Paroxetine = One Murderous Girl

On reviewing this post I find there’s a fair amount of not so passive aggression – sorry. I blame drugs and pent up frustration. Also, the writing sucks, but I’m not trying so I don’t really care.

I am reduced to drinking instant Nescafe decaf coffee as I type. I’m not in a rooibos mood and as sleep has been challenging lately I don’t want to drink real tea or use one of my coffee bags. I’ve been here 33 days and I’m on my third box of 28 pack coffee bags.

I was supposed to be discharged today but as my psychiatrist came to see me last night and caught me in a murderous rage he decided against it. In store is a reduction in my new antidepressant; the agitation, rage, extra suicidal impulses and plotting to destroy the entire world coincided with the dose increase. I think I scared him last night. I told him off, swore a lot and when asked what I’d be feeling as I blew up myself and took the whole world with me I replied that I’d be laughing. Looking back on this I can see why I’m still here.

My three friends in here are all gone. Only one said goodbye, guess I won’t be seeing them again. I struggle so much to make friends and I scare the ones I manage to make away with the whole being a super introvert and having BPD thingy. Also there’s just not enough happy stuff to share, people don’t want to be hearing about all the crap, they want kittens and teddy bears. I have a stat counter on this thing – the happy titled posts get a lot more hits, my happy, shallow facebook comments get more comments. I could say “I just spent the last 5 hours crying, does anyone want to come over for a cup of tea” and no one would reply. But “My cat just chewed right through my knitting yarn” 5 or so comments and a dozen likes. I’m not popular okay – 5 is a lot for me!

One disgusting tasting antibiotic left but the cough persists. I’ve had my annual dose of radiation and then some this year, I hope this doesn’t result in a chest x-ray.

The final ever episode of Dexter has aired and I haven’t been able to watch it because there’s no wifi in here and I’ve almost reached my monthly data limit on my phone. I’m waiting for mum to bring it in but not sure when that will be. Really this season has sucked, but I want to know how it all ends and I refuse to read about it

Questioning what to do with my life – very slowly finish the masters and then do who knows what with it, give up on study and just write something and see where it goes, die? Even if it’s small some part of me wants to live, or I wouldn’t have sought help before this admission or told my nurse yesterday about the perfect hanging point I found in the hospital – it was promptly removed.

I wrote this on Tuesday night:

Tue 24^th September

I found a hanging point in the hospital; tomorrow I will show it to my nurse to hopefully save some other depressed, hopeless soul from using it. I made the noose – they’re bloody hard to get right! I wrote the letter, including passwords to everything. I tested the hanging point and then feared that my cord may not hold my weight and the involuntary thrashing would attract attention before death. Surviving a hanging may result in permanent brain damage – no thanks!

Nine weeks until the family trip to the UK for a month. I am terrified.

I Have to Bake a Cake Tonight - I Wonder if I Can do it Drunk?

Language warning for my more sensitive readers.

11:02 – Phone call from mum: Wake up your brother, he has a driving lesson soon. Roll over.

11:04 – Call brother from mobile phone lying conveniently next to head to wake brother up. No answer. Shit. The heating isn’t on and it’s nice and warm in bed.

11:12 – After debating pros and cons of leaving him there and hoping that as a 19 year-old he’s responsible enough to get himself up for a 12pm driving lesson choosing to get out of bed to wake brother up.

11:12:20 – Turn heating on so house is warm when I eventually decide to make my second exit from bed.

11:20:40 – Back in bed with sheet over my head because my eyes and ears are cold.

