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Really? How sensible!

Losing my virginity for £3.80.

My Ikea virginity, that is.

Oh and having a crying free day for the first time in almost 2 weeks.

I've never been to Ikea. My friend says it's where gay couples go to argue on Sundays...
Almost everything in our house is at least a hundred years old so Ikea isn't really our thing, but I'd still like to go and have a nosey!

I didn't notice any Bristolian gay couples in Ikea Eastville yesterday but what I did notice were two metre high Benno CD shelving units of which I'm in desperate need of one. They're only £30 and I've saved a tenner but that's going to go on......something rather good.

Benno has a matching bookcase called Billy and on many of their displays I saw Billy and Benno standing side by side like a pair of Swedish Flowerpot Men-no.

I don't think I could ask for a Billy Bookcase with a straight face...why don't they just call them 4'6" bookcases?

They're much taller than 4'6'', which is why I want them because they hold 187 CDs and they're cheaper than the Dexter range in John Lewis that hold less!

Every single item of furniture, utensil, work of art, textile sold in Ikea has its own Swedish name. The bed we want is called Leirvik and the mattress Hovag. Ikea is fun!!!

When we buy from Ikea we'll introduce Leirvik and Hovag to Paula...our car!!!

Someone told me about a friend who hired a car to collect her new kitchen from Ikea, got it home then discovered the stuff to be blue, not white. She rehired a car, took it back in a rage and demanded the person accompany her to the carpark to see the horrid blue stuff with which she'd been lumbered. Wordlessly the Ikea bod leant forward...and peeled off the blue protective film from the WHITE kitchen fittings...

The lamp I have on my piano looks rather unusual and fresh. I think it may have been purchased from Ikea, though I got it at a charity shop.

I am happy to read loads of positive comments from someone who is struggling a bit just now

Feg wrote:I am happy to read loads of positive comments from someone who is struggling a bit just now

I've only read chapters one and two, Fiona. Those are 'what is depression' and 'what are the causes of depression'.

Keep reading; we're impressed so far, aren't we, Feg?

Gill the Piano wrote:Keep reading; we're impressed so far, aren't we, Feg?

Oh, yes Gill

I can truthfully say that I have learned more in 75 pages of a book than 16 years of being on chemical antidepressants and growing steadily further frustrated. It's like that frustration has been unlocked somehow.

I shall really miss my book tomorrow (Teresa is at home therefore televised sphere-kickery will be on) and also the shop on Monday, but I'll have 47 pages of handwritten notes to recap on.

Then on Monday evening, I have to get in touch with piano teacher.

I have lots of things to be happy about today.

My Mother's 80th birthday.
My Ikea bargain corner footstool.
Dave Brum's !Eureka moment!

There is a danger that negative emotions can surface here centred around frustrations of taking antidepressants - which my wife has always said has destroyed me. The key is to reject confrontative emotions that could allow me to think and dwell on things that annoy me, rather go with the emotion and work with it, and also allow it to drive me positively to seek out solutions to my life on Citalopram. I'm not the only person in the world that takes so few antidepressants....I was an alcoholic until Christmas 2011. I had my GP reduce the daily dosage by half a couple of months before I sat my grade 3. It is important also need to think about what I've achieved to balance my emotional systems out.

I feel like an unlikely guru!

The thought of a visit to my wife's home city on the 23rd of March.

That's LONDON

Not Little London in Worcester. Or Londonderry in Smethwick. I'm talking Borisville! We're dustin' down our Oyster cards.

Ooo, oystercards; get you metropolitan bods! I just get a travel card on the rare days when I HAVE to go up to the smoke...

A leisurely Sunday of 'swanning around' Kensington and the Museums, and a walk to Sloane Square if we're up for it.

We'll be passing dangerously close to Marleaux....

Drop in if you want!

If Google Street View can't find your place, don't expect me to!!!!

Ring up and we'll talk you in...

You won't see us...it'll be dark before we would even have reached Hillingdon tube (where we're parking up) and it'll be a Sunday, you would already be crashed in front of the fire post-gig!!

I tell you what's made me UNhappy today; idiots with shiny sports cars using the carwashing brushy thing to clean their already sparkly cars when i can hardly see out of my filthy car windows. Grrrr...

Ah, but think how much money these chavs waste on carwash fees, motor insurance and petrol when they could be spending it on things that matter (to them) such as Special Brew, fake jewellery and cancerous and poisonous tobacco and nicotine sticks?

It's made me happy to finish copying up 47 pages of my handwritten scrawl on 'Overcoming Depression' into 23 pages of Word document with the help of Nederlandse Publieke Omroep Radio 4 (vier).

What does Oemroep mean?

Gill the Piano wrote:What does Oemroep mean?

I don't speak any Nederlandse but as far as I can glean it means what the second B is in BBC. Broadcasting.
It's odd to remember that for proper music in Sweden is on P2, in Holland it's Radio 4 as it is with Radio 3 in England and Italy. But, just like we had with the Third, Light and Home many public broadcasters still use names for their various programmes, so France has France-Musique and Ireland Lyric FM.

And there are the endless North American stations with the four letter callsigns starting in W K or C. Like WCRB Boston or WQXR New York (both playing classical music) which are okay but those weather checks in bl00dy Fahrenheit are really confusing and annoying!

Back to my self-help book today. Learned about cortisol, a stress inducing hormone and its effects on the body, including how too much of it can affect our concentration and memory, which is what I have experienced since becoming ill. And how cortisol can lead us into downward spirals associated with depression and melancholia, how our brains have been designed to jump to conclusions and assume the worst, but only as part of our protection systems and irrationality...and how control of our lives can allow us to cope with stressful situations we think we cannot control, leading us to avoid explosions of negative thought, making things worse of course. Just how I go about doing this is explained later on in the course.

