...the martians could land in the carpark and no-one would care.

So today was a game of two halves sort of.  This morning I visited the doctor and explained that I wanted the prolene mesh that the surgeon implanted in me without permission 2 years ago removed. From the word go it caused me more pain than anything else in the surgery. Being a chronic pain patient I basically ignore it (thing is I reckon the pain would be a constant 2-3  peaking to 7 or 8 on a normal persons scale.  For me its another one of the list for when someone asks what hurts. Its less than my hypermobile spiney bits but more than the displaced wrists) but it is always there, Whenever I exercise, or am tired, or, importantly ejaculate.  Last nights solitary soothing exercise one would have thought there was a knife sticking into my gut. I want it out.
So they are referring me back to the Luton and Dunstable, which is a pain because I have never yet managed to get that place to send me an appointment.  They use paper.  You ring them and ask to make an appointment, they say we will send you one.  You say, no, that doesnt work, it never gets here, they say we will send you another.  When you say please just tell me the day/time they act like you are crazy.
I also wanted a rheumie appointment to deal with my shoulders.  and hips.  but mainly shoulders.  The doc said basically there wasnt much a rheumy could do for me so try a physio first (for which you self refer). So I rang them up.
Again with the paper fetish.
Also I was trying to explain to the receptionist that I needed a physio experienced in EDS-HT.  She just latched onto the word Hypermobility and said "yes our senior physios do that all the time"
Well call me Mr Suspitchy Doubttrousers but I think the nuance between hypermobility, the symptom, and Hypermobility Syndrome, the pigfucking hyaenabitch from hell is lost on you.  Well since NHS choices for many years used the terms interchangeably I cannot blame her.  But I suspect that come VE day when I am seeing some jobbing physio nerk that the presence of cluebringer would be greatly appreciated.

So that was part 1

In Part 2 I am applying for jobss.  and hating it.  I am not well enough.  but it is something to do.

...by the blue TV's green light

So sleeping in the arms of zopiclone is having several effects.

Spock is very much more in charge and is doing several things.  He is trying to get me to complete a job application before it closes.  He has updated an OKCupid profile for me.  He took me round hiking shops to look for gear.

As for OKcupid I am basically browsing.  I dont know what I want exactly but I know I can't be alone.  I would prefer to be married but that seems not to be an option.  All of this is at Spock level.

Emo is still sitting in a corner smearing his shit on the wall.  So we can ignore him.

A surprising number of people on OKcupid appear to be prostitutes, or stupid, or both.  Why would I want to date someone in california ffs?

Another unfortunate effect is the return of my libido, which was being a bit suppressed.  Last two mornings you could have hung a flag from it.  Which is just inconvenient.

So Zopiclone lets me pretend theres not a problem.  Until I see my wife, hear a phone ringing, see an email from a friend etc. etc.

Perfect.  problem solved

telephone exchanges click when there's nobody there

Soooo

Last night Mrsinky let a bunch of what-used-to-be-my friends know of our status via the medium of farcebook.  Should say upfront she speaks/farcebooks them more than I do, and so it is natural she should do that.
Of course that triggered phonecalls.  I spent the evening letting all my phones ring and ring.  Its my turn to be hounded by phone.  Only its not the banks wanting money, its my friends wanting to kill me.
Well that's what it feels like.
I now don't want to be at home near the landline because it doesn't display the number.  I might have to talk to one of my friends if I answer it.  I have to be careful opening my computer in case it displays available on Skype because then my friends will try and track me down.  I have to turn off location on my blogging from my phone in case one of them is nearby.
The urge to just disappear, emigrate, walk off bivvieing is so strong.  No people with their incessant demands on me.  No intrusions.  No hounding me with demands for information and emotion. Just silence and loneliness and loss and failure.
I miss oblivion.


I took a zopiclonealike last night.  shrink wrote a prn for a coupla weeks supply.  It worked but it was pushing at an open door, given 3 hrs sleep night before and a week of late sleeping early waking.  Spock has a bit more space today.  but Emo has also been given a new lease of chaos.

this is the worst trip I've ever been on

Well the psychiatrist was...

I want to say as much use as tits on a bull.  She tried to backtrack on the narcissist thing, then tried to correct me on its meaning and I quoted DSM and ID at her.
She wants me to talk to a psychologist.  I have a bad history with psychologists. Generally they hate me and I hate them. But its something to do.
We tried to go through the list of anti depressants.
SSRI's no fucking good
SNRI's remove ability to orgasm so no.
Tricyclics are a bit...killy in overdose
MAOIs are a bit...mad

I keep trying to suggest wellbutrin or ketamine but no go.

So in the end just sleeping pills.  Zopiclone.  hope the habituation has worn off.

I have absolutely no hope of any of this helping.

