AFTERMATH: May As Well Be A Different Planet

The above tune is the theme tune to today's entry...that's my excuse, anyway.

As perhaps you're aware, the first 22 episodes of this blog are the text of my ebook, 'How To Become A Crack Addict' (from Jan to April 2013).  From then on, it's just like other blogs, purveying daily musings for a hungry readership.  Also, though I don't like to mention it, you can even buy the above-named ebook on amazon.  I won't tell anybody.  Here is some more pigswill for your trough...snouts in...

MAY AS WELL BE A DIFFERENT PLANET

When I was using, really in the loop of it, there were days when I'd never leave my flat, weeks where I'd see no one but the shopkeeper, for milk, which I'd pay for with change.  There'd be months where I'd be broke for 27 out of 30 days, fridge'n'cupboard bare as you'd find in any fairy-tale, when I'd barely stray more than half a mile from my desolate little grotto, and that would be to score.

Not long ago, I was sitting, sweating, in a curtained room, about nine floors up, with a schizophrenic who was in a kind of delusional mania, and a fat bloke who'd undressed to his pants, and was now lying on his back, smacking his chops and chuckling, saying, 'I'm having such fun,' then reaching out and clutching at the backside of the deluded lady, who wasn't wearing very much either.  He had some crack, which, oddly, he was quite generous with.  He'd get Lydia, the lady, to load and burn him a pipe, which he'd take in like a neglected newborn, let out the guilty dry billows, and then resume feeling her up, and even leaning against me a bit, because he'd apparently asked if I was bisexual when I was out of the room.  He was enough to put you off any form of sex, regardless of any pre-existing proclivities.  Splutter, splutter, smack, smack, 'Oh, I'm having such fun,' he'd chunter on his back, body bronzed from a recent trip to Thailand, probably as a sex-tourist.  Then Lydia would stand with her back to the door, telling us at ten words a second about the Pope, and other people who'd stolen from her, and could we hear her name in the pear-tree outside?  There was no pear-tree.  We were on the ninth floor.  Then a guy called round with some crack, but he seemed a bit mean, not just because he didn't give me any, but more because it wasn't long before he was chasing the fat bloke around the place with a kitchen-knife, because he thought he'd stolen a crumb off the bedside-table.  He didn't stab him, and Lydia managed, somehow, to diffuse the situation.  Then, shortly after, knife back in the drawer, I thought I'd make my way.  After all, all the crack had gone.

That was about two months ago.  Today, I went on the train to Eton, where my family is from, to see an old friend.  We walked along the river in golden sun, stumbled on the last few overs of a college cricket-match, on a ground I'm sure some counties would be happy with, surrounded by beautiful trees, some clearly donated from foreign potentates in days gone by, like an Indian Bean Tree, and a Turkish Lazuli, all bathing in the warmth of an egg-yolk sun, looking on from a low angle, thus getting in the bowler's eyes.  There was a bench we sat on, under the shade of a well-trimmed willow, and I drank my cherry Lucozade without a qualm.  The college chapel rang a slightly clanking, and therefore ancient, bell, punctuating the late afternoon with its monkish, tin janglings.  There were footpaths, barely beaten, through woods that led down to the river, upon which a seemingly sedater life existed, as rowing, private, and pleasure boats drifted by, leaving a wake that was pleasant to watch to the shore, and bounce back into the next one coming in.  Even conflict seemed harmonious in this idyll.

Then, back through a quadrangle or two, a cobbled arch here, a prohibited lawn there, we made our way back to the station, where I caught the train back to my enchanted grotto, just ten minutes from the curtained room above.  You don't need NASA when a train and a short walk can get you to another planet, albeit it one where you rarely see the sun that gives it life. 

Maybe bad light stopped play.

And that is all I shall say today.