Oh, and made another 15 pages of scrawl.

dave brum wrote: those weather checks in bl00dy Fahrenheit are really confusing and annoying!

I would understand those. I don't understand centimetres. I only know 2 temperatures in those; 28 = 82 in real money, and 16 = 61. I estimate everything else using those two measurements.

I really do not see the point of Fahrenheit and it should be regarded as history. Water freezes at zero and boils at 100. A warm day is 20, 25 is hot and 30 is too much. Our body operates at 37 degrees. If the Americans want to carry on using it then as an Englishman it really is nothing to do with me (remembering that they do not use stones, and that a pint is 16 fluid ounces in the USA whereas in the 20th century British system it was twenty, which is in itself confusing)!! Even The Guardian use it (Fahrenheit) on the American version of their website as it is USA standard weights and measures. People that still insist on British weather forecasts in American Fahrenheit have a major problem with acceptance of change (given the fact Celsius has been standard in England for half a century) and probably the fact that it's in fact 2014!

I was born in 1969 and we used nothing but metric measurements in school. My health trainer always weighs me in kilograms, in fact the only non-metric measures I use are miles, MPH and trouser sizes!!! If people ask me 'what is that in old money' I always say 'but we don't live in old times'!!!

What's made me happy is visiting my old piano teacher and, from the 11th March resuming my studies with her. And understanding every single anxious thought I had, taking each one and trying to balance out my emotions with positive thoughts about learning the piano and exactly WHY I really want to learn the piano...and it worked!!

I hope she'll do some duets with me!!!

I should also add that listening to happy music on the journey helped me to produce positive thoughts. I ditched the Mahler and Sigur Ros for some Uranus in 10 time by Passport (German jazz rock band) and Sunchyme by Dario G.

My main philosophy now is that the pathway out of the debilitating mind states that are chronic depression is learning to play the piano. I've always known this but anxiety has gotten in the way and I've not had the wisdom to control it. Until now.

Roll on 11th March.

One thing I've noticed about European radio stations is their use of the 24 hour clock, which we English solely regard as a 'continental' (and militaristic) trait. It seems it is only used in France and Germany! Everywhere else use the 12 hour clock as we do. Also almost every single classical music station incorporates an hourly time signal into its broadcasts, whether it's 3 4 5 or 6 'pips' or a rhythmic tune (like the BBC TV news theme) denoting the hour by a change of pitch.

I've got RTBF Music3 on at the moment (Belgian Francophone broadcaster) and their time signal is really groovy!

Had some home made beef fajitas from a recipe on the Aldi website using whole packs and jars of Aldi ingredients (so there's no waste food), and they were gert lush.

Buying a sight reading book that I can actually use, not feeling creamed after keep fit, listening to 'Watch That Roundabout, Ben' by Gaye Bykers On Acid that I haven't heard since John Peel back in the 80s, typing up four more pages of course notes, nice lunch in Redditch, bright weather, one week to piano lesson.....

Getting my Latin homework right. By guessing, but still, it's a start...

I didn't think you were a Roman Catholic, Gill! I won't tell the queen......

This has made me very happy indeed:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26447089

The BBC is taking a leading role in the de-chavification of our planet!!

dave brum wrote:I didn't think you were a Roman Catholic, Gill! I won't tell the queen......

Good grief, no! Proddy through and through...

Gill the Piano wrote:

dave brum wrote:I didn't think you were a Roman Catholic, Gill! I won't tell the queen......

Good grief, no! Proddy through and through...

A Protestant learning Latin, isn't that like Germaine Greer reading Jeremy Clarkson???

Just seen the first fly in the house of 2014, so spring must be here!

My chickens started laying again a few weeks ago. Then stopped...

Have you changed the cock recently, Gill??

Getting a massage via Youtube from the piano teacher in Wales whom I went to see last November. I was able to reply with some very positive news indeed!

dave brum wrote:Have you changed the cock recently, Gill??

My cockerels both died last year...

Gill the Piano wrote:

dave brum wrote:Have you changed the cock recently, Gill??

My cockerels both died last year...

Then you need a nice young cock, don't you. Or rather your hens do!!!

Ikea furniture is much easier to assemble than Argos or John Lewis. Plus I didn't swear once whilst I was putting it up. Bravo Ikea!!! That's made me happy as I don't feel at all stressed!

Throwing something out of my life that has made me anxious for 8 years.

not wishing to fuel the cockerel joke fire but.... we've never had a cockerel. You don't need one, the hens will lay just as much without one, just the eggs won't be fertilised.

Today, Cutlet started learning Drip Drip Drop Little April Showers from Bambi! It's very sweet. I love hearing practice in the mornings.

PS. I can't stand Ikea - am I alone on here?

I don't miss the cockerels, particularly now it's lighter in the mornings! I got a few fertilised eggs and let Locky sit on them when she went broody, but wasn't entirely sorry when she only hatched one and Chicken Nugget proved to be a hen!
Never been to an Ikea; their stuff wouldn't fit in with our old cottage...we don't do modern!

Gill the Piano wrote:...we don't do modern!

I'm on your side 100 percent!

Well, Ikea seem to do well enough without our custom! They've annoyed me three times with their adverts; first was 'stop being so English' - ruddy cheek! Then 'chuck out your chintz' - I LIKE chintz (in moderation). Now they have a radio advert about saving water; when living in the flooded Thames Valley there are certain things you don't need to hear... Also I note they have changed the pronunciation and it's now 'ickier', not 'eye keyer'.

The thought of going to London tomorrow....unfortunately not to see 'Moonlight'. Or even to see the sun go down on Primrose Hill.