England. Stoned

England. Stoned

Late Afternoon. End of October. England: I awoke

I awoke. I sat on the edge of my bed, which was actually a couch. The sound of music and beer-cans being snapped open traversed its way up the stairs and into my room. I crouched slightly over the cheap, self-assemble coffee table. It rested plonked awkwardly on an old, worn and stained imitation sheepskin rug. Late afternoon. I was readying to go to work.

It was my favourite time of year. The Autumn-cum-Winter. The Gothic, mysterious, intriguing darkening months. As the evening set in, the tiring daylight dimmed to teasingly only part-reveal it's awesome, mesmerising power over my mind. The Autumn and Winter. Inviting. A warm-cold. A vanity box where the happy memories of my past echo and reverberate flashing to me a fleeting glimpse of my former life.

Memories of the music of my youth. It's contagious bohemian euphoria. A different epoch. An epoch where friendship was real and togetherness was celebrated. An epoch where the bonds of human mutuality were firm. When art was celebrated with greater gusto than material success. In our late teens and early twenties wandering the aesthetically soothing streets of our Dublin's Rathmines. The doors of perception opened wide!! But many years had passed and Ireland had changed. I had to escape what it had become. I had to leave what for me was the ultra-conservatism, the toxic mass psychology and dismal career prospects of my native land. I had to run, run, run from the scowling tones and contorted faces crunched up in anger that I felt my people had become. So I went to England.

I Prepped

I love the smell of cannabis. Crouching over the coffee table I opened the plastic toothbrush tube and tilted it letting the cling-wrapped tiny pebble-shaped hash slide the tube walls and gently fall onto the table. I had my roll-up papers opened flat on the table. Flaps springing upwards. An inviting wide. A waiting recipient for the landing tobacco as I let it drop awkwardly from my finger-tips along its paper ridge. An orderly sort of chaos.

Unwrapping the cannabis, the music still playing and the sounds of muffled banter rising from downstairs. The other tenants were readying themselves for a tipsy-turvy night ahead. Impending drunken conversations to be had, celebrated and forgotten all over the period of one night.

I nipped a bit of cannabis off the nugget between my finger and thumb nails. I sprinkled it in skilled measures across the length of the tobacco underneath. I never put any cannabis near the top of the spliff. The fire of the lighter would burn it and see it's magic lift off and away from the spliff. Up into the dark, starry Autumn sky, away from it's preferred trajectory into my lungs!!

No!! I left a gap between the spliff's end and the first cannabis crumb. The approaching lava-like fiery red bulb of a smoking spliff heats the cannabis sufficiently first, before subsequently burning it. It's the approaching heat and not the burn itself which releases the cannabis' magic along the spliff shaft and into my lungs. That was what I wanted. This was what awaited!!!! In the early hours of the following morning, that was what awaited me.

It was a memory yet to be had. One I would remember for the rest of my life. One I would carry with me smiling and fondly If I lived to be an old man.

In this manner, I rolled two small spliffs. Done! I stuffed the loose tobacco strands, protruding defiantly from the spliff's end, back into it with the extended arm of a pen-lid. A gentle but firm twist of the spliff's open end. Then flattened the rolled, makeshift cardboard filterless filter on the other end.

I guided the two small finished spliffs back into the toothbrush tube. I slid the tube-top in firmly to its base thus sealing my after-work treat securely. Magic! I sat there on the couch peering over the toothbrush tube. Knowing it's naughty magic inside as it rested inconspicuously on the coffee table. I smiled in anticipation of what awaited nearly fourteen hours hence. I was on my favourite shift during my favourite time of year. Nightshift in the Autumn and winter. And two "shorts" (small spliffs) well packed, ready and waiting as an after work treat. What more could I have wanted!!

But teasing oneself is futile. So the secured toothbrush tube disappeared away into the depths of my bag. I pledged to forget about it until the following morning. It was sorted. Calmly and confidently it would be there when the morning came. It was done. No need to fret.

I Readied for Home

Another good night! I had ploughed through the litany of tasks. Not quite in my stride if I'm honest. In a strange type of way I extracted a sort of hit off the stress of it. Juggling the myriad of task-pins. Navigating the litany of responsibilities and conflicting demands. For yet another night-shift I had been Ship's Captain. I had served the organisation well yet again. My conscience was clear.

(I guess some clowns aren't meant to be laughed at!!)

Shift-end was approaching. Was time to tie-up the last few loose ends of the nights travail. Tick those boxes! A quick trip to the gents to freshen up, smarten up! To conjure and project the look of someone who's on top of things. Someone who's sharp!!! Yes, sharp! That chaps sharp! (Yes he is!) Solid y'know! He's one of the crew.

