Ho hum.

As much as I dig being the northlondonhippy and believe me, I do, sometimes I struggle to force myself to sit down in front of my computer to produce high quality, web-based content that both informs and entertains.

In other words, sometimes I just can’t be arsed.

I’ve always got ideas and a running list of a dozen topics which would dazzle the average hippyfan. Of course, you are above average and require a higher standard from this hippy. Don’t worry, I’ll disappoint you all today.

I’m actually in a reasonable mood this week as I took delivery of my fancy new coffee set up. I’ll do a proper post on it in the near future, but I am pleased to report that I am already pulling reasonable shots and producing quite drinkable cappuccinos and lattes.

I’m sure its not helping that my birthday is imminent. I think that’s why January sucks so badly, because right off the back of the stupid holidays comes my dumb birthday.

Getting old sucks. Yes, highly original and thought provoking, wouldn’t you agree?

I don’t really mind getting older, not that I have a choice or would prefer the alternative, but that’s because I don’t look my age. How much longer can people still see me as youthful? I’m forty-fucking-five years old for fucks sake!

My birthday brings out my ageing obsession, but don’t despair, it peaks every year around January and fades into the background soon after that. Then I can move onto other obsessions, like my utter failure at life.

Haha.

I don’t really feel like a failure, but it’s amusing to make jokes about it.

Considering all my faults, its amazing I’ve done as well as I have out of life and I thank Satan every day for doing that deal with me back when I was a teenager. Eternal souls are overrated anyway, or at least that’s what my master, er beastmaster tells me. If only I thought to ask him to make me taller! Being short sucks more than getting old, any day!

We’re already over a week into 2008 and I haven’t posted a thing. In that case, belated New Year greetings and seasonal wishes to you. I hope that this brand new year brings you everything you’ve ever hoped and dreamed for.

This is a shitty time of year for me, as I am not a fan of the holiday season, cold, grey weather, or my birthday which is also falls this month. Another year down the drain is all I can think.

I’m going to be 45 this month, which is undeniably middle-age, or at least how we define it. The reality of me actually making it to 90 is laughably ludicrous, which makes the term middle-aged a total sham in my case.

I don’t feel 45, not that I even know what 45 should feel like. I still feel 15, which could say more about my stunted emotional growth than anything else. Ageing is the physical process, maturity refers to your mental age. Maybe I am 15?

Sometimes I think I am obsessed with ageing and growing old; it’s even a category on my blog. I do think about it too much. It’s the passage of time that really gets me, not the growing old.

My life is finite. I only have so much time and with each day that slips by, I have less. If I am really hoping to accomplish anything with my life, I better get my skates on or come to terms with the reality that my dreams will never come true. I’m not sure which one is worse.

The change in the calendar, combined with a milestone birthday is really bumming me out. You see, even hippies get the blues. Forty-five years of underachievement and failure can have that effect on even the cheeriest of souls and trust me fuckers, the last thing I am is cheery!

What’s a poor hippy to do?

The usual, just keep plodding along, doing whatever it is I do and distracting myself as best I can. If it weren’t for soft drugs and consumer purchases, my life would be as empty as a void in deep space!

Oh and don’t forget my exercises in creative futility! I am going to record that album of original northlondonhippy music!

And I am going to work on my novel. My real novel, the one I have been planning for over a decade. I did knock out 2 other novels in the last few years, the second one will be published soon I hope. They’re not under my real name, they’re not even under my hippy banner. I don’t really count them, but they were fun to write.

My real novel will actually be done under my REAL NAME. I don’t do anything under my real name, so that should tell you how serious I’m taking it. It’s also why I’ve been taking so long with it, I want to get this one 100% right. I want it to be a literary masterwork, which perfectly captures the human condition.

I want a lot of things.

Like right now, what I want is a high-end, pump driven, espresso machine and this has become my latest obsession. I’ve been hanging out on a couple of coffee-obsessive websites, CoffeeGeek and HomeBarista are my two current favourites. If you’re serious about coffee, you should really have a look.

Don’t laugh. The pursuit of the perfect espresso is right up this hippy’s street. After all, caffeine is a drug and we all know I dig drugs and I also adore a good ritual as prerequisite to enjoying any drug. Espresso extraction is a skill and at the hobbiest level and beyond, it becomes a religion.

