's around the corner, natch.

No V-Day cards or presents will be sent this year; and CarolineDay will, hopefully, be spent pootling around Knorwich with S. wetting ourselves over too-expensive shoes before going back to New Look, which has thankfully cottoned onto the size-9 wide-fitting affordable but doesn't-look-like-stereotype-lesbian market.

Plankton: PLANKTON!!!

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Today's Big Question: What "change" are you currently contemplating?

For the first time in, what, thirty-seven years, I'm not watching The Eurovision Song Contest. Last year's proved such a farce in many ways, and with the retirement of the [usually entertainingly drunk] Terry Wogan and his replacement with the annoying [except on Just A Minute because on there you don't get to talk for more than one minute] Graham Norton as host / commentator, it seems any particular reason for watching it has gone.

Instead the day has been taken up with family business: the Evil Sister has gone loopy at my mother: a lost-in-the-post birthday card has sparked off my sister to send her angry e-mails about what a bad mother she was and how she's frightened at leaving her kids for my ma to babysit [obviously, since she arranged it for about once a month], and basically accusing my mother of being the most Evil Woman In History Ever.

This is quite unlike my sister. She's always been ferocious, but her attack has always been precisely focused like a laser beam. For her to go off the deep end in such a general, ranting way is actually quite worrying.

It transpires that it may be that my sister is coming off Prozac; paranoia and strong emotions are part of the withdrawal syndrome, at least in its early stages, and although it's perfectly "safe" and reasonable when managed properly, it would actually quite fit my sister to eschew the withdrawal program and just stop taking the damn things outright.

Plus: My mother was certainly not blameless during our childhoods – to have two out of two kids with "issues" probably proves that – but she certainly wasn't any Josef Fritzel or Pol Pot, and I've long forgiven her for whatever shortcomings she had. It seems my sister may still be working on that process.

This is one of the reasons I was quite wary when, last Xmas, my sister asked for my email address and said she had a few things to "discuss" with me. I'm all up for discussion, because anything which sheds more light on myself and my own "issues" has got to be a good thing. But I was worried that I'd be used as a target, much as my mother just has, for a karma dump. Luckily, though, my sister only ever used the address to find my FaceArse profile [and "block user" is a wonderful option].

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There are many stages to "recovery" from deep, emotional issues that you've left subdued and smouldering away in your subconscious for years. Counselling is one of the methods of recovery, but I think whatever way you do it the stages are still pretty much the same.

First, you dig out exactly what it is that's going on in your head – not the day-to-day stuff, but the long-term things that have affected your life. Then you hold them up for examination.

Anger is a natural stage here. You see exactly what got you into this shit in the first place, and you think "how could they have done that to me / let me get like that?", whoever the "they" is.

One of the reasons why the Rogerian therapeutic relationship is important is that in counselling or similar situations you can vent this anger safely: you're not hurting anybody or casting anyone into Coventry, but discussing [sometimes expressing, acting out] your feelings in the "unconditional trust" atmosphere. You don't have to vent it by sending shitty emails out to whoever.

Beyond that comes acceptance: in my own case, that my mother did the best job she could, given her circumstances and her [not entirely wonderful] emotional background. Yes, there are things I'd've wanted done differently with the benefit of hindsight, but given the care that she showed me later on when I was out of my frogging tree in my early twenties, it would be absolutely churlish, and selfish as hell, to get angry at her for any of it.

So this is kind of what I said to my mother today: she's feeling hurt because my sister has just shat on her from a great height, but if it's part of the recovery process, it may very well be that it's for the greater good of both my sister and the long-term happiness of the relationship between the two of them.

It just doesn't feel like that right now to my mother.

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Although I call her the Evil Sister and obviously maintain a healthy disdain for my only sibling, I don't wish emotional turmoil on anybody. I know myself how disabling that can be. It makes you wish you'd had your legs chopped off instead, for at least that'd be something concrete and manageable, rather than diffuse and difficult to work around.

I very much doubt that I'll ever have a working, close relationship to my sister, given the way our personalities rub up against each other and spark off. As at Xmas, though, I'm prepared to at least put up something resembling "familiness", for the sake of my niece and nephew if nothing else.

But a post-"recovery" properly-accepting sister would be something different, and maybe someone I can negotiate a proper relationship with.

But at the minute; if she wants to shit, sure, but she sure ain't shitting on me.

[...I've now got that last line stuck in my head as part of a country-and-western song...]

Things I Have Achieved Today:

Priscilla passed her MOT [annual safety check] this morning, and the bar of organic fair-trade 85%-cocoa chocolate I slipped to Mary to ensure I was at the front of the queue for the test was a success.

Bribery and corruption are not regular features of my life, either offered or offering; it's not a part of our culture¹.

But as they say, "each man has their price".

Mine just happens to be fairly bargain-basement.