Dream about being a passenger on a bus heading up a high mountain with no trees whilst trying to escape a tornado. I scream at the bus driver to go faster so we’re not eaten up by the swiftly approaching tornado. There’s an explosion to our left outside a farmhouse. Me and my two fellow passengers command the bus driver to go back to offer assistance to whoever was involved. We find an upside-down truck with the driver lying unconscious a few meters away. He has a hole in his chest and something is wrong with his hands. We call 000 and try to help him to the best of our ability, he’s still alive. I find a yellow hand gun in the truck, it seems he shot himself in the chest. I move it further away from the man incase he wakes up and wants to shoot himself again because he didn’t die the first time. The paramedics arrive, look at him and decide that before taking him to the hospital they’ve got time for a coffee from the café which has just emerged from nowhere with lots of customers and a long queue. I show one of the paramedics the gun and we find a rifle in the back of the truck. I don’t know what happened to the tornado.

01:34 – Second emergence from the land of warm and soft.

01:34:40 - Mouthful of water followed by a rather large antidepressant capsule and more water.

01:36 - First ever attempt at using mum’s Nespresso machine – “Why the hell are you flashing that red circle at me, just do your job. Fine I’ll turn you off and start again” Machine off, disassembled and reassembled. Take two. “Stop that fucking flashing and froth my damn milk you piece of shit lazy person’s excuse for a coffee machine.” Milk down the drain and find that the froth-maker-bit-of-magnetic-metal-cone isn’t exactly where it should be. Take 8000. Coffee!

01:I don’t know what – The Age, The Guardian, The Conversation and Facebook catch up. Nothing really exciting. New X-Box revealed overnight, brother stayed up to watch it live.

3:55 – Clean the kitchen so it looks like I’ve done something when mum gets home.

4:10 – Get dressed and groomed, hair up for the first time since cut, it’s still long enough for a pony-tale, thankfully.

4:30 – Start reading “The End of Your Life Book Club” – I like it.

5:20 – Mother comes home and tells me off for leaving her coffee machine on all day. Continue reading.

7:10 – Trip to supermarket to buy the butter I forgot yesterday along with several impulse purchases

7:35 – Eat dinner and drink scotch

8: something – Write a stupid list of day’s lack of activities to bore people in the over-share world we live in with.

Thanks for reading, I’ll write interesting things when they next happen to me. In the meantime I just feel like writing sometimes so I’m writing this shit. Sorry.

Dumped Again

I'm sorry this blog has taken on more of a diary feel of late, I'm not too sure what to do with it. I want to write about my adventure with BPD and that kind of necessitates the diary tone but I don't like it.

I have been out of hospital since Wednesday - a public one close to my Mum's home. I was sectioned on Monday for smuggling a knife into the hospital for a suicide attempt. I surrendered it before doing anything, but merely having it was enough to freak out the nurses and cause my doctor to throw his hands in the air and give up on me. He has requested a few months without me and when he takes me back he wants to do so with the help of a case manager. The CAT team have visited me twice since my discharge and are dealing with the case management referral. In the meantime I will hopefully be given a new private psychiatrist from one of the only hospitals left open to me, my GP wrote several referrals for me when I saw her on Thursday, she's amazing, I'm very lucky to have a GP as capable and caring as her.

It has been suggested to me that I write about the good stuff in my life, not just the crap; so here's the few recent good events.

On Sunday I attended church for the first time in almost two months. I was on coffee for our welcoming ministry prior to the service so I arrived over an hour early. I enjoy making coffee even if it is only on a Sunbeam machine. Ten minutes into the service I felt the need to leave and maybe even go to an emergency department due to strong suicidal urges and the recurring feeling of inferiority I get at church. As I approached the door a friend caught me and spent the next 40 minutes talking very harshly to me about trying more to help myself and having greater consideration for those in my life who care about me. It was a hard conversation, and a number of times I wanted to either walk away or hit her, but I think she actually said some things I needed to hear. By time we finished talking the service was nearing the end so we sat down to a cup of tea and watched from the foyer. Now for the good... After the service I was not left alone for more than 30 seconds, so many people wanted to speak to me and seemed to genuinely care about me. I got to catch up with some people I hadn't seen since prior to my admission and also with those who came to visit me. I had some nice talks and was even invited to a couple's house for dinner but I couldn't go because I was getting tired and have a long drive back to my Mum's. I left church feeling cared for and glad to have been prevented from leaving earlier.