There are some seriously serious people out there making some amazing coffee at home and I want to be one of them. I’ve been doing research online for the last month or so and am now ready to take the plunge.

The first thing I learned is that the grinder you buy is every bit as important as the espresso machine you choose. And if you’re serious about coffee, you will only want beans freshly roasted, they start to go stale after around 2 weeks. You need to spend at least 50% of what you spend on the espresso machine, on a decent grinder.

Pulling the perfect shot of espresso isn’t simple, it requires knowledge, practise and skill, but if you can master this, you will be rewarded with exceptional coffee every time.

The home espresso scene is nowhere near as big in the UK as it is in north America, but there are several companies specialising in high-end kit. After a lot of research and careful consideration, I’ve decided to go with the Rancilio Silvia espresso machine, paired with Rancilio’s Rocky grinder - the doserless model. It has quite a good reputation with aficionados online, but is not an easy machine to master. I think that’s part of the appeal, that I will have to work hard to get the best results.

That’s what hobbies are; distractions from reality. My new found coffee obsession is a healthy diversion from the things that bring me down. Once I have perfected my extraction technique and I am regularly fuelled with the finest cappuccinos, expertly crafted, I will be buzzing with caffeine. That in turn should inspire me to spend more of my increasing limited free time, writing. Everyone wins!

I’ll be ordering my new machine hopefully this week, as soon as they come back in stock following a rush on them for xmas. I’m hoping that by next week, I’ll be brewing my own, right here in my north London lair. How fucking cool with that be!

My life might not be perfect, but at least my coffee soon will be!

Happy fucking xmas, fuckers!

I hope you all stuffed your faces and got got everything on your wish list; not limited to, but probably including: an iPhone, an iPod Touch, an iPod nano, a MacBook, a PSP, a PS3 and if you are seriously lucky, a Wii and if you are super lucky, naturally you found an nlh deluxe under your tree!

I’ve had a fairly normal xmas, well normal for me, because I’ve worked right through the holidays and I ain’t finished yet! I worked xmas eve, xmas day and I am working tonight, boxing day too.

Apparently, loads of people have to work over xmas, only I didn’t “have” to. I chose to and given the chance, I will probably choose to again next year.

Next year is a long way, away. Who knows what the next 12 months may bring? Do you? If you answered yes, then email me with some horse racing results for next week, or better yet the lottery numbers for the next giant rollover. Please?

The first xmas I ever sold was 18 years ago. I was offered the chance to do a shift in a newsroom in NYC for double pay, 400 cool dollaroonies.

Did I just type “dollaroonies”? I must be stoned.

I am.

I remember ringing up my mother and informing her that I was going to be a newswhore for xmas and I’d be missing the usual family gathering. That was 1989. She was less than impressed, but ka-ching! That was a lot of money! It still is!

As a kid growing up, xmas was a big deal and in my (now estranged) extended family, there was much celebrating to do with both my mother’s and father’s side of the family.

As I got older and we fell out with various branches of our family tree, xmas’s were downscaled, but still big events in my immediate family.

I liked it mainly for the gifts.

Xmas stopped being fun when I stopped getting bicycles.

The last xmas I shared with my parents was 1991 and every year since, I’ve either worked or just not gone. My dad died in Sept 2004, my mother is very disabled and has been confined to a bed, following a stroke in 2003 and now lives in a nursing home. That’s 13 xmas’s avoided.

I tried to write about all of this last year and I couldn’t finish it. I went into far more detail and skipping down memory lane was difficult, if not impossible and I gave up. I still have what I wrote, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it again. Hey ho.

For most people, I think the holidays are pure stress. All you need to do is visit your local high street or shopping district and watch how cunty everyone is to each other to see proof of this. Expectations have to be met at all costs, even if it means elbowing some old lady out of the way, so you can get the last copy of Nigella Express.

Xmas for me, has come to mean my family, my immediate family. When I think about xmas, I think about the four of us, my parents, my younger brother and me.

I can remember spending many xmas eve’s unable to sleep, because I was so excited; adrenaline coursing though my veins, making it impossible to rest.

I can remember the smell of my mother’s home-baked xmas cookies.

