The following will make absolutely no sense to you unless you do the following two things. Go and make a cup of tea or coffee and then return to your computer and read herebemonsters. Don’t worry about getting back here - there’s a link on his page.

Right - are you sitting comfortably? Where were we?…ah yes. A play there is my lord. Some ten words long. Which is as brief as I have known a play. But by ten words, my lord, it is too long. Which makes it tedious…unless you ever got backstage at the St Thomas More RC School (Blaydon) version of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

It was my fairy godmother’s - who was also in the English department (and if you think that’s bad my Uncle F was my Head of House - St Catherine’s and my geography teacher and my Aunt R was my biology teacher- apart from the brief interlude when she went off to have a baby and was replaced by my mum - just as we got to human reproduction. Bad enough learning the facts of life in a Catholic school, even worse to learn them from your mother especially as she still hasn’t got round to telling them to me yet. By the way this wasn’t some little school out on an island somewhere- it’s a large school in Tyne and Wear. Mossad’s got a lot to learn from the Catholic Mafia ) but I digress - it was my fairy godmother’s dream to produce a modern version of the play. She saw it as yuppies against Glam. This was the time, gentle reader when Guns n Roses dominated the charts (actually I did meet them a couple of times and managed to get Axl’s name wrong - but that’s another blog…) so there was some topical interest in it She railroaded me into playing Philostrate (a yuppie and therefore an anathema to me) by threatening to withhold my baby-sitting money until I complied with her evil demands.

My own dear bro played Oberon in a pair of scarlet tiger print spandex (and no, I haven’t missed out the word trousers - all rockers know that spandex are only ever referred to as spandex.) with beanbags down the front (well he was only 14) that I’d borrowed off a Glam. rocker I knew. Judith Welsh played Titania - (wonderful Judegirl #1) my later-to-be London partner in crime - the only girl who could a) party harder than me, b) scare Paul Dianos “Killers” without even speaking to them, and c) dance to the Sisters of Mercy without looking completely ridiculous. As opposed to the equally wonderful Judegirl #2, who actually could fulfil all those criteria as well except she scared the Magic House and Suede - sometimes at the same time and Judeboy www.onebadway.blogspot.com who’s personal best stands at two bottles of Pernod without either water or ill effect, doesn’t dance and scares everybody.

This was possibly the only play in history where the rehearsals went on for 6 months simply because everyone was having far too much fun to actually put the play on. We were (with the exception of my bro who was a precocious 14 year old) seventeen tops- we’d just discovered rock n roll, sex and drugs, and the Newcastle Mayfair, in that order, where all of the latter could be found in the third cubicle along of the ladies toilets on the ground floor, that being the only toilet in the building with a lock on the door.

For some people their sexual awakening is listening to Robert Plant, for other people its shagging Robert Plant - I mean, In My Time of Dying - move over Meg Ryan, I’ll have what he’s having. For me, it was Paul Mc Nestrey’s bottom. Sorry I mean Bottom with a capital B like wot Shakespeare writ it.

I do. Honestly.

There were three of them that hung out together - I’m not mentioning any other names cos I’ve already mentioned too many - all three were gorgeous, all three were cool - by which I mean they didn’t listen to U2 or Big Country, but…I think it was the black jeans that did it for me. Obviously they were utterly verboten at school but somehow he managed to get away not only with them but with not tucking his shirt in either… Black jeans, nice and wavy not too curly shoulder length hair and a white shirt do it for me every time - its the Jim Morrison syndrome. Black jeans on someone bending over a pool table is the female equivalent of why men like stockings and suspenders as far as framing the view goes. His brother, who was equally gorgeous - in fact there wasn’t a member of that family that wasn’t gorgeous, looked like an Irish Jesus (clear skin, blue eyes and a slightly nervous expression) but Paul looked like a cross between Angus Young (ACDC) and Jim Morrison and the slightly askew school tie just added to the glamour. In my not yet turned sixteen year old eyes he was …he was the coolest of the cool.