Another good event:
I spent part of the weekend at Mum's holiday home with my Grandad and Step-Grandmother who are visiting from Mexico. We had a lovely meal and wine at a local winery and enjoyed browsing in the few shops dotted around the place. They go home on Wednesday, it has been nice seeing them but I have no real attachment to them as none of my relatives have been part of my life, having grown up on the opposite side of the world to all of them.

It is currently 6:05am. I haven't slept a wink tonight due to a long afternoon nap necessitated by a high Seroquel dose. My choice was Seroquel or chancing what I would do to myself. My current suicidal urges are frightening, they feel different to what I'm used to, they're darker and feel like they're coming from an outside force rather than a mere thought. I'm stuck at the moment, I can't go to either of the private hospitals I usually attend, I don't want to go public because it's a scary environment, you get little help and if you put a foot wrong they have terrifying isolation rooms to place you in - I'm claustrophobic and being locked in one of them is high on my list of fears.

It may not come across but I do actually want to get better. I was excited about Schema Therapy because I though there was a chance it would work. I now can't do it until they start the next course because you need to be the current patient of one of the hospital's psychiatrists and mine has temporarily dumped me. I just wish he'd given me warning that he was struggling with me; apparently the knife incident was the straw that broke the camel's back, if I'd known it was getting close I could have tried to change my behaviours. I like my doctor and I value the help he's given me, I really would have tried to keep him.

To finish on a different note: I've been terribly clucky lately and would love to find some random (intelligent, educated, creative and at least a little good looking) man to get me pregnant and then never see again - unless he actually wanted a baby and a crazy woman, then maybe I could have a happily ever after family life. Sadly being a Christian doesn't really gel with random sex, sperm donation or single parenting - sperm donation within a marriage where the husband is having difficulty is probably not so frowned upon but I don't know the ins and outs of Christian reproduction rules. Maybe it's time for me to lose the 21 kilos I need to bring me down to a healthy BMI, try to be a little less insane and see if any Christian men look at me twice. I'd made a good start on the weight prior to my hospital admission, I was swimming several times a week and not eating too badly, I've lost 29kg in the last six months(ish) but I put on 40 due to Seroquel - I know I'm back on it, but it's the only thing that really works for me and I'm being careful this time, even weighing myself every day.

Thank-you for reading this epic post. The sun has risen and I think I'll have another attempt at this sleep thing. 6:36am!

5:21

I forgot I'd written the last post, so some of this you already know. Sorry.

I write this at 2:55am Sunday 24^th March from Melbourne’s finest psychiatric hospital. I have been here 17 nights, although my total hospitalisation has been 26 days in five different hospitals!

It would appear that I am not cut out for teaching; the stress surrounding starting the course, finding my way around a humungous campus; meeting new people and not to mention the impending work brought my psychiatric health to the lowest point it had been at in many months. My coping mechanism – cutting of course! The aftermath of a little self-harm I can cope with at home, but the increasing suicidal urges I thought warranted a late night GP visit. There is a clinic near my Mum’s home which is open until midnight; I arrived around 10:30pm and left in an ambulance at 12:30am. The GP didn’t feel comfortable letting a suicidal girl who had just been slicing up her thighs go on her merry way. I then got to wait for an hour in emergency, where I was the only person wearing shoes, sure there were only five of us in there, but still, when did shoes become unnecessary?

