Why I love life, London and Sour Diesel

Hello and thank you for taking the time to read my first attempt at blogging. I’ve been meaning to write one for a while now but just haven’t got round to it for some reason. It took a week off in London to inspire me to get busy with it.  

For the past 2 months I've been looking after a very sweet 89 year old man in Portsmouth after having left my job as a sales rep for P&G (aka Evil Empire) towards the end of last year. A job which, as a fully paid up member of the anti-establishment, I despised! Anyone who knew anything about me knew that I should be working in sales as much as the Queen should be selling crack to children outside church. The only perk of the job was my company car. And while I admit I loved that car like it was my own, she wasn't worth selling my soul for. 

I wanted to do something that would be rewarding both financially and spiritually so not only could I feel good about what I was doing but pay off my debt at the same time. Having had experience working with a few disabled people as a personal trainer, I decided care work might be just the job, even if only for the short-term. So far it's paying off and even though I now live the life of a pensioner, I go to bed at night feeling good for a change. Plus while everyone else I know is