observations. 24th November.

Tinnitus was bad yesterday too. It's still very present this morning, it is always present, but was more manageable prior to Friday's fall from grace. So I must be good?

Left overs for breakfast as I always do enough fried rice for the morning too. I usually just add some eggs for protein as last night it was a veggie rice only.

Mum's stirring and I am having a cup of tea, to help digestion, prior to walking up Deighton Road up towards Ainsty to do some digging on the allotment?

***

I've hit a bad patch in my alcohol addiction. Friday and Sunday I overdid it. After three weeks of calm I am undoing all the goodness - it drives me nuts as I can't connect property without proper sleep. And all day today will be a right off: no fun. I am sleep deprived and that leads to feeling anxious - it's the opposite of what I was feeling before Friday. I know I can't be like this if I want to get out of the pits of despair: it's a cold and foggy morning which is very like my mind!

***

Last night was fun. I appear to enjoy talking to people currently, as long as long as it is quiet (I can't do crowds) I conversed with people in all the locations between Brownhill and Co and The Social, between 1pm and 6pm when I came back to the flat. At no point did I drink anything of a high abv or more than either a half or a 440ml can(twice). I didn't eat anything trashy? I ate bread, olive oil and balsamic, 3 samosas and three eggs back at the flat. I did all the things I normally do at the flat in preparation for the morning, but I was pretty much awake at 3am and that was it! And I am sick of this routine!!!

And I did two solid hours on the allotment in the pleasant sunshine. Saw Andy. Cleared a lot of the trees, nettles, raspberry canes and dug up plenty of the building back fill near the house where the guy died, around a year since. So the mistake of Yesterday afternoon doesn't matter... Start again once more!

***

Tuesday morning. It's colder out than it has been and most of the trees have ejected their canopy for the winter wait to pounce once more on the spring. Three to four months of this emptiness: it's why people get carried away with celebration, work's parties, silly jumpers: etc, etc, and I am planning an escape from the nothingness I feel for this time of year.

Archie's owners have asked if I can look after him from the 22nd December, so I will definitely be in Madrid from the 1st and Spain until around the 18th.

***

Thursday morning. Days have passed now since I felt low due to sleep deprivation and hyper anxious on the X99 as it filled up with school children, noisy as hell, and thought I was about to have a stroke, heart attack or something equally catastrophic: for all the years of deep chronic depression, with its associated baggage, death is the one thing I've hoped wouldn't occur prior to something good coming of me...

Thursday morning and it's three days of laying quite still in a darkened room trying to take the racing thoughts out of my system and sleep peacefully: which appears to be working again both Tuesday and Wednesday slumber time.

As I had to wait in for the operatives to sort out the culvert for the extractor tubing in my bedroom I didn't arrive in Wetherby at my mother until 12:30. Lola had only had a half an hour due to the ongoing downpour I saw outside the flat, but the sun was shining high in the sky as we went up to Millennium Field and had fun around the various ways we know. On Raby Park, as I brought her into town, and as the sun was warmly our bodies we sat to be with each other: it's something valuable we do together whenever the weather permits. I sit on the inside of my coat with my arm around that girl as she observes the world and sniffs the air. For a few minutes we are tranquil. We are a unit. A one