| COFFEEHOUSE CULTURE -- Issue 1 | ||
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PAGE FOUR; ARTICLE ONE; FEATURE Roll Britannia Part One LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL |
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| ALTHOUGH IT IS ONLY a handful of years ago that the UK discovered what Amsterdam had done with grass, it is hard to recall how it used to be. Looking back to the Sixties, if your vision stretches that far, it is a long and dusty road relieved by only the occasional oasis. There were the bad years and there were the really bad years. Sure, once every seven years or so there would be a few brief weeks lit up by something spectacular and, as frequently as every three or four years, there would be other things that were better than the mediocre standard. But that was as good as it got. That such events were high points for the smoking community cannot be doubted; until recently we still talked about the Bombay Grass from 69, the Kashmir Twist from 1975 or 6 and the rum-rich early Jamaican from the 80s. Such high points, as you will have gathered, were great and notable rarities. The standard fare was much less exciting. In the best of the bog-standard years there was a fairly constant supply of straggly OK Jamaican or low-grade sand-laced Colombian (and didn't those specks of hot sand burn?), Red Seal, Leb or Rocky. But it wasn't often that good. You bought what you could get even if, in the many bad years, it was only dodgy home-grown. All leaf and no buds. It was bad. But also it was stupid. We had the grow books. We'd seen the pictures. We knew about sinsemilla. But, somehow, no one seemed to take notice. Although there must have been some people doing it the Amsterdam way, for most growers anything that actually reached flowering constituted a successful crop. Sparse and pathetic growing tips, mainly young leaves but with a few white pistils, were gathered, cherished and prized. They were the growers' reserve and the leaf was the saleable crop. If that makes it sound anything like a commercial enterprise, don't be fooled. It was never professional, never commercial, never anything other than amateur night. Hobbyists rule, OK! But it was better (probably) than nothing. As if things could not get any worse, as the Eighties drew to a close the droughts grew more frequent and the quality of the hash declined. Soap Bar made its debut and unadulterated hash exited stage left. And we were all lost to mediocrity. Ever predominantly a hash market, the UK looked destined to hard times. Then something happened. Suddenly everyone seemed to discover Amsterdam. There was a year, maybe four or five or six years ago, when everyone seemed to be about to visit or to have just come back from visiting Amsterdam. And the talk was, of course, all of the grass. For seasoned smokers it was a revelation. All of us old hippies (there must have been some exceptions but I do not know of any) had merely gone with the status quo, kept our heads down and wished. It took a whole new generation of smokers to drag us into a heaven of which we had only previously dreamed. Along with their tales of liberating freedom and what we used to call 'hipness', some of those naughty children brought back samples. And . . . . Well . . . . What can we say? Except, far out, man. That was enough for many of us. We booked our tickets and came for some first hand experience. And a very nice time was had by all. Marred only by the fact that it was back to the desert after only a few days. The desert, however, was somehow being transformed. Although no grass, as it were, yet grew on it, there were clearly changes going on. Like us, the kids came back to the same wilderness. To the Soap Bar and the straggly grass. And, although we still bought them, we knew what we wanted. Where there is a market, there will always be someone who is prepared to supply it. Thus it was with England. We wanted Skunk and we knew where it was easily available. And it was only a comparatively short distance away. Free enterprise being what it is, what started as a trickle soon became a torrent. If you are an Amsterdammer it must be hard to imagine what all the fuss was about. Having lived with Skunk, it is just 'part of the scenery'. But for us it was something much more significant. In discovering the real meaning of the word 'sinsemilla', we also discovered the real meaning of the word 'high'. It was a bit like suddenly discovering, after years of marriage, that marital sex involves more than mutual masturbation. It was, as I have said, revelationary. And all along we'd thought we'd been high. Hmm. It would not do to underestimate what exactly happened here. This was not much less than a social revolution. Actually, it was a lot less than a social revolution but it certainly changed things. It was one of those things where it seems that one moment no one knows and the next everyone knows. Phase transition or what? Whatever it was it certainly became rapidly and fully integrated into the hearts and minds of those in the UK's dope smoking community. So much so that, as I said at the start of this article, it is hard to remember how it was. In itself such a sharing of knowledge can have some far reaching repercussions. However to bring about significant change it needs a little help. In the case of the UK's dope smoking status quo, the help came from an unlikely source the UK