I would like to say 'Happy New Year'...

but that would be total bollocks! Now I know it's all relative, and I'm in a half-positive frame of mind at the moment, but 2009 has been a bloody disaster so far!Where to start? At the beginning I suppose. And ,for me, that'll be Friday 2nd January. I'd finished work at two, and then popped up town to take a few snaps,and just wander around. I got home just after six. So far so good...My telly is in the bedroom, but as I've got no heating, well one small electric fan type one, given to me by a mate. I very rarely use it, but we've had such a bad cold snap at thec start of the year, so I moved the telly into the front room, and heated the one spot. I also used my laptop in here, sitting on one of my armchairs. Anyway that Friday night I leant over to turn the power socket on, all the plugs being on an extension lead, and I caught my foot in one of the cables and the laptop slipped out of my hand, less than a foot to the floor, with a clunk & froze. Broken completely! Another casualty of my alcoholism. No I hadn't been drinking, but the reason I have no heating yet is down to my old drinking days. I simply never paid the bills, and owe quite a large sum to the gas board. For many years in alcoholism I simply never paid bills apart from the rent. But as I sorted myself out, eventually, in sobriety & when I almost lost my job & was seriously suicidal at the start of this very blog, I first paid off the electricity bill, and in a couple of months time my debts to the water board will be paid. Next up will be starting to make payments to the gas people, & getting the hot water put on at last as a result. So you see, I only dropped my computer as a result of the cold in my flat, which was a consequence of ignoring bills in my drinking days.When my computer broke my head exploded. Not literally, but it might well have done. It was like I'd had an arm chopped off. I got a huge amount of pleasure & positivity out of it. For a moment I felt worthless and useless again. It was my fault for thinking I was anything other than that. Getting ideas above my station! I asked friends for help, & they tired to reassure me it was fixable. But that wasn't helping me at that very moment. I went very quickly into a sort of depressed, worthless, what is the point of anything, type mode. I wanted to get out of my fly to try to clear my head, but I was actually too scared to. I wasn't one hundred per cent sure if I was able to be responsible for my actions. Thoughts were whizzing through my head with jumping in front of train prominent. Or going to Tower Bridge and getting ready to go for a 'swim' without paddling to the side. It's been a while since I've felt that way, & it does frighten me at times. It also confirms my belief that when I do die it will be by myself taking my own life.I felt crushed, and vulnerable. There was only one way I knew to get my head screwed back on again, and that was to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wanted to go out and get drunk, the only thing stopping me was the inevitable 'downer' I would be on afterwards, when I'd realise I'd thrown away over six and a half years sobriety. Go to the rooms of AA are wonderful. Look for the similarities in people sharing, and you always find something to take away. There's a saying that you take away the alcohol and you're still left with the 'isms'. I'm not sure what 'crazyisms' I've got but the meetings calm me down, when my thoughts need to be reigned in, & AA does this for me. It shows everyone has their own problmes, but the most important thing is that I don't pick up a drink. Not just at this moment, but many times insbriety I've said to myself if it wasn't for AA I'd be dead, and I doubt if there's truer words I could speak.Things picked up, when I spoke to my friend Cleopatra. Her fiance Geekie owns his own computer firm, and she's spoken to him & he will look at it & try to fix, at cost price for the parts! But not for a couple of weeks, which still seems like an eternity. But the clock ticks round, and I leave my laptop with her, when he's next due up in London from down the south coast where he lives. It turns out the hard drive was completely wrecked, so I lose whatever i had saved on it, including quite a few photos that I haven't saved anywhere. My loss, the most important thing is that for only forty quid it's fixed! (Well £63 or so actually!) When I picked it up after coming out of hospital I treated cleopatra, her little boy Natty & myself to a 'slap-up' meal at the local Wetherspoons!Did I mention hospital? The month only got better-not! And despite what you've just read it wasn't any self harm. I had, what I thought, was some sort of spot blowing up on the back of my neck. It was sore,& I couldn't move my neck properly. This was on a Friday. I was off work on the Saturday. So, first thing, I went to my doctors. Silly me! Expecting a doctors' surgery to be open on a Saturday, when half of the country go to work! I would have to wait until monday morning. I was in a fair bit of pain, not agony, but seriously irritating. I'd been to football that afternoon, practically every game in London was off due to the freezing weather, I ended up at Erith Town versus Croydon, at Thamesmead Town, where Erith groundshare. It's was one of the most awful nil nils I've ever seen! Not all bad, there were quite a few fans from other clubs there to chat to, a few fellow Hamlet fans, & I knew the half dozen or so Croydon faithful. On the way home I decided to make my way to A&E at Lewisham Hospital. I actually apologised for going to see them as I wasn't a 'real' emergency! But I still needed to see a doctor. As it happens I was only there for a couple of hours, which was no time at all for an A&E visit. I had some sort of folicle infection, with blistering on the back of my neck. I didn't ask exactly what it was, I was interested, I just wanted it treated. So I was more than happy to get a prescription for some antibiotics, and buy some pain killers over the counter. I wasn't so happy when I got to the bloody chemist! Seven quid for a fucking prescription! That's on the NHS! So why am i paying out as if I'm a queue jumping private patient! Outrageous charges!I was told it should start clearing up in 'three or four days', and if it didn't I was to go to see my GP. Well what should have happened didn't! My neck blew up badly, and although I was a bit concerned I wasn't too worried. With hindsight this was only due to the fact I couldn't see the back of my neck! As the 3 to 4 day 'deadline' approached I kidded myself it was getting better as I could move my neck a bit more. But the antibiotics were due to run out the following weekend, so I made an appointment with my quack at 4.30 on the Friday afternoon, convenient as I was finishing work at two. I went to see him & any hope of reassurance went out of the window when he looked at my neck & his exact response was: "Oh my goodness! I've not seen anything like this before! It's the size of a cricket ball!" He ordered me to return to Lewisham pronto.And that's how I came to be sitting in A&E again! I eventually had a doctor try to treat me but sticking syringes into my neck & draining puss out of it, but it was too difficult & too much, only about six millimetres drained, when she said if she could get around ten or twelve milimetres she would sent me home. While she was doing this all I was thinking was....Yes! I'm working the next day, & would have phoned in sick to catch the Hamlet away to Cray instead! But hopes were dashed, as she said they'd have to keep me in. Damn! By now it was gone eleven o'clock, I assumed they'd sort it out in the morning, but I wasn't sure how long it would take, so I asked if it was ok to go home, then come back. I had to get my phone, and-more importantly-some books to read. I wasn't feeling sick, so I would be awake, ans knew how bored I would be. The doctor saw me on his rounds on the Saturday morning, and said not to eat or drink anything, as I was going to have a small operation later that day. And LATER it was! As I was a non-essential op it kept on getting 'knocked back' & they eventually took me down to the theatre at ten at night! They knocked me out, and cut an incision into my neck ,and cleared all the shit out. I was then kept in yntil the Tuesday morning, having been on a drip & various medication. But it didn't end there. My neck was alright, but doing other routine tests on me they said I was type diabetes 2! It doesn't rain it pours! How I'll cope I don't know, I'm not sure what it involves, even now, over a month later. I could go on for a lot longer posting here, and tell you more about my time in hospital. But, to be honest, I want to get this post out of the way, & try to explain why I'm starting this new blog...