The partner took a picture of me whilst I was deeply asleep this morning.

Good bedclothes, eh?

I've given Butter the bear a bath in the washing machine. He has been on serious soothing duty for quite a while, and so was quite sweaty. Worse than that, in a move of what can only be described as total ineptitude I managed to spill prawn cocktail on him this afternoon. Sadly the pictures I took don't really capture the radical cleaning effect the bath has had on Butter, so I cannot be bothered to post them here. On coming out of the drier he is really toasty warm. This is nice for cuddling.

I'd much rather have Butter, Stew and Zoo than this teddy bear. I am sure he is being faithful to his beliefs, but sadly his beliefs are thoroughly evil. Religions are terrorist organisations; they use threats to coerce. They are also perfectly happy to re-write history to suit themselves. If any nutcase American theists  are reading this you might be interested in this song on YouTube which says a lot about the founding fathers of the USA. It is also quite funny.

Yesterday we went to The Southerner in the city. This is a boozer that sells Speight's beers, imported from New Zealand. We went with the neighbours, one of whom is from New Zealand, because we were promised that they do good roast lunches on Sundays. Good roast lunches, my arse. They were bloody awful: overcooked, leathery, flavourless meat, wet tasteless vegetables and the roast potatoes defied description. I wasn't so impressed with Speight's beers, either.

So, we needed perking up. This required decent wine, teddy bears and nappies. You can see me enjoying these around the neighbours' place below:

As you can see by my bulging Miffy t-shirt, now I am not spewing all of the time I have put on a shed-load of weight. I've had to move up to large-size Abri-Form X-Pluses. The wine was a rather cheeky little Chateauneuf, Mont-Redon 2004, which really blossomed with time in the glass. The afternoon passed with much pleasure and I felt rather jollied along by the whole affair. The kebabs we ordered later were much better than The Southerner's roast lunches.

The cleaner came today, when I went into the bedroom after she had finished there I found the bed looking like this:

Nice to know she treats Butter and Fudge well.

I'm still a good baby, cuddling Butter and doing as I am told:

Even drinking from an appropriate vessel:

I've been supervised at home for the past two days, so I have not cut myself or done anything else bad. This has resulted in me being sure that I am a good baby rather than a bad adult. This works for me. My dose of the anti-psychotic that has worked in the past (Risperidone) was also increased yesterday, I am half way to getting up to a therapeutic dose. This has also cheered me up a bit, even though the hallucinations are still pretty bad. Still, I am a good baby and that is a good thing.

You just cannot get any peace these days. There I was trying to sleep and someone comes and takes pictures of me. Well, here they are (click for enlargements):

Not me, but happier:

 

I am remarkably less paranoid, and really not being so bothered by the hallucinations, but really still terribly depressed. I have no interest in my hobbies, I cry all the time and I feel like I want to die. Soon. But I am still happier than I have been. Those arms are a real mess; I am disgusted with myself.

I saw the boss-lady psychiatrist yesterday. She agreed to take me off the drug that is keeping me awake. Sadly, the dose will have to be gradually lowered over several days, but hopefully this means sleep will come soon.

She has also prescribed me a short-term course of clonazepam, a tranquiliser, to help me deal with the incredible anxiety I feel being locked up. To be honest, it barely scratches the surface of the terror that is my life, but even a slight improvement is welcome.

Amazingly, the nurses also were bothered to go and get my anti-depressants yesterday, so maybe I will begin to feel less miserable.

Feeling miserable, and sadly suicidal, is still a problem, though. Today I want to negociate for the return of my belt, shoelaces and earphones, so I will have to be very careful what I say. I will have to stress how much getting my medication sorted out has perked me up. Oh, and avoid saying I am as miserable as sin and if I am left alone with a bottle of cyanide I'll swallow it instantly. I do not think there is terribly much cyanide on the ward, though.

I suppose I am happy that I have my Nokia N800 and N95 to keep in contact with the outside world, and having Butter to cuddle as I lie awake at night helps a lot as well.

Some friends are going to visit this evening and I cannot express how pleased I'll be to see them. I'll ask them to dress as washer women and smuggle me out in their basket of washing.

I had to go shopping first thing yesterday morning. I dressed like this:

Then later on I was invited for dinner chez the neighbours and I dressed like this:

Both suited me fine, but somehow they seemed the wrong way around...