Customs & Excise (or is that Excess?) and their 'Whoops, no borders' xenophobic paranoia. When 'the borders came down' the xenophobes came out of the closet. Suddenly nothing got in.Dry. Dry as a bone. Dry as a summer drought. Like prohibition always does this produced some rather unexpected and (from the Customs & Excise point of view) unfortunate effects. Although this zealous action had severely negative social repercussions, these do not come into the scope of this article. (They will, however, be examined in Part Three, when we look at the way in which the UK authorities have conspired against themselves and those they are supposed to be serving to produce the very situation they most wished to avoid.) It also had some very positive effects. Not, of course, so far as the Police were concerned. But certainly for dope smokers. The main effect was to drive Skunk supply sources inwards. The market was still there but, suddenly, there was nothing to fill it. The erstwhile amateur growers jumped at the opportunity to fill that gap. Dusty copies of Rosenthal and Franks were dug out from the backs of book shelves. Lofts, attics, basements, cellars, spare rooms and cupboards were converted into growing areas. Aeroplane tickets were purchased and hotels booked. Looking for inspiration, up to date information and seeds, the soon-to-be-growers headed east. One of the most crucial factors in this singular piece of initiative was access to seeds. Somehow or other it made a hell of a difference knowing that the seeds one bought were virtually guaranteed to produce grass 'as smoked in Amsterdam.' By the time they made the trip, many of those fledgling growers had already discovered that seeds were available in their homeland. They had probably tussled with the problem of how they might bring back lights without attracting interest and come to the conclusion that it was difficult verging on impossible. Domestic sources of supply were necessary and not too hard to find. Getting the seeds from Amsterdam, however, was both a pleasure and an inspiration. Although it was only a few years ago, grow shops in the UK were a rarity. But there must have been some people producing grass in the Amsterdam style because there were one or two and the best known and oldest established made enough money to advertise their products. If you knew where to look, the ads were explicit enough (although they have since become much more explicit). There could be little doubt about who the growshops served and their customers were certainly not lettuce growers. Indeed, Sunlight Systems, one of the longest established, produced and still produces an illustrated seed catalogue. They used to describe the seeds as fishbait which is the only use for which hemp seeds are legal in the UK. In recent catalogues, however, such empty subterfuge has been dropped in favour of a screaming reminder that the seeds in the catalogue are 'For legal purposes only and must not be grown.' The information about each seed type (such as its flowering period) is there, we are told: 'For those interested in how the seeds were produced.' And the colour photographs of the bloated, dripping sinsemilla buds are merely to show what happens if you don't have that crucial male plant in your fishbait crop? It all seemed so outrageously blatant. But a legal loophole is a legal loophole and the best thing to be done with it is to try to jump through it. Now it is even more blatant. A recent Sunlight Systems ad in Viz magazine made no bones about it. 'Grow Your Own Pot,' it said. Compared with the sophistication of the highly specialised products sold by the Amsterdam grow shops, those in England left much to be desired. While they could come up with everything for the hydroponics grower, the bio grower was pretty much on his own. Certainly so far as fertilisers were concerned. For those growers concerned about quality as well as quantity, there was a year of experimentation before many of them got their crops right But the gap was filled by more than adequate hypdroponic grass. Eventually the bio growers made it and today are producing grass of a standard that approaches Amsterdam quality. Things, of course, have eased up slightly over the last year or two. The grass growing market has become one of the UK's most remarkable but -- funny that -- unremarked growth industries. Grow shops have proliferated. And slowly but surely specialised grass fertilisers have made their way into the UK. The effects of the creation of a UK domestic growing industry, under the misdirected auspices of the Customs & Excise, have been and will continue to be profound. In removing the emphasis of cannabis control away from national entry points into the community, the Police Force have been dumped with another fine mess. As we all know, cannabis is a hideous social evil that corrupts and destroys the youth of the world. But put it alongside rape, mugging, child molestation and all the other evils in society and it seems somewhat less of a priority. Meanwhile the growers become more skilful and the shops become more confident. And the grass becomes more plentiful. Roll Britannia, we say, and continue to roll until you are the waves. Yes, we keep on rolling along |
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Or read these Page Four articles in Plain Text: Anti-Drugs Policy -- Some Mistake, Surely? |
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