All I can think of is ending it.

Think I know how a coyote feels When he's howling just to Ease the pain,

In a way I have always been two people. I think it is a science thing.  Let us call them Spock and Emo.
Spock runs my life.  He does not do emotions.  you give him a problem he looks up the most rational solution then serves it up with no value judgements and no pack drill.  problem--> solution.
Emo is normally pushed into a corner.  His responses are emotional and therefore unhelpful.  In any interaction Spock gets first dibs and Emo is only allowed out if time allows.  which it rarely does.
So in a crisis I am quite frequently saying to people "drop the emotion we don't have time for that" and then getting on with it while others are flapping around blaming and crying and stuff.

Even now this is the case.  I keep saying that filling in my diary keeps me alive.  This is because Spock runs the diary.  While he is in charge there aren't any emotions so it is great.  I wish he could run it all the time.  So I need a job, Spock is applying for jobs.  I need some comfort, Spock is browsing dating websites.  I need help with mental health, Spock takes me to the psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist sees this as signs of wanting to move on, signs of belief.

This isn't right.  Spock doesn't believe in anything, he selects the best match from available options. In fact if Spock did believe in anything he would be a total hindrance as a scientist.  I think this mindset is difficult for outsiders to assess.

Emo does not believe that help is there.  He is beyond despair into destructive behaviours.  Accessing Emo results in tears and helplessness and lashing out at walls etc in a pit of pure animal hurt.  Emo is currently like a slug in a box of salt, squirming and dissolving in a world of pain.

Spock is getting desperate.  the problems he is being given are basically "how do i kill myself painlessly" and " how can I get myself locked away" which even Spock can recognise as unhelpful.

So with the psych, like today, when they ask how I am emo comes up and I start crying.  then when they ask what I want from them Spock pops out and answers rationally and in a controlled way.  So I appear to be coping.  Not typicallly depressed.

Actually my trajectory...It is like a chess player trying to play for a stalemate when someone keeps removing his pieces from the board, limiting his options into smaller and smaller pieces of the playing area.

I am currently down to a pawn and a broken horsey.

All I can think about is death.  Emo wants it and its about the only move Spock has left.  This may be adjustment disorder or whatever.  I do not think I can survive it.  The psych keeps talking about accessing the emotional side.  this is the opposite of what I want.  If I could arrange never to access that madness again I would be so much better off.

They mostly come at night...mostly

Suicidal thoughts.

Head full of putting dressing gown chord round neck twisting stick through it.
Or taking screwdrivers to shrinks tomorrow and sticking em in wall socket.
Or parking near Orwell Bridge and bungee jumping with eds collagen style bungee.

If I sleep I really pray that I do not wake.

It comes so slow and it leaves so fast

Well as ever Joan Armatrading had a song for it.

Today helped foal with homework and had her sob over how no one gets her and she cant talk to people.

Went to gym.

Crashed. Mrsinky said she hated to see me so emotional.

Well I just hate to see me.

I was up v late after Ashes place. Huge comedown. Much self revulsion. 4 am with a good deal of gin inside me I slept.

Today was too hard. I can't do this. I can't bear to be alone. I do not know how to communicate with people irl. I think its time for me to give up.

I did alone for many years. Then mrsinky happened and I had a hope of lasting company. Well such things do not happen twice. Statistics can only be stretched so far.

Cost benefit analysis not rosy.

In How to Murder Your Wife Jack Lemmon offers the jury a button to make their wife disappear. If I had a surefire button of painless death right now I would press it so hard my thumb would break.

Is it so much to ask fo, some kind of happiness? What did I do that was so wrong?

It's in the stars, next July we collide with Mars.

That one you may need help with.

Went round to Ashes place.  I was due to take pudding so I invnted

Toffee Apple cake

You will need:  1 bramley apple

1 Bramley applee

Cinnamon

4 oz muscovado sugar

4 large eggs

11 oz butter

 9oz caster sugar

9oz SR flour

Oven to 160C

Get a mandoline.  seriously.

Line the bottom of an 8 inch cake tin with non stick parchmentslice a layer of apple onto it using mandoline.  Then sorinkle thickly with muscaovado, then another layer of apple, then 2 ox of butter dotted around, then a bit more musco.

Cream caster sugar and the remaining butter, add eggs 1 at a time, then the flour.  adjust to soft dropping stage using milk.

Cover the layer with half the cake mix, then put another layer of apple on, sprinkle with cinnamon then more musco.  then the rest of the mix.  

Bake until the middle feels like the edge.  while still warm turn upside down onto a plate then take off the tin and the paper.

So that was the pudding.  Ash had bought some terrscotta tiles and we used these to bake pizza.

Two other lads there, using the same film as sources I will call them Parker and Brett.