I still have the loony support service visiting me, but I am pleased to report they are taking my mental state seriously enough to have increased the dose of Valium I am on. 5mg twice a day rather than 2mg has calmed me down considerably. I cannot take it for terribly long as it is wildly addicitive, but the idea is that it is just a stop-gap until I am feeling more balanced.

Quite when I am going to feel more balanced I do not know. I got a bit more sleep last night, but when I got out of bed early in the morning I spent a long time crying. Cuddling Butter may soothe me somewhat, but I am really not happy. I am still feeling pretty suicidal. However, with the increased dose of Valium I do not think I am going to act on those urges.

Thanks to my new purchase, a stereo bluetooth headset for my Jasjar, I can now make telephone calls using Butter. I just attach the microphone to his shirt and stick the headphones in my ears:

I can also give Butter commands to play music and navigate the web thanks to the power of voice recognition. I wonder what people would think if I walked around apparently chatting to my teddy bear.

The cricket world cup has started. So far my favourite match has been to watch Australia whip Scotland, the masters seem to have got some form back. Tomorrow is England's first match, which will have me glued to the television all afternoon.

Encouraged by Butter's example yesterday, I've been watching it in just a nappy and t-shirt.

   

As you can see, much excitement is generated when a boundary gets scored.

I thought I'd take a picture of Butter demonstrating that it is alright to be in bed in just a nappy and a t-shirt, which I managed to do.

However, whenever one tries to do anything in this flat, including taking a quick picture, Kisu the bloody cat turns up and expects to be the centre of attention.

Kisu cannot even be bothered to wear a nappy to encourage me to wear them. He is a nice little kitten, though, and I don't mind him sleeping on my pillow too much.

As I was looking through my draw of baby clothes I noticed this:

This is the oldest item of baby clothing I own, from 1996, and it still fits! The company that made it has long gone tits up, but it is a good, comfortable thing to wear. Some of you may be wondering how I can have clothes that are eleven years old when I am merely two, and I assure you that so do I...

Last night I met a couple of ABs, one of whom had travelled over from the US on business. We had went for some London-brewed beer, had a look in in Tate Modern then went out for dinner at a place called Chili's in Canary Wharf. Here I proved that I am the master of unconvincing smiles:

My smile was unconvincing because I found the margarita to be weak and lacking ferocity. The baby back ribs were quite nice; I plastered my face with the sauce.

Whilst we were out in Canary Wharf and anecdote occurred. My overalls have a teddy bear printed on the back pocket and I was wearing my sweater that has a picture of Butter on the front and bear paw-prints on the back. I was hanging around with the chap from the US whilst our other dining companions had to visit the little boys' room when suddenly a quite fetching young lady of about twenty came up to us. She said, "Excuse me, but why do you have teddy bears on your clothes?"

What could I reply but, "Because I am an enormous toddler, of course."

She hesitated a moment before saying, "Oh, and I thought you just liked teddy bears. That is quite cute, I suppose." And off she went.

I used iron-on transfer paper to add a nursery print to a onesie. I think the result was pretty good.

Onesies are such handy items of clothing, I really don't have enough of them.

I've been neglecting Butter somewhat over the past couple of weeks; Kisu takes up a lot of time with his demands for attention. I even find it hard to cuddle Butter whilst I am in bed. Kisu likes to sleep next to me in a position that makes it difficult to hold Butter in a comfortable position. I am still deeply attached to Butter, though.

At least he doesn't try to attack my nappies when I am having a change.

It is 2007, what joys await us all this year, I wonder? The march of time doesn't stop, despite the protests that took place in France last night. As I wish to remain a toddler for a long time I wish those protesters' demands to the UN to stop the 'mad race' of time were possible to be granted.

The Christmas period has been quite fun. My partner had ten days off and I really feel a lot happier when he is about. Shame he has to go back to work tomorrow. We drank some mind-bendingly good wines and, even though I didn't cook the goose and huge chicken terribly well, we ate some lovely food. Good meals will continue with our first dinner party of the new year occurring on Saturday. We'll be dining with a friend from university and his partner; she always likes to steal Butter when they come around. Butter doesn't seem to mind, he smiles, but I do!

Well, time for me to start washing some of the glasses used for yesterday's celebration. Happy new year to you all.

I'd just like to wish anyone who reads this a happy new year. New year is a good thing partly because it is an excuse to drink some Champagne, but also because all of my wines become one year older and so closer to drink-ability.