When I was finally seen to at the hospital I was given a tetanus shot, had my wounds dressed, was assessed by a psych nurse and sent on my merry way with instructions to contact my usual hospital in the morning. Morning came and still feeling keen to end it all I was admitted later in the day. It would seem that my doctor didn’t quite understand the severity of the situation as he granted me unescorted leave from the following day. This means coffee! Great! There’s a magnificent café about a four-minute walk from the hospital, so off for coffee I went. Coffee was followed by some errands and impulse shopping, a lovely jumper and a beautiful, yet practical pair of shoes which I thought would be suitable for teaching rounds; as someone who has trouble finding nice, yet comfortable shoes I confess to buying the beige ones and putting the black on lay-by, a little too expensive to buy them both at once. Somewhere between buying the jumper and the shoes my mood dropped and I thought maybe throwing my-self in front of a tram would be a great idea. No. Trams don’t move very fast, it would probably cause serious injury, maybe life long disability and trauma for the driver and witnesses, best to leave that idea alone. Go for a walk. Mood drops a little more. How else could I die on a street packed with shoppers, business people and the occasional beggar? I can’t; let’s just go back to the hospital; my leave time is almost up anyway.

There are flats across the road from the hospital, some of them very new and rather high but access must be restricted to residents and buzzed up guests, a random K surely couldn’t get to the top floor balcony with the press of a lift button, it must require a swipe card, key, password. No. K who is terrified of lifts summoned it to the ground, entered, pressed “9” and up up up she went. Not a nice view, but these are council flats, not somewhere you live if you can afford luxurious scenery. How strange, the lift opens onto a balcony, not a hallway lined with doors, just a ledge with doors on one side and a 9 level drop on the other. Relief. A little fear. A little confusion. Determination, I can end it all now with no room for error. But maybe there’s another solution that doesn’t mean dying right now; I don’t know what it is, maybe my nurse will know. Call the clinic “Can I please talk to the nurse appointed to me (K) today?” to the nurse “I don’t know what to do. I’m on a 9^th floor balcony ready to jump but I’m not sure if I should… No I don’t want to come down, I just don’t know what to do, yes you can see me from the hospital, I’m only across the road. No I don’t want to come down.” Hang up. I look over the edge some more, it really isn’t that high, would it definitely kill me? What if it just paralyzed me and left me mentally impaired too, no, surely 9 stories is high enough for death. I can see a few nurses gathering across the road to look at me so I move to the other end of the balcony, there’s a smaller ledge there, one out of their line of sight. A woman exits one of the flats and asks what I’m doing, “Just came up to admire the view” I lie in my most polite tone. I walk back to the bigger ledge, sure the nurses can see me, but it’s further away from the woman. My phone rings “K, come down” I hang up. A police officer appears at the bottom of the building just to watch. I grab my shopping bag filled with shoes and a jumper and decide to see how long it would take to hit the ground. “Don’t drop that” shouts the officer. I drop it and watch in amazement as it drifts slightly to the left as it falls. I think weighing much more than a pair of shoes and a jumper I may fall faster and straighter.

I lean over the edge and just stare at the ground; can I do it? I want to die, there’s nothing in my life coaxing me to continue. I was a little excited about starting this new course and having a real job at the end of it, but the course administrators did a grand job of scaring the shit out of me two days prior; “you’re not education students, you’re pre-service teachers” WTF!!! And really do I want to teach a class where 90% of the kids don’t want to be there, 10% do and only 5% are any good? That’s my experience of high school drama and what if I can’t get a drama position and I have to teach English. This 9 story plunge looks pretty good.

“Hello Mr. police officer, come to keep me company have you? No, I will not come down with you, but thanks for telling that nosey woman to go inside.” We stand admiring the view/drop for a while, he tries to talk me down, he’s quite nice about it. His colleague joins us. “Step away from the edge.” “No.” This conversation continues for quite some time, eventually I decide to obey, I still don’t want to live but something in me must want to, I did after all call my nurse and surely I didn’t think she’d ignore the situation. Down we go, but not off the edge of the balcony, just in the lift – my shopping got all the thrills. I pick up the bag and surprisingly my shoes are unharmed, the box is a little worse for wear.