I knew this because - at the time - I was the coolest of the cool. Or I thought I was. Actually it wasn’t until I got to London and became the bitch girlfriend from hell of the Magic House’s guitar player (you had to be there - its hard keeping your cool when you want to turn people into wallpaper) that I actually graduated to being cool because a) you can’t be cool in a provincial town, b) no-one who tried as hard as I did then to be cool - ever is, even if I did wear mirrored sunglasses all the time (and lets not even mention the denim hot pants made from cut-off jeans a la daisy Duke with opaque black tights underneath) c) you can’t be really cool until you’ve mastered the art of drinking neat vodka (I still gagged a bit), never smiling ( I smiled at boys) and being mean to everyone no matter how famous and (and here’s the important bit) not caring about it later (at the time I did)

So it was obvious to me that we belonged together. Cool boy plus cool girl equals cool couple. That was the way the world worked. Besides which my fairy godmother thought so too. Because not only was he cool - he was nice as well. Genuinely nice. He spoke to people. He joked with people, he put his Walkman on the ears of people and introduced them to cool music. It was a fait accompli - it was meant to be. The laws of cool (and my godmother) decreed it so.

After six months of rehearsals, yearnings, blushings, nights out and eventually - because we couldn’t put it off any more sell out performances, on the last night of the show, at the extremely unsanctioned by teachers after show party at the Mayfair, I got my friend to ask him if he wanted to go out with me. I was supremely confident. I was turned down. He was madly in love with someone else - who had been going out with someone for the past three years (who my cousin then had a fling with) - and who later had a tempestuous relationship with my brother. Relationships never get more complicated than the sixth form.

This was my first ever failure. The first time I’d never got who I wanted. It was also the first time that I’d asked someone to ask someone if they liked me. It taught me an important lesson about men. They don’t tend to say yes to going steady unless you’ve got them in a headlock, knowledge which stood me in good stead eight years later when I met F ( who not only wore black jeans, had shoulder length hair and didn’t tuck his shirt in, but, looked better than a young Jim Morrison, played the guitar like a god, had a French accent that sounded like bitter chocolate and was/ is quite simply my (horrible phrase - but its late and I want to go to bed so I’m not going to think of a better one right now) soul mate) But, at the time I didn’t know that there was going to be a F. At the time I thought my life was over. That was it - I was obviously going to die an old maid.

Ah Paul Mc Nestry. (sigh) Paul McNestry. My only failure. Damn.

Cannabis has now been downgraded to a Class C drug. This puts it in the same class as some tranquillisers, anabolic steroids, aspirin, buttercup syrup and Preparation H. Why don’t they just make it legal and have done with it? In fact why don’t they legalise all drugs up to and including the big H. If nothing else that should stop Irving Welsh writing another book aimed at the thirtysomething, pseudo-intellectual middleclasses who think reading about a stereotyped view of working-class youth makes them hip, so one good thing would come out of it straight away.

Did you detect a note of sarcasm there? From Moi? I’m serious. Hang on a minute cos its difficult to type while you’re jacking up. There, that’s better. Now that you’ve had your prejudices reinforced you can read on, secure in the knowledge that anyone who’s for the legalisation of drugs is a drug user or would like to be. Sorry to bust your bubble - I don’t. That’s not to say I haven’t. Like a lot of other people, I’ve inhaled. I’ve also popped, swallowed, snorted and spent all night dancing to trance remixes of Pink Floyd - (truly, drugs can make you do some terrible things.) But now I don’t. Why did I try drugs? Why did you have your first glass of alcohol. “But it’s not the same” cry the moral majority “Drugs are illegal, alcohol’s legal, therefore it’s not a drug.” Bullshit,of course it is, both alter your perception. Both enhance a good time (and a bad one). Why did I try drugs? I wanted to see what they did so that I could make a decision on them based upon my own experience. Did I enjoy them? Oh yes, (apart from cocaine which I only tried once as I couldn’t see the point of putting the price of pair of shoes up my nose for the same effect as drinking three expressos very quickly.) I had a whale of time, laughed my ass off and had less ill effect than I had after drinking three glasses of wine. Was I an addict? No, if the opportunity came about to try them - I did - if it didn’t, then it didn’t and I didn’t think about them. Why did I stop? I’d tried them. Did I care that they were illegal and that being found with them in my possession could have landed me in jail. Stoned or straight - it never even crossed my mind.

