The northlondonhippy

Hello and wel­come to post num­ber five-hundred! I hope you enjoy your stay because this is a celebration!

I think, there­fore I blog, there­fore I am.

To blog, is to exist; to exist is to be alive.

Check me out with my beat­ing heart; look every­one, I’ve got a pulse.

No, wait. It’s more than that, much more.

Blog­ging is ther­apy on the cheap; it’s a venue to vent your inner­most thoughts and feel­ings, anony­mously, with­out fear of judge­ment or ridicule.

Blog­ging is a way of shar­ing your secret side with the entire world.

Blog­ging keeps me sane.

Well, sane-er.

I’m not going to bore you to tears with a mean­der­ing saunter down mem­ory lane. That’s not what this post is about, though I will touch on a lit­tle hippyhistory.

I started blog­ging at quite a low point in my life; I was between jobs, broke and gen­er­ally just a bit down. Start­ing my blog gave me some­thing to focus on that was sep­a­rate from my more imme­di­ate problems.

I’ve always writ­ten. I’ve writ­ten short sto­ries, screen­plays and even nov­els, but before I started the blog, that all couldn’t be said.

Ok, I did fin­ish some short sto­ries and short screen­plays, but noth­ing of any con­se­quence. The longer form projects I started, like fea­ture length screen­plays and nov­els, would always get dis­carded in dis­gust or left to whither on my hard drive, incomplete.

Blog­ging helped me to focus my writ­ing; it gave me dis­ci­pline and helped me to develop a rou­tine for get­ting things done.

You have to under­stand, when this blog is being neglected, it’s because I’m using my time to work on other, non-hippy-related projects of mine.

It’s not because I don’t love you all, because I do, deeply and with tongues.

With­out you hip­py­fans, this blog would be nothing.

If there’s no one in the for­est to hear that tree fall, then it really doesn’t make a sound.

I love this blog too. I see it as an exten­sion of my very being. I put my heart and soul into this blog, plus my blood, sweat and spunk.

Yuck.

Don’t worry; I washed my hands before typ­ing this.

The main rea­son I’d never tried to pub­lish or punt any­thing I’d writ­ten, up until I became the northlon­don­hippy, is a silly one:

Fear of failure.

If you always dream of doing some­thing, then you do it and you flop badly, then your dream dies. But if you never do it, then your dream can live forever.

Now, I’ve done it and not only does my dream still live, it thrives and it’s that much closer to being reality.

I wrote some­thing and put it some­where, where any­one could read it. And they did. And they didn’t hate it. I don’t want to blow my own hip­py­horn too much, but peo­ple more than “didn’t hate it; after all, you’re read­ing this right now!

The best advice I was ever given by a teacher came from an instruc­tor I had at uni­ver­sity that taught me play­writ­ing for a semester.

She was an award-winning play­wright, but that hadn’t always been the case and she strug­gled for years to get her first break in the busi­ness. As she relayed her tale of toil, she passed on the best advice she was ever given too; and I’ll share it with you now:

If you want to do some­thing you love, then do it and keep doing it and never be dis­cour­aged for if you stick with some­thing long enough, even­tu­ally you will succeed.

I’m going to be 44 years old this month. Go figure.

I’m mak­ing this sound like I haven’t had an inter­est­ing or reward­ing pro­fes­sional career, instead of writ­ing, but that’s not exactly true either.

For the last 20 years, I’ve worked in the media; mainly tele­vi­sion and mainly news. I’ve trav­elled exten­sively, I’m fairly well com­pen­sated, and I keep uncon­ven­tional hours and have done many uncon­ven­tional things. I’m very grate­ful for all the oppor­tu­ni­ties I’ve had and con­tinue to enjoy.

As I’ve said I’ve also con­tin­ued to write, but for myself, not for pub­lic consumption.

But, and yes there is a “but”, I’m bored with it all now and see it as mainly a pay­cheque. And more than that; I’m very jaded and start­ing to think I’m burn­ing out.

The truth is I’ve had enough.

I want to move away from what I do, back towards what I’ve always wanted to do, which is writ­ing. I want to write nov­els and screen­plays. I’d also like to pro­duce films and tv shows, instead of the relent­less real-life death and destruc­tion I have to face, every night.

I want a job where my col­leagues and mates don’t get killed in shitty lit­tle coun­tries that no one’s ever heard of!

What I need is one big fat fucker of a break!

And the silly thing is, I still think even­tu­ally it will come.

I haven’t been dis­cour­aged and I haven’t given up.

I don’t think this blog will bring me that break and if I’m hon­est, I never did. At best, I thought I would gar­ner a small, yet loyal cult fol­low­ing and I have, but that’s prob­a­bly down to my choice of sub­ject matter.

I write about drugs. A lot.

I also take drugs, a lot and have done since I was 18 years old.

I want peo­ple to know that some­one who uses drugs can be a respon­si­ble, tax-paying mem­ber of society.

I want peo­ple to under­stand that intel­li­gent, edu­cated, pro­fes­sional peo­ple enjoy more than alco­hol and tobacco when they want to relax, or escape the pres­sures and stress of daily life.