(I guess some clowns aren't meant to be laughed at!!)

The day-staff arrived. They were nice people. I liked them. I would remember them for many years to come to. I reeled off the change-over briefing effortlessly. Clear, concise, correct. But it was time to go. Go before the idiocy of day-life and daylight started to encroach upon the solace that I extract from the depths of Autumn-Winter's silent darkness. I left the day-staff reassured in the knowledge that everything was well taken care of during the night.

He's one of the crew! (Yes he is!) Solid y'know!

(I guess some clowns aren't meant to be laughed at!!)

I Walked Home

I walked calmly from the building, myself with my bag slung lazily over my shoulder, fading into the cool, foggy dim in the early hours of a late October morning. I made it my business to know every intricate, minute detail of this route. That was because I wanted to be left alone for its journey. That walk home was my time! My little treat. My little secret.

I was now about to enter the reality of a memory that I would cherish for the rest of my life. I threw a quick glance over my shoulder: Nope! No-one about. Coast was clear. I brought the spliff to my mouth. I lit up. The flamelight muffled and subdued in the darkness by the cloak of a surrounding early morning fog. The fog was paled shades of orange and yellow by a row of faded street-lights. Calmly but promptly. Excitedly but discreetly. I sucked on the spliff, drawing its magic into my lungs and that dizzy heaviness kicked in. There wasn't a soul in sight except for the odd early-morning delivery van whizzing by me obliviously. The driver most probably lost in their own focus, chasing their own agenda.

And now the journey had started. I meandered my way through the tree-lined roads of old Victorian streets, magnificent in their Gothic splendour. Residential through-roads and obscure, haunting side-streets. The cannabis had kicked in! In my mind I was waltzing a sensuous waltz with nature as my senses were aroused to the heights of a sensual cacophony of feelings. Some senses dulled, others provoked and nurtured from the THC inside me. The visual intensity I was experiencing was awesome amplified by the music I was listening to tickling my senses. I scanned the dark Autumn -Winter street ahead. Not a soul in sight. Taking it all in. Taking in the shapes of the tree branches calling out to me against the backdrop of a dim, sleepy street-light.

Under the influence of the cannabis the sounds of things had become accentuated and started to pleasantly hit some nerve. The sound of my feet as they tapped in patting steps along the ground. The sound of the crunchy fabric of my coat ruffling along with me as I walked. All these sounds made more intense by the hit from my joint. Each sound taking on a new connotation, again, tickling my stoned senses. I was stoned. And I loved it!!

I was stoned. It felt great. That was my only respite in any given twenty-four hour period. I loved it so much.

But this routine each morning was enough for me.

I wasn't an "addict".

I wasn't greedy for it.

I always confined it to just that routine. I never yearned for it throughout the day. I never turned up for work having consumed it and I never would. The thought of taking a spliff in the daytime to me was and is outlandish, clichéd and formulaic bordering on depressing. No!!! It had to be this way. It had to be in the early hours of the Autumn -Winter on my own. Alone with my thoughts. With my music. With nature. With my spliff!!

I was harming no-one! I was keeping it low-key. All schum! Mum's the word!

Nod, nod,

Wink, wink!!!

My little secret.

I'm stealthier than you think!

I had and have no interest in hard drugs such as cocaine or alcohol which cause so much misery and suffering. I had and have no desire to push my fetish on anyone else. I had and have nothing to prove to anyone. I was harming no-one. I wished and wish no-one any harm.

I took a corner and there, from the darkness ahead: The outline of a person approaching. I calmly crossed the road, cupping the spliff under the palm of my folded hand and letting the sleeve of my jacket slip down over my fingers. I had perfected this manoeuvre. I kept walking until I was clear of them. Then I resumed my blissful passion. Puffing intermittently all the way home.

I Was Home

As I arrived at the front door of my house the only panic was the thought of the steeply sloping stairs ahead of me!! By now the intensity of the cannabis was abating, the sensual hit and nuanced perception slipping away to its invisible bolthole. Untouchable and sealed from the world until I unlocked its potent seduction and unleashed it upon myself again. The sensual beauty that I had experienced was dissipating proportionate to the creeping of the new day's light. Thumpity, thump, thump. I struggled up the stairs. In minutes I was asleep. Safe and guarded in my warm cocoon. Safe from what for me is the depressive shallowness of the daytime. I would awake in the afternoon and ready myself for work again. But for the rest of that morning, all my worries had slipped away. I was asleep.                            

England.

Stoned.