Parker is a friend of Ash from way back.  In fact Ash was once his boss.  He was a little cool about my description of Ash which was naughty.  Parker basically looks like Daniel Beddingfield and sounds like the Big Brother voiceover guy.  He is a really nice guy, married, kid.  Never floated my boat.

Brett is another incomer to the group.  He too married one of the local flange.  He is ... well if you needed help to build a shed, or catch chickens, or help organise a group of young people, or ...well Brett is the guy you would ask.  Generous and honest.

Anyway wee all made pizzas.

Ash had set out the ingredients, we assembled them and then baked them.  Ash won several more inkypoints for having anchovies.  Oh god I love anchovies.

Anyway we all chatted, even about politics and no-one shouted and it was nice.  really nice.

Brett left early.  Parker and Ash and I got talking about my situation.  Probem is I am fine with the whinging but when people start urging me to make decisions for myself....I have never acted in self interest.  Not purely.  My whole life since adulthood has been about helping others, supporting others, living for otherrs.  I have been miserable but I had a plan.  Now I have noone and people say do something for yourself, look after yourself,

I do not know how.  Or why.

So I diverted and gave a small class in making origami frogs.  Our efforts below.

Anyway shortly afterwards Parker left.  Then after a few minutes so did I.  I gave Ash a very chaste hug goodbye, brotherly style. 

He can cook.  His cupboard contains anchovies.  

aaaarrrg.

As ever my emotions are all mixed up.  I feel like shit.  But any outreach triggers a predictable longing for company. And me being me I get things all mixed up.  Textbook transference.  Or honest feeling.  How should I know.?

Got hoome and have no tonic.  drinking gin and dr pepper.  oddly sort of works.

when all I can do is watch you leave....

One of those evenings when only sad cheese will do.

Mrsinky was out last night and is out tonight- prearranged and agreed.

But I have had to watch her get her good clothes on, put on the makeup, wear the perfume I like...and leave.

I keep walking.  but I am dead inside.  BBBBRAAAIIINNNS

Today I spent all day getting the dragon tattoo coloured in.  Terry Parish at Drawing Blood is awesome.  He still doesnt get me and pain.  He is shocked that the washoff with cold ethanol bpthers me far more than the needle.  It is like being pissed on by a yeti.

So that filled in the day.  Foal is at the Hutts tonight because I am going round to Ashes for Not-A-Date with some other friends.
I am honestly very worried about when I get back. I will be down and alone.  I suspect the gin will happen.

PS we may need a name that dragon contest.

Waiting on the first step, show me where the key is kept

So here we are once more on the sofa in Costa.  This is a step up on yesterday as I have stayed out of the house but it is not exactly lovely.
I am really very typically depressed today.  dissociated and anhedonic to an extreme.  I know I am reporting this to you reasonably well but life as a scientist allows that.  I once spent 9 hrs observing droplet formation mismatches with a dislocated shoulder.
My life is such a fearful mess I cannot begin to sort it out.  So I am trying to apply for jobs.
I am not well enough to do them to be honest but that seems like the only positive way I can do anything.  I can at least try before giving up.
I still struggle with wanting to live.  I do not see a reason.  there is a lot of effort involved and absolutely no pleasure or motivation.  No why.
So, you know, fuck it.
Same with social interactions.  Sex I understand, and even I get pleasure from that.  But people associate for other reasons, allegedly.  I have spent a long time trying to work that one out.
I am locked into a cycle of doing things because I am doing them.
My GI tract is painful.  I stopped Mirtazapine because the munchies it triggerred made me eat till I hurt.  I may have stopped too late.  real discomfort from stomach.  guarding and tenderness too.  It hasnt worsened though so it probably isnt a perforation.  but really not pleasant.
ah well, what the hell.
Mrsinky said last night she missed the old me.  So do I.  I mean he was fucking miserable but less miserable than this.

...like tears in rain

So anyway tonight I went to the IFT to see Blade Runner on the silver screen in a decent cut. I last saw this on its release which was a shit cut.
Ash has dutifuly agreed to join me. He has made it plain that I was correct that that was not a date. And nor was this. But he was available unexpectedly and I am still pitiable enough so he agreed to alleviate my billynomates status.
Last time the theatre was empty. Tonight the spod army was out in force so we fought for seats.
Also not helping was the fact the theatre in the same building had an easy listening irishman singing. So the near dead, recetly dead and freshly reanimated of suffolk had dragged their zimmers along for fun and profit. Interesting mash with the sk8terbois.
On reflection a film about the brevity of life amongst emotionally crippled manlike beings may not have been choice no 1. But it is so lush in its realisation. And yes the horny horse is important.
This horny horse is struggling. I had a sofa day today. I have discontinued mirtazapine. Munchies too bad. It was making me eat till i hurt. Not good on a bypass.
I am really not getting the idea that I actually want to recover. In fact I think I dont. I feel like I am just waiting to stop moving.
So after film went our separate ways. I would have done anything right then to continue some human contact. Friendly pint...sex...even being beaten up would be a meaningful interchange. Just where I am right now. But both of us needed to be off and doing.
I might get the hang of this friend thing in 50 more years or so.

