Lexin

People sent me snowflakes! Thank you cordelia_v, gwendolen and shezan.

In other news, my cleaner came and I now have a clean kitchen. This makes me very happy.

After Herculean efforts I bought a light bulb for the kitchen today (fluorescent, 1500mm) and discovered the dreadful truth. I live like a pig. For some reason, the new bulb seems to be brighter than the one it replaced, and the kitchen is now lit like the opening scene of a panto ("are we all happy boys and girls?") bringing into sharp relief my kitchen-cleaning failure of the past few weeks. (This may be a lie. It may have been longer – cleaning the kitchen rather went by the wayside when I got depressed. Don't eat at my house.)

I first tried to buy this thing on Sunday at the horrible shop near where gloria1 lives, and over a week since the previous one bit the dust. They had everything else, they sell kitchens let alone kitchen sinks, but not a 1500mm fluorescent bulb. Every other size, and shape, but not that. So, frustrated, I bought a Christmas tree. As you do, obviously.

The young man in the horrible shop told me strange stories of an electrical shop further down the road at Thatched House - which is near the place where the psychiatrist has his office – but obviously he was not open on a Sunday. It seemed to me therefore that I could roll two visits up together today.

Had I the sense given a billiard ball I'd have visited the psychiatrist first and then bought the bulb, but for some reason that obvious way round eluded me and I arrived at the psychiatrist's office clutching a fragile 1500mm of glass. And the psychiatrist says I'm not mad – really, he does. I asked him.

I also asked him what I should do about my generalised cleaning failure. He said, "Get a cleaner." Which is what gloria1 told me when I asked her. So I'm considering it.

For the first time, I have an olfactory hallucination. Wherever I go I can smell petrol.

It's vile.

I'm feeling slightly better since I took a decision to change the dose of my anti-psychotic that I take. I halved it and now take it all at night - and I'm 100% more awake during the day. Go me! I haven't got around to telling either the GP or the psychiatrist yet as I can't seem to get hold of either.

The next door neighbour bloke

Mr Smelly-Opposite is still living in his flat, despite not having locks on the front door, and the smell of unwashed person and wee is getting stronger every day. On hot still days, of which we've had a few lately, it's particularly nasty. When she came over, clare_nce was stunned that he was living there.

I'm stunned myself, but there seems nothing further I can do. I've hassled the social services department substance abuse team, but they seemed more concerned about how I'd discovered him to be a client of the substance abuse team than of doing anything to help the guy. They may be beavering away in the background, but my hopes are not high.

I've hassled the environmental health people, but though I had a phone call from them which I missed, they don't respond to the calls I've made since then. Meanwhile, the smell and mess is still there.

The one ray of sunshine is the freeholder. He's making arrangements with the loss adjuster to clear up the mess, clear out the flat, decorate it and replace the windows. Once that's been done, Mr S-O will have only a bed, the rest of the furniture having been condemned. And they may change their minds about the bed.

Contents, including carpets, will not be replaced, that's Mr S-O's responsibility. I have visions of him living there sleeping on the floor wrapped in a blanket, but as the freeholder sensibly points out, that's his problem and the less furniture he has the less he can set light to. It's very strange to find the freeholder a ray of any kind of sunshine, as he's not the most personable of characters himself.

The minor issue is that Mr S-O needs to give consent to these works, and when the freeholder has been round there, he's found letters he's written sitting unopened on the floor of the flat. Mr S-O just ignores them. The freeholder is hoping that the works will be completed by the end of September, but they'll never be completed if Mr S-O won't give his consent.