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!

Just when you thought it was safe to switch your TV set back on, along comes the 5th series of Celebrity Big Brother!

I’m the last per­son to com­plain, I’m a big fan of the for­mat, as count­less pre­vi­ous posts will confirm.

This year’s series looks like it’s going to be a fun one, with pos­si­bly the odd­est mix of par­tic­i­pants in the his­tory of the programme.

OK, we’re lack­ing the shocks pro­vided by the inclu­sion of George Gal­loway and Ger­maine Greer, but come on, Ken Russell’s pres­ence is pure genius!

I realise that is prob­a­bly lost of most view­ers of CBB. I’m not being snob­bish about this; he’s not as well known as Steven Spiel­berg, is he? He’s prob­a­bly not even as well known as Guy Ritchie! And that’s a pity, but I expect peo­ple will be redis­cov­er­ing his films all over the place now!

Ken Rus­sell is the sort of direc­tor that film crit­ics sali­vate over and media watch­ers every­where will be going into melt­down. Big Ken gives a new respectabil­ity to CBB, and adds a level of intel­lec­tual mas­tur­ba­tion never seen before on the show. Well done, Endemol.

The fact that he’s push­ing 80 and the mere act of enter­ing the house seemed to sap him of what lit­tle energy he had, should be some cause of con­cern, as I think if he died in the house, they might choose to pre­ma­turely end the run. That would suck; I want to see it go to its full 25 ago­nis­ing days!

Ken’s already flashed his cock and balls at the dumb pretty girl who was Miss Pretty UK or some­thing and now sleeps with a foot­baller. I’m not over­sim­pli­fy­ing, am I?

She’ll prob­a­bly turn les­bian after that see­ing his “meat and two veg”, but let’s just hope she does so in the house with that other pretty girl, the one from India. I’ve never heard of her, but then I don’t know any­thing about Bol­ly­wood except that there’s a lot of singing and dancing.

Ok, so they are a bunch of nobod­ies. So what? In their minds, they are extremely impor­tant and very well known. Just look at Michael Jackson’s brother, Jer­maine. He thinks every­one knows who he is and judg­ing by the reac­tions of the other celebri­ties upon meet­ing him; that might not be 100% true.

Or Leo Sayer, who had hit records when this old hippy was a teenager twist­ing the night away at a school disco. Have his songs moved up the iTunes charts yet? They will.

The theme this year does appear to be singers, with the 2 for­mer 90s pop stars, Jer­maine, Leo and that young guy with the blonde hair doing the Spinal Tap impres­sion! If that’s his audi­tion, well done and I’m sure they’ll find a slot for him around 1am at the Com­edy Store!

I know he calls him­self Donny Douchebag or some­thing, but come on! He’s a cliché of a par­ody of a CHEAP ANGRY SPINAL TAP IMPRESSION!

Did you see? He pissed in the shower before he dis­cov­ered there was a sep­a­rate toi­let. Doh! You could splice that scene seam­lessly into the “Spinal Tap”. If you like Donny, get the DVD and pre­pare to piss your pants! Or your shower!

The hot middle-aged lady from the Kenny Everett video show seems lik­able enough, if a bit mad. Noth­ing wrong with that! I bet she inspired some furtive wank­ing in her day, and prob­a­bly still does today.

Oh and for the record, I’m the same age as Cleo, so that makes me mid­dle aged too.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and ven­ture that the out­side favourite at this point is the only girl from S-Club that could actu­ally sing. The book­ies like Leo Sayer too, but I’m giv­ing her the edge. Wait till she belts out a few tunes!

And I know her name, it’s Jo O’Meara and she had some spinal prob­lems that got in the way of her pop career. She’s seems fine now and good luck too her.
I read the tabloids, so I know this stuff. I can’t help it. We all have our use­less areas of expertise.

Jo seems down to earth, at least in the lit­tle bit I’ve seen.

And what’s the deal with the A-Team guy?

How des­per­ate and/or broke is he? I think we all know the answer to that one! He comes off sharp and witty and I get the feel­ing it’s going to take a lot to get him to snap.

Is it going to be entertaining?

Isn’t it always!

I pre­dict we’ll like some of them and hate some of them and every one of us will have dif­fer­ent list for both cat­e­gories. That’s just how it goes.