And if I say, I really knew you well what would your answer be?

So I spent most of the night grinding over the visit to the shrink.

I am currently waiting on a callback from the team.  My intention is to tell them their services are no longer required as I have lost what little faith in their abilities I ever had.

The problem is that yesterday during conversation the shrink mentioned her diagnosis of longer term issues would likely include narcissistic as a characterisation.  Quite how someone with self esteem as low as mine, with a history of continually putting others first, sacrificing career, standing and health to support others etc. can qualify for that is an interesting leap of mental gymnastics.

During the sessions of contact with the team I have rehearsed the basic problem.  I am asocial, but lack a peer group.  My brain functions in an idiosyncratic way at very high speed.  I read faster than I think, have an IQ in the dubious range where the measurement is so high it is meaningless (IQ only measures IQ though) and if I relax and speak at my ease only 3 people I am aware of stand a hope of keeping up.  The boss who just sacked me will cheerfully refer to me as the brightest person he has ever met (He has worked for decades in Universities classed as top ten in the world) and the guys at Cambridge refused to do pop quizzes with me in the room because my brain was cheating.  My peer group in the intellectual aspect ( emotionally I am a stunted toddler and physically...my 9 year old daughter can whup my ass at 10 pin bowling) is a disparate group of similar hermits scattered by the vagaries of genetics.

Of course the shrink sees this and instead of trusting me, believing what I am saying as simple truth I can back up with evidence and helping me cope with the grinding loneliness assumes that this is an exaggeration, that I am self aggrandising.

This is so much like every other interaction I  have had with psychologists and psychiatrists and so disappointing.  Time after time I reach out honestly and display the problem, to find them treating me through a prism of their own distrust and limitation and trying to label me as something that denies what I am so that I fit into their world.

Enough.  No more.

The truth is that a long term diagnosis would be career useful but I dont have a career.  The shrinks short term diagnosis of adjustment disorder is plausible, but there is no treatment beyond "taking it day by day" which I have been doing for 34 years so fuck that.

It was foolish of me to expect more.

The inkybars are on me...

Just back from the shrink with the normal feeling of time wasted. I fear my total lack of respect for the validity of the field may come over. Monday is the next appt when a Plan will be revealed.
Anyway it may comfort some to know my cookery does not always work. Yesterday one of my betes noires, wholemeal bread, went very wrong. The result could bend light it was so dense. Tips for wholesome wholemeal welcome.
Normally I would commit bread pudding but only I like it round here. So I thought....lets invent.
The following is a work in progress but my god it yums. I giveyou inkybars.

Oven 160c
4oz oats
3oz butter
8 oz demerara sugar
I loaf wholemeal bread,small, whjzzed into crumbs
1 bramley apple

Line 2 medium loaf tins, about 3 in by 7 in with non stick paper.

Melt the butter and stir in the oats and half the sugar. Press into a layer covering the bottom of each tin. Cook in oven for about 20 min till it browns. 
Cover each base with a layer of breadcrumbs1cm deep at least. Use a mandoline to slice peeled apple ina layer on this. Sprinkle with sugar, then add another layer of apple, then sugar, then breadcrumbs again then finally sugar. Put one tin on top of the other, a third on top of the second and a weight in that. The idea is to cook under pressure.
Cook for about 25 mins till brown.  Allow to cool. Slice. Nom.

What could I do more yeah I'm really not sure I know I'm running circles but I can't quit...

Ha, find that reference without googling or clicking...

It used to be a backing track on a Tony Hawks game.  Oddly I do have a slight taste for skaterpunk.

It has been a weekend in a hell of my own making.  Well there is the first lie right there, I didnt make it all but what the hey.

It is difficult to encapsulate my feelings on this one. But I am going to try.

