I've had a request!!
It seems someone wants to hear a bit more about the caravan years. Of course, with me being me I got a pang of paranoia - Is my blog so boring that people want me to write about other stuff - but this quickly passed. If someone is requesting information about my past then it must show that they are interested enough to keep up with current events and come back for more. Who would go out of their way to read something mind-numbingly boring on a regular basis unless you are a fan of Milun Kundera?
Luckily today has been a slow as hell, self centred area of desolation and pointlessness - no friends around at the moment and televisual highlights include late night infomercials! - so a few words about the caravan years would be a pleasure.
Before I carry on, I will be going into a part of my life which is completely over but one which I do not regret. The whole experience centred in or around the world of drugs and some of the things we got up to were completely illegal and/or irresponsible. Whilst I don’t regret any of the things I did I no longer condone them or recommend them – you have to make your own decisions in life and leaning on other peoples’ choices is not the right thing to do.
I was introduced to cannabis shortly after leaving school and there was an almost instant connection. I knew that it was illegal but I still liked the way it made me feel and I wanted to feel like that as much as I could. I had always been a fan of psychedelia in its many forms and I had practically grown up with bands like Hawkwind, The Doors and The Beatles. Ironically, I think I can trace it back to watching re-runs of The Monkees during summer holidays when I was young. Just a few tokes on a joint and suddenly I understood what it was that I was missing. The music and imagery had always been interesting but now they took on meaning and I was sold.
I wasn’t obsessive about drugs. Even when I was in the heaviest phase of my usage of narcotics I could take or leave them sometimes going as far as refusing to take anything when going to see a band or some other event for fear of forgetting what had happened. I started out, as most people do, with the occasional “teenth” (sixteenth of an ounce) which lasted well over a week and wouldn’t even consider other drugs but over time my usage increased to an “eighth” a week and then every couple of days and finally at least that a day.
The main problem any teen faces when taking drugs of any kind is finding somewhere to do it. Usually it means taking a drive into some remote part of the countryside, parking up, rolling a few spliffs and getting stoned before taking a rather more treacherous drive back to home base. I wasn’t alone in this, I had gathered a few friends who were in a similar frame of mind and we had bonded stronger than epoxy resin. Over time we began to get lazy – it didn’t happen out of anything like contempt or complacency – it’s just the nature of the drug, you smoke, you lose your inhibitions and eventually you just can’t be arsed to move. So we would just stay at home and smoke blaming the smell on each others herbal cigarettes should questions arise. Everything was good with the world and our worries were confined to where we were going to get the money to score our next deal.
One morning, on a rest day from college as I remember, I was awoken by my mother. She had been watching “Kilroy” and by some fluke the subject matter was “Drugs – How to tell if your child is a druggy!” Lets just say that the laziness had expanded and certain artefacts had been left around…
My mother recognised some of the signs and came to the conclusion that I was on heroin!! This came as quite a shock to me because I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near hard drugs like that – it is just foolishness. Sure, I had seen people take it – you can’t dabble in the world of drugs without making the odd “dodgy” deal – but it didn’t appeal to me at all. I tried to explain that whilst I couldn’t deny that I was a pot-head there was no way that I would be as irresponsible as to take hard-drugs. It was no good. Due to years of misinformation passed down via the media I was a junkie and was immediately shunned.
The next few days were taken up trying to make sure that no other parents were contacted – after all, some of the guys didn’t smoke at all and I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt for no reason. The next step was for me to find somewhere to live. Whilst I hadn’t been forced to leave by my parents (due, in no small part, to my Dad having a better understanding of drug culture) I though it best if we didn’t have to see each other on a daily basis. I packed my bags and spent a few weeks sleeping at different friends houses.
