Listening

Wooo, why do I keep posting about depression? I haven't counted, but a quick flip down my previous posts shows that there's loads. Sorry about that. I wouldn't want you to think that I am obsessed with it - I'm feeling fine at the moment, anyway. Thanks for asking. It just seems like an interesting subject to blog about, at the time. With hindsight, this is probably not actually true, is it? A bit like golfers going on about the really good shot that found the really bad lie. Or, in poker parlance, nobody likes a bad beat story. Sorry. I'll try and shush about it.

I'm in a quandary regarding my radio listening at the moment.* I may have mentioned, just the once, that I'm forty now (why isn't that spelt fourty? Always annoyed me, that has. Still, we could be french and call ninety nine four twenties nineteen. That would be worse). I've got Radio 1 on at the moment. I am plainly not in the target demographic. I don't mind Chris Moyles, I suppose, though I've just listened to him reckoning the Nile is the longest river in South America. Brain the size of a planet. I find that annoying. Oh, and now they've said that Saturn's rings were discovered in 1979. I haven't googled it up but I'm fairly sure it was, uh, the odd century or four before that. For fuck's sake. I really hope I misheard that. Wasn't it a Mr G Gallilei in sixteen hundred and something?

Anyway, radio choice. I have a severe allergic reaction to local radio. It causes me a choking sensation, and feelings of nausea. Caused by me sticking my own fingers down my throat in desperation. I also have a nasty intolerance of adverts on commercial radio. It causes irrational spasmoidal muscle twitches, resulting in throwing heavy objects at the radio. So that's Virgin out. (Could have contrived a joke there about virgins, but you're too distinguished an audience).

Radio 2 is the obvious choice, I hear you cry. Well, maybe, but, duh, Steve Wright still doing exactly the same stuff as he was doing on Radio 1 in the eighties, and Ken more-effective-than-prozac Bruce. Puh-leeze.

I guess it's time to download some more albums onto iTunes. Or upload them. Oh, whatever you do when you go onto t'internet and find some nice songs that you like and buy them and the little blue line takes a couple of minutes to travel a few inches across the screen and then suddenly the song appears on your playlist and you can make a CD of your very very own with the burn to cd function. See, I'm internet literate, me. Then I can listen to my stuff not their stuff, which is nice.


*Challenge anyone to change the subject more suddenly than that.

Depressed, manic, what?

WARNING: may contain the word CUNT.

May also be self-indulgent bollocks, however. The author will not be liable for readers kicking the crap out of their pc due to boiling over with anger at the self-indugent arse-wipery contained hereafter. So there.

I may have referred in the past to being a depressive sort of person, so it was with great interest that I watched Stephen Fry last evening exploring his and others' relationship with bipolarity. (I fear that I am in danger of breaking my self-imposed ten minute rule here. It is a serious thing, though).

Bit disappointed, actually. Not with Stephen, whom I like enormously and he made a very good programme. No, more with myself, as usual.

I can relate to all of the more minor incidents of depression recounted: one Robbie Williams, of whom you may have heard, described standing up in front of forty thousand people and saying 'I'm great, me', finishing the concert, going alone back to his hotel, and pulling the duvet over his head. I so do that. On a much smaller scale, obviously. And Stephen recounted that during his depressive periods, he just thinks that everyone dislikes him because he's such a cunt*, a complete wanker**. I do that, too. I still think sometimes that my mates are just putting up with me and all give a collective sigh of relief when I leave.

However, they then recounted the manic episodes of creativity, unbounded energy, no sense of responsibility, no fear of failure - and both said that they wouldn't want not to be bipolar because of this; it made it all worth while. They even credited these manic periods with creating them as successful slebs in their own field.

Twat.

No fair.

Typical me.

How come I only get the arse end of the deal, as usual? I heard myself asking.

I could look at this, if I was a paranoid person, as just another of life's kicks in the teeth that I seem to get more than my fair share of. And, yes, I know we all feel like that sometimes. But I found myself thinking: I actually want to be more mad ill than I am already. It's not fair. How come I don't get the fun bit, just the bad bit?

But then the other people on the documentary gave me a reality check, so to speak: a fat Tony Slattery chucking all his worldly goods into the Thames from a warehouse flat, holed up alone for three months; the ex-commander of the Royal Yacht who saw angels, and the devil, and then walked out of a psychiatric unit and stepped in front of a lorry, on purpose - did you see the damage still done to his legs? - and the poor woman, only a little older than me but who looked seventy, who just grinds to a halt in the supermarket, unable to motivate herself to move at all, and says she lives from minute to minute because she can't even consider further away than that. She once tried to kill herself by drilling into her head. Not funny.

