so what’s new?

About time to do some more blogging but nothing much to write about: the world has not ended despite te predictions emanating from http://www.familyradio.com/ and pushed around the world by the twitter sphere, https://www.facebook.com/ and most of the other chaterati sites. The major news broadcasters used Donald Camping‘s earnest predictions as the joke item to close their weekend bulletins, spending their bulletins telling us all they they could not say that Ryan Giggs has had his super injunction outed by https://twitter.com/ with the secondary story that the Spanish are revolting.

Tsk tsk David for not writing and spending the the year so far being a passive mostly non-reactive watcher of TV and browser of websites – perhaps the inability to engage with Angry Birds could be considered symptomatic of something or other? Nothing much has changed; the Greeks are revolting now amid predictions of the end of the Euro. Don’t really see the reintroduction of the punt and the drachma and the other obsolete currencies: one of the surely intended consequences of the second Gulf War was to have Iraqi oil priced in USD rather EUR.

Now the government is asserting that unemployment has fallen yet those claiming has increased: how does that work? (distracts off to http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/has-unemployment-gone-up-or-down/2902).

Haven’t been completely idle – the workhorse PC is now running Windows 7 Enterprise quite nicely after some trial and error. It’s certainly quicker and more resilient then it ever was with XP Pro. At last a version of Windows that runs (better¹) with no trace of Internet Explorer! Have lost track of the number of times that I have reformatted this disk, an action that horrified a visiting mental health worker who took some convincing that such an action was not that of a confused mentalist but rather a completely sane way of maximising limited resource. Grrr, running gripe convincing people that although I might be officially mad, there are occasions when I do know what I’m talking about. The “does s/he take sugar?” syndrome seems to apply everywhere; any kind of disability seems to need an unending sense of humour

Seroquel or Quetiapine Fumarate is the most recent medication I have been prescribed for the treatment my chronic depression. This is the first time I’ve been trying one drug without the accompaniment of others, anti-psychotics such asOlanzapine. Have been researching as I best can, on the Internet and by reading of others’ experiences of the drugs they’ve been given.

The most significant factor about my current use of Seroquel is the fact that I am using it as a monotherapy i.e. on its own without accompaniment. For the first time I am able to judge effects, good , bad  and merely interesting, without having to take anything else into account. (Goes without saying that alcohol and cannabis are not part of any monotherapy, that the effect of either compromises any medication.)

So far in my mentalist career I have not suffered any notable physical side-effects. The only one of note was the double vision caused by Carbemazepine. I rang my CMHT (this link provides a very helpful definition of Community Mental Health Teams) who advised me to desist immediately; my vision was back to its slightly myopic normal within 24 hours. Phew!

Interesting dreams are a factor for me but not in any way distressing, http://www.crazyboards.org/forums/index.php/topic/4042-seroquel-dreamsnightmares/ records some of the effects that others have experienced. I suppose that if I was getting therapy from a Freud og Jung based clinician, I would keep a notebook or dictaphone at my bedside but I prefer to go back to sleep. Everyone dreams all the time; the awareness/memory of a dream comes only in the milliseconds  between sleep and consciousness.

Structure, structure, structure screams my internal editor.

Most important (side)effect is that Seroquel at 400mg a day works for me as an anti-depressant so I will tolerate almost any side-effect up to but not including death.It is such a relief to start being alive again, hooray for AstraZeneca. Boo hiss for any mention of big pharma but this particular offering is working for me, some of the products do work as intended for some of the people some of the time.

Legs: I made a call to CMHT and around the Madosphere a couple of weeks ago when my legs were dysfunctional to the extent that I could not stand without holding on to something. Still not right but that particular effect is lessening so that I can walk though I have to be careful. Northing dramatic like spasms or cramps, the effect I can best describe is that of pins and needles without any tingling.

Sleep: is generally good, I am not rendered comatose and I can wake up and function early if I must although I need a couple of hours in which to get going and depend on a complex set of twatchecks (wallet, phone, keys, satnav, glasses etc.) before I venture forth. Not absent-minded but I do have to be deliberate and make sure that I put things where I’ll find them again. Of course that may not be a medication effect, might just be early onset dementia.

Appetite: many people have reported weight gain as an undesirable side effect but I guess I have a margin for that since my metabolism seems to burn off whatever it’s given to deal with. I am not therefore too worried about the just-as-if-I-had-been-smoking-dope type munchies.

Anxiety: nothing to report, I can function socially and am confident enough to be able to make my excuses and leave if any particular social situation is not where I want to be.

Memory: still functional, short term memory is good enough to attempt and achieve complex computer tasks like completely initialising then reviving very poorly computers without having to write everything down. Beginning to have trouble remembering names of people and things but that’s probably just an age thing.

