The northlondonhippy

Archive for December 12th, 2007

Do you need some cool gifts for some cool peo­ple? This hippy is here to help!

Xmas is less than 2 weeks away and if you haven’t fin­ished your hol­i­day gift shop­ping, then you are just like every­one else! But you’ve got some­thing they haven’t got…a cer­tain north London-based hippy with a ques­tion­able char­ac­ter. I’ve got a few sug­ges­tions to help you out.

I find xmas stress­ful, every­thing is busier, peo­ple are ruder and noth­ing pisses me off more than queue­ing up to spend my hard earned money.

Let me share a tale with you from last Saturday.…

Last Sat­ur­day after­noon, I made the rather unfor­tu­nate mis­take of vis­it­ing my local super­mar­ket in my car. It’s a large chain super­mar­ket, with a large car park. I needed to pick up a few things and didn’t have a choice.

When I arrived at the super­mar­ket, I noticed the queue of cars depart­ing, but didn’t really think too much of it. The car park was quite full, but I man­aged to find a space with­out any stress. I decided to abbre­vi­ate my shop­ping list, grabbed a hand bas­ket and swept through the shop quite quickly. I even found a till with no one wait­ing and was checked out in record time. And then the real fun began.

I returned to my car to dis­cover the car park had filled up even more and the queue of depart­ing cars stretched to the very end of the car park. It took me around 10 min­utes just to get out of my space, because of being blocked by other pass­ing cars, arriv­ing or departing.

After get­ting out of my space, I joined the queue of depart­ing cars, head­ing towards the exit and that’s when the real fun began. The line of traf­fic was barely mov­ing and after 15–20 min­utes, I phoned Mrs. H to warn her I would be a bit later than I expected.

After 30 min­utes of not mov­ing, other peo­ple were start­ing to get rest­less and I began to see exam­ples of road-rage, or rather, car-park rage. Cars, were try­ing to cut into the queue of cars head­ing for the exit, oth­ers were try­ing to merge from unex­pected direc­tions. Then cars arriv­ing, started queu­ing up for lim­ited park­ing spaces, cut­ting off depart­ing cars and allow­ing merg­ing cars to jump in front. It was total car-park chaos!

Being the resource sort and main­tain­ing my calm through the reg­u­lar inges­tion of cig­a­rettes and choco­lates from my shop­ping, I got the num­ber for the super­mar­ket and rang it from my mobile phone. I asked to speak to the man­ager, iden­ti­fy­ing myself as a cus­tomer trapped out­side in my car. After a few min­utes wait­ing, I was con­nected to the duty man­ager and I explained the predica­ment fac­ing his val­ued cus­tomers just out­side the doors of his shop. He was sym­pa­thetic, but blamed the local coun­cil for not allow­ing them to build more access to the car park. That was hardly going to help me out at 2pm on a Sat­ur­day after­noon, 2 weeks before xmas!

The man­ager sug­gested I phone the local police sta­tion, which I was only too happy to do. After get­ting passed the first oper­a­tor, I was con­nected to the despatch desk at the local nick and I again explained the sit­u­a­tion, point­ing out the it could eas­ily turn nasty and as well as near acci­dents with cars, I’d seen a cou­ple of dri­vers leap out of their vehi­cles and nearly trade blows. The despatcher took my details and said she would send some offi­cers as soon as pos­si­ble. I didn’t see any before I left, around AN HOUR LATER!

Yes, I spent 2 hours in the super­mar­ket car park, in my car, in the pour­ing rain. It was absolute hell and I wouldn’t wish an expe­ri­ence like this on any one, ever!

Which brings me to my main point, which is this…if you can, do all of your shop­ping online! Every­thing I’m going to sug­gest is avail­able on the inter­net, so grab your credit card and get­ting ready to shop!

My top rec­om­men­da­tion this year is an iPod Touch from Apple. I bought one for Mrs. Hippy and we’re both blown away by how good it is. The touch­screen is gor­geous, so user friendly and as I sus­pected, the killer app is def­i­nitely being able to surf the inter­net on it.

It’s actu­ally a very usable, read­able browser and its the first sat­is­fy­ing inter­net expe­ri­ence I’ve ever had on a hand-held device. To put this in per­spec­tive, I’ve surfed on var­i­ous mobile phones and a high-end Palm Pilot and none have come close to this. The iPod Touch found my home net­work, let me put in the pass­word and joined it instantly. The mobile ver­sion of Safari rocks, its fast, respon­sive and ren­ders pages beautifully.

Oh and did I men­tion it plays music? And the video daz­zling too, so is the photo browser. I haven’t hacked it yet, because it’s Mrs. H’s, not mine and I don’t want to end up brick­ing it on her. I’m hold­ing out for a 2nd gen­er­a­tion iPhone, hope­fully that will come in the next few months.