The illegality of drugs doesn’t prevent anyone doing them. If you want to take drugs you will, if you don’t you won’t. Whether they’re legal or illegal makes no difference. Did prohibition work? Well alcohol’s legal in America so the answer has to be no. It put the revenue from alcohol into the hands of the criminal classes but it didn’t stop people getting drunk. Seeing any parallels here? (for all you people reading under the influence that’ll be the two straight silvery blue lines you can see leading to infinity - and not the lobster that’s dancing on top of your stereo.) I’m sorry I’m being flippant - it’ll be the effects of all that clean living,

The late, great and much lamented Bill Hicks had a monologue about drug use which suggested that if you were really anti-drugs you should throw out ninety percent of your record collection. He pointed out that the Beatles were so high on drugs that they let Ringo sing a couple of tunes and probably had to pull him off the ceiling with a long stick before they could record them. He has a point. I’m not sure if it excuses Pages’ 20 minute guitar solo in Dazed and Confused but it certainly explains it. Coleridge, Blake, Borroughs, Hemmingway, to name but a few - were, to paraphrase Hicks - real fucking high (on their own particular proclivity.) Does this mean that everyone who takes drugs will become a brilliant musician or writer. Of course not - its just pointing out that not every drug-user is living in a squat on the wrong side of town and using drugs to escape from an empty life. Most are simply normal human beings who function quite normally in society and who prefer stimulants other than the ones that are legally available. These people hold down jobs, they pay their taxes and would no more consider themselves or be considered drug addicts than someone who enjoys a drink now and then would consider themselves an alcoholic. I’m not suggesting that any of the above are good for you - just that we shouldn’t be so hypocritical in our definition of good and bad drugs.

But drugs are bad. Drugs ruin peoples lives. You start off with a spliff and then you end up with a needle stuck in your arm dying in some cheap motel ( with the broken neon sign blinking on and off and the only sound the rain hitting the streets - let’s really cater to the cliches). If you take drugs you lose your job, your house, your car and your family (hey- drugs are getting more appealing by the minute) and you start talking with a heavy Scottish accent. We must protect our families, we must keep our society clean and free from all pernicious influences because…all together now…drugs are bad. I’m all for it. Let’s make society a stimulant free zone. Lets shut down and board up every single pub and off-license in the land. Let impound all the cars that come back from the continent loaded with booze. Lets stop celebrating events with champagne, drowning our sorrows and taking a shot of Dutch courage. Lets stop doling out antidepressants and beta blockers like they’re sweets and instead tell people to stand on their own two feet and get on with (and over) it.

Or, we can hold our hands up and say honestly - look, the drug laws as they stand don’t work. We can go into shop and legally buy a bottle of spirit which will, if we drink it to excess, change our mental state to the point where we will become either euphoric or violent and which has the potential to kill us or others but we can’t legally buy a pill that has the same effect. We worry about our children and the dealers on the street corner but we don’t worry about the liquor stores on every street corner. We can go to the doctors and tell them we don’t feel so good and they’ll rip off a prescription for Prozac or Seroxat, both of which are proven to cause psychosis in some cases and people swallow them without a seconds hesitation secure in the knowledge that because they’re legal, they’re somehow safe.

Those who chunter about the re-catergorising of cannabis are paranoid about the rise of cannabis psychosis. “It’ll be reefer madness”, they cry as they down their pints. Definitely a case of kettle calls pot black. Yes there are cases of cannabis psychosis - yes it isn’t pretty. Neither is cirrhosis, hepatitis, diabetes, emphysema, lung cancer or HIV. You can get these diseases from taking drugs - but y’know what? You can get them from other things too. So - lets make homosexuality illegal because you can get HIV and AIDS from that, lets impose prison sentences on the overweight because they obviously eat too much sugar, lets ban smoking - oh sorry we’ve already done that, lets outlaw alcohol. Lets (and this will really screw up most of our trendy town centres) - outlaw coffee because… if you’ve ever sat in cafe talking complete crap after one latte too many…then…whey hey - welcome to the world of the amphetamine

For every case of cannabis psychosis there are a lot more people who will have a spliff instead of a whisky to unwind, an E or a line of coke instead of a few vodka’s on a night out or a drop a tab in the company of similar like minded people once in a while and these people will have no ill effects other than perhaps a mild depression and a chewed up lip the morning after.