Bring on the next 3 and half weeks! Let them all go men­tal! Arm them with rusty knives and fill their heads with high-quality blot­ter acid. Starve them of food so they have to resort to can­ni­bal­ism and that lit­tle blond guy from Steps gets spit-roasted, but not in the way he’s dreamt of all his life. Send three gen­er­a­tions of Jade’s fam­ily into the house next door…

You know, some things are just too hideous to imag­ine. I’m sure glad there’s no chance that’s going to hap­pen tonight!

PS
This really is your last chance to enter the “win the hippy for a week­end” con­test! Go on, you know you want me!
Click here for the orig­i­nal post with all the details!

The win­ner will be announced soon!

I’m let­ting you all down.

I’ve spent most of this month not post­ing any­thing on my blog. I’m sorry.

There are sev­eral fac­tors involved in this total lack of hippy par­tic­i­pa­tion this month, some I’ll share with you, oth­ers I will keep to myself.

I’ve been over­run by spam of late; com­ment spam. At its peak, I was receiv­ing over 300 com­ments daily, all linked to online poker or penis-pill web­sites. Fuck­ing delight­ful! Each spam com­ment would gen­er­ate an email to me, alert­ing me to the new com­ment. It was a real drag.

Com­ments are now, effec­tively turned off. You need to be reg­is­tered to leave com­ments, only there is no way to reg­is­ter. It’s a catch-22 aimed at foil­ing these nasty pieces of shit who want free adver­tis­ing on my site!

I recently read an arti­cle, which explained that spammed com­ments are left by liv­ing human beings, so they can type the weird let­ters into the box to prove they are not machines. Because broad­band and labour are now so cheap and com­puter knowl­edge is so wide-spread in so many far­away places, it’s eas­ier to pay some­one to do the spam­ming for you.

Pretty soon, they’ll be out­sourc­ing my blog to India and you’ll be read­ing my replace­ment, the newdel­hi­hippy. Progress marches for­ward, so watch out fuck­ers, your job will be next!

I did nearly fin­ish a lengthy entry on my own per­sonal xmas mem­o­ries, but never got around to fin­ish­ing it. Xmas has come and gone now, so it’s too late to post it. I’m going to save it for next year.

I also haven’t been around, because I’ve been work­ing loads and most of my Decem­ber shifts were clus­tered into the sec­ond half of the month. I’ve been choos­ing sleep over blog­ging. Again, sorry, but I’m still tired and could use even more sleep!

These days, I’m always tired. I think its old age catch­ing up to me. I don’t bounce back like I used to. Maybe I just need more sleep. I don’t know, but I dream of spend­ing 24 hours in bed, just to put some zzzzzzz’s on account.

That’s never going to happen.

It’s not just the hippy I’ve been neglect­ing, I’ve got other projects that haven’t had enough of my time. After the New Year, I’m going to make a con­certed effort to get back on track.

No, more than back on track, I’m going to take every­thing a lot fur­ther in 2007! Go me!

See, even at my age, self-delusion remains a true skill!

Here’s some good news for you Big Brother fans out there, the celebrity ver­sion kicks off on the 3rd of Jan­u­ary and this hippy is poised to pro­vide you with my own spe­cial brand of com­ment and analy­sis through­out this 5th series.

By far, one of the most pop­u­lar fea­tures in 2006 was my Big Brother col­umn. It would be sadis­tic of me not to give my loyal hip­py­fans what they crave! I am a boy who can’t say “no”!

There are all sorts of uncon­firmed rumours about who might be appear­ing and I’m plan­ning on pro­vid­ing you all with a pre­view before launch night. This Sunday’s papers should give us some more clues and of course, I’ll be mon­i­tor­ing many sources just for you!

So I’m still the hippy you all adore, espe­cially because I’m a com­plete media whore! Things will be pick­ing up here at the hippy, so come back often to see what I’ve got in store for you!

PS
Yes, this is post 497, only three more to go until I announce the big win­ner of my con­test. One lucky hip­py­fan will be win­ning ME for a week­end of soft drug use and inap­pro­pri­ate touching!

Click HERE for more details!

I think too much; it’s what I do.

When you think too much, you need to keep think­ing of new things to think about, which takes up a good por­tion of your think­ing time.

I was think­ing the other day just how much we’re in our infancy as the dom­i­nant species in charge of the planet and I thought of a way to express this within a per­spec­tive, which we can all relate to in our own frame of reference.

A gen­er­a­tion is accepted as twenty-years, so if you were sixty, you could have a child that was forty, with a child of twenty, who could be a par­ent as well. So that’s four gen­er­a­tions, all alive at one time.