The past year has had some entertaining moments. Our trips to Burgundy and the Basque country were a lot of fun. Going to Sweden was also pretty good; another booze-fuelled holiday. I've had Butter the bear for two years now and much cuddling has taken place. There have been some great wines drunk, and they'll be a few more tonight. I survived the one serious attempt I made on my life and at the moment I am pleased I did survive.

Hopefully the new year will bring some excitement, new experiences and general jollity. I hope it goes well for all of you who read this.

My stomach is still not in perfect condition. I can only eat very small meals without feeling sick. It doesn't seem that the operation to fix my hiatus hernia was terribly effective in the end. This has resulted in me continuing to lose weight. This is good because more and more of my clothes now fit, including my old onesies.

Onesies are great for general-purpose wearing. They stop nappies from hanging down and drooping. Because they also hold one's nappies tight they also reduce the potential for leaks. You can get them from Diaperstation. I think normal t-shirt designs are better than the lap-shoulder design as they are not really suitable for very large toddlers.

People have often asked me if my friends and family know I am an AB; they do. I decided I wasn't going to feel ashamed by something which does no one any harm. By now guests are used to Butter coming out of the bedroom as the evening gets later. I still do this even though Butter usually gets stolen by someone.

I had a friend staying with me last night. He didn't seem at all phased by me mooching around in a sleeper, making rustling noises, this morning. Nor was he perturbed by me changing into my day clothes: nursery-printed overalls and a nursery-printed shirt.

I have never had a bad response when I have told anyone. Perhaps I am lucky in that most of my friends and family are open-minded, educated types, but I think if people like you they are not going to stop liking you because you have unusual underwear.

I was looking through my clothes, got to a back of a rarely-opened draw and found these:

I think teddy pyjamas are rather fetching. And that is not fetching as in 'fetching up one's dinner'.

Whilst I am thinking of religion and getting slightly bristly, I've been extremely annoyed with the constant news stories about the pope apologising for quoting someone in a speech. This is yet more madness from the ever-growing lunatic fringe of Islam. Their message that you can only say what they approve of is an example of terrorism, they use threats to coerce. Free speech is an absolute in almost all instances, the safeguard of all other rights. The right to say only the right thing is not worth having, let alone fighting for.

The last blog entry was appalled by the Christian lunatic fringe in the video I linked to; this entry is about Islam. I am not really aiming for balance, I just hate all religions equally. So does Butter.

I'm really not feeling too good. The hallucinations I see are getting really nasty and frightening. I have tried to de-sensitise myself to them, by staring at them or not avoiding places where they are worse, but all I feel is more scared and my thoughts get very confused. I really don't feel like leaving the flat and Butter the bear is being cuddled an awful lot.

If I am still feeling this mad tomorrow I'll see if I can get an emergency appointment with a random psychiatrist.

I've been really quite social this weekend. On Friday I met up with a friend who I have not seen for seven years. I was pleased that I am not alone in putting on weight in that time. Firstly we went to Dukes Hotel for martinis. This always pleases me, I get to say one of my favourite sentences, "Two Tanqueray martinis, please".

We then went out to a new place to eat, a gourmet burger bar in Camden called Haché. The burgers were really pretty good, I would be happy to go there again. Unsurprisingly, the wine list was laughably poor, but I really don't mind drinking beer with burgers.

Last night we had the neighbours around for pork and ham pasta bake. It should have been veal and ham pasta bake, but evil Sainsbury's don't sell veal. We indulged in much eating, drinking and cuddling of teddy bears. Not much stops me from cuddling Butter, but when everyone else has a teddy bear of their own he is in less danger of being taken from me.

Tonight is a bit more sedate, but I am still cooking something nice. It is a school night so there will be less boozing tonight.

I am clearly engrossed in the cricket in this picture, not just cuddling Butter.

One of the most common side-effects of taking anti-psychotics is that one gets very hungry. With the last lot I was taking I ended up weighing over 110kg, far too much. None of my spiffy suits fitted and many of my baby clothes got too tight.

Oddly, even though I am on a very high dose of the current stuff, I am hardly hungry at all. I don't have lunch, don't eat much for dinner. This has resulted in me losing enough weight to fit into my clothes again. I am very pleased that my Oshkosh shortalls are now wearable.

I'll have to try on my two Paul Smith suits and see if they fit. They are incredibly smart and well-designed; I look like a serious adult when I wear them. I know it is hard to imagine that I might occasionally be a serious adult, but sometimes one has to go to wine-tastings, you know?