I can remember my dad swearing when he thought I couldn’t hear him, as he tried valiantly to assemble some crappy toy that wouldn’t survive in one piece for more than a week.

And I can remember my younger brother, just as excited as me, checking to see if our parents were awake at ridiculously early times, because we weren’t allowed to go downstairs until they were ready to accompany us for the ritual ripping of the wrapping paper.

I can remember more, much more, but it all just depresses me now because I’ll never have those times with my family again. I can’t.

These days, I don’t get excited about xmas, instead I count the seconds until it’s the 2nd of January. Then its all over and I can exhale.

Though when I think about that first xmas I sold, back in 1989, for 400 dollaroonies, I wish I could give them a refund. Four hundred bucks for one more xmas with my family would be the bargain of the millennium!

I hope wherever you are, all your holiday dreams came true and you spent it with people far less miserable than me. Maybe having me trapped behind a desk over the holidays is good for everyone, not just me. We’ll never know…

I grant you permission to prod my neck or clasp my wrist. Indeed, I do still possess a pulse for I remain alive and nearly well.

I haven’t been ill, not really. I’ve been suffering from a malady known as overwork-itis and I am the cause of this affliction. I’ve worked 10 out of the last 13 nights, with tonight being my final night - number 11. Go me. After that, I’m off for a couple of weeks to catch my breath and catch up with you guys.

So much for my 100 post thing, you might possibly be thinking. Well, I am here to tell ya that 100 days hasn’t passed yet. I can still catch up. How do you know I won’t snort a shit load of crystal meth and stay up for 6 days and nights, doing nothing but blogging?

You know this, because I’m telling you, I shan’t be ingesting any horrible, crappy, man-made shite! This hippy don’t do class A drugs no more, anyway!

But I can still catch up. I haven’t counted to see how behind I am, but I’m sure its not an insurmountable number. This hippy is a hippy that can do! And does! And will…!

Fuck, I might start buying into my own hype. Naw, I’m far to cynical and clever for that. Besides, its not like I’m actually selling anything. Everything I do, I do for you, for free! When’s the last time you got an invoice from this hippy?

I wouldn’t know how to charge for this shit, anyway. Just send me your credit card numbers (and don’t forget the 3 digit signature strip number too) and I’ll buy myself something pretty, on you.

Wouldn’t you like to buy me something pretty? Like a Porsche? Nothing says you love me like a finely engineered German sports car. And I’m going to be 45 years old in January, don’t you think I’m ready for a mid-life-crisis mobile?

And speaking of gifts, I’m sure I’m not the only one who you’re shopping for because it’s Christmas soon. That means this hippy’s holiday shopping guide will be coming soon too. As a fervent consumer of everything, I am well-placed to help you choose gifts for people I’ve never met…as long as they are cool people, but if you’re reading my blog, you must be cool and everyone you know is cool too. It’s simple math, really.

Are you digging it? Groovy!

I can’t believe that Tony Blair’s been Prime Minister for over ten years.

Of course, I do believe it; I’m not in denial or anything. If I am in denial about anything, it would be just how quickly time passes. Ten years, it seems, can disappear in the blink of an eye. He’s stepping down today, but if you get so much of any news today, it would be hard to miss. We don’t get a new Prime Minister that often, these days!
It does feel like it was only yesterday that Blair won his first election. I was working in a tv newsroom, all night, that night, right through to the morning.

I remember watching a live feed from, I think it was the South Bank, where Tony was having his victory celebrations. The crowd was as big, as it was jubilant. He got a welcome normally reserved for sporting heroes and rock stars.

I can remember that song, too; his campaign theme song – D-REAM – Things can only get better…

They didn’t; at least, not from where I’m sitting.

Crime rates are up, taxes are up, the NHS is worse, most government services are lacking, civil rights eroded, house prices skyrocketing, and we’re still knee-deep in a pointless war that seems to have no end in sight.

Job well done, Mr. B!

Good luck solving all the problems in the MidEast next. With your track record, I’m sure it will be sorted within weeks of your appointment as the new “peace envoy” to the region.

It’s easy to be critical with hindsight.

But back in 1997, we were all just so happy to put the Iron Lady and then the Grey Man behind us, that we would have celebrated anyone else’s election. Tony was that anyone.