If you agree that 20 years is one gen­er­a­tion, then 100 gen­er­a­tions is 2000 years, which takes us nearly back to the time Jesus was allegedly strolling around Galilee. It’s the frame of ref­er­ence we use every day in our mod­ern, west­ern dates; it’s 2006 AD right now.

2000 years may seem like a tremen­dously lengthy time period; in the scheme of the uni­verse it is less than a blink of an eye. We’re still evo­lu­tion­ary chil­dren, who shouldn’t be trusted with the fate of the planet. We’re just not mature enough to have that sort of responsibility.

At our hearts, we are still sav­ages and though some of us aspire to rise above that and live our lives in more pur­pose­ful ways, most of us are ani­mals with base, pri­mor­dial, sur­vival instincts guid­ing our decisions.

If I can’t fuck it, or eat it, then I’ll kill it and eat it or fuck it.

In the news­pa­per today I read two sim­i­lar sto­ries about the true nature of our soci­ety and the gen­uine face of mankind.

Two men; inde­pen­dently of each other, col­lapse and die; one on the street, the other in his place of business.

In both cases, help from the pub­lic was sought. With the man who died on the street, his pock­ets were picked clean of his wal­let, keys and mobile phone. The man in his office, as well as hav­ing his pock­ets stripped bare, by the pass­ing “good Samar­i­tans” also had his his lap­top, mobile phone and other assorted kit from his office stolen, all while his dis­traught part­ner was in the next room phon­ing for the paramedics.

If both of those inci­dents are not con­sid­ered despi­ca­ble, then I don’t know what the word means!

Wel­come to the real word, you stu­pid hippy. Cru­elty bor­der­ing on the sadis­tic is the norm in our world; we choose to believe that the real­ity is bet­ter than that.

It’s not, not by a long shot and if you col­lapse in the streets, you should just expect to have your valu­ables quickly taken from you while your down. You can prob­a­bly count on a few kicks in the head as well, since you’re such an easy target.

I couldn’t walk past some­one on the ground with­out check­ing they were alright and it wouldn’t occur to me in a mil­lion years to rifle through their pock­ets in search of swag!

Maybe there’s some­thing wrong with me?

And that’s a rev­e­la­tion? There’s loads wrong with me. Being a liv­ing god doesn’t come with­out a price. You live my life for a while if you don’t believe me. None of you could take it, you pussies!

Ah-hem.

Think about it, 100 gen­er­a­tions is noth­ing; you can imag­ine that, it gives things per­spec­tive. We are still chil­dren, barely evolved with our lizard brains doing most of the think­ing. We still fight wars; we still kill each other for no good rea­son. Of course we do, we’re not even ado­les­cents yet!

100 gen­er­a­tions; it’s less than a blink of an eye. We were nail­ing peo­ple to crosses, the dead were ris­ing, and it was a mag­i­cal time.

We think we’re so advanced and so mod­ern and so high up on the evo­lu­tion­ary scale. Look around you; the com­pe­ti­tion is hardly fierce!

We’re the dom­i­nant species and we shouldn’t be. We’re not up to it, like if you’re parent’s left you home alone when you were not really mature or respon­si­ble enough and they came back to find the gas cooker on and the pilot light out and you and your lit­tle brother are groggy on the sofa. You said you were ready to be left alone, but obvi­ously you weren’t!

Ok, that hap­pened to me when I was a child, so it’s true and I know what I’m talk­ing about. As a race, we’ve left the oven on and we’re all groggy on the sofa. We said we were ready to run the world and look at the mess we’ve made!

So the next time, someone’s claim­ing how shit-hot human beings are, remem­ber what you’re old pal the hippy told you. One hun­dred gen­er­a­tions ain’t nothin’!

PS
My con­test is still open if you would like to enter. Remem­ber, this time the prize is one north London-based hippy of ques­tion­able moral fibre for a week­end at your place! Start down­load­ing some extra hard­core porn and stock up on a seri­ous quan­tity skunky bud!

Check out my lat­est and dare I say great­est con­test yet! You won’t want to miss this!

Hey ho hip­py­fans! Da hippy is in da house!

Well, tech­ni­cally it is a house, but I do pre­fer to refer to it as my north Lon­don lair. I’m in a good mood because I’ve only got to work three more nights between now and the end of the month! Yipppeee to that, fuckers!