Butter has come out from his bath looking very clean.

This is the first photograph I have taken with my new camera phone. I have shrunk it down and cropped it, but the quality looks pretty good to me.

I am pouting petulantly and being generally awkward today, or at least for the next five hours. Butter the lovely teddy bear is having a bath, and it'll be five hours until he is clean and dry. I want Butter now! I suppose I will have to make do with Fluffy Bat until he is ready.

I've had an email from a friend who will be at the Adult Baby Club this weekend. Much nicer when there are people there one can speak to.

My ear infection has left me with an ear filled with dried-out wax; I cannot hear a thing through it. The way of dealing with this is to soften the wax with olive oil which allows it to drain out. Since I sleep on Fluffy Bat (my security bat, who is a real bat, not a Mothercare-brand cellular cotton cot blanket) it seems likely that the wax and oil mixture will drain out onto him. Poor Fluffy Bat, I don't want him to get oily and filthy. I hope Butter doesn't catch any of the filth.

The other item of clothing that arrived yesterday was a footed sleeper with dinosaur prints:

I ordered this because the feet fell apart on my favourite sleeper. I mentioned this to Marcie of Forever a kid and she suggested I cut the feet off it and make it into a footless sleeper. She kindly sent some ribbing in with my order for the ankle cuffs. I managed to sew them on quite well:

I was a touch perturbed by the high acidity in that margarita.

Butter can be a baby too:

Pampers fit Butter perfectly. Lucky bear.

I am having two friends over for dinner tonight. I'm feeling a tad nervous about this, I am still pretty fragile. I saw my nurse earlier and she really wanted to lock me in the bin.

I have cooked in advance so all I'll have to cook is rice. I hope it goes smoothly and no one gets whammed and argumentative.

I am sure Butter will be whipped out not too late into the evening.

Butter may be a big, soft, childish teddy bear, but I like him for other reasons as well.

Firstly, he is real. A lot of the things I see and here are not real. I usually see nasty, dirty, hairy rat-like things running around wherever I am, and there is a group of people standing outside my flat shouting abuse at me. It is good to have something real to hold onto when these seem particularly bad.

Secondly, he is very happy. Butter smiles all of the time. The hallucinations and paranoia make me quite depressed, but all I have to do is look at Butter and I know that happiness still exists. This is particularly useful when I am in the loony bin feeling incredibly miserable to be stuck there.

Finally, he was given to me by my partner. This means that even when my partner has to go to work I know he has left Butter to keep me soothed. So, in a sense he is a real transitional object; he helps me manage when I am alone.

Having a security bat and a security teddy bear help me deal with things a lot better. I am barely dealing with things at the moment so every little helps.

One of the symptoms of schizophrenia that I have is paranoia. This is a really difficult thing to deal with. Even when I am speaking to old friends my knackered brain makes me think they are continually coming out with snide digs at me.

Last night I went to a cocktail party. I provided three litres of Bloody Mary and mixed margaritas and Harvey Wallbangers. Every one who had one of my cocktails said how much they enjoyed it. My twisted thoughts interpreted all of these as nasty, patronising attacks on me and my ability to mix cocktails. This is not really how you what to think at a party so I left early. I was cuddling Butter in full view of the party-goers from about half-way into the time I spent there.

Since leaving hospital I've had members of the health profession visiting me at home every day. I've been feeling fairly rotten over the past few days so when they came to visit tonight quite naturally I was cuddling Butter. Just as they were getting ready to leave after our chat one of them asked, "Teddy for comfort?".
"Yes", I replied.
"He looks after you?" was the follow up question.
"Yes", seemed a reasonable response.
"Good", she said.

I find it slightly odd that toddlers, especially toddlers as big as me, find sleeping holding onto a security object so easy and natural. I dropped Butter last night and woke up I was so disturbed. As soon as I was holding him again I dropped off back to sleep.

He does get a lot of 'use', I hope he doesn't fall apart. I'd be heartbroken if he did. I am not sure my clumsy toddler fingers are up to sewing him back together.

I am not sure he was so filthy to begin with, but now he is certainly very clean.

His ears may be a bit folded up, but he is very clean and smells very nice. Well done the washing machine; my heart was in my mouth during all of that I can tell you.

I have been taunted and goaded into giving Butter a bath in the washing machine. He is currently tumbling around in a pillow-case in the machine. By way of comparison, here he is before being washed:

After the bath will follow in a few hours.