Now I know that I’m writing from the point of view of “recreational” drug use and it may seem like I’m ignoring the fact that there are areas in which addiction and particularly heroin addiction is a very real problem. I’m not disputing that heroin is addictive. I’m not disputing that a burned out spoon and a used syringe is not a pretty thing to find in your back yard. I’ve found them on my stair and if I had kids I wouldn’t want my kids to be playing with them. I wouldn’t want my kids to play with cat shit either because there’s a chance they’ll get toxoplasmosis, but since I have a litter tray in my house then there’s a high risk that when I’m not watching they’ll get their sticky little fingers into the tray- after all it looks vaguely like a sandpit and its got its own little spade. So you know what - we need to ban cats too.

I still think that we should legalise all drugs. Drugs don’t cause poverty - bad governmental policies, lack of education (aka bad governmental policies) the gradual erosion of skilled workers (aka bad governmental policies), the formation of sink estates (aka bad governmental policies), a welfare state that pays the bare minimum to survive but not enough to engender self respect (aka bad governmental policies) shall I go on…? Maybe - radical thought here - just maybe, if drugs were legal and were available in the same way that alcohol was then we would not only remove their mystic but their legalisation and therefore standardisation would mean that there would be less deaths through accidental overdose. Most people who take heroin know to the nth degree how much constitutes a safe dosage and in itself though addictive the actual usage of heroin does not in itself cause social deviation (after all it was once known as the soldiers disease what screws them up is the varying degree of purity of the drug sold at street level. From the increased government revenue (because of course the government would tax drugs at least at the same rate that it taxes alcohol) then maybe some of the social problems that cause addiction and a need to escape from society could be addressed. Maybe not - but since the current laws are obviously failing then perhaps its worth a try.

MTV has just pissed me off - no they weren’t playing the Darkness again -and by the way am I getting old? are they a joke band? - or did A&R’s in their wisdom decide to splice all the high notes from Iron Maiden and Saxon outtakes, cobble together an outfit out of the bits Roger Daltrey circa Woodstock and Freddie Mercury circa anytime in the nineteen seventies had left in wardrobe and throw it on some unsuspecting guy who makes Lemmy look good - (yeah I’m probably old - I don’t object to it being loud - I just object to it being bad.) Touching yooouhoo - I don’t think so, its one thing to have dirty rock stars, its another thing for them to look seedy. Please someone - take the lead singer and persuade him to use some of his advance to buy a tub of sensations (the remainder of the last jar looked like he used firegold). Trouble is that I have a soft spot for Ozzy ( ever since I realised that probably the only song I can sing in tune is “Bark at the Moon”) so when I’m flicking through the channels I will stop if I turn on to the Osbornes.

The reason for the rhetoric tonight though wasn’t the dubious music MTV plays (oh yes I will defend the judges on pop idol - but it doesn’t mean I like the current state of the music industry) it was an advert.

Cue grainy black and white film of designer downtown…cut to shot of three girls wandering down street like their touting for trade…

“This is Anna” splashed across extreme close up of prettiest of the three (ruffled blonde hair, big eyes, micro mini, cropped top, wonderbra)

Cut to shot of dodgy looking tattoo parlour and girls nervously giggling at window.

“She’s 17″ Well hadn’t we already guessed that - just old enough for it to be legal to show her looking like a penthouse pet but not so old that you’d suspect she might not be a virgin.

“She dares” Anna goes into tattoo parlour. Friends giggle nervously outside. Close-up of tattoo designs inside.