Don’t worry, I won’t be spend­ing all my free time wasted on drugs, I do have to sleep you know! Actu­ally, that’s a lie; no not the sleep­ing part, the wasted all the time part. That just won’t be possible.

Why?

Well, mainly because I’ve got heaps of work to do. I’m still help­ing that guy pro­mote his book, I’m work­ing on a cou­ple of other projects of my own and if you add to that my usual list of respon­si­bil­i­ties, then you will see that I won’t have much time to party.

But none of that is the real rea­son I won’t be on drugs.

The biggest rea­son I won’t be on drugs is sim­ple; drugs, at least my beloved skunkweed, has been remark­ably scarce recently. And by recently, I mean since August.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, wel­come to the great cannabis draught of 2006!

As a seri­ous, reg­u­lar, habit­ual con­sumer of the wacky-backy, this is a tragedy for me of bib­li­cal pro­por­tions! I haven’t seen a decent qual­ity of weed in ages; every­thing I’ve been get­ting is via 3rd par­ties, under­weight and expen­sive! That sucks, man. And I’ve yet to see more than like a quar­ter at any one time.

It’s been hand-to-mouth with mar­i­juana and that’s never a good thing.

I’ve done, what any ded­i­cated smoker would do; ask every­one and any­one if they know any­one help­ful. Guess what? They’re all pretty much sail­ing in the same boat as me.

Things are dire; things are des­per­ate! If any of you out there in inter­net­land can lay your hands on a quan­tity of qual­ity herbal cannabis, I would love to be your newest, bestest friend! I’d cer­tainly invite you to visit my north Lon­don lair, as my guest, where I would exchange a rea­son­able amount of British pounds ster­ling in return for said cannabis. And if you have to travel a long way, I might even be will­ing to con­tribute to your expenses and throw in a hot meal from my favourite north Lon­don Malaysian take­away! Yum! And nat­u­rally, if you’re female, the usual offer of pro­longed oral sex applies, though you will have to be will­ing to let Mrs. H take some pho­tos – artis­tic ones of course, for our per­sonal enjoy­ment only! I swear I won’t post them online!

Think I am jok­ing? Think again! Yes, I am that des­per­ate! And xmas is not too far off, which is tra­di­tion­ally a stress­ful time for scor­ing weed, because all the ama­teurs who only smoke around the hol­i­days are buy­ing all the good weed meant for hard­core smok­ers like me!

But all of this raises a sim­ple ques­tion, why is there a draught?

I’ve heard sev­eral the­o­ries, which I will attempt to weave into a coher­ent explanation.

In July, we had a lengthy, sus­tained heat wave. Most weed you get in Lon­don, is grown locally, indoors. If the grow­ers don’t have ade­quate cool­ing for their grow room, which I expect is the case almost uni­ver­sally, then the higher tem­per­a­ture will kill all the plants. In August, the draught started, which time­wise, would jive with this event.

We lost a whole gen­er­a­tion of THC good­ness in July. Please pause for a moment to reflect on this loss of life. Awwwww.

Not long after that, the police announced they were going to start crack­ing down on sub­ur­ban com­mer­cial gar­dens. From what I’ve read, Viet­namese crim­i­nal gangs run this end of the trade. What hap­pens is that they rent a house on a quiet street, gut the place, install every­thing they need to start turn­ing crops around and then they just sit back and watch the dosh roll in.

Except it isn’t always that sim­ple. Because they do half-assed jobs of build­ing their grow-rooms, fires are not unknown and because no one is liv­ing there, the entire place goes up in flames. Or the elec­tric com­pany notices an increase in usage, thanks to the high power draws of many sodium lights. Or they fid­dle with the metre and don’t use any power, which is equally suspicious.

And the cops are on to all of this, using ther­mal imag­ing to see if a build­ing is run­ning hot­ter than it should. Or the neigh­bours tip them off to usual activ­ity or the cur­tains being con­stantly drawn.

It’s a risky busi­ness and there’s a lot of “cut and run” involved. My guess is not so much that the cops have shut them all down, but that they have spooked them into shut­ting down their oper­a­tions for a while, until the sit­u­a­tion cools off.

A col­league of Mrs. H rented her house out a cou­ple of years ago and one day while at work, she got a call from the local police. You guessed it, the peo­ple she rented to turned her house into a com­mer­cial gar­den. She wasn’t in any trou­ble, as she could show them the signed lease and ref­er­ence pro­vided by her ten­ants, but the real prob­lem was the cost of return­ing the house to a hab­it­able state.