If there is one thing I hate it is imposition. I hate it when people impose upon me and so I don’t see why I should impose myself upon other people. The result of this is that I decided I had outstayed my welcome (despite what my friends said) and so I had to look for somewhere permanent. The big problem was that I had no cash. I couldn’t scrape together enough to put a deposit on a house and the bank didn’t want to know because I was a pre-university student and only in a part-time job – net result: I had to crawl back to my parents with my tail between my legs. They accepted my return but the situation was untenable. It wasn’t like there was any hatred there but mealtimes were difficult and the atmosphere was strained to say the least. After a while I realised that the only decent thing to do was to move out but with nowhere to go things were going to be tough. One night as I was pondering the situation I hit on the idea of moving into the caravan in the back garden. Yes, it sounds stupid but it wasn’t a bad idea really. It meant that I could live at home but also be out of the house which meant that the situation could improve over time. It was like a kind of halfway house. I asked my parents and after a bit of negotiating we struck a deal – I would live in the caravan as long as I was quiet and if things worked out then I would be allowed to hook myself up to the electricity. The bargain was struck and the caravan years had begun in earnest.
The strange thing about the caravan was that it was never empty. Even when I was at college or out somewhere there was always someone there hanging out and keeping an eye on things. I laid down some ground-rules which were basically:
1) No dealing
2) Respect the property
3) Be quiet
It worked perfectly. The caravan was the ultimate haven for the preppy drug users. We were basically a good bunch and wouldn’t touch a drug without doing proper research into it first. If we decided that the negatives outweighed the positives then the drug was ruled out. We pretty much kept ourselves to cannabis, LSD and the occasional dab of speed all supplemented by the odd bottle of poppers. When mushroom season came around we would harvest and enjoy them but we never kept anything we didn’t use. They were happy times and led to the majority of us having stories that begin “Once when I was on…”
There is so much that I could talk about but I will limit myself, for now, to two distinct memories.
One thing that tends to happen when a bunch of guys start to smoke is that they will utilise their love of tools to make the best and most innovative device to smoke weed with. We came up with some absolute classics in the caravan. There are various ways to smoke cannabis. The most common way by far is just to roll a joint, smoke some and pass it around but after doing some research we discovered that only about 12% of the active ingredient THC is absorbed this way. The next way is to use a water cooling system like a hookah or “bong” this allows for a greater level of THC absorption and gets you more stoned in a purer way. The bong gives way to other ideas like the “bucket bong” which is essentially a piston made from a couple of half bottles which allows a large amount of smoke to enter the lungs very quickly again increasing the THC absorption. All of these methods were used along with a couple of others and because of the variety we developed a “Bong game”. We had the names of various “bongs” written on pieces of paper in a box. The box would be passed around and each person would blindly choose a piece of paper and have to have whatever they chose. This was carried out as quickly and as often as possible resulting in lots of deliriously happy stoners “vedging” out all over the place. We would then try to play “frustration” and if you were “popped” you would have to sniff some poppers. It led to some great experiences – Like I say, they were happy times.
I remember one night I had just introduced a very good friend of mine (I’ll leave his name out of this just in case) to the wonderful world of LSD. I’m not sure how it happened but in our altered state we had been goaded into climbing onto the roof of one of the local municipal buildings. We had managed to get up there somehow and quickly realised that it wasn’t the best idea in the world so we made our way back down again. We got to ground level and began to walk away only to be stopped by a policeman. He proceeded to ask us about where we had been and what we’d been up to and we answered well considering our state (thankfully acid makes you act as if you were drunk but you get to keep your lucidity). He then asked us if we had been on the roof of the aforementioned building – Keep cool I thought, this is a situation I can well do without and if my acting skills stay with me we’ll be fine… I rolled my eyes and said “No, not us – we were just on our way home from the pub”. It worked the policeman smiled and said “Ok – on yer way then” and then my friend decided it might be a good idea to speak:
“How do they get up there officer?”
I had to fight to stop myself from going into hysterics – no-one talks like that these days. He may as well have just said “Here young man, a sixpence for your troubles – It’s good to know the peelers are there to protect us from the ruffians”. To this day I wonder how we got away with it but the policeman raised an eyebrow, looked up at the roof in question, smiled again and went on his way.
I’ll never forget those days as long as I live but as I say, they are long gone and these days I hardly even drink let alone do anything else. I know I wouldn’t be who I am now had the caravan not existed and I’m thankful for my memories.
If you want to hear more give me a shout and I’ll go into more detail.