Apparently trying to jump off a building doesn’t get you walked across the road to your minimal security private psychiatric hospital; it gets you a police car ride to the nearest public hospital with a psych ward. The police hang around for a little while – paper work I assume – while I sit on a bed with a fluorescent pink blanket in an empty grey room with a security guard at the door. Four hours pass, thankfully I have my phone and can speak to a couple of friends, they are very helpful. Psych assessment performed in this cell–like room. Time to move me up to the psych ward, it stinks of urine, the whole ward. Here I spend the next six nights, no unaccompanied leave allowed, which I suppose is reasonable given what happened last time I was allowed out alone. Time passes quite fast, I have two laptops (I need to buy a portable hard drive so I can stop using the old laptop, the new one is nearly full) so I watch episode after episode of Six Feet Under – I’ve seen them all before but thanks to ECT I remember nothing at all. I think my friends realise I’m in quite a bad situation, as more of them than usual come to visit me, some even come more than once. As well as bringing books and their lovely selves they allow me to escape the urine stinking ward for a little while. We go for walks, get coffee, even dinner on one occasion. Unlike any other hospital I’ve been in the nurses are also willing to escort me down the road for a coffee on days I’m not expecting visitors and am desperate for some air. For the duration of my stay I ask every day if I can return to the hospital I came from or its sister hospital which has an ICU ward I could go in if they didn’t feel comfortable with me on an open ward. The hospital I came from is a little uneasy about taking me back, plus they’re full. The other hospital is massive and my doctor can treat patients there too (though I don’t think he appreciates the extra driving it means for him) so after six days inhaling urine fumes I am moved to a private room in the nicest ward in the nicest hospital I’ve been in. Sometimes the food here is even good, most of the time it’s okay, but sometimes it’s actually good!

All was going swimmingly until I decided to hang myself and then decided no that’s a bad idea, I’ll ask a nurse for help instead. Oh ICU is full, that’s a shame, sedatives aren’t working so you’re sending me to an emergency department; great! Third ambulance ride in 10(ish) days night spent in a very noisy short stay unit of a local (not psych) hospital, thankfully I brought ear plugs. The following day I returned here after multiple psych assessments declaring me safe enough to be in a psych hospital and not stuck in a medical hospital. Fourth ambulance ride in 11(ish) days. I return to the same ward only to be placed in a shared room as the toilet in my room isn’t flushing properly. I can put up with that for a night until the following day when the plumber is coming. The plumber comes and I’m not given my room back because I’m too high risk and will be safer sharing. Fuck that! I was told I’d have it back, I’m getting it back! So to the nursing manager I go and the room is mine again… For a few days; suicidal urges return and this time there is a bed in ICU so off I go leaving most of my stuff behind, as it isn’t expected to be a long stay. ICU is boring, it’s a small, locked ward, you can’t even go to the dining room, meals come to you. Two nights pass and my doctor deems me well enough to return to the open ward but my room has been taken and I’m put in a shared room, not such a terrible thing as there’s no one in the other half of it, for one night. On Thursday I am joined by R; a lovely girl who I really like -except for her snoring and her refusal to flush the toilet; thankfully she always puts the lid down so I just flush before use and I don’t have to look at her waste.

Somewhere in all this I’ve had four sessions of ECT, after the third I forgot why I was in hospital; the building / police saga, the whole lot but it came back with a little prompting. My doctor thinks the ECT has lifted my mood and I think he’s right, but I’m still getting strong urges to self-harm, not so much to suicide, though it does cross my mind a few times most nights. I’m writing this now (at 5:04am) because I was lying in bed thinking about pouring boiling water all over my arm but I really don’t want to tonight, it’s my lovely friend’s baby shower tomorrow (well today) and I’ve been given extra leave so I can go, I don’t want to either lose my leave or rock up to the party with a bright red arm. I should be out of hospital by next weekend, probably sooner – Dr doesn’t think keeping me here just for self-harm risk is worth it, the worst of the suicidal-ideation is over (I think) so maybe home time it is.

It has taken me over two hours to write and proof read this, do excuse the errors. I don’t proof read well at 5am.