The day after the election, I remember it seemed like the mood in the entire country just lifted. Strangers smiled at you on the streets, children held doors open for old ladies and that hot chick a few houses down the road from me finally relented and gave me a world class BJ.

OK, I made that last bit up, but that’s how it felt; like all of your dreams were possible and maybe that next knock on the front door might really be that hotty from 2 doors down, offering to pleasure me in return for a borrowed cup of sugar.

Now, that’s what I call neighbourly!

If I knew then, what I know now…

I wouldn’t have been so happy.

None of us would have even come close.

And what really bugs me about Tony Blair is that he’s not stupid. And I think his intentions to do “good” were genuine.

He just cocked it up. He got it wrong. Or worse, he allowed commercial and political compromises to dominate his policy.

Do you really think sitting at the big table with George W doesn’t come with a price?

Do you really think any alleged exchange of cash for peerages, didn’t include some strings that might lead back to some possible, dodgier business deals?

I don’t think we’ve really scratched the surface on any of this just yet. There’s plenty of digging yet to be done. It will be. Dirt always finds a way out.

Ten years is a long time. Let’s see what Tony’s up to in ten more years.

Will be seen as an elder statesman, continuing to perform on the world’s political stage?

Will he still be on the lecture circuit, commanding large speaking fees and publishing boring, yet worthy books?

Or will he be locked in Slobodan Milosevic’s old cell at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, awaiting trial over his role in the Iraq war?

Or a cell in Belmarsh, awaiting trial for some as of yet discover corruption allegation?

I wouldn’t want to speculate, especially as I got it so very wrong ten years ago. Let’s just say if I were Mr. Blair, I’d avoid any stopovers in Holland for a while and get a good lawyer!

Oh wait, he’s got his wife! She could be his mouthpiece, although from what I hear, she ain’t cheap either! He can afford it.

See ya, Tony! Your ten years sure went quick! Time really does fly when you’re watching society crumble before your eyes!

After yesterday’s deconstruction of all things moral and true in our universe and our lack of station within it; I thought I would continue in this same philosophical vein with some thoughts on time.

I can feel mine, running out.

It’s been doing that since the day I was born; only recently I think I’ve actually become able to perceive the tick-tock of nature running its course.

It is natural, in our universe, in our four-dimensional world that we perceive time passing. Time is important to us.

But I’m talking about something different, something more personal. I’m talking about my own lifespan; maybe what I really mean is I can tell I’m aging.

Oh blah, blah, blah, the hippy is getting old. Show me someone who isn’t and you will be showing me a dead man; death is the only known alternative to aging.

Until they admit aging is just some kink in our genetic code that they will one day be able to re-sequence right out of your DNA, if you can afford it.

Trust me, you won’t be able to afford it. Neither will I.

Time is change; I like change, but when my time runs out; I’ll miss all the changes.

I think that’s what irks me most about having a finite lifespan; I won’t be able to see how it all turns out. I want to know what’s going to happen on the day after my death.

Even better, how about 100 years after, or a thousand, or even ten thousand! My curiosity about the future drives me crazy.

I’m not saying the future is going to be all shiny and golden, I actually have a sneaking suspicion that it’s going to be quite bleak and in my life time, but I do so very much want to know how it wraps up.

And it is all going to wrap up someday, when our sun goes super-nova if not before. I don’t think our species will last that long on this planet and I’d be a fool to reject the notion of interplanetary immigration!

I’d be a fool to reject any future developments in science and technology.

There’s just so much we don’t know about so many things, even now in our “modern age”, or “our infancy as sentient beings” in hippytruthspeak.

There are things that we’ve yet to discover that I promise you will turn our understanding of so many things, so upside-down, that you won’t know if you’re coming or going. I’m talking about giant changes in our perceptions of the vastness of the universe to the tiniest of tiny sub-atomic particles.

And no, I don’t know anything about what these giant strides in our knowledge are; if I did I would be writing for important and respected scientific journals and not just shit in some blog on the internet!

And by shit, of course I mean highly entertaining, thought provoking masterpieces that bring joy to dozens, I mean millions, of course!

When I was a kid, the smallest particles known to man were the three bits of the atom, which if my memory is correct are, protons, neutrons and electrons.

And then the started smacking atoms together in particle accelerators and well, wouldn’t you know it, they found quarks. And I think they may have even found even smaller bits than quarks, though I will not deny my knowledge of cutting-edge physics is shall we say, rather limited.