Roll back to Friday evening when, if you recall, Ash took me out as an act of kindness to cheer me up.  I think I did ok in Human Emulation most of the way through, but on the way back home I  started with the verbal spew which is characteristic of nervousness on my part.  Kept rabbitting on about the weirder things I have done in the name of science (making transparent noses for example), and even though I could hear myself and was thinking "Shut up Inky" I couldnt do it.  poor Ash must have had a shit journey.
So then Friday night I was properly alone, MrsInky being away and foal at the Hutts place. Cue massive loneliness and depression.  Guilt.  Worthlessness. I watched telly, then porn, then more telly.  Finally got some sleep due to Mirtazapines caress.
So then Saturday was an early start after little sleep.  I was in withdrawn mode, not so much from the pills as from severe depression.  If you havent experienced this for yourself the closest is the Pink Floyd song Comfortably Numb.  I could respond to people but only with a time lag, and distractedly.
I had to take Foal to Band Camp ( local school music workshop) so picking her up from the Hutt had been what got me through the night.  I drove her there, she was anxious because her friend was going for the first time and she wanted to help him find things.  Foal is very caring for others.
So as I say I sit there surrounded by all these fecund people with their happy families and their perfect lives and I can feel myself getting more and more tense and sad and sad an tense and tense and ARAAARRRRRG.  Last time i felt like that was the day I lost my job and then had to go for an ultrasound.  I asked for a seat in a cubicle because madperson.  at Band Camp I just had to hang on with my fingernails.  The urge to violently self harm was so strong.
I got through it.  But the rest f Saturday was a write off.
Yesterday was not much better.  Foal and I did the normal stuff then went 10 pin bowling.  she is rather good and beat me first time.  second game  think she let me win. I put my hip out doing this though.
Then MrsInky came home.  She had been given shit by the Hutt and was crying.  I wanted so much to hold her and make it better.  But I am not allowed to do that any more.  The things she reported about what made her mother cross...I cannot process.  It seems the image they have of me is so warped and horrible...If I really seem that way to others then that is it, I am out of here.  Maybe they judge me by how they behave?
Anyway MrsInky being back meant I wasnt in charge any more.  Major danger.  I just sat there and cried.  So hard to believe that the woman I turned to for comfort for a decade doesnt want me any more.  So tough trying to be strong and amicable but just hurting hurting hurting all the time, my soul bleeding to death while we stand around and watch and be polite.
I was meant to be going to the gym, but this meant crossing the Orwell Bridge and that scared me.  Eventually I went.

A close run thing.
This pit I am in....I really cannot see a way out.

I cry sometimes When I'm lying in bed Just to get it all out What's in my head

Gosh look a music reference from the current era...

Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyaena offal?

My moods have, of late, been a little gloomy.  And swinging around a lot.  The background emotional stress and crap is just something I cannot cope with.

Let me go back a bit.  When last we interacted I  was bemoaning my inability to do human interactions.  In a way I think this is the reason for the dip.

On Friday I went out.  A friend asked me out basically because he wanted to be supportive.  I suggested we didnt just sit in with me ranting because I get enough of that with everyone else.  So we went out to Mizu  for dinner then on to the Film Theatre afterwards to watch Wild Tales.

This friend, who we shall call in here Ash, is part of the local friend group that Mrsinky introduced me to on our first meeting.  She has since kinda faded out of that group a bit because life, thought there has been no breakup as such.  Ash was always what you might call an outlying animal of the herd, being the only gay in the village, a bit older than the others ( my age really, give or take a bit) and having a kid.  But he went through he whole divorce thing a long time ago and so he knows something of where I am.  I call him Ash because he reminds me of Ian Holm, though a bit more attractive.

Anyway Ash asked me out as a friend doing cheerup.  I am 99% certain this is the case, because I think he is in a relationship and also because of the way the evening was transacted.  Of course this being me for all I know he was actually asking me out to establish an alibi for a bank raid, or to mystery shop the restaurant, or any of a number of other things.  But the likelihood is this was a cheerup.

That paragraph gives you an idea of exactly how confusing I find human interactions.  Here is a simple kindly gesture.  But because I know that people have this weird telepathy,  to which I have no access, I have to calculate all possible reasons even the wacky ones and then assign Bayesian probabilities, recalculating as necessary to try and work out what the fuck is going on.  This is exhausting.  But at the same time it doesnt seem acceptable to get people to fill in a tick sheet of their intentions before talking to them.

Anyway the food was good, the film good but rather violent.  fun though.  And we talked about his business and stuff.  Which made me start thinking about dates.

Now two things to start with.  This wasnt, as far as I am aware, a date.  If it was then I trust Ash will let me know I have the wrong end of the stick.  But given that we were doing meal for two and a film it made me think of them.
Also don't think I would kick him out of bed if he was interested.  He is both sweet and cute, though as I say I think he is taken.
But as I say this is mainly about me being taken out for cheerup and it being enough Like a Date without Being a Date for me to think of Dating in general.  And not really coming up with a cheerful picture.
I never really did dating at all.  my relationships  have al sort of happened without it.  On the few occasions when I have dated ( Jo the Radiologist circa 1999 for instance) it has been disastrous, because I am ok at going, and the first half.  but I get increasingly uneasy as the date progresses and at the end basically run out of the door.  I could have ended up married to Jo but it was totally sabotaged by me not kissing her.  I can see this in retrospect but at the time....I just imagined she would let me know if i was supposed to.  And i think she was imagining the same.  It is a lesbian sheep scenario.  Sheep (ewes anyway) signal sexual willingness by standing around waiting to be mounted.  Lesbian sheep, therefore, have a Hellerian paradox when it comes to starting a clinch.  So farewell Jo.

