Day 1086

Usual town stuff. Redrew the town centre section of the distance map as an inset. Worked on a poker hand recognition algorithm.

Went round to my parents' - tippexed the call I made to the Samaritans out of the itemised phone bill (A. Mole would love this). Went to Sainsbury's for the weekly shop.

Day 1085

Went into town in the morning, gathered info for the distance map. When I got back, scanned part of the town map to use as a basis. Did some work on my normal curve approximator. Ran 1400 steps on the spot. Watched the Glams and 1 minute of Men Behaving Badly, which was a repeat and not very interesting.

Day 1084

Round to C's early in the morning and got his car started. Got him to give me a lift to the post office to cash my Giro and into town. Restocked supplies, looked in at the Jobcentre. Looked up postage to Turkey - 30p, which is what the post office have been charging me, so perhaps D has been getting my letters.

Day 1083

Following my new plan of adding Tuesday and Thursday afternoon town visits to the three mornings, stayed in in the morning and watched it snow: big flakes but too warm to really settle - it got dispersed by rain in the afternoon. In town looked in at the Jobcentre, got cooking ingredients.

Day 1082

Bright but cold with a North wind and snow forecast. The north wind doth blow / And we shall have snow... Felt a bit anxious at times but kept on top of it. Went and signed on, started writing to T. Ought to make a doctor's appointment as he told me to come back in a fortnight.

Watched Game On, seemingly the first ep out of sequence because it was out of order and was about boxing - probably pulled after the last coma-causing big fight.

Worked very hard all day trying to calculate 2-dice rolls with bonuses: did a Psion and 123 sheet to work it out but couldn't get an r^2 greater than 0.96 so used a look-up table. Got the wanted result, ie a Monstermark for Fighting Fantasy monsters.

Day 1081

Stirred T about 10.30, she'd had a good 9 hours after all. Walked her to the station.

Got to sign on tomorrow. At least they can't give me looking-for-work hassle, I've been there every day for the last 7 possibles. Keen eh?

Day 1080

Printed a mothers' day card with that cardioid curves thing, which I had to recreate from memory and textbooks.

T arrived in the evening, she pronounced my lasagne excellent. She annoyingly fell asleep about 12.15. Which was a bit of a downer but never mind eh? I suppose you can't expect every visit to go excellently, but it was pretty good while she was awake.

So I got into bed and carried on with the Martian novels. Asih achih!

Day 1079

Went shopping in the morning. Had a letter from the library to say the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars book I'd reserved was in, so after dinner went back down to town to pick it up and go the the Jobcentre.

Rang the tax office, got things moving. Could have £65 coming my way in April - a sort of final instalment of compensation for the Alphabet City debâcle. And it should be £650,000, and even that wouldn't be enough to make up for it. Bastards.

T rang up in the late afternoon (© J.Vance) for final checks.

Uncharacteristically watched The Upper Hand as it had Quantum Leap references. I wouldn't've thought QL was popular enough. Later read the Mars book.

Day 1078

Went to the dentist - had to wait a long time due to continuous mistaken identity. Teeth okay, apparently, not bad considering I haven't been to a dentist for 8 years. Came back, had a late lunch, listened to the R4 play, went to the Jobcentre.

Scanned in all 31 paragraphs of that story with good results: 2 or 3 crashes but CatchWord OCR rather well-behaved really. Now I can do some translation: nice to use Catchword for something useful at last.

in the evening watched The Glam Metal Detectives.

Day 1077

Nice weather again, into town again. Read the gambling books in the library.

Day 1076

Went into town: got Casino Management (untroubled by a moral dimension but very interesting) and the anxiety book I read yesterday and which made such a difference. Had occasional dodgy moments today but on the whole very good.

Been down the Jobcentre the last 4 working days - unheard of.

Day 1075

Woke up feeling cold and shivery, went to the library. Had to pay £3 in fines for that scanner book! The price of honesty. Considering the hundreds of books I've had out I suppose it's not too bad.

But I made a great discovery! Or a number of them. First, that the cold/shivery stuff is a symptom of the drug I'm on - which is histamine, not anti-histamine. Second, found a triffic book about anxiety and fear of fear, the thrust of which was that anxiety can't be dealt with by blocking it out but it must be faced, and that you must think differently when anxious and realise that mounting panic never will actually cause what you fear. As I discovered on Friday night. It's a bluff.