Today’s Word: EUPHORIA
Today’s Mood: Happiness in reminiscence
It seems someone wants to hear a bit more about the caravan years. Of course, with me being me I got a pang of paranoia - Is my blog so boring that people want me to write about other stuff - but this quickly passed. If someone is requesting information about my past then it must show that they are interested enough to keep up with current events and come back for more. Who would go out of their way to read something mind-numbingly boring on a regular basis unless you are a fan of Milun Kundera?
Luckily today has been a slow as hell, self centred area of desolation and pointlessness - no friends around at the moment and televisual highlights include late night infomercials! - so a few words about the caravan years would be a pleasure.
Before I carry on, I will be going into a part of my life which is completely over but one which I do not regret. The whole experience centred in or around the world of drugs and some of the things we got up to were completely illegal and/or irresponsible. Whilst I don’t regret any of the things I did I no longer condone them or recommend them – you have to make your own decisions in life and leaning on other peoples’ choices is not the right thing to do.
I was introduced to cannabis shortly after leaving school and there was an almost instant connection. I knew that it was illegal but I still liked the way it made me feel and I wanted to feel like that as much as I could. I had always been a fan of psychedelia in its many forms and I had practically grown up with bands like Hawkwind, The Doors and The Beatles. Ironically, I think I can trace it back to watching re-runs of The Monkees during summer holidays when I was young. Just a few tokes on a joint and suddenly I understood what it was that I was missing. The music and imagery had always been interesting but now they took on meaning and I was sold.
I wasn’t obsessive about drugs. Even when I was in the heaviest phase of my usage of narcotics I could take or leave them sometimes going as far as refusing to take anything when going to see a band or some other event for fear of forgetting what had happened. I started out, as most people do, with the occasional “teenth” (sixteenth of an ounce) which lasted well over a week and wouldn’t even consider other drugs but over time my usage increased to an “eighth” a week and then every couple of days and finally at least that a day.
The main problem any teen faces when taking drugs of any kind is finding somewhere to do it. Usually it means taking a drive into some remote part of the countryside, parking up, rolling a few spliffs and getting stoned before taking a rather more treacherous drive back to home base. I wasn’t alone in this, I had gathered a few friends who were in a similar frame of mind and we had bonded stronger than epoxy resin. Over time we began to get lazy – it didn’t happen out of anything like contempt or complacency – it’s just the nature of the drug, you smoke, you lose your inhibitions and eventually you just can’t be arsed to move. So we would just stay at home and smoke blaming the smell on each others herbal cigarettes should questions arise. Everything was good with the world and our worries were confined to where we were going to get the money to score our next deal.
One morning, on a rest day from college as I remember, I was awoken by my mother. She had been watching “Kilroy” and by some fluke the subject matter was “Drugs – How to tell if your child is a druggy!” Lets just say that the laziness had expanded and certain artefacts had been left around…
My mother recognised some of the signs and came to the conclusion that I was on heroin!! This came as quite a shock to me because I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near hard drugs like that – it is just foolishness. Sure, I had seen people take it – you can’t dabble in the world of drugs without making the odd “dodgy” deal – but it didn’t appeal to me at all. I tried to explain that whilst I couldn’t deny that I was a pot-head there was no way that I would be as irresponsible as to take hard-drugs. It was no good. Due to years of misinformation passed down via the media I was a junkie and was immediately shunned.
The next few days were taken up trying to make sure that no other parents were contacted – after all, some of the guys didn’t smoke at all and I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt for no reason. The next step was for me to find somewhere to live. Whilst I hadn’t been forced to leave by my parents (due, in no small part, to my Dad having a better understanding of drug culture) I though it best if we didn’t have to see each other on a daily basis. I packed my bags and spent a few weeks sleeping at different friends houses.