I know people have suggested Grindr or similr for sex, and that isnt a totally out-there idea but essentially I don't want to have such a hard time (fnarr).  It is difficult for me to be around people and intimate with them.  So hooking up repeatedly with strangers... I would need drugs to do that.  And I am off the opiates pro tem and not wanting to be back on them until i neeeed to.

So then you have OKCupid and the dating sites.  which brings us back to dates.  and lesbian sheep.
I mean OK so I could hand out a card at the beginning saying if you want something you need to ask using your words because I am a freak, but that seems oddly pressuring and I suspect would ensure I didn't have to worry about it.  I also have a real problem with being put in the freak box.  I know I am a broken toy, without having everyone else treat me like one.

So my head is going to a don't try/ die alone scenario and thinking about moving the date of the latter forward a few years.

I cannot process the losses of the last few weeks.  I am forlorn of purpose, just marking time from appointment to appointment.  All that I lived and worked for is gone.  I have nothing else because I was working towards this.  I am sitting in the crumbling wreck of my life pretending it is normal.  It is like a post-apocalyptic comedy.  the Bed-Sitting Room comes to mind.  Occasionally I toy with moving on but I lack a reason for doing so.  Apart from just going through the motions. I eat because I am hungry.  I sleep because I am tired.  I care for foal because I care for foal.

I get dark patches.  I know that seems dark but it really isnt.  Yesterday morning I was in a local school while foal did trumpet thing with a millin other kids,  The parents were waiting around.  I saw dads with their large families and wanted to kill them out f shear jealousy.  All around me people were chattering awway and I had to concentrate hard on origami or anything else just to keep the noise and threat out.  one woman kept talking about "packed-up lunches" and I wanted to scream "it is a packed lunch you vapid whore, where did the up come from".

I was basically in a very bad place all afternoon.

Why?  because I had social interactions.

But I am human enough that my biology needs them.  I am desperately horny.  I get lonely.  The lament of the lesbian sheep through the millenia

Yes I loved you dearly and if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

I have previously mentioned my problems with humans.  There are many attempts to label this and frankly I am not sure if diagnoses are totally helpful.  However the fact remains that humans make me very...well nervous is not the word.  It is like the feeling you get when you sit next to a piece of operating high tech high tension equipment.  It is running and you are aware of it.  but you are also aware it can seriously fuck you over with a simple twitch.  And you have no way of predicting its moods.
I can appear to be social and sociable.  This is a performance I switch on and I can sustain it for nearly 2 hrs.  After that time I am exhausted and have to withdraw.  I cannot relax and show my true self around people.
There are 2 reasons for that.  Firstly the risk factor is too high.  Letting others in is too dangerous.  Secondly, and this sounds like dreadful boasting, when I let go and just talk almost nobody is capable of keeping up.  The amount I dumb down in conversation is staggering.  Most of the time talking to people is like wading through jelly. It gives me a headache thinking down to their level, as Marvin used to say.
But at the same time I get very lonely.  And, not to put too fine a point on it, horny.  I am blessed, or cursed, with  very strong sex drive, probably because it is the only form of intimacy I am at ease with, and it is very irritating at times.  Although I am not a Vulcan I am also not an emotional  thinker.  I reason first and wait for emotions later.  So being compelled to do emotey stuff is irritating.
I bring this up because of the breakdown of my marriage, which looks to me to be pretty final, even though I do not want it.
From my point of view I have been on a sexual starvation diet for 10 years.  I stuck with it because wife/promise/family, even though it was killing me.  Remember that other peoples sex drives are different so starvation for me may be a feast for others.
I am now in a situation that I have to go out and try to secure another source of sex (I think they call them relationships or significant others) because I can't go through life without one any more.  I have no idea at all how to do this.  I mean yes, obviously I could pay, which would hav been legal in switzerland, but that is not what I want at all.  Too dangerous.
But then what else do I do?  I cannot go dancing and pull at the bar.  Cruising the cripples at Zebra Con seems tacky. I am forced to try and socialise with humans.  Even go on a date. this has AAAARRRRRGGGG written on it in big letters.  It is very hard to persuae someone to engage in sexual relations after you have spent a date metaphorically holding them off with a whip and a chair.  Also my ability to read subtext is legendary, i.e. nonexistent.  The only times I have successfully worked out that people wanted to shag me is when they have grabbed my genitals.
Maybe I can employ some kind of chatupmonkey?  A feeling-emotion dog for the terminally cue-dense?