Amazingly this worked. Nothing succeeds like success and despite momentary worries my new positive calm prevailed. This isn't like Thursday when I was really holding off anxiety by trying very hard not to think about things. This time it's positive. Even Game On could not depress me. Finished the Jennings books.

Day 1074

Up at 9.30; went for a bike ride, browsed in Homebase. Very quiet in town.

Was troubled by negative thoughts occasionally but remained positive. I think perhaps it's been better today. At least all this exercise and activity must be doing me good.

Found that bloody Scanner Handbook in a box file, it was due back 2 months ago tomorrow. Ouch.

Rather than read anything too lively in the evening read Jennings books for light relief. Went out for rizlas; Orion, Sirius, Capella, Aldebaran, the Pleiades all very clear and bright.

Day 1073

Had a bit of a 'crisis' last night about 1am when I thought 'Oh no, I've thought myself into a corner'. But suddenly I could not remember the train of thought that had led to the 'crisis' nor what it was about.

Being at a loose end in the morning went up to the museum for a look round. Quite good 'story of Mugsborough' exhibition from Stone Age to present. Walked back to my bike through town, looked in at the market and got a Roman Empire book from the library.

Day 1072

Maintained a positive attitude most of the day, with occasional downers but nothing too serious. Went to the Jobcentre. Helped a delivery bloke push-start his van, and was rewarded with free sausages.

In the afternoon went round to mum's and did some gardening.

While the new drug appears to be working for the physical symptoms I had a depressing general apprehension. But I seem to be able to keep it under control. I am after all doing everything I can to change my situation.

Day 1071

Was anxious in the morning, anxious enough to ring up after a packer's job; in the afternoon took Action and went into town to the Jobcentre. Even enquired about another job! Got National Express details at the bus station for future reference, went to the library.

Took two of the new drug today and it may be helping but a lot of it is attitude (positive).

Greenpeace rang up in the evening asking me to do an envelope collection. I agreed but I don't know what sort of response they'll get.

Day 1070

Went into town for fortnightly supplies; pumped up this woman's tyre when she asked me. 'You'll be repaid for that good deed' she said as I hurried away embarrassedly.

Went to the doctor: he told me (inter alia) that what I had was almost certainly not serious and that it was not 'downhill all the way to the wooden box'. Straight talker, Dr. Crowden. Told him I wouldn't look up the side-effects of the latest prescription this time as I would probably start imagining symptoms. He agreed.

The Community Service Volunteers stuff arrived - they say they take anyone, but they want two references. So much for them. Hope Liam Davis replies soon (and positively) about my MSc reference.

Day 1069

T rang up at lunchtime and told me not to worry. I rang up Effolk university to get some questions answered and the Community Service Volunteers for an application form.

Got ingredients for cauliflower and courgette macaroni cheese, cooked it.

Day 1068

Went into town to sign on, went to the library. Very little anxiety today.

Tony Blair got his new Clause 4 accepted by the NEC. I still think there was no real need to change it. Went round to my parents' and got their old anglepoise lamp out of the loft.

Watched Bottom out of boredom, and Game On - despite obnoxious protagonist the latter quite good and with well-crafted comic situations.

Day 1067

Worked very hard on the map prog: got the basics working, having trouble with unwanted lines and aspect ratios.

Day 1066

Worked very hard on the line-clipping prog and eventually hit on the solution. Then started integrating it into the mouse rubber-box prog.

Day 1065

T rang up about 2pm and was very sympathetic again. She's been a tower of strength this troubled week. She advised me to try exercise so I did some calisthenics. It did work too, for a while.

Tony Blair had some success in Scotland with his Clause 4 rewrite: his picture was captioned 'VICTORY' on the ITV news, which was an image to hang on to.

Day 1064

Went to the doctor's - it was Dr Conway, and I was wrong to think he wouldn't understand, being quite old - he has after all been treating me since I was about 6 weeks old - but I'm glad to've been wrong. Sorry.

Made some progress with a mouse prog in C. In the evening experienced relief from symptoms for over an hour - very encouraging. Anxiety you see is a feedback process and if you can prevent it running away you're all right.

