bu yin, bu long, bu cheng gu gong (Chinese)

What a weekend I've had already and it's only Sunday lunchtime. Not that it's been bad, just different.

Let me start by saying that although I'm sure something interesting must have happened on Friday (and without upsetting my lovely Niki at all) but I can't really remember anything about it. Now I know that I've been a bit bored recently but that's just ridiculous, it can't have been that dull that either nothing at all happened or I have blanked it from my memory. Not sure I understand that at all really but there you go.

I can't remember exactly when it was, but at some point between Wednesday morning and Friday night, I put an ad on the Gumtree community site via Yahoo about getting a band together with some differnet people (thought it might be a good way to meet new friends and do something about my boredom). Well I got an anwer on Saturday morning which I am following up, I'll let you know what happens.

Anyway, Niki went to work on Saturday and I slept in, I couldn't believe it I was in bed later than 8am, in fact I didn't get up until about 10.30ish. After faffing around on the computer for a while, I started working on some songs that I'd basically done the music for weeks ago. I spent the rest of the day doing that and came out of it with two completed songs (which I have now posted on my Kizlode MySpace site), one of which is a cover of The Dixie Cups version of Iko Iko (memories of my brother Pete - more of that later) and one 'original' song of my own about my heart attack. Looking back from now, the evening/night seemed to go by in a blur, we watched Dr Who on the on demand thingy that Virgin Media have and had dinner then watched some more tv and then bed.

Now I'm sitting here faffing around on the computer again and listening to the mp3's that I've got on my hard drive. That's where the memories of my brother Pete came from, I got a lot of my interest in a wide variety of music from him and have a lot of songs as mp3's that were songs he first played to me. He was a great bloke and I miss him a lot.

Well, I'm going to leave it there for now.

nam gawa the wei woe lu yoe; phug dang si yang they nang yoe (Dzongkha, Bhutan)

Yesterday was an interesting day. Niki had to go to hospital for her GTT (Glucose Tolerance Test - basically a blood test to see if she's diabetic, for those of you that don't know), and I had to have some blood tests done to check on my cholesteral levels. What this meant was that neither of us could have anything to eat or drink (apart from water) from 9pm on Tuesday. So we get to the hospital at about 8.45am and I go with Niki to the waiting room she has to sit in to wait for them to take the first lot of blood and then give her a sugary drink, after which she has to wait again for 2 hours and then have some more blood taken. After a while I left to go and get my blood tests done, It's a take a ticket and wait for your number to come up (a bit like a deli counter at a supermarket), so I take my number, number 13, and look at the counter, it reads number 48. So I settle down for an hour to wait for the numbers to tick round and read my book on Black Sabbath which is now overdue at the library. Eventually my number comes up and I go in, the nurse is a cheery woman (which I hate as I can't stand having needles put in me, absolutely HATE it), she sets about trying to find a vein in me left arm. After a few moments she thinks she's found one and sticks the needle in, she manages to get absolutely no blood and so takes the needle out again. She then trys with my right arm, this time after much trying she can't find a vein at all and so goes off to get someone else to try. The second nurse turns up and she is just as cheery as the first one, which makes me feel even worse, then she tries to find a vein in my left arm. After much trying she says she can't find one and so trys my right arm, this time after a few moments she finds one and sticks the needle in, and manages to get a tube of blood out. I wouldn't mind but last time I had this done at the same hospital it took one nurse, one attempt and she wasn't as cheery. So I then go back to see Niki and we sit in the waiting room for another 45 minutes or so until they took her second lot of blood and we went on our way. Then we hit the canteen and I had a cup of coffee, after which I felt much better. Now I know that my mood was nowhere near as bad as it would have been if I hadn't recently started having half-caff coffee, but to go from 9pm Tuesday until nearly mid-day on Wednesday without any coffee was not fun.

Anyway, given all that, the good news is that they told Niki that if there were any problems she would get a call today, and we haven't had one so therefore everything looks good.