I’ve smoked weed, every day for nearly 26 years. And I don’t mean a cou­ple of puffs, either. Con­trary to what you might think, it hasn’t made me lazy or stupid.

And the for­get­ful­ness? I put that down to my advanc­ing years, bad diet and poor sleep patterns!

Dope has kept me sane and grounded since I first dis­cov­ered it. It com­pletes me; it makes me feel whole. With­out it, I wouldn’t be who I am.

And who am I?

I’m the one true genius of the 21st century.

I’m a mes­siah for the new millennium.

I’m the hippy you all adore because I am total media whore!

Ah-hem.

Once I found out that every­thing every­one ever said about cannabis was a lie, I tried other drugs, but none of them matched my absolute love of weed…

…except one, my beloved and dearly departed, fresh and legal magic mush­rooms, which the gov­ern­ment took away from us in the sum­mer of 2005. The fuckers!

Shrooms were partly respon­si­ble for me start­ing this blog as my enjoy­ment of them was peak­ing just as I fired up Blog­ger for the first time.

I dis­cov­ered magic mush­rooms were legal the same time I stum­bled onto everyonedoesit.com and pur­chased my first batch from them.

I also became a user of the everonedoesit.com (or EDIT) forums and it was there I first coined used the name “northlon­don­hippy” and if it wasn’t for them, I might not be blog­ging today.

That’s part of the rea­son I have adverts for EDIT on the site. It’s partly their fault that I’m here so they might as well pony up a bit of dosh!

But I also am affil­i­ated with them because I con­tinue to be a cus­tomer and forum reader and have had noth­ing but 100% pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences shop­ping with them.

And more than that, EDIT are a shin­ing exam­ple of what the world could be like if weed were legal! It’s the one thing I really wish they could stock, but prob­a­bly not as much as they would! EDIT are very good at what they do. Whether you use a link from my site or not, I heartily rec­om­mend shop­ping with them, if they stock any­thing that catches your eye.

Look, I know my blog isn’t like other blogs. I know I don’t do 10 short posts a day, link­ing to other people’s sites. I know I post spo­rad­i­cally and that my posts can be long.

But I also know that my blog is very per­sonal and that I always tell the truth. I strive for orig­i­nal­ity; I try to be cre­ative, thought pro­vok­ing, acces­si­ble, and humorous.

I try to make you laugh, make you think and make you wish you were a hippy too!

I try to inform.

I try to entertain.

I try to be myself.

I just try.

I would like to thank all of you, the thou­sands and thou­sands of you around the world, who have vis­ited my blog and found some­thing to keep you com­ing back again and again. I hope you keep com­ing back for the next 500 posts too!

And yes, you read that cor­rectly, it’s not mil­lions, but thou­sands. I don’t have an exact count.

Don’t for­get, I’m not obscure; I’m just under­ground, so well done you for reach­ing my site! You are now part of the van­guard of the inter­net elite!

And now, as promised, I’m going to dis­close the win­ner of the “win a week­end with the hippy contest”!

I have to say, even I was sur­prised by the num­ber of entries I received and choos­ing a win­ner, was, well, it was actu­ally pretty easy because many of the emails I received, ummm, shall I politely say were some­what “eccentric”.

How­ever, one entry stood out ahead of the rest and I will share it with you now, minus any iden­ti­fy­ing details about the winners.

And you read that right too; “win­ners” as in plural; there are two of them. Here’s the win­ning email:
===
“Hello hippy!

When we first read about your con­test, we thought it was a joke. After read­ing your blog we know its seri­ous and we want to win you for a week­end, but would you really come to Hull?

We are two uni stu­dents, both girls and love to party and smoke gear. We’d be into you com­ing up and stay­ing with us in our shared house. We have a spare futon you can sleep on and can promise you a wild week­end of get­ting off your face and hav­ing a right larf with two wild women!

For the night out, we want to go out for a nice meal and prob­a­bly take you to a party where we can get high. Don’t worry on a Sat­ur­day night there is always a party!

Please choose us hippy, please!

Love,
(2 names — both removed)
xxx

PS
We’ve attached a pic of us from a party last week, so you can see how wasted we look!”
===

So this hippy is going to Hull, which is only one let­ter away from Hell and I’m prob­a­bly going there too, just not as soon. I hope.

I’ve been in touch with the win­ners and I’m head­ing up to see them some­time in Feb­ru­ary. I’m just wait­ing for my work sched­ule before we pin down the date.

The win­ners seem really nice and yes, they do look totally toasted in the photo they sent, which I will not post here!

I’m going to jump in my lit­tle black Yaris, grab my sat­nav and load up up my iPod with a really long playlist and head to Hull. I think it could be a lengthy drive!

Oh why couldn’t the hot chicks have been in Amsterdam!

Fear not, I shan’t be tak­ing undue advan­tage of their hos­pi­tal­ity, I’m a great house­guest; neat, tidy and exceed­ingly respect­ful of my host’s home. I’m a plea­sure to be around too!

And don’t worry; I would like to reas­sure my read­ers (and Mrs. Hippy!) that noth­ing unto­ward will hap­pen while I’m there, no mat­ter how much they beg for a glimpse or taste of my cock.

And even though I’m old enough to be their father, I won’t let them call me daddy either!

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