It's just over a week to the latest Audience With The Goddess Tori, and already I'm in "squee" mode to quite some degree;

…except that at £45 each inc. booking fee for two tickets, plus travel, plus subsistence, plus the inevitable "ooo! I must have that T-shirt!", means that it's taken all my hot shoe money for July…

[Not that the puncture, which threw up the need for two back tyres, followed two days later by the entirely separate puncture on the same wheel, which thankfully was repairable, did much for my immediate cash-flow situation either.]

So Fish @ the Junction won't happen, the mental health space conference won't happen, there's no new books [so I'm re-reading Kafka, just to add to my soundness and peace of mind], there's no new DVDs, and even the weirdo Greek film showing in Ipswich went in the out-tray marked "tits-up".

I'm not hurting for dosh as such – which makes me better off than 91% of the citizens of this country – just, well, don't expect me to take any long holidays in Kerala in the near future.

Although I may – after next Sunday – consider a one-way ticket…

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We of course live in interesting times for money, and as someone whose job relies on public funding through the County Council, my long-term future is blurry and uncertain. Not just of my "high-care" residential bloc, but of just about everything in the whole damn field.

Mental health is a prime area for cuts because there's always traditionally been a reluctance of the patients/clients to complain about anything – which for many years had a very sound reasoning behind it, in that people who complained were deemed either as troublemakers and thrown out of the system, or it was deemed that the complaints were part of their "condition" so required further/harsher treatment.

The people requiring "high-care", though, have recently got cut less; the experience post-"Care In The Community" in the 1980s meant it was recognized that cutbacks on services for them would mean the people concerned would take up a lot more resources in other services – police, A&E and ambulance, council officials – and generally be a pain in the bum to everybody. [Some of course went a lot further than that and, sadly, hurt or killed people because they didn't get the care they needed.] Whether that same recognition applies now we won't know for some time yet.

Again, whilst I'm not obsessing about this topic right now, neither am I taking out any 40-year mortgages.

I am not an economist, so I have no idea whether the "lack of consumer confidence" caused by upcoming cuts is worse than not doing the cuts, but I suspect…

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Okay, enough moaning. Have a zebraffe, courtesy of the b3ta giraffe image challenge:

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?

I'm typing whilst listening to a soundscape incorporating Rimbaud's 1873 poem "A Season In Hell".

…who'd'a thunk some French bloke 136 years ago would so accurately predict and summarize being an Ipswich Town fan in the Roy 'Up Yer Bollocks' Keane era?

Anyway…

…yes, I know, I'm a bad blogging person, and a bad commenting person at the moment. Having cleared the latest instalment of "oh frog, the landlord's coming round, better clear away any nefarious goods" last Monday, my body has been succumbing to the cold that has threatened to take me down for some weeks, swelling my sinuses to the size of sewers and making my throat feel like I've been drinking a cocktail of Pernod and battery acid. [Sadly not available in your local Threshers'.]

The blustery weather's not helping either – today's mini-tornado luckily was in a village four miles down the road rather than down the main street; if I'd known I'd've got out my Dorothy shoes – and everything now seems on that downward slide towards Agh Festive Season in five and a bit weeks' time.

You can add to that my body clock's maddening habit of 5:30am starts on nights off – I've already seen more 6am episodes of Me Too! than is recommended under European Union health guidelines this month – and an increasing realization that I am coffee's crack-bitch and this needs to change.

No doubt this is a temporary lull rather than a wintry trough, but motivation's difficult to come by.

All I can do is apologize and say "normal service will be resumed", then it's back to the old motto: if you can't make 'em laugh, give 'em something fluffy to go "aaaaaaaah" at…

I hope you're all happy with that.

Not a great deal to report. I missed yesterday's Greenpeace Fair, mainly because I had a migraine and didn't want to get out of bed [oh yeah, and the cricket was on too]; the only thing I've got coming up on my agenda is a lunch in London with a gorgeous person in ten days' time.

But with that and P.'s birthday this week, I did have to do some particular shopping the other day…

The only other thing I can think of from the past few days is that I've seem to get into a kick for scallions / spring onions.

