Christ, I’ve had diarrhoea for a week! Explosive type. Thank God it all goes into a bag, or it’d be a shitstorm for sure.  I’ve stopped eating fruit completely, that’s how serious it is! Given I live on fruit, I don’t really know what else to eat….

Stella has just left as well, so that’s gonna take me  down a bit, and there is other mischief at play designed by The Unscrupulous to unhinge me and someone close to me.

A gig tonight, and having the very capable Rosanna to take over from Stella, should get me back on track, I hope.

As i said goodbye to Stella, I openly admitted to her that I’m not quite at the stage where I can honestly say that I’m thankful to her that she stopped me from dying on July 21st, but perhaps one day I will arrive at that point?

We’ll see.

I don’t know, Frankly.

Anyway, Pia arranged a leaving party last night.

I’ll miss my Stella!

Best front man in Britain? Lead singer of The Pigeon Detectives! So funny, knows how to entertain a crowd and get them eating from his hands…

Brilliant gig in Kentish Town. Pia loved it, as I promised she would. Thanks to Stella for getting me there! The way Back was more interesting…… Pia insisted that I follow her car ( me on the Triride ). As I sort of knew the way already, and we  started going a completely different way, and a COMPLETELY different way to the shortest route that my own MAPS was shouting at me to go ( set to walk/ wheelchair route ) it all became a bit confusing, and we definitely went round in circles for a while, in north London, and the 7 miles that it should have been ended up being 12 Miles (?!) Anyway,  all fine until Pia’s blind following of Sat Nav’ery ( and my misplaced (?) faith in her, took us up onto The Westway ( like an elevated motorway) definitely illegal for bicycles, let alone Wheelchairs. After a couple of minutes I could see Pia was having a fit of the giggles, which set me off too.

Would a copper have looked upon us more favourably had he seen us laughing our way through our crime? I don’t know.

It actually would have been faster on the bus, which stops about 50 times, but hey- it was as Funny as F***, as they say in Wales.

We watched a film last night, so we did.

Silence of the Lambs. A horror film on Halloween, obvs. Timely and fitting.

It was screened by the outdoor cinema peeps, in Hampton Court, no less. Too cold for Stella, the poor South African, but ok for me, hardcore Welsh cinema goer. I just wore shorts and a string vest, Valley Boy stylee…

And almost died of hypothermia.

Anyway, I live to write the tale. Grisly lil number, that Lecter fella. He’s Welsh too, that Yanto Hopkins. Cannibalism is big in Wales. Nothing wrong it really? People are too prissy about stuff these days….

I cope with my spasms far better than I used to, but Jesus, sometimes they just go on all day,  every 10 seconds or so, and last for 4/5 seconds at  a time, meaning that they are happening for 50% of my entire day…

Then I get periods when I’m virtually spasm free.  If only I could work out why they stop, then I could do whatever it is, all of the bloody time!

So Stella comes out of my apartment to the lift, and sees a young man with a woman on his back ( like a monkey ) who is screaming ‘ he’s Isis, somebody search his bag!’  The woman is clawing  at the terrified man’s neck, and blood is running down to his shirt. The woman’s partner ( male, with bad toupee ) is just standing and watching.  Stella opts to not get involved, and jumps into the lift.  She self justifies this by assuming ( bizarrely ) that the young man has been caught in bed with the shouty woman,  by the Toupee Man….?! Well obviously all that would make perfect sense, right? I mean, what other plausible explanation could there possibly be, her being so pulchritudinous n all…

Once Stella is  at  the Ground Floor and out of the lift, the blood covered young bloke appears, having fled downstairs via the fire escape.  He is shouting ‘ this is a Mad House !’  Stella then asks him what how he knows the ‘lady’… He says he doesn’t / he just came into the building to change a lock… (evidenced by his Locksmith hold-all ) but that there’s no way he’s going back upstairs to ask for the money ( as evidenced by the PDQ credit card machine he’s clinging to ) as he’s getting out as fast as he can, to call his office….