After coming home for a while, and some more coffee, I went to my counselling session. It was an interesting one given the weekend I had, and was also a follow up on last weeks session. We managed to talk about a lot of stuff, which I was pleased to have both out in the open and more sorted in my head. Basically what came out of it is that (and I'm sure that there are those out there that will say something along the lines if I told you so) in order to stop me going out of my head I need to get out of my head, the good thing is that for the first time not only do I fully understand that and accept it, but also I have a counsellor who is going to work with me in order for me to find the way. I can't wait.

I want to end this blog entry by posting a link to a site where they are looking for plus size women to become singers (just one of my personal likesD), anyway here's the LINK

Well, that all from me, see you.

gading yang tak retak (Indonesian)

So I'm going to try to sum up one area of thought as it happened this weekend (well actually it started at the end of last week and covered the whole weekend up to Monday afternoon), in as short a sentence as possible. I'm sure it will need no further explaination, but even if you'd like some you wont get it from me.

Smile, grin, laught, idea, message, smile, stop, think, oops, initiate stop, find wrong target hit, double oops, possible meltdown, panic, initiate damage control, panic, start internal meltdown, panic, continue damage control, panic, panic, damage control worked, sigh, initiate mop-up and calming procedure.

Well apart from that this weekend wasn't too bad really. Niki had a bit of a hard time with work, journey wise on Saturday but was alright after resting a bit when she got home. We sold quite a bit on e-bay but still have lots to sell. We watched the London Marathon, I always like to see the people dressed up stupidly, running miles for charity, but thought this years TV coverage was crap, too much of the pro race and not enough of the charity stuff, plus I didn't here Brendon Foster say 'record' even once (Old Nick should know why that's funny even if no one else does). Still it was a pretty quiet weekend, all in all, and it wasn't too bad really.

Well the snooker is back on TV, which is great. Not that I'm a huge fan but it does give me something to watch when I'm awake until 3 or 4 in the morning other than the rubbish phone quiz things and repeated programmes presented with semaphore for the hard of thinking (please don't think by that comment I am in any way anti-deaf, I'm not, it was just an attempt at humour ).

So here I sit, feeling a bit bored (something that has been happening to me more often of late) and not knowing what I really want to do. I have been getting like this more and more, in some ways I can see it as a good thing because it means that my mind is starting to think about more than just chaos inside and wanting to do something other than find ways of beating me up, but in some ways I'm not sure just how good it is because if I can't find something, or at least decide what thing it is, that I want to do I may well slip back into that despondant well of feeling like it's all just a waste of time anyway, and I don't want to go back there again.

That's about all from me for now, see ya.

dalu tongtian, ge zou yi bian (Chinese)

Yesterday was a nice day. We did bugger all in the morning. Niki had packed up the e-bay stuff on Wednesday afternoon while I was at the counsellors, so in the afternoon we went into Romford and posted them off. Then we walked around the shopping centre doing some window shopping (don't know why, we don't actually need to buy any windowsD) and trawling the charity shops for any interesting stuff. We bought a couple of books and some wool and needles for Niki. Then we came home and we had a chinese takeaway for dinner. For some reason, I couldn't sleep last night and so sat up until about 3am watching 'Midnight Run' which I think is a very good film.

So this morning I got up earlyish to go over to Niki's studio to show some people round who phoned last week about taking it over. Halfway through getting dressed I managed to screw my back up and it was hurting like buggery. I managed to finish getting dressed and went downstiars to have coffee, pain-killers, and breakfast. After a few hours of resting it was fairly obvious that I wasn't going to be able to go, Niki said she would go instead which I wasn't too happy about but had to accept. Then the woman who was interested phoned and said they'd found somewhere else and so wouldn't be there today. Although I was a bit pissed off about it, it did mean that neither of us had to go, which wasn't bad. So I rested some more and then had to go to my doctors this afternoon to get my repeat prescription, which didn't take long but was a bit of a pain in the arse (well in the back actually).

So now here I am, back home with an aching back and tired, but feeling pretty good-ish. If anyone knows anyone that would be interested in renting an artists studio in Barnes we'd be only too pleased to show them ours

On to other things.