[That's eating them, and nothing else, you filthy-minded peoples.]

[Though if you've any other ideas about what to do with them, then answers on a postcard...]

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Last Night's Dream: I know I suffered from headaches over the weekend, but why in this dream [also featuring a Heath-Robinson polystyrene-cup flinging machine] was I trying to use a paracetamol pill as lubricant?

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Facebook "Coming Out" Update. It's amazing – and a little educational – to learn how and why, just a little time after putting up a picture of my legs and boots as my primary FB pic, just how many friend requests I get from random men, mostly in south-eastern Europe and the Middle East.

It is rather delightful, though, to note that of the very few who I've clicked "yes" to when they didn't seem too pervy or had some other redeeming feature, many of those changed their mind quickly when they read the rest of the profile…

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Random Animal To Disguise The Fact That This Entry Isn't Actually Very Good:

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Today's Big Question: What's your favourite [or, if you haven't got a favourite, your least-detested] type of bird?

[NB: "Bird" is not to be used here in its colloquial Essex sense.]

Like just about all people, my feelings about my body are a mix of emotions. There's few people that remain completely free of the neuroses connected with physical appearance, except for those who are 'in another world' enough not to care; but, outside of pathological self-loathing, it's also true that very few people, I think, don't have some part of themselves that they think is their best feature and want to preserve.

For me, the latter is of course hair and legs.¹

My pins, though, aren't looking at their best at the moment.

This may be because of the previously-discussed theatre workshops, which were held in the dance studio rather than the main stage. I was undertaking a piece of improvisatory delight which involved running across the floor, when I tripped over my slightly-too-long jeans, went arse-over-tit, and slid right into the mirrored wall at the side.

No serious damage was done – except, of course, to my 'rapidly diminishing as the years go by' dignity – and luckily the mirror was of an unbreakable sort, so I'm not condemned to a fate of seven years' touring with Nicholas Parsons; but there's quite a bit of bruising on my knees and legs, and they're still sore and tender.

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A Tufted-Ear Marmoset, As Requested By Sam For His Prize:

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To combat the soreness, I'm devoting this evening to one of my infamous several-hours-long baths – at least, they were infamous in the times I lived in places with shared bathing facilities.

The Proms are having a special "Music from the MGM Musicals" evening, so I shall be singing in a somewhat gay² [and probably also horrendous should you be within earshot] manner whilst I soak.

I have my mother to thank for this particular subsection of my musical preferences, thanks to endless Sunday afternoons during my childhood with nothing else to do but join her on the sofa for the classic movie; thirty years later, the same films – and the same songs – always induce a long-lasting contented nostalgic state in me, in a way that only cricket and early Pink Floyd albums can match.

In those pre-video days, you only got films made post-1970 on special occasions, like Xmas or Easter; and older films were still seen as special property by the studios, to be rationed out on licence rather than sold en masse for four-times-a-day Sky-Movies-Pants rotation. You had to wait six months for Star Wars to come on, rather than just Netflix it within three seconds, and if you didn't like the Sunday Afternoon Movie, there wasn't a heck of a lot of alternative choice…

It wasn't just musicals – there were the old massive epics, like Ben Hur and El Cid; the romantic blockbusters, a la Doctor Zhivago and Casablanca; and, very very occasionally, something a little more left-field along The Day The Earth Stood Still lines. The only thing that got switched off was war movies.

It was a great apprenticeship in the golden age of Hollywood. It was only much later that I got more interested in the dark underbelly of what made the industry tick….

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Today's Big Questions [choose either or both]:

- What bit of your body are you most proud of? Which are you least comfortable with?
- What, stemming from your childhood, acts as a "memory comfort blanket" for you?

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shoenotes:
1 Photo here, if you're interested / pervy.
2 An episode of American Dad – not bad though not seriously funny, but I roffled at this bit – had a Republican convention in which homosexuals were identified by having a security guard say "clang, clang, clang"3; one man who then sings "…went the trolley!" is forcibly ejected, despite screaming "No! I just like musicals!"
3 Oh, and whilst we're talking about it; "We Are Klang"? Yes, you might be, but you should also add "We Are Not Actually Very Funny" to that too.