...come to gabble and to chatter and to wonder what the matter is with you...

Oh for fucks sake.

Last night I got an email from Boss where he was suggesting we talk this week.  I sent one back explaining that I am not able to do much other than breathe and not kill myself.  Because I gave my Dad authority to talk to HR etc while I am being irrational I copied him in on this.

This has triggered him calling me ( I didnt pick up) emailing me, getting mum to email me....

I know they are concerned.  but that is their problem.  I feel hounded and attacked.  i do not know what to do with this level of intrusion.  I cannot cope with this level of extra stress every time I have an interaction.

I have sent an email to mum basically saying respect my boundaries or I will cut you off completely.

I know it is me being wierd.  But I cannot cope with intrusion, being cared for, being hounded like this.

With a pink hotel, a Boutique and a swinging hotspot.

I live in Margaret Thatchers frot-fantasy.

The developement where Inky Towers rests was pushed through in the eighties just after The Maggon shot the Parker-Morris guidelines in the head.  Parker-Morris set a standard for how much space should be allowed per person in a house.  Ever wondered why dwellings from pre 1980 cost much more than new ones and are so much larger?  That's why. When they went you got what we have now, hutches.  our 3 bed semi is actually a 2 small room and a cupboard semi.  The largest bedroom gives you a choice: double bed, or the ability to walk around.

The houses on our development, and there are way smaller ones with 3 beds, are sold mainly to young aspirationals. Not blue colour but pastel white.  It is quiet and ha a green for them to play on.
I am the only one with a front rose garden, of course, because I love roses.  Typical really, it just matures and I have to sell it.  Albertine reached 12 ft by 20 ft this year.

In the mornings at 8.30 everyone, me included, gets into their car for the school run.  the doors click in unison.  On alternate Thursdays we put the bins out.  It is the picture of ordered neighbourlyness.

It drives me potty.

Foal has now got used to me singing Malvina Reynolds greatest hit as we drive to school.  It is irresistible. I just cannot stand the conformity at the same time as being drawn to its sickly addictive grasp.

Structure and system rule my life and mind.  I struggle when I do not understand where I fit in.  Or what the people round me are for, what they want.  People lack purity of intention, due to woolly-mindedness.  So this kind of conformism seems attractive.  but at the same time it is all structure without benefit.  they all suffer in these hobbit sized houses with their giant sized mortgages because they think they should.  Something went very wrong here.

My daily shrink visits continue.  Yesterday I met a trainee who I  shall call Eric.  Eric sat in the meeting where I was pouring out my bitterness and hurt and was clearly moved by it.  I spoilt it by asking, at the end, what the hell switch flipped in his head and said "I want to be a Social Worker" but then I suppose there is no answer to that.  Unless they are all on community service, or Lizard Men in deep cover.

Anyway on to last nights recipe, which was a kindacassoulet.  The idea was a stovetop stew to do while foal and I were out.  I included chicken breasts for foal and mrsinky but any tender meat will do, rabbit quarters or pork loin being good ones.

1 onion
3 duck legs (in suffolk even the ducks are inbred)
2 chicken breasts
4 rashers bacon
A smoked sausage of some sort, skinned.
olive oil
1 large can white beans
a good handful fresh green beans
a tray of button mushrooms
a tray of baby corn (optional)
a bouquet garni heavy on the sage

You need a heavy based pan.  this is an old fashioned layered stew so respect the order.  First bone your duck legs.  It isnt hard, just cut down the inner thigh and circle the leg.  Remove tendon but keep the bone.  Tie the legs up with string into parcels.
Chop the onion and cube the bacon.  fry in olive oil until the onion is dark.  Add in the duck legs and brown top and bottom, then fish em out.  brown the leg bowns on both sides then leave them in the pan as a lattice to form a layer at the bottom.  the bottom of your pan should be dark brown here.
lay the duck legs on top of the bones.  then the chicken breasts on top of that.  then the white beans.  then the green beans.  then the mushrooms, then the bouquet garni, then the baby corn, then lastly the sausage.  Pour enough weak stock or water over to just cover the duck leg layer.  put a tight lid on.  bring to the boil then turn right down.  leave it for 2-3 hrs.
Thicken with beurre manie or cornflour, making sure to incorporate the fat which holds the flavour.  traditionally this is topped with breadcrumbs then toasted.  Serve with new bread or rice.  It is VERY filling due to the fat.  You should serve with a spoon and dig down through all layers.  at 2 hrs the duck will still be parcels.  at 3 it will be duckpaste, which is actually nicer.

Safe in my own words, learning from my own words Cruel joke,

Reason notwithstanding, the universe continues unabated.

I am running out of bottom.  Actually I have a bottom the size of Brazil but I mean emotionally and lifewise.