Last night I set up a MySpace page for a band that Old Nick and I used to be in. The band were called Beyond Help and we did mostly our own material but with four cover versions as well. I have posted one of the cover versions, Cat Scratch Fever originally done by Ted Nugent, and one of our own, Gimme Money which was written by Old Nick. Amazingly I managed to find this picture on the internet which I nicked for the picture on MySpace:-

Here's the link to the page if you want to check it out:-

Beyond Help

Here's another piece of odd guitar stuff. I found this whilst surfing and thought it looked really odd, I'd love to find out more about it. All I know is that it is machine tooled metal:-

Here's a link to the site and more pictures:-

Guitar

Well, I think that's about all from me for now.

mas vale rodear que no ahogar (Spanish)

Let me start by saying that a bit of a load has been lifted today in two different places and about different things.

Firstly there was the fact that we had been told that there was an increased risk of the baby having Downs Syndrome but we went to the hospital today and Niki had a scan done, the consultant said that everything looks fine and the baby looks perfectly healthy. Here's a picture of the scan, this is a close up of the baby's profile (if you look closely you can see the nose, forhead, eye, and lips):-

We are both feeling much relieved. We both agreed that even if the baby did have Downs Syndrome or something like that, it wouldn't make any difference to us having it, however we knew that if that had been the case then we would have had to do a lot more research and preperation in order to cope. It's weird but every time I see those pictures it makes it all much more concrete to me and I must admit it's all a bit scary sometimes. I know we'll cope and get on with as best we can, but in many ways it's as much a first time for me as it is for Niki. Still it's another thing I can cross off the list as having done for the first time without drinkingD

Anyway, after stopping at the hospital canteen for lunch, Niki went home and I went on to see my counsellor. I arrived a lot too early and had to fight to stop myself from falling asleep in the reception area (not a great idea as I snore rather loudly). This weeks session was mainly to do with sex and went really well, and, although I am not going to go into great detail here, my counsellor helped me to realise and come to terms with the fact that although I have had strong sexual feelings/fantasies for, or about, people that I really shouldn't have at times in my life, it doesn't make me a pervert or deviant as I never actually did anything about it. Having read that back I realise that it might sound worse than it is, let me assure you that the feelings/fantasies have all been harmless. Anyway it helped to lift a layer of guilt that I have carried for quite some time.

Other than all that excitement today, things are going alright. The stuff on ebay seems to be selling pretty well, Niki cooked a lovely dinner tonight, and for the first day in weeks my farmers aren't giving me problems.

That's all from me for now.

I realised that I forgot to put the foreign language quote at the begining of yesterday's post so here's the next one anyway

chi non ha cervello abbia gambe (Italian)

As I said with the first one, if anyone wants a translation either try Babel Fish or ask me.

Well, I was feeling a bit down yesterday for some reason and so Niki tried to cheer me up by getting me membership of Sprout Law, the official Robert Rankin fan club. She is wonderful, but unfortunately my happiness at it didn't last as long as I would have liked. Don't know what it is that's making me feel like this right now but hopefully it won't last too long, I have another counselling session tomorrow so maybe that will help. Tomorrow is also the day we go for Niki's next scan, and we find out if everything is well with the baby. It depends on the outcome as to weither I actually go to my counselling session but hopefully everything will be fine.

I finally got an answer from MySpace about posting cover versions, aparently then can be posted as long as they are all your own work (i.e: no samples from the original recording), so I have now posted the two that I have finished onto my MySpace music site

We've put a load more stuff up on ebay and hopefully they will sell well, then we can put the money towards stuff for getting the house sorted out, as well as making a bit more space here by getting rid of them.

Well, Niki and me are going to do the shopping in a few hours time, and I need to get at least some of the washing-up done as well so I'd better go for now, see you later.

Well, what a day it's been (well a day and a half actually since my last posting but there you go).

I did a fair amount of bugger all yesterday afternoon and evening, which was nice. Watched a fantastic film last night, 'Ravenous', I saw it for the first time (as far as i remember) about 5 years ago when I was partially drunk and awake at about 1.30am one Saturday, bored and channel surfing, and came accross it just as it started. I don't know what made me keep watching it, but I'm glad I did because I thought it was brilliant, and still do.