If there is one thing I hate it is imposition. I hate it when people impose upon me and so I don’t see why I should impose myself upon other people. The result of this is that I decided I had outstayed my welcome (despite what my friends said) and so I had to look for somewhere permanent. The big problem was that I had no cash. I couldn’t scrape together enough to put a deposit on a house and the bank didn’t want to know because I was a pre-university student and only in a part-time job – net result: I had to crawl back to my parents with my tail between my legs. They accepted my return but the situation was untenable. It wasn’t like there was any hatred there but mealtimes were difficult and the atmosphere was strained to say the least. After a while I realised that the only decent thing to do was to move out but with nowhere to go things were going to be tough. One night as I was pondering the situation I hit on the idea of moving into the caravan in the back garden. Yes, it sounds stupid but it wasn’t a bad idea really. It meant that I could live at home but also be out of the house which meant that the situation could improve over time. It was like a kind of halfway house. I asked my parents and after a bit of negotiating we struck a deal – I would live in the caravan as long as I was quiet and if things worked out then I would be allowed to hook myself up to the electricity. The bargain was struck and the caravan years had begun in earnest.
The strange thing about the caravan was that it was never empty. Even when I was at college or out somewhere there was always someone there hanging out and keeping an eye on things. I laid down some ground-rules which were basically:
1) No dealing
2) Respect the property
3) Be quiet
It worked perfectly. The caravan was the ultimate haven for the preppy drug users. We were basically a good bunch and wouldn’t touch a drug without doing proper research into it first. If we decided that the negatives outweighed the positives then the drug was ruled out. We pretty much kept ourselves to cannabis, LSD and the occasional dab of speed all supplemented by the odd bottle of poppers. When mushroom season came around we would harvest and enjoy them but we never kept anything we didn’t use. They were happy times and led to the majority of us having stories that begin “Once when I was on…”
There is so much that I could talk about but I will limit myself, for now, to two distinct memories.
One thing that tends to happen when a bunch of guys start to smoke is that they will utilise their love of tools to make the best and most innovative device to smoke weed with. We came up with some absolute classics in the caravan. There are various ways to smoke cannabis. The most common way by far is just to roll a joint, smoke some and pass it around but after doing some research we discovered that only about 12% of the active ingredient THC is absorbed this way. The next way is to use a water cooling system like a hookah or “bong” this allows for a greater level of THC absorption and gets you more stoned in a purer way. The bong gives way to other ideas like the “bucket bong” which is essentially a piston made from a couple of half bottles which allows a large amount of smoke to enter the lungs very quickly again increasing the THC absorption. All of these methods were used along with a couple of others and because of the variety we developed a “Bong game”. We had the names of various “bongs” written on pieces of paper in a box. The box would be passed around and each person would blindly choose a piece of paper and have to have whatever they chose. This was carried out as quickly and as often as possible resulting in lots of deliriously happy stoners “vedging” out all over the place. We would then try to play “frustration” and if you were “popped” you would have to sniff some poppers. It led to some great experiences – Like I say, they were happy times.
I remember one night I had just introduced a very good friend of mine (I’ll leave his name out of this just in case) to the wonderful world of LSD. I’m not sure how it happened but in our altered state we had been goaded into climbing onto the roof of one of the local municipal buildings. We had managed to get up there somehow and quickly realised that it wasn’t the best idea in the world so we made our way back down again. We got to ground level and began to walk away only to be stopped by a policeman. He proceeded to ask us about where we had been and what we’d been up to and we answered well considering our state (thankfully acid makes you act as if you were drunk but you get to keep your lucidity). He then asked us if we had been on the roof of the aforementioned building – Keep cool I thought, this is a situation I can well do without and if my acting skills stay with me we’ll be fine… I rolled my eyes and said “No, not us – we were just on our way home from the pub”. It worked the policeman smiled and said “Ok – on yer way then” and then my friend decided it might be a good idea to speak:
“How do they get up there officer?”
I had to fight to stop myself from going into hysterics – no-one talks like that these days. He may as well have just said “Here young man, a sixpence for your troubles – It’s good to know the peelers are there to protect us from the ruffians”. To this day I wonder how we got away with it but the policeman raised an eyebrow, looked up at the roof in question, smiled again and went on his way.
I’ll never forget those days as long as I live but as I say, they are long gone and these days I hardly even drink let alone do anything else. I know I wouldn’t be who I am now had the caravan not existed and I’m thankful for my memories.
If you want to hear more give me a shout and I’ll go into more detail.
Today’s Word: EUPHORIA
Today’s Mood: Happiness in reminiscence
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