Well, we all do, but I was suggesting something in a less physical-necessity sort of manner. I am sitting around at home, cuddling Butter and reading in a half-arsed manner, and I find myself incredibly bored. If this was the weekend I'd be cooking something baroque and planning what to drink later, but no such luck. So I need food and drink to keep me interested. Hardly a bad thing, but a real swine when there is no food in the house and all of my wine is too young to drink. Perhaps I'll chop the onions for dinner....

Bored, bored, bored. Until moments ago I was stunningly bored. The work of toddler doesn't get me out of the flat that much, day-care has limited calls on my time, so I usually just sit here writing thrilling prose all day. Today, alas, I've just got stunningly bored with it all and I want a bloody drink. As luck would have it, I've got one or two things to drink in the flat. At the moment it is Château de Pibarnon (Bandol) 1999 which is simply lovely. It is arguably a bit too heroic for a toddler, but if a toddler of my enhanced magnitude cannot manage the odd bit of heroism then what is the point in being large? After two smallish glasses I feel a song coming on... They call him Butter, Butter....

I've been a bit slack on keeping the spume of drivel up-to-date in recent months. Obviously this is largely down to sheer idleness, but I do have a vague excuse. A while ago I was prescribed a new drug to assist with my various ailments and it has not worked out to well. Firstly it just didn't work as the dose was too low; I felt rotten all of the time. More recently, the dose has been increased. Turns out this drugs is quite stimulating in reasonable doses. Very stimulating I find it. Stimulating to such an extent that I am hardly sleeping and I have constant anxiety levels akin to those following the consumption of vastly too many espressos. I sit here jumping and twitching like a flea on a plate too warm for a flea's comfort. It is very difficult to sit down and compose rants and other drivelly prose when sitting down for more than a few minutes is beyond the realms of my tension-handling ability. Sadly the anxiety is not terribly assuaged even by cuddling lovely Butter.

I am perfectly willing to admit that I may seem like a comedy bunch of ailments, but at least high-anxiety levels can be very, very slightly medicated with the odd glass of wine now and again. And again.

It is clear that either someone out there knows me (and my security bat), or they came along to a site they might find rather surprising. One of the many searches that has brought people here to the spume of drivel this month was for the words "Fluffy Bat". Pleasingly, I am second on Yahoo and third on Google for this most soothing of search terms. I just hope they realised that he is a real bat and not a blanket. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people top me in the search for "Butter" including a site called butterisbest; I couldn't agree more. The Wisconsin milk marketing board can be thanked for this statement of the obvious. I do worry in that a lot of their recipes they talk about Butter (proper noun) whereas all of their other ingredients are just nouns; I hope they are not suggesting cooking with Butter (the teddy bear). This could just be an example of American Headline Syndrome, though, the usage of initial capital letters Where They Do Not Belong.

My wonderful purveyor of quality pork products, Sillfield Farm, is again providing tonight's dinner: Sicilian-style sausages. In an attempt to pander to passing popularity these sausages are flavoured with Chardonnay wine. Ignoring the fact that Chardonnay is not a local grape in Sicily, it is pretty silly to suggest that any Chardonnay character beyond 'being a bit wine-y' is going to make it into the sausages once they've been cooked. It also irks me that Chardonnay is used in order to capture the vague popularity this grape has, when most Chardonnay (certainly at the quality level for putting into sausages) is not very interesting. How can I exorcise my spleen? By having a glass of Riesling, of course.

That is about as close as I can currently get my knees together due to the rather bulky nature of the cloth nappy I have been put in.

Butter has been with me for but nine months; given my toddler-like sense of object-permanence it seems like I've always had him. Obviously, as he is my main security object he has spent a lot of time with me: toddlers are not known for being sparkling-clean individuals so he has attracted a bit of grime in places. I would not dream of putting Butter is the washing-machine, he is too big and would never dry out. A non-drying security object has caused much heartache in the past. As a consequence, I decided to look for ways of cleaning soft toys (plush toys/animals for those of a more American vocabulary) and was pleased to find quite a comprehensive guide very rapidly. It sounds quite involved to me, and I may just have to let Butter continue to accumulate the residue of affection before I try anything so dramatic as scrubbing him with alcohol. I can see comedy value in having Butter stink like a distillery, though.