As he’s legging it out, I arrive, and Stella helps me in. I know nothing of what went before, but Stella looks startled, for sure. At that point Toupee Man appears and launches into his partner’s drinking problem/ history.  I listen and nod politely, not connecting the fleeing blood covered man with his alcoholic partner….at all. I mean, why should I ?

I blame the landlady for not checking their previous tenant history, but hey, it’s nothing to do with me…  but I do wonder why they are changing the locks of a flat that they don’t actually own…?

The UK’s missing people – Professor Hester Parr

Monday 30 October
Members + one guest
Pre-bookable supper follows this lecture

Each year more than 300,000 people are reported as missing in the UK. Hester considers where missing people go, their experiences, and the complexities of what happens after they return.

The lovely Stella leaves soon, but I have found a replacement. I’m not sure anyone could actually match Stella, but who knows ?

I’ve been to the gym every day, but my life has been complicated by recurring diarrhoea this week. I don’t know why, as I haven’t changed anything diet wise, and I feel ok, but my lil external shit pouch has really been put under pressure on occasion. If the adhesive were to fail me, then the shitspray would have a projectile radius of several yards, I reckon. So if you see me, stand to one side rather than in front of me….

I saw a film ( The Death of Stalin ) yesterday, with Jo. A spoof about Joseph Stalin ( not a nice fella ), his death and the aftermath – stellar cast of men, but not really a humorous topic, or a humorous time – he killed just about every clever person in the Soviet Union, after all.  Bit like making a comedy about the Holocaust – not everyone’s cuppa tea…..

Good to see Lal and Neal on Thursday, Chérie too,  Pia as well. I have been to Teddington hospital and had my catheter replaced – the bloody thing was apparently a day or so away from completely blocking with sediment, adding to my spasms of course. I can’t feel anything as it’s replaced, but it’s all quite bloody.  My cryotherapy burns aren’t sore, like last time, as they are smaller burns, so no big deal.

The Hogarth Halloween party was ok – i had a wig on and a knife through my head – I’m not sure if people thought it was artificial, or my latest suicide attempt.

Seeing Sue V was a tonic as always ( love a funny Aussie chick, me ) and talking about post divorce mental trauma for children  with both Sue and Christine was very helpful, so thanks to them. I chat to Lily reasonably often, so not totally divorced from offspring, and find it best NOT to dwell on the absence of other contact, for the sake of my mental state ( which has been very stable/ positive for a while now.

The new tenants next door have been the subject of gossip in the building for a while, and the last Ambulance to turn up was not for me! Alcohol does bad things to people – the shouting goes on all day and night, and a visiting tradesman was even assaulted by the ‘ lady’… as he tried to flee the building, she was on his back shouting ‘ get him, he’s Isis !’

Personally, I think the landlady ought step in, but it’s not really a situation that I want to become embroiled in, and I can’t say I’m on speaking terms with the landlady in any case. If she assaulted me in my wheelchair (either the neighbour OR the landlady ) then I’d have to take matters further, but as yet that hasn’t happened.

Right, gotta plan stuff to do next week…

Bye for now.

I’m at the RGS.

Tonight’s talk –

lecture

The fascinating story of discovering and excavating the ship wreck of the Esmeralda, from Vasco da Gama’s 1502-1503 voyage, shedding new light on Portuguese maritime trade and warfare in the Indian Ocean.

Good to see Toby last night, and my deepest sympathies go to his family.

On Thursday Stella and I saw a play – Time and the Conway’s   It’s about a family, and charts the journey from youthful optimism to the realities of life and the crap way it can actually work out.

It resonated ever so strongly with me, I have to say.

Just had more bits of me burnt off with the Freeze  gun thingy at the Dermatology Clinic.

I asked, and she told me that they’d been using cryotherapy for years.

I asked if she’d do my whole body – put me into cryogenic suspension, and wake me up when they have a cure for paralysis – she just laughed ( perhaps not realising that I was completely serious )