And half a year later, now down to 200mg hoping that the anhedonic sedation will ease :)

somewhere to record those tunes that waft into my conciousness

don’t know what an earth made me think of  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQYQTFudrqc some songs come up during Facebook dialogues – first heard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMqkNUU5yRY&feature=fvst when in Prague, sharing my space with an Australian; this is a real Oz tour de force. Writing Prague naturally reminds me of Brno where there was once a truly independent radio station called Radio Hady that lost its spontaneity and unrivalled eclecticism when it was absorbed into the Kiss empire, became Kiss Hady and developed play lists, rather than a DJ’s random selection of what he wanted to play. Each week, the Monday morning show invariably included http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2I84-A9duY which did help me keep things in perspective. Happily the Radio 1 based in Prague is still independent and often worth listening to: some of the ads are delightful and you don’t even need Czech to understand them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHa1ThS9avA could have been written for someone I once knew. U2 was the band most listened to in long drives around southern England. Tangenting all over the place, saw REM in Prague one night; Michael Stipe really was hurting when he performed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijZRCIrTgQc: he was medivaced to the US military hospital in Frankfurt immediately the concert finished – he was singing with a burst appendix so he really was hurting – that really was method performing in a different league from Dustin Hoffman. It’s tahe time of year when  all the Christmas songs are coming out of the woodwork http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLb213lak5s definietlty qualifies as an ear worm but my favourite is   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvNRHrKyaX4&feature=related My two favourite positive anthems are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAJ2AoEwDvY ironically written and performed before his untimely death and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQQpkll5aoA both Marley and Lennon died young but worked to make the world a better place. Prague/Oz  induced tangent suggests this tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqJ4N6Z7l00. According to an Australian girl friend who who interviewed Black for the Melbourne Age, the singer had written and recorded this song when just about everything that could go wrong in his life had gone wrong and the resulting song was presenting at deeply sardonic world view. Still, global fame and its accompanying largesse must have helped. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1oDb14S68 what on earth put that one into my head? Now stuck in a road song groove - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMbATaj7Il8, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkYRPumSU_8 nothing to do with roads http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRnUpjEV8L0 but from the same album as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBZvWTeMgi8 so I guess there is a tortuous link somehere

This for me counts as a road son – featured heavily during a nad ascapade around the castles of Southern Moravia ten years and a long hot summer ago  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sOpbRL8R4g, the other tunes that featured included http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWv2juM01T0&feature=fvst

This is going to be very much work in progress as I keep finding/remembering tunes to include. for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIMNXogXnvE&feature=channel and of course http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0MabBkvQks

Damn you Desert Island Discs will be stuck with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfrRrPNu01w all day now… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxZ3_7kk00 suddenly appeared from somewhere. Two ballads from the sixties http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fVPagHR88E and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHS8hj4TdT8 it was many years before I realised the place actually existed, might be mis-remembering but I think this UK charted at the same time as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoBWW3OAhgw

Today is the day when the world says goodbye,RIP, to Gerry Rafferty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWJOUiKvRk&feature=fvst and [Tarratino gore warning]  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=komvFIGYBYM&feature=fvst – those of a nervous disposition might prefer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMAIsqvTh7g&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXfm2InaUKW9T2RSnqtqpTvp

Today’s theme was prompted wen I referred to something as ‘new-to-me’, correspondent had not heard that particular euphemism before, she referred to ‘previously owned’ or was it ‘loved’. Looking about me, the only two ‘things’ that I have had from new are the iPhone which is nearly 2 years old and the electric fire, bought for me when I moved into this flat January 2006 – almost five years ago –  the gas central  heating did not work – but I was so relieved to be in my own home after six years that I didn’t care. Happily the weather was  unseasonably warm and because of the sheltered housing status, Mendip Housing soon sent a man to fix it. When I first moved in I was on quarterly billing but soon had to switch to pre-payment meters because had no experience of budgeting or many years or any kind of fiscal management for years  and even then I was making enough money to not worry about bills. Never thought I’d end up living in a ouuncil flat but hey ho, that’s what social housing is for.

Surrounded by so much clutter, it’s hard to remember that this was once an empty flat. My daughter provided much of the stuff as she was merging her Surrey household into that she’d inherited from her Mum. No need for sentiment, I was very pleased to be able to continue to make good use of the things she grown up with. Looking around, almost every thing here  is “pre-loved” as Loot and Freecycle users euphemise what to many others might be just old junk. Perhaps being a baby-boomer growing up in post-war England. Who could have predicted that tinkering with old wireless sets would stand me in good stead for living life in straightened times in 21st century Britain. I can light a fire, mend a bicycle and even a motor car  but still know a little about the workings of computers. Fettling stuff is something i’me been doing all my life and I don’t usually need Swarfega after I’ve gone into a computer’s innards. I drwa the limit at making Christmas cards and have just bought enough. with stamps fot those I need to send to by snail mail. Sudden thought on the whole Crimble business; rather than send a round robin letter of what I’ve been up to, I’ll use http://warriet.com/ to post some sort of Christmas/New Year message (disappears momentarily to check Filezilla). Hurrah, it works and I can remember the password and stuff so perhaps I’ll start working on it tomorrow. Of course another consequence of a make do and mend mentality is that rather than curse an inadequate PC, I crawl around until I find software that brings out the best in whatever hardware is to hand. Although deprecated by the true Linux person (whatever he/she/it might be). Ubuntu 10.10 is definitely fit for my purpose especially since it enables me to run VirtualBox without having to go all geeky and start fixing things in root.. The point of mentioning is that such software is legitimately free – why pay money on an unfinished, insecure and hopelessly inefficient product that demands evermore expensive for its effective use? Perhaps Windows 8 will in time to save the day but meanwhile there is literally tonnes of perfectly good hardware going to landfill every day when it could be revitalized in an hour so. Which reminds me of something my daughter suggested a few weeks ago, nameky to create a local PC refurbishment outfit from which the increasingly dispossessed could get their first step to (re)connect to the rest of society.[mental note to go and see Furnequip next week]