Who knows what those crazy boffins will come up with next?

Let’s go back to time.

Imagine, if you can, that time, which is known as the fourth-dimension, actually had a dimension in space. The tiny meat-based computer in your head will have trouble with this concept, as mine does, but stay with me.

Imagine if this fourth dimension could be measured in space and mapped; as if you could physically perceive it, almost touch it. Think of it as a free flowing river and all we’ve been doing since we started measuring time, is gauging the current of this river.

We know the speed of the time river, or rather, we perceive it in our limited way and we know the direction. That one’s a given as we perceive time as moving forward.

Now suppose you discovered this river existing in a part of space that our senses can’t perceive, but is just as tangible as the other dimensions.

You can pick on a pencil and thrust it forward and back, up and down, or side to side; which covers all three dimensions, but what if you could thrust it into a fourth that exists in space, but is not visible to you in any way.

Am I really doing your head in? Sorry, I’m nearly there.

Take the leap that somehow, some scientist has found this time river in space and he decides to build a pod to launch himself into it.

Now, I know you’re getting it.

This pod could simply let the current carry it forward, which would be the most likely outcome, or perhaps this scientist managed to power the pod in such a way that it could overcome the force of the river and travel in the opposite direction. What has this scientist invented?

Time travel.

I’m not saying that this is likely, or even plausible, but it is possible and it’s possible because of our ignorance of time…and everything else that we know jack shit about.

That would be nearly everything that matters in the universe. Oh, I covered that yesterday.

I don’t know that I would want to travel back in time, but forward certainly appeals to me, but again that’s down to my curiosity about the future.

I take that back, in a sense, as lately I’ve been feeling unusually nostalgic about the past, specifically my family. I’m not saying my childhood was perfect, whose is? But if I could go back for say a day, I would.

The question is what day?

Would I choose something cheesy like that one birthday when my parents surprised me with a brand new bike; or maybe I could go all smaltzy and pick one of the rare occasions when my father told me he loved me.

Or maybe just go the obvious route and select the day I smoked my first joint and got high.

It wouldn’t be any of those; it would actually be a day that I think is going to make my younger brother laugh when he reads it. It’s not even a specific day and even more surprising, it’s not even a day I would have thought at the time would mean so much to me now.

I’m not even sure of the year, but I would venture a guess to say the late 1970s, in the summer. My father had a boat and rather than take an annual holiday, he would use his leave a couple of days here or there, every week for the entire summer. Mainly he took off Mondays and/or Fridays so we could go out deep-sea fishing on the boat.

Ok, I had a slightly privileged childhood, but nothing compared to the super-rich of today. Trust me, I’ve more than redressed the balance as an adult.

We’d all go out on the boat for the day, my father, my mother, my younger brother and yours truly, your favourite northlondon-based hippy.

My father would make sandwiches and pack a cooler with soft drinks and we would cast off early then spend the day at sea; maybe catching fish, maybe not; arguing, laughing but mainly just enjoying being a family.

It was all just so simple, so carefree. I can tell you right now, that I doubt I’ll ever experience that feeling again for as long as I may live.

To genuinely have no worries, no responsibilities, to know that everything was all right and as far as you could tell it would always be that way is a feeling that only really good drugs can reproduce.

And even then, they wear off, you come down and you’re right back where you started.

I miss my family so much sometimes it hurts, but the only way I could ever get back to that moment, that feeling, is if someone really does invent a time machine and I can order one from the internet on my Visa card and that just ain’t gonna happen.

And if you told me on one of those fishing trips that I would be sitting in front my a computer in my north London lair nearly thirty fucking years later, bawling my cunting eyes out as I share my deepest thoughts with anyone who happens to stumble on my blog online on the internet, do you know what I would have said?

What’s the internet?

Ok, besides that, I would have told you that you were talking crazy! I believe I actually did actually say that, to my mother, on the many occasions when she told there would come a time when I would feel this way and I rejected the very thought.

And now, I can’t even tell her that she was right because I haven’t spoken to her in around three months for no good reason except that I talk a really good game, but I’m a piece of shit too.

I never said I was perfect.

Ok, I did actually, many times.

I was lying.