Today is two months since my dad died. Wow, I don't know how that happened.

A Little Catch up

I haven’t posted for a while because the new medication gave me very blurred near vision, it’s slowly improving since I stopped taking it, I can see well enough to type now, but it hurts to focus on anything close for too long (long being a few seconds). I haven’t done any uni work because I can’t read and I’m getting behind which is giving me more stress than I need when I have a drug change coming up – since the drug to treat the side effects gave me worse side effects, that means I have to come off the first one too. The drug I have to come off is the anti-psychotic, it has been the one getting rid of the graphic violent urges, just reducing the dose isn’t an option because I feel like I need a higher dose to maintain where I am now, now is far from perfect, but still quite good.

On Monday and Tuesday of next week I will be working for the first time in 22 months! I agreed a while ago to be the emergency barista for a not so local cafe. I was offered  a proper job but with my health so up and down I’d make a very unreliable employee – plus I have no desire to work in hospitality; as much as I love sending out a great coffee, it is just coffee and I’m terrible with customers. I hope this will be a coffee only arrangement and I don’t have to talk to people, also that I don’t have to carry the coffees out, my hands are so shaky – I probably should have mentioned that before accepting the shifts. I have five days to change my mind, this feels like a really bad idea, they’re 7 hour shifts, that’s long when you’re only just dipping your toe back in the water, but maybe being out there doing stuff will be good for me.

Return of the Hermit

I received a call at 4:20 this afternoon asking why I was not at my psychologist appointment. Somehow I left our last conversation with the understanding that my appointment was this Friday at 4 she, however, left the conversation with the understanding that my appointment was today at 4:15. I am fortunate that she has a spot available on Friday anyway, but that is very lucky, you don’t miss appointments with such a busy person who could have got their $150 an hour from someone else. One more offence and I’ll be dumped by her too!

It is nice to be home enjoying my solitude, yesterday I didn’t leave the house and saw only my house mate and a man who came to test the smoke alarms. Today was rather busy, I had two catch ups with friends (in the same cafe), bought some vases and flowers and went shopping for a coffee table – I want a massive one which will suit my lounge suite, it is proving difficult to find. Now I’m at home for a short respite before braving the public again to buy salad ingredients; I’m trying to eat as little as possible without passing out, I’m sick of being morbidly obese. I dropped 4kg before Coffs and put on 2kg there, I’m not impressed. The two coffee dates didn’t help my cause today, I only had poached eggs, but I shouldn’t have had the bread. I’m putting off doing the shopping because I currently want to decorate my abdomen and I don’t have razors, I don’t know I’ll have the will power to not buy them and once they’re in the house it’s party time! This is where my food phobias come in handy, I can’t use kitchen knives for such a purpose because then I’d never want to cook with them again, so I can’t just do it on a whim; also my house mate has had a few vege chopping accidents and despite being thoroughly cleaned I couldn’t knowingly use the same knives. On a positive note I’m feeling better than I was a few days ago, sure I want to slice my belly open, but I don’t want to get decapitated by a train today.

I’m interviewing a potential house mate tonight and hopefully another tomorrow, I’m really keen on tomorrow’s, she seems lovely and she comes with a dog!

Pass the Razor

I write this post from Coffs Harbour on the second-last day of a rather ordinary family holiday. The only truly enjoyable thing has been going up to a town called Bellingen (think Sassafras in Victoria but a bit bigger and quieter) where I enjoyed the best rocky road to pass my lips and a surprisingly good coffee - served to me of all places in a vintage clothing and furniture store; the lounge suite was sold from under us and promptly replaced by another one. The scenery here is lovely, and our resort is right on the beach, but I’m really not a beach lover, I just like to walk in the shallow water and listen to the waves.