I bought the iPod Touch from Ama­zon, £243 for the 16gb model, which is a real sav­ings com­pared to other retail­ers, but your mileage may vary, so look out for the best deal. Also, don’t leave it too long as its con­sid­ered one of the hot gifts this hol­i­day season.

In gen­eral, I can rec­om­mend Ama­zon, they’re nor­mally very reli­able and they are good with deliv­ery too. I shop with them so much that I signed up for Ama­zon Prime, which costs 50 quid for a year, but in return you get upgraded to next day deliv­ery on every­thing you buy. I usu­ally pay for next day deliv­ery any­way, because of my erratic lifestyle, that way I never miss any­thing. I’ve already placed a few orders with it, so it will pay for itself in no time.

The other online retailer I can rec­om­mend is everyonedoesit.com or EDIT. The adverts you see on my site are from EDIT, as my endorse­ment of them is long­stand­ing. They are also the exclu­sive dis­trib­u­tors of the NLH Deluxe, the bong I designed, made by RooR in Germany.

EDIT stock a wide vari­ety of good­ies, from pipes and bongs to a wide selec­tion of legal highs and one of the best stocks of cannabis seeds on the inter­net. If you like to party, or know some­one who does, they’re cer­tain to have some­thing desirable.

Of course, you can check out the entire shop for your­self RIGHT HERE, I do have a few rec­om­men­da­tions for you.

Check the Bush­mas­ter Dou­ble Bub­blers on this THIS PAGE. I’ve got the mid­night blue one and I can’t rec­om­mend this pipe enough. It’s only 20 quid and its a real bar­gain, pieces this good nor­mally cost lots more.

I cleaned mine out the other day and it reminded me what a use­ful piece of kit the SPACE CASE GRINDER is…I put all my bud through mine and around twice a year, I scrape out the crys­tals inside. You will be amazed how much you can col­lect, if you use it reg­u­larly to break up your weed. And if you think about it, every­thing you’re col­lect­ing, would prob­a­bly just have been lost. I can’t believe every­one doesn’t use one!

I’ve heard lots of peo­ple com­plain­ing about the cost of RooR glass­ware and I won’t deny that some of their pieces are pricey. That said, you get what you pay for and RooR qual­ity is the best you’ll ever find. But if you don’t want to spend a for­tune, here are a bunch of RooR pieces that all cost under 100 pounds, includ­ing one (that I own) that costs under a ten­ner! That means you can give some­one a piece of pure RooR qual­ity, no mat­ter what your bud­get may be!

I’ll start with the CLASSIC THREE PIECE WATER PIPE, which is a piece that I own. It’s a great look­ing water pipe, well con­structed and it smokes so sweetly, you will love every hit!

How about a RooR gift set, includ­ing a RooR bong for only 65 quid? Check out ROOR GIFT SET 5! And check out the rest of the RooR gift sets RIGHT HERE.

And if you want a full sized, proper RooR? No prob­lem, we can still do that for you and here’s 4 mod­els from the RooR red range, with 3.2mm glass, that cost between 85–100 quid! Go on, check ‘em out RIGHT HERE.

And remem­ber, I said there are RooR pieces under a ten­ner? Check out the MINI-STEAMROLLER, for only £5.95. I’ve got one of these too and its my favourite tiny pipe. It’s per­fect for a quick blast, when you need a lit­tle hit to take the edge off life.

But what RooR gift guide from me could ever be com­plete with­out a shame­less plug for my pretty lit­tle baby, the “RooR Cus­tom 5.0 — northlon­don­hippy deluxe” — the best bong in the world! Of course, I’m biased, because I designed it and it car­ries my name, but trust me I’ve smoked out of loads of pipes and noth­ing hits as well as my bong. It costs a bit more than other bongs, but trust some­one who’s smoked out of it a lot now, its worth every god­damn penny! Treat your­self, or treat some­one you love, you won’t be disapppointed!

The best news about all the good­ies I’ve men­tioned from EDIT is that they have it all in stock right now for imme­di­ate ship­ment and that includes the NLH Deluxe! I know the NLH Deluxes have been hard to come by, since the ini­tial ship­ment sold out, but they’ve got ‘em now!

Xmas doesn’t have to be stress­ful. If you can visit my site, then you can visit Ama­zon or EDIT, or any one of a num­ber of sites which will ship things to you quickly. If you can avoid the shops, the malls and the high street, you’ll make your life a lot eas­ier and isn’t that what we all want? Trust me, you don’t want to lose 2 hours of your life in a car park!