Fluffy Bat (ah, my first-ever security object, returned after years of being apart, and he is a real Fluffy Bat, not a sheet) is perfectly happy to have a bath in the washing machine, as he is quite a flat bat he dries with no problems and can soon be dragged to bed for hiding under-purposes. As you can see from this old picture, Fluffy Bat cleans up a treat with all drool marks removed after a sojourn in the washing machine. Takes some time after the bath to smell as soothing as he did before the bath, of course....

Well, another trip to the face-zapping clinic. The pain is really quite eye-watering, but nowhere near as un-nerving as when they lovely bint who zaps me burst into tears because I said something nice to her after her boss had said something nasty to her earlier in the day. I am but a toddler, such social awkwardness has me blushing and hiding behind my teddy bear.

Butter is not, I hasten to add, a teddy bear like the one reported here. I am not saying there is anything wrong with such teddy bears, and I can understand the idea that "A kiss is just a kiss but a thrashing throbs for days" might attract some people, but I'd much rather have a cuddle and gurgle happily whilst someone holds my bottle. I like being good and think I am far less intolerable when smiling than when howling incoherently with discomfort.

Who would have expected it? The end of April and it is 20°C outside. Most unlike Blighty. It is days like this that I find myself glad I have a little terrace by the Thames, even if I do get dazzled whilst trying to have a drink out there.

The best news is that the temperature might reach such heady heights as 25°C this weekend. To prevent getting hot and bothered I may have to lose the t-shirt whilst catching some rays.

As I mentioned eleven days ago, I have a really rather sore throat. It had started about a week before that so has been hanging around for quite a while now. It seemed reasonable to disturb my GP and check that I did not have tonsillitis or anything that required treatment beyond swilling anti-septic fluids with reasonable frequency. I finally got to see him on Friday. Sadly, he is a bit scared of me; he knows I have a doctorate in epidemiology which, coupled with me being considerably taller than him, he views as cause to be terrified when I burst into his surgery.

I asked him about my throat, he peered down there and said what must be the most moronic statement from a member of the medical profession to someone with reasonable insight into the nature of diseases: "Well, it is probably just a cold. Colds last a lot longer these days because they have evolved to be better than they were a few years ago." Perhaps he was just so scared he said the first load of drivel that popped into his mind in order to get me out, but perhaps he thinks that within a year or two rhinovirus will have evolved even more and so will wiping out huge swathes of the world's population because our immune systems, despite fighting these viruses for a very long time, can no-longer hold them back. "That is a very interesting story", was about as polite as I could manage after I'd gasped with incredulity.

So, there is the throbbing throat and also a late night out drinking cocktails yesterday. This morning I wanted to take things a bit easy and just play around in a soft, low-intensity sort of way.

A big problem with insomnia is that it can be perilously dull. Once you've checked every website in the entire world for updates twice already, had a look in the fridge again to see if something nice has appeared in there since last time you looked you reach the dreadful conclusions that all that can fill in the time is doing some work.

After composing a long, artfully-sculpted but quite amusing tract for your next publication you look at the clock just to check how large a chunk of the day has passed only to find it is still five in the morning. The word that springs to mind after vast intellectual energy expenditure directed at composing text of some merit that people will actually pay to read, possibly assuming it is not written by a comedy-type of person, only to find that nineteen hours of the day still stretch in front of one can only be, "Bugger".

This is where it is handy that I am a toddler and so easily amused. Hours can disappear watching my Miffy or Teletubbies DVDs. I really like Miffy as she shows it is fine to be terribly childish, even when some people are deluded enough to think you are really quite old. She is also a brilliant minimalist design icon. Anyway, today's five o'clock entertainment has been and a good old standby, playing with Butter.

Last night I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of the company of my next door neighbour. Sadly, Butter was clearly feeling dissolute and so soon began to corrupt we toddler-types.

At least he appeared to be enjoying the vastly expensive tequilla I scored. Butter, as I may have suggested, is a big teddy bear who normally looks after me; after he had set such a bad example I just felt I had to pop a bottle of wine. Since it was a rich and hearty, winter-esque sort of red wine we were charged with enough energy to spend a while watching life's passing parade from my balcony.
 

As it was such a warm night we were there until quite late letting Butter and Ted wave and sing incoherent songs at people as they walked past. Honeestly! What kind of message does this send to impressionable minds?

Mind you, I was quite excited in a childish manner for being allowed to stay up late. Naturally, I soon got tired and started getting grumpy, but I am easy to convince to belt up and after such a soothing send-off to the evening I slept. Three cheers for a baby bottle before bed!