You would prob­a­bly think that as a big dope head, I would be all for these com­mer­cial grow­ers. In part, I am, in Hol­land, where weed is legal and of course, your non-commerical home gar­dener. Even my friends, who have done it com­mer­cially, have done it in prop­er­ties that they have a legal right to use, in a safe and respon­si­ble way. No, my prob­lem is with the criminals.

Crim­i­nals don’t grow weed to share with their mates, or to per­fect some rare sticky, skunky strain; they do it to make prof­its, at the expense of decent, hon­est, hard work­ing people.

Who pays for all the elec­tric­ity they steal? We do through higher bills. Who pays to fix the houses they rent and trash; land­lords like Mrs. H’s friend.

The weed pro­duced in these gar­dens is never the best you’ve ever had, it’s pass­able, but never fin­ished prop­erly. To my shame, I am cer­tain that I have pur­chased weed grow­ing under these con­di­tions but in my defence, I don’t really have a choice.

The legal sta­tus of cannabis is at the root of it all. If weed were legal, then these crim­i­nal gangs wouldn’t have any rea­son to grow dope and it would be done pro­fes­sion­ally, and with care, pro­duc­ing some amaz­ing results.

How can a plant be ille­gal? Let’s ban oak trees next because some­times they get blown over and peo­ple get hurt, maimed or killed. Let’s end this oak tree men­ace today!

My oak tree ban is no sil­lier than the pro­hi­bi­tion on cannabis!

But back to the draught, because I haven’t given you the last piece of the com­plex puzzle.

Price. Cost. Dosh. Moolah!

When­ever some­thing is in short sup­ply, the price goes up. This is sim­ple eco­nom­ics, you know, sup­ply and demand? I think part of what’s going on is that the sup­ply chain is hold­ing some back to drive the price up. I’m see­ing prices ris­ing by about a third – 33%, so the ounce you used to pay £150 for will be going for £200. Talk about a high rate of inflation!

It’s sim­ple, you hold back the sup­ply for a while and when you restore it, peo­ple are so des­per­ate they’ll pay any­thing. Any­thing, becomes the new price! By doing this, the deal­ers and sup­pli­ers will still sell all their weed, just at a higher price than a month ago, so they are the real win­ners and we are the real losers.

As I don’t see weed being legalised any­time soon, I think the real answer is for every­one to become self suf­fi­cient! It’s time we all start grow­ing our own!

I’ve wanted to do that for years, but I don’t have a suit­able space in my lair to ded­i­cate to it. I really wish I did and it is a seri­ous require­ment for my next house, should Mrs. H and I ever get our acts together and flee our north Lon­don ghetto!

Oh and I was seri­ous about the weed. If you can get your hands on an ounce (or 3) of high grade, qual­ity skunky bud, I’d really like to meet you, soon!

As the title says, thanks every­one in the United States who heeded my call to get rid of the Republicans!

The polit­i­cal clout I yield with this blog truly is spe­cial and all elected offi­cials should take note. The pub­lic do exactly what I tell ‘em to, because my fans are a very loyal bunch.

Change is a good thing and these changes to the polit­i­cal land­scape in Amer­ica are very good news indeed, but we’re not out of the woods just yet.

We’re stick stuck with George Porgy and his pack of lies and don’t for­get Darth Cheney. Those two are still at the top, but only for a cou­ple more years!

So pay atten­tion my Yan­kee friends and fans, you need to main­tain the momen­tum until the next gen­eral elec­tion. You need to give those wiley Democ­rats a free run come 2008 so they can intro­duce some much needed san­ity back into your coun­try and the world! Please! It would make this hippy very fuck­ing happy!

On to other news…

My con­test is still open and will remain open until I post num­ber 499 – this one is 492, if you didn’t notice up there at the top.

Come post num­ber 500, I’ll be announc­ing the winner!

You don’t know what you can win? Oh please, do keep up!

I’m giv­ing one lucky hip­py­fan the chance to win me! Well, me for a weekend.

That’s right, kids, the northlon­don­hippy will come and spend the week­end at your place and you can read my orig­i­nal spiel RIGHT HERE.

So what are you wait­ing for? Send me your email and you could have this crazeeeeeee hippy fondling you in your sleep!

Who wouldn’t want that?