Unfortunately I feel myself becoming more unwell, the shock of that last psych appointment hasn’t worn off, and has been inflated by my GP’s assurance that BDP never goes away you just learn to manage it. I don’t know how you are supposed to manage constantly feeling like an empty shell, surging waves of anger, self hatred and the constant desire to be dead. It has been hard, but good being constantly surrounded by people this week, I’m quite sure that left to my own devices I’d have added a few more scars to my collection. I’m trying to behave myself until uni starts in March, maybe I’ll love it and have a small reason to live. I don’t want to destroy myself between now and then so that I need another semester to recover. I should have started this course mid last-year; I’m already six months behind the grand plan

This has been one of the hardest posts to write, every sentence slithering its way onto the screen only to be scowled at, deleted, re-written and then deleted again. My head is so full, I feel I could do with Dumbledore’s pensieve (I’m currently reading the Harry Potter series for the first time, I didn’t see the films either).

Parents at Santucci's

Santucci’s provided an excellent lunch and more perfect coffee, although we were none too pleased that they forgot our booking and we had to wait for a table to clear. I committed the ultimate coffee sin of ordering decaf. Forgive me, but I first had a non-decaf latte, followed by the decaf latte because I wanted to end my meal with an espresso shot of the single origin Peruvian - which was delightful. My doctor would die if I told him I’d had three coffees, hence the decaf – and it was actually very good for a decaf.

Santucci's

***Not feeling great today - I'll edit this to make it a little better at a later date***

Screw Cafe Bliss with their mediocre coffee and sterile atmosphere, not to mention the surly till tender; when right across the road is Santucci’s. I’d looked at Santucci’s from across the road many a time and thought, “maybe I should give it a shot, but why risk a bad coffee, when I know I can at least get a drinkable one here”. This morning’s Bliss coffee was indeed drinkable, but I was feeling adventurous and afterwards I wandered into Santucci’s, where I was greeted by an inviting and comforting decor and a cake fridge and shelf stocked with cakes clearly made on site (confirmed later). The barista looked like he knew what he was doing and the coffees on the tables looked perfect, sadly I left my wallet at the hospital and didn’t bring enough money for a second coffee, so I had to leave coffee-less. I promptly googled Santucci’s when I got back here and found raving reviews, an epicure listing and a good mention on the coffee snobs website. It’s okay though, a second coffee trip in the same day never hurt anyone! Five whole hours later I made my way back to Toorak Rd eagerly anticipating my perfect coffee and maybe a naughty slice of cake. I was not disappointed. The coffee is supplied by gravity and is freshly ground for each order, the milk was near perfect, just a little hot and nothing at all wrong with the pour. I didn’t watch him make mine, but I saw him put a lot of care into others. I enjoyed my naughty cake – a slice of chocolate, almond and date meringue – simply lovely.

They don’t know yet, but my parents are taking me there for lunch tomorrow.

Spoon Art, an image from Santucci's blog

Cafe Bliss

If you feel like bumping into me whilst I am incarcerated try dropping into Cafe Bliss at 1393 Toorak Rd Camberwell (they say Camberwell, but really it’s Burwood). Cafe Bliss has become my temporary coffee haunt since I’ve been granted unaccompanied leave. I am yet to experience a bad coffee there, I certainly won’t be adding them to my list of favourites, but they are getting me through this tough time. The two baristas who have had the challenge of pleasing me have done a reasonable job. I have been seated in a fabulous position to spy on them, and they care enough to make sure everything is clean and they follow the appropriate steps. I think they just need a little more time to perfect their art – and a better bean wouldn’t hurt. One barista is better than the other, but his milk is a little too hot – not burnt, just not immediately enjoyable; the other provides milk of a good temperature, but a little too frothy and he allows the coffee to sit too long before pouring the milk, which also waited a little too long and as a result separated too much. I can’t offer you a food review, except to mention that they order in their cakes and biscuits, few establishments can be bothered to make their own and it’s really disappointing because it makes all the difference. Being ‘fragile’ at the moment, comfort food is... comforting; so I can give a positive mention to their fries, having experienced them twice.