 

There are but a few days before I leave my little island for a considerably larger one. This means the next few days will feature furious washing, ironing of shirts, buying plug-adaptors and pain-killers, trying to fit two styles of attire and plenty of nappies into limited luggage space, buying more luggage, trying to find my passport, running around lifting up very small bits of paper in an increasingly desperate mood just in case my passport is hidden under them and much, much more.

As luck would have it, I am a toddler and so can often manage feats of boundless energy. Some people fancy a lie-in after a busy night of playing, I can get up at frightening times of morning in order to watch children's programs with the volume turned up to one hundred decibels. After washing sheets and hanging them on the line it may be that a nice sit-down and a cup of tea is in order, another alternative is to run up and down the washing-line, squealing with pleasure and beating the sheets with a stick that has been dipped in mud.

Butter, on the other hand, is a grown-up teddy bear. This is useful as it means he can look after me and keep me out of trouble. However, it does mean that at advanced hours of the evening he just feels a bit jaded, spent and generally in need of a bit of relaxation.

He does look rather dissolute.

Cooking for meal for some friends is an activity filled with pleasure. Of course, since you wish to entertain your friends and spend time in their company hiding in the kitchen all evening is not an optimal strategy. Therefore, one must choose food that is easy to cook yet satisfying. A very successful meal is 'petit salé aux lentilles' or 'bacon, lentils and vegetables boiled in big pot', if you prefer. My recipe comes from Simon Hopkinson's book that I have mentioned elsewhere.

The key to cooking is good ingredients. I was particularly pleased with the two kilogrammes of high quality bacon sourced from one of London's most useful places, Borough Market. My selection of ingredients is shown below.

All of this is boiled up (I add a couple of glasses of wine to the boiling mixture) and then just before serving the recipe gives one of my favourite cooking instructions: Stir in butter to add richness.

Even though there was plenty of fat on the huge slabs of bacon, butter is pretty much an essential ingredient in almost anything nice that one cooks. My guests seemed reasonably pleased when the food was served, as shown below.

Unsurprisingly, after a large, hearty and fart-provoking meal one can feel a bit jaded and in need of soothing, as we are all happy to admit.

They are particularly bad if one has no shoes. Since toddlers are known for running about, dragging their feet along the floor and generally leaping around in a full of beans style, it is no surprise that all of the soles on my shoes are full of holes. All of my shoes were delivered to the cobbler this morning, and so I am pretty much stuck in the house all day. There is nothing for it but to play!

As you can see, Quatro really is quite a lot of fun. You may also note my Butter-themed sweatshirt, which came to me via the power of money combined with the skills of clothes printing companies. It is good to have a nice and warm, hooded sweat-shirt that was very cheap, has Butter's face on the front and some teddy-bear prints on the back.

All of this was very easy to obtain. I used this company, uploaded my images and four days later I had the sweater. I am sure there are companies in other countries that do a similarly good job. There are limits to the complexity of the images one can print, but the result is very high-quality, washer/drier proof and cheers up even recalcitrant toddlers on rainy days.

My Butter-themed debit card has arrived! Oh joy of joys. I must go shopping. Wine merchant first, then I think I'll go and look for a new baby bottle.

Teddy bears, and similar security objects, are clearly marvellous things. Yet dragging them around galleries, taking them shopping and even sitting them on top of your computer whilst in the office all take their toll and grime can accumulate. Even if one is a brave child and can manage to leave one's security object in bed all day, they are still likely to encounter sweat, snot and drool.

Sadly, cleaning such important things can be a difficult process. Ignoring the cruelty of throwing one's teddy bear in a washing machine, such an act can often lead to disaster. Several years ago I finally washed the teddy bear I had dragged around pretty much everywhere with me for about five years. He came out quite clean, but as he had an obvious degree of three-dimensionality drying him out was a problem and he ended up going mouldy. I was most unhappy. Of course, washing machines can also cause colours to fade or run and place a lot of stress on a treasured object; this was the cause of the final disintegration of my very first security object.