Got up at about 9.30ish this morning, Niki had already gone to work and I went into Romford to pay a cheque into the bank, put a bet on the Grand National, and do some shopping. I bought a copy of a funny film called 'Free Enterprise' on DVD for £1.75 out of a charity shop, got some food and then came back home. Watched the race, what a waste of time that was only one horse we backed finished and that one came in 11th out of 13 (still maybe I'll have more luck with the Lottery this week, haven't checked it yet). Niki came home and we got a Pizza in then sat and watched Dr Who and now here I sit blogging. God what an exciting, rock 'n' roll life I lead these daysD

Niki hasn't had too good a day really, she's suffering a bit at the moment, aches and pains, not sleeping very well, and feeling acidy and sick a lot of the time. I wish I could do something to help and make her feel better but I can't, which annoys me. Still only about another 4 months to go and then the baby should be here and maybe she won't be suffering all the aches and pains and sickness, not so sure about the sleeping mind youD

I've been working on some music lately and am trying to find out if there is any legal way for me to post cover versions on the internet (either on here on or my MySpace music page), I think that if I make sure they can't be downloaded I might be able to do it, but can't seem to find out for sure. If anyone has any idea I'd be grateful for any information.

Well, that's about all from me for now, hope everyone is OK and I'll see you later.

I have decided that this is going to be the start of a whole new thingy, don't really know what to call it but basically it's just an attempt to start afresh for me in many different ways. All of my postings from now on are going to start with a saying from another language, in that language, that appeals to me (if you require a translation you can use Babel Fish on-line, or ask and I might let you know), so here's the first one.

ai jiao de maque bu zhang rou (Chinese)

Well, eveything is going pretty well at home, that is taking into account the fact that both me and Niki have got colds and she's suffering a bit from the normal aches and pains of pregnancy, apart from that we're fine

Niki suprised me this week by buying me the new Black Sabbath CD 'The Dio Years' which is great and has three new songs on it, which to be honest are a lot better than the new songs that were on the Ozzy line up 'Reunion' album.

Just as an aside I found these two amazing pictures earlier in the week, and I want to get hold of these guitars to try them out:-

I'm trying to find out more about the artist who created the guitars in the second picture because they look like they are fully playable but I'm not sure.

I will be posting a lot more regularly from now on, honestly, so I'll be back

So. Here I am back again. Part of me so wanted to prove Mr Blue Sky wrong and disappear from the blogging world for good, but then I read through the comments that had been left after my last posting and also a couple of posting by some of my friends on here and decided that I didn’t see why I should. I want to thank everyone who left a comment, especially my daughter, and also want to thank Lyndlj and Whitty for their recent posts that influenced my decision. I will be posting a proper entry on here soon but for now I just want to leave a special message.

Message for Mr Blue Sky

I have thought long and hard about the things that you said in your comments. Firstly I want to thank you for making me stop and think about exactly what I was doing and why, you have made me realize that what I am doing is right for me and that it is what is right for me that matters the most because if I’m not right then I cannot do right by the people I love. The second thing that really struck me is this, if as you have said, you haven't put anything in your comments that you wouldn’t say to my face, why didn’t you say them to my face? Surely we know each other well enough after all these years for you to come round, phone me or at least e-mail me directly to state you point of view? (I hope you won’t do this now as it’s a bit late really, and I don’t want to end up having an argument with you, I still consider you a friend and don’t want to risk that not being so in the future)Your comments did hurt to a certain extent, and I do realize and accept that by blogging publicly I open myself up to any sort of comment from anyone and that some of the comments are not necessarily going to agree with my position, however I do feel that the way you worded the things you said was overly attacking. Because of those comments, or more correctly the tone that they conveyed to me, I very nearly shut the door on one of my only safe outlets for my confusion and emotions, and even within the short period of time that I haven’t been blogging I started feeling chocked by the chaos, but I decided that I wasn’t going to allow the opinions of one person take something away from me that I like being a part of. My last point is that I think that the comment left by my daughter really negates any comment left by you that my blogging about my therapy is causing my children problems. You can leave a comment on this post if you want, and I may even reply to it, but I am not going to allow myself to get drawn into any kind of argument with you.