Watched The Glam Metal Detectives - not bad.

Day 1063

Was very glad to see another dawn: thanks to all concerned. Symptoms returned, but I knocked off the Stemetil and went gingerly into town. Was attacked by appalling anxiety as soon as I got back: used the paper bag hyperventilation therapy to good effect. Rang the Samaritans; described my symptoms and situation at length. I said I was anxious and needed to talk to someone to take my mind off it. She said not to worry about going to the doctor again and to take a written list of my symptoms. Also to do voluntary work, which I've been considering and was trying to look up in the library in the morning. All good advice. Accordingly made an appointment and produced a list.

Got through the day, feeling worst at 2.30 and 8.30. Rang T at 7pm; she was most sympathetic and supportive, and said I could ring her at any time even during the night - such thoughtfulness. T is a good friend to have - funny how things turn out eh, lucky we didn't argue permanently. Else where would I be now? For which much thanks.

Used a little wine for my stomach's sake. It's the only thing that can counteract the anxiety in my experience.

Day 1062

Worked very hard all day on the .PCX scaling program - finally got it working properly. Went through those Skivers tapes.

Had a very dodgy period in the evening starting about 9pm and wearing off about 11.30. The worst moment was about 9.30 and it was bloody awful. I had to concentrate on Hope to carry on. I would like to say more but would rather leave it till daylight.

Day 1061

Walked into town in the morning as I felt like a challenge. Looked at the Jobcentre boards. Went to the library, walked back. The Stemetil had odd effects; with each one I felt shaky from 3-5 hours after taking it, and then very well up to the 7th hour. It did get rid of the dizziness though.

Listened to a depressing R4 play in the evening - it used an older version of The World Turned Upside Down (the Diggers song I thought Billy Bragg wrote) as a theme.

Watched Game On, found the situations amusing but the main character repellent. I hope there'll be some sort of resolution at the end, so I'll carry on watching it.

I can't decide whether to apply for the conversion Computer Studies MSc or one with linguistic background which might be easier to get onto, though the first would be more use for a job. Rang M for her opinion - the first, as I expected.

Day 1060

Experimented with a prog to display segments of lines falling within a viewed area of a map, inspired by the superb zooming map prog at 'People's Phone' yesterday. Letts Maths books came in handy again.

Day 1059

M came round about 10.30 and we walked into town for a long stroll round mobile phone shops and interminable moaning from M over her £199 Orange phone. Then I borrowed mum's car and we drove to Lakeside; M cheered up when she managed to ring home from the A12.
She and her fiancé, E, are talking in terms of when they have children rather than if.

Thought: would an index to my diaries be a good idea? Would be interesting to see what I write about most. And if it was updated only after each volume it wouldn't be too wasteful to maintain. Aren't I writing a lot for each day these days? What does it mean? Could cost me a lot in diary books.

Day 1058

Saw Douglas Hurd on the news yesterday walking through some park with J. Major and conversing casually in French with a woman from Normandy and her kid. The Sgt. Wilson of the Tory party.

Went round to mum's again - she'd got her laptop updated at work, it had had DOS 6.0 replaced with 6.22 and Windows 3.1 with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, which comes with a version of Chase The Lady! Odd rules, like the Queen of Spades being worth 13 instead of 50 (which made the game as played in sixth form much more exciting) but good fun.

Day 1057

I am not going to look up any more symptoms in the encyclopaedia or cast horary charts for my own illnesses. Until I'm mature enough. All this recent hypochondria has at least taken my mind off worrying if I was mad or not. So perhaps it's a blessing in disguise?

Went round to mum's, set up new printer drivers on her computer.

Watched The Glam Metal Detectives again - good in parts. Carried on with the 1914-45 A.J.P. Taylor book, very interesting.

Day 1056

Went into town but forgot to cash my Giro and so had to go back to the post office again and then back to town, which took so long that I got caught in a very heavy shower.

I looked up Stemetil in the library in town, and thought I was getting a reaction, so when I got home I rang the surgery and spoke to the doctor, who advised me to leave off and try again on Monday. I think I'm getting a bit obsessive about my health.

M came round briefly with her fiancé (!); she's commuting to London again at the moment .He was quite nice.

First day of Spring of course. Let's hope things improve.