So, I guess my bad bits aren't too bad, really. It is frustrating, don't get me wrong. I have the greatest difficulty motivating myself to do anything at all sometimes, and it was important for me to hear Stephen say that sometimes to get up from the sofa and go to the fridge is an effort almost too great to be attempted. I had sort of wondered if that was just me. So that's good to know. I find myself doing anything at all as escapism: this, tv, books, the paper, having a snooze, anything, to avoid thinking about what I should be doing, ie working; the trouble with that is I finish the paper, programme, whatever, and reality just comes crashing in again. Leaving me being down and feeling guilty that I haven't been working, earning money to feed the children, blah blah.

I went to the doctor about all this a while ago, and he said to get more exercise.

Ta for that.

Our Robbie said that he'd stopped drinking and drug-taking for 13 months and felt worse than ever. So he went and got some anti-depressants and suddenly felt fine for the first time in years: 'Soz about that, I'm ok now'.

Mmmmm. Now that really is interesting. I have always steered clear of this route. I am really worried about dependency and so on. I can't decide whether what I feel like is really a big enough problem: I muddle through. You wouldn't even know, to look at me. I seem normal enough, I guess. But I have felt like this - the mates thing, the motivation thing, low self esteem and all that - for pretty much all of my life that I can remember, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always there. I'm fairly sure that I'm not bipolar. I don't do the manic thing much (or maybe I do, what the fuck do I know? I'd need to be on the outside looking in to judge). I don't think I do. I'm also fairly sure that I am depressive. Not lock-self-in-garage-with-ignition-turned-on depressive. Ever. Honest: be reassured on that one. But I think that I really do have to do something about this one now. Crisis? What crisis? Ha. Maybe, this time.

So: pills, or no pills?

Assuming the doc agrees with me.

I'll let you know.



*His word, and I did warn you.
**Sorry, forgot to warn you about that one. I assume it's ok between mates.

Really quick is best

I've decided this. Blogwise, I mean. I can think of lots of other things in which it wouldn't be true at all, not by a long chalk. Sex, for one. Unless you like it like that. I once had very quick sex on the steps of the Albert Memorial in that there London on a Saturday afternoon. There's (a) an interesting dinner party conversation and (b) a time when quick is definitely good. I was wearing a very long coat and she was wearing a very short skirt, in case you were wondering. This was Acceptable, as it was the eighties.

I'm digressing. And turning into one of them Sex Blogs which have been all over the media recently. Perhaps.

Quick Blogging is the way forward (keep up at the back). I've decided that unless I've got something serious to say, then 10 minutes is my limit. I got a bit fed up and like lots of others I thought about giving up (I understand that 3 months is average for Bloggers to keep it up*) because I'd run out of stuff to say - even the inestimably great Greavsie thought about giving up recently.

So, stream of consciousness, no editing, no constantly going back in and fiddling with something and republishing, and I'm going to be really strict: if I haven't finished after ten minutes I'll just


*fnar

Well hello ...

... again. Finally.

I'm in a real fucking rush, typically, so just saying that I have obviously been a good boy and Blogger has deign ed to let me on again. See what a rsudh I'm in? I haven't even got time to correct those typos.

I didn't know my username, see, cos ever since I've been on here I just log onto the site and I'm still signed on from last time and I never needed to know it until I did need to cos I just got sent to the Blogger sign on page, and then I didn't. Know it, I mean. I tried everything I could think of. It kept telling me ways to sort out forgetting my password. I know my fucking password. It's only ever the same word, sometimes with a single digit number after it. I don't know my fucking username. The person(s) on blogger who are any variation of CrisisWhatCrisis must be totally fucked off with getting emails confirming their passwords. It was weeks and lots of emails until Blogger randomly sent me a reply saying 'this is the screen to change your password on'. And on top of it, big font, in grey, my username. It's one of my other pseudonyms, see, but with a hyphen in the middle. Why the cunting hell did I do that? I had no fucking chance what-so-bastard-ever of remembering that. I'm swearing a lot today. Sorry. Comes of being in a rush. And cross.

So, jus' so you know, I'm back. And while I was away I had loads of ideas of blogs. Did I write them down? Did I bollocks. So now I can't remember any of them and will have to think of some more. Which I will endeavour to do while out drinking this weekend. Reality is, after all, a delusion brought on by lack of alcohol.


Update: well, more a question really. While I've been away someone's stolen my nice white background, apparently. I've just noticed. It's all just grey and nothingness and dull. And the blog. (badoom tish). Is this just my antiquated machine fucking about for a sinister electronic silicon laugh, or does Blogger still hate me really, or has no-one else got that? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that everyone isn't out to get you anyway.