more sugar

Lawks! This is one of those untranslateable words - a bit like the Anglo-Saxon Hwaet! that you might find at the beginning of a narrative poem. The literal meaning of Hwaet is 'what' but what it really means is right then, folks, listen up! Wiktionary says that Lawks is an expression of surprise, a stereotypical utterance of a cockney house-servant in literature, particularly 19th and early 20th century. Whatever. I use it to mean something like, oof - well here I am again!

Or, perhaps - here I am, still, having absolutely nothing to declare but my genius! This is perhaps stretching the Lawks a bit, especially if one hasn't actually done anything in particular to prove one's genius. Never mind, I am testing the boundaries of sugar addiction. I am alone in Brighton with a packet of sweets - mint crumbles - that a friend left lying in the cupboard after her stay here as a gesture of appreciation. Actually, she left walnut whips and booze as well. Alcohol gives me such a headache these days it is easy to leave that alone. Mr. Signs ate the walnut whips as I sat and shivered. He is not here right now and I have eaten a mint crumble - just the one. Instant bliss, and a kind of shine hovering around. There is elevation. It will not last for more than half an hour and is very interesting to observe. I used to work in a drugs crisis centre where people were withdrawn from whatever they were on before going on to long-term rehab. Withdrawing someone physically from a drug is actually the easy part. If an addiction is established, the deep, visceral longing for a drug is written into the body and won't be so easily erased. For a sugar-sensitive person, sugar affects brain function the same way that heroin does. First the sugar high - the feel-good rush that addicts crave, then the withdrawal. I am learning all about it, remembering how, over twenty years ago, I told a homeopath I was seeing that I was concerned about the amount of sugar I seemed to need. She said it was ok - if you need sugar, then have it. But the feel-good rushes grow less over time, you need more of the stuff, a steady supply that increases. Then the insulin receptors become deranged and mere anarchy is loosed upon the system. The centre will not hold, the falcon will not hear the falconer - etc. My guess is that W.B. Yeats probably knew something about blood sugar disorder.

This is all so rockanroll, isn't it? Makes a change from boring old M.E., at any rate. Not that boring old M.E. has moved out, but looking on the bright side, I have something else to bang on about now - the pain and ecstasy of it all. More pain than ecstasy, but - Peeps, I can feel a Youtube coming on.

But laptop - or something - won't allow me to embed. Bugger.

"I'm waiting for my man ....."