Not quite this low.
Though in a recession, you never know…

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Also: I've parcelled up Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking for Ang and will post it tomorrow.

Don't read this next bit, Ang: nice monologue, good jokes, but didn't really work as a book. Lots of bi-polar and addict insights, yes, but treated as comic material rather than as memoir.

He may or may not have been quoting someone else, but I remember that Victor Lewis-Smith once wrote²; "Analyzing humour is like dissecting a frog. Nobody learns anything much, and the frog's dead."

So I won't go into this too deep, but it's important to this context: addict humour, and mental health humour, is a whole other realm. It's part of one's acceptance of one's past to be able to turn it into comic material rather than keeping it locked away and untouchable. It's something I've done a lot of myself when people have asked me about my experiences. I'd write a whole thesis on it, but it'd be dull as frog.

Natch, I was never from a celebrity Hollywood family or appeared in a long white dress in Star Wars³, so I've not had the pleasure of turning my past pain into laughs in a monologue or a book. But I do have a blog, which has sometimes been just as important…

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Also Also: I've said before how I waste time in lunchbreaks and insomniac nights by completing online market research – YouGov sends me a cheque for fifty quid when I've done 100 or so, and I send it onto my local Samaritans.

Most of these are fairly dull [where do I do my shopping, how do I pay off my non-existent credit cards, how many tubs of mayonnaise do I feed my pet iguana per week] but a couple reveal some interesting things: this time I was asked my attitude to a possible question about people's sexual orientation being on the next UK census in 2011.

You don't get to know who the research is for [although you can often guess], so I don't know whether this is being conducted by the Office for National Statistics themselves as a proposal or as part of a campaign to have such a question included.

I wouldn't have a problem with such a question myself, and out of the three options given [Straight/Heterosexual, Gay/Lesbian/Homosexual, Bisexual] I'd choose the third as the closest-to.

They also asked "if there was an option to tick 'other' and write your own description, would you use it and how would you describe yourself?"

I refrained from typing the following: warning – possible TMI: highlight to read: "born male but wears cute shoes, mostly straight, doesn't really like men much at all but thinks cocks are tasty/gorgeous". If only there was a suitable acronym…

Today's Big Question: Would you answer such a question? What would you put in the "other" box?

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 shoenotes:
1 At least on a personal level. Corporate and governmental corruption is a whole different kettle of fish…
2 From an review reprinted in "Inside The Magic Rectangle". He's kind of like an early Charlie Brooker, only with less pine cones up people's bottoms.
3 Not for want of wishing.

Hurrah. Survived another Feb 17th and did not drink¹.

Also, did not mope around listening to early Marillion albums, did not pine for ancient history, did not write any shitty poetry. Win.

Instead: I treated myself to the latest Doro Pesch album -

- which, as is customary for the genre, shouldn't be examined too closely for deep meaning or innovation, but works very nicely on its own level; Herzblut is a particularly cool track, even if it is in German².

Add to that the forthcoming Cruicifed Barbara album and you can see that my head's very much in aging rock chick mode.

My eyes even drifted over an advert in the paper this morning for a forthcoming Bonnie Tyler gig in Ipswich.

Just for a second. Then sense was regained.

…especially when I saw the price….

Anyway, if you've got any recommendations for female metal/rock/fillintheblank, feel free to use the comment box. I know about all the obvious ones, but if there's something obscure you think I may have overlooked…

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An odd thing this morning: for half an hour I couldn't get on this site. Every time I tried, instead of showing a page, it came up with a dialog box: "Firefox has found a stream: x-httpd-php - Open? Save?"

A bit of net digging found that this was a misconfigured server problem, perhaps related to some messing about I did to try to connect this blog to my FaceArse account. I reversed that, and everything worked again.

Has anyone else had this problem, or was it just for a few minutes this morning?

[Yeah, I know, it'd be so much easier to move my blogging back to Xanga, LiveJournal, OKC or somewhere like that. Balls to it. I like being able to muck around under my own bonnet.³]

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 shoenotes:
1 Even years later, although 99.9% of the urge has disappeared, I'll be minding my own business wandering round the supermarket or something, and the corner of my eye will just catch a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and send a message to my brain; "Hey! Wouldn't it be bitchenly amazing to drink me?" No it frogging wouldn't is the instant answer, and I move on; but this is one of the problems of having alcohol as my weakness. I mean, ex-smackheads don't have to pass massive advertising hoardings every day that say "JUNK: IT'S REALLY FANTASTIC, HONEST" in two-foot high letters…
2 My knowledge of which was limited by having a French and German teacher at school who absolutely excelled at ensuring that we had no motivation whatsoever to learn anything. My list of "people I'd like to slap round the face with a two-ton haddock" has very much shrunk over time as I've worked through the frustrations of my early years, but she's still on it.
3 or hood, but that's starting to sound rather euphemistic…