Rough, ugly looking, pierced everywhere shop owner (the usual stereotype) sees them looking in and pulls curtain so that Anna can no longer be seen. Shock horror - what is the nasty man going to do to poor Anna who dares.

Anna comes out with tattoo on shoulder - neat little rose of course not fucking big swastika…

“she doesn’t smoke.”

Anna giggles, pouts and peels off tattoo - ( what a relief…it was a temporary tattoo, I was worried there for a moment)

OK an anti-smoking advert - again - which was the straw that relit the Camel. Cos you know what - I smoke. I don’t mind being relegated to the worst seat in a restaurant, to the outside of a building or in an overcrowded carriage on a train. I don’t smoke next to children even if their parents are smokers, I don’t smoke in non-smoking areas, I don’t smoke in no-smokers houses unless they give their express permission and even then I tend to smoke outside, I don’t smoke if I’m surrounded by non-smokers - I don’t even smoke next to people at a fucking bus-stop if they aren’t smoking. I smoke where we smokers are now permitted to smoke - mainly my own home or in a strong breeze ten miles away from anyone else.

I know the health risks associated with smoking. Yet I still choose to smoke. Its called free will. I have no problem with government health warnings on my cigarettes telling me that I’m shortening my life. In fact I’m grateful for their concern, it’s nice to see the 80% tax I’m paying on a packet of cigarettes is going to such a noble cause as opposed to being spent on invading oil rich third world countries so that we can brown nose our American buddies.

All I would like is some parity. I’m offended by the drunken morons who scream outside my window at closing time, I’m offended by the number of violent crimes that are caused by alcohol, I’m concerned about the health problems associated with even moderate drinking (which by the way is a damn sight lower than you think) but are we having post pubescent (just) sex goddesses telling us that it’s not cool to drink because you’ll turn into a brainless aggressive moron? does a bottle of tequila carry a health warning slashed across its label? They should - but I haven’t seen those ad’s (although I’ll give the Scottish Health service their due and say that they do have a few toe curlingly embarrassing ones aimed at the under 16’s)

Because alcohol is associated with the following health risks;

“…mouth, pharyngeal and oesophageal cancers (this risk being greatly increased if combined with smoking). Furthermore, alcohol probably increases the risk of colorectal and breast cancer, high blood pressure; gastrointestinal complications, such as gastritis, ulcers, and liver disease; and a depletion of certain vitamins and minerals are all caused by alcohol consumption. Of course, excessive alcohol can also have detrimental social and psychological consequences…”

Yes I know its responsible for detrimental social and psychological consequences - I hear the soap opera outside my window at about 12.30 every night.

I haven’t seen those ads. Or the ones about junk food? Is the government cutting back on the number of fast food places that litter ( literally) out high streets, does a big Mac have a health warning? Does all our food have absolutely everything it contains labelled and if it does is there an easily accessible booklet telling us what the e-numbers and scientific names actually mean along with some statistics letting us know their long term effects. Do overweight people have to bear the slings and arrows of the self-righteous telling them that they’re slowly killing themselves. They should since obesity is responsible for over 30,000 deaths per year.

“Obesity is the most important dietary factor in chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Obesity is second only to smoking as a cause of cancer. People who are overweight or obese are more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, arthritis, high blood pressure and some types of cancer. Women are more likely to have complications during and after pregnancy. World Health Organisation has predicted that one of the consequences of the global epidemic of obesity will be 300 million people with Type 2 diabetes by 2025.”

I could go on. I really could, do you want to know about the long term effects of HRT, about the free oestrogen’s that are contained in the plastic our foods wrapped in - the sort that are associated with an increase in endometriosis in women, the danger of idiots who’ve passed their driving test but aren’t safe on the roads, the danger from the leader we vote into our country every four or so years - yeah you remember him - the guy with the plucked eyebrows and the lavender marriage, the one that’s sentencing people to a death right now that’s way quicker than smoking 20 cigarettes a day. I could go on - the list is endless…but just thinking about it has got me so pissed off I’m going to lie down, listen to Quadrophenia and commit suicide the Kurt Vonnegut way