Avid readers will remember that my wife of 11 years asked for a divorce.  That was on a Saturday IIRC.  I spent a few days pleading, and then another mourning.  And then I thought "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again"  so I rang my boss to find out about a back to work plan.

Things at work had been strained for a very long time.  He has no idea of how much shit I tidy up for him without him having to deal.  Much of that shit is generated by his lack of organisation.  And this is me saying it.  All he sees is me not there at 9 am. I have a medical note for flexitime and I also always put in more hours than on the contract. The 9am thing matters to him because he wants to be able to pop in first thing and dump surprise work on people.  For me that is very disruptive.

Anyway the upshot of the phonecall was stay off sick because you will not have a job to come back to.

So, no wife, no job.

Still living in the same house as wife, and generally things are amicable.  But I am dying inside.  Last night she was upset with me for reasons I didn't really understand (remember I don't do social cues so I may be in the wrong and not know it.) She has made it plain that a marriage is not going to work, not in the normal sense. I am not going into details but what she said has made me hate me so much.

Before xmas I had a job, a wife, we were trying for a baby.

Now I have...a tattoo. This process is like someone taking a knife and cutting away everything I valued or self identified as and making me loathe what remains and the mess the process makes. Every night I pray I will not wake up, that I can just die in my sleep. That undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns would be most welcome.

I go through the motions.  I sent out a cv.  I am thinking of getting a dog.  In my idle moments I think of getting  a bivvi tent and some second hand kit and just walking somewhere.  anywhere.

A lifetime ago I did intensive group therapy at a place called the Red House.  I then finished my PhD, got a variety of jobs, found a girl, settled down, I wanted to so I married, and I thought I was going to grow old and be happy.  But it turns out that who I was was incompatible with that.  So 20 years later I find myself in the same place, suicidal, alone, hurting, no job, no partner, no soul-mate, pretty soon no family.  the last time this happened I was still fairly young. Rebuilding a life from nothing didn't seem such a fools errand.  This time I feel like life has just finished with me.  I cannot go through all that again.  Back then I had friends.  My marriage got rid of all of them, they are strangers to me now, with lives of their own.  Here I have mrsinkys friends. And I cannot ask them to choose.  It is clear when I talk to them she feels hurt so I shall stop doing that soon.

I can either accept the mixed metaphor and do a caligula against the sea of troubles, or oppose.

The psychiatrist has me on daily visits to make sure I am still breathing.

In other news last night I fainted in the bathroom.  This follows a day of joint hell and a serious sublux in the swimming pool.

How many more hints do I need?

Seems like only yesterday I left my mind behind...

So mrsinky has taken foal our on an easter egg hunt at Sutton Hoo.
I am not invited.
She is meeting a work colleague and his children. His kids have been through a divorce . She thinks mybe they can help foal.
I am not invited.
This chap was kicked out by his wife, and is still adjusting. She is worried seeing me will upset him.
I dont know what to think. I would like to ask him how he coped with his life being stolen. With waking one morning and finding nothing left. I think she doesnt want him to see the evidence of what she is doing.
I am back on  the sofa. While I still have access.

For those who missed this...

Got a little black book with my poems in. http://rantingsciencezebra.blogspot.com/2015/02/got-little-black-book-with-my-poems-in.html

Happy Easter

Yesterday was one of the worst of my life. My wife of 11 years asked for a divorce.
She has taken all meaning from my life. She is stealing foal from me in real terms although she wants to be fair about access. She is turning our lives out onto the scrapheap.
She says I havent done anything but she cannot stand to be with me any more.
I feel my life has now finished.
I am tidying up.
Today I am having a meal for easter we had planned snyway with the hutt and Salacious Crumb. I know it sounds weird but I want to say goodbye and show Foal normal is possible.
We did a forest floor cake.
Choc sponge :
5 eggs
5oz caster sugar
4oz sr flour
1oz cocoa powder
4oz melted dark choc.
Oven 180c
Beat eggs and sugar till fluffy and white snd stiff. Beat in melted choc then fold in dry ingredients pour into lined 9 in tin. Cook 25 mins till middle feels like efge.
Split and fill with jam.
Decorate with choc leaves. Mushrooms are split kinder eggs and flakes. Bits of lemon zest and rosemary flowers too.

They fuck you up...

I came down to Somerset after the shrinkage to visit my parents. Foal is on hols so came along. Mrsinky is at work.
This is so much work. My Dad is very controlling and cannot let others make their own decisions. We were running low on cut logs and so I asked where the chainsaw was. He actually asked in so many words if i was mentally fit to use one. I was so angry, hurt and offended. Nice to know the mental health stigma is still going strong.
My tat has started to peel a bit so i keep shedding little black lines.
But on the plus side a windy day at Clevedon with impressive wave action...