Teddy was replaced with Kipper, who lead a similarly busy life. His last sojourn into the wider world before Butter appeared was the 'family christmas' experience. Remarkably soon after my arrival, I was shown a recipe for cooking goose that had been snipped from a Sunday newspaper. The recipe was unremarkable and discounted for the cooking of the goose, but it was strange that the one, distinct column that had been cut out of the news paper also included a tiny tip, that was attached to the side of the column in a most must-have-been-awkward-to-cut-out way. This described how one can kill dust mites and eliminate odours in children's soft toys by placing the toy in a tightly sealed plastic bag and putting it in a freezer for several hours. I thought a message was trying to be sent about the character of Kipper, so I made sure I carried him about with me for the whole time I was at the family residence in case I found him cold and slightly stiff upon going to bed.

I am sure this is really a good idea, but there are refinements. If you fall out with your teddy bear-owning partner, you could always soak said teddy bear in water before placing in the freezer. If there really are irreconcilable differences and you have a particularly vicious streak you could substitute the water for wee, but please never tell me if you sink to such a vile act.

One of the comments I received about my wonderful new debit card was a rather angst-filled missive suggesting that retailers might make some comment when I handed over my Butter-esque card. I can only imagine the comment they'd make would be, "Thank you, Dr Strange, that will do nicely." Why would they say anything else? I suppose it would be nice if they commented what a lovely teddy bear Butter is, but sales-assistants rarely take a polite interest in their customers.

Of course, I realise that my co-respondent was one of those people who have a strange attitude to shopping. Some people appear to think that when one pays for goods in a shop the shop keeper is in some way doing them a favour and so one should submit to their judgement and possible scorn. I realise I could be missing on some fundamental part of the service-provider/person-who-pays relationship, but it does seem that if one is paying for a particular good or service it is up to the person providing it to provide it efficiently, ideally politely, and nothing else.

I recall getting a glazier in to repair a window in one of my rooms whilst I was doing my doctorate. Obviously in my rôle as busy student, there were stacks of papers everywhere in quite novelty systems of order. The glazier commented, "Your room is a real mess." "Yes, that is right", was the only reply that seemed appropriate. "You should tidy up", he felt the need to add. "You should remember that I am paying you to fix my window; making comments on how I organise my paperwork seems tangential to that", was the only reply that seemed appropriate. He did a very good job and was keenly priced.

If I buy meat in a supermarket I could not care less if the person manning the cash-register is a vegetarian. If they made any comment that went beyond politely selling me the meat I would probably be so surprised by their audacity that all I could do is point at them and laugh. The same is clearly true when it comes to buying nappies as an adult. What people who sell me things think about me beyond that fact that I am paying a fraction of their wages and they are paid to make sure I have a smooth buying-experience is really of no interest to me and the idea that they should announce their wider views of me to myself or anyone else is simply laughable.

Of course, as anyone who has worked in a shop is well aware, as long as customers are polite and trouble-free they are also forgettable and rarely rise above the 'procedure to be followed'-level in one's consciousness. So, go and buy your nappies, no one cares and no one notices. If you are embarrassed about this you may as well be embarrassed about buying food.

Normally viewing my bank account online is a deeply worrying experience yet today I noticed my bank's latest money-spinning idea; I was suckered in immediately.

For the small sum of a Lady my Visa debit card will now soothe my tortured mind when I whip it out to indulge in a bit of retail therapy. They do have some rules about what one can and cannot have upon one's card, but I think no one could possibly complain about this:

PS. A few people seem to mistakenly think this is a joke of some description. Let me assure you that within ten days I will have a debit card graced with a pleasing picture of Butter.

Much to my chagrin, these days I have high blood pressure. I am obliged to go and have it measured every so often so that the doctor feels something is being done, even if it is only watching it get higher and higher. This morning I had an appointment. I had a few other appointments this morning, so I had to move with alacrity to make it to the surgery on time and just as I dashed in my name flashed up summoning me to the consultation room. Went in and as I was a touch flustered I asked the nurse if she could wait a couple of minutes before measuring the blood pressure as I'd been in a rush and I did not the reading to be too inaccurate. The nurse agreed this was a good idea. So, from my bag I whipped out Butter, sat him on my lap and took a deep, relaxing breath. "Bloody hell!", the nurse exclaimed, "What are you doing with that teddy bear? He is much nicer than mine." The thought drifted through my mind, "I will do well here." The blood pressure continues its upward climb, alas.

Butter was a christmas present, although I chose him myself he is one of the best presents I have been given for many a year. Undoubtedly well-chosen bottles of fine wine are brilliant things to be given, but to have someone buy one a very pleasing teddy bear at the age of thirty-one is really quite touching.

As you can see, I do like Butter.