Let’s get back on track, wipe those manly tears from my eyes and return to the subject at hand.

If you told me 30 years ago that I would have this amazing device in front of me that could edit video, audio, text, and photos as well as being connected to the rest of the world, I wouldn’t have believed you.

And if you told me way back then that anyone with one of these magic devices could publish anything they wanted in such a way that anyone else with one of these amazing boxes, anywhere in the world could read it, I would have thought it was the stuff of science fiction.

And that’s only happened in the last thirty years!

Just imagine what’s amazing treats are in store for the people still here in the future.

Imagine being able to travel through time, or theoretically living forever, if you don’t get run over by a bus or shot by a jealous husband!

And that’s at the root of this hippy’s dispute with time. Mine is going to run out before a lot of really cool shit happens and that makes me very sad.

If I could live long enough, maybe there would be a way for me to make it back on that boat, even if it was just for five minutes. It’s a journey I would willingly take, if I could.

Is your life as fucked up as mine? Are your thoughts as twisted? Email me let me know your secret for not going completely insane!

As ever, I remain your ever faithful, ever loyal, ever twisted, northlondonhippy!

Yo groovers, what’s shakin’?

I’m not so much shaking as trembling, but I’m old and it’s probably just the onset of some debilitating and degenerative brain wasting disease.

Ah, the joys of aging!

I’ve been thinking about growing old recently; obsessing about it is probably a more accurate description. It makes a change from obsessing about my own death and the deaths of those close to me though!

It’s good to shift gears occasionally!

I’m 43, but I’m quite a youthful 43, whatever that means. I’m spry, agile and possess all of my physical faculties. I’m not particularly fit in a cardio-vascular sort of way, but I’m as strong as an ox, only I probably smell better.

Lately, though, and I’ll whisper this because its not something I’d want to say too loudly, but lately, I’ve been having odd aches and pains in my muscles and joints. My knees hurt sometimes, when I squat down to do some things, like wipe a mess off the floor or even tie my shoes. The only way to relieve the pain is to stand back up again.

And yes, my shoes have laces; I’m not so old that I’ve switched to loafers, just yet.

I’ve got hairs growing out of my earlobes. They’re really long, coarse, white hairs that hurt when I pull them out. I’ve got flecks of grey in my beard, but because I keep it trimmed quite short, they’re not noticeable. I’ve got the odd white hairs on my head too, but there’s so few of them, I could count them on one hand.

The point is, my body is changing. It may not be as fast as other people, but the years are gradually taking their toll on me, as they will on all of us.

And there’s sweet fuck all I can do about it! Fuckers!

In seven years, I’ll be fifty years old. Fuck! Fifty! Seven years is nothing, it’s a blink of a fucking eye!

In my mind, I still feel 15; only I can drive my car and buy liquor. Oh and I have a mortgage. And a responsible job. And a serious cannabis habit.

And people say all of those things don’t go well together! Well bullshit to that; I’m living proof you can be a highly functioning, dope-smoking, member of society!

I even pay my taxes! I’m a well-behaved hippy.

But here’s the thing: I was born too soon.

Aging is a disease, a genetic aberration; a defect in our coding; nothing more. At some point a little tiny bit of one of our little tiny strands of DNA goes POP and suddenly your body starts to break down.

We call it aging and because we all do it, we don’t see it as a disease, but it is. Soon, science will discover the cure. We don’t all have to die.

Think I’m crazy? Think again.

Those wacky boffins have already mapped the entire human genome. Very soon, they’ll have a better understanding of what each gene does to the point where they will be able to isolate the bits that control aging.

And do you know what they figure out how to do then?

They’ll learn how to switch-off the aging process. Effectively you’ll immortal.

Of course there will be other things that could get you, like cancer, heart disease and plane crashes, but the first two will probably be genetically cured too. So watch out for those dodgy 747’s that do the long haul routes!

Genetic science is going to be able to fix everything that’s wrong with you at some point in the not too distant future; including the most common disease known on the planet: aging.

I’m just sorry I was born a bit too late to take advantage of this living forever lark. I reckon I’d be good at it. Oh well.

At least my writing will live on eternally, after I’m gone.

Maybe the world will catch on to me then and everyone will know that I really was (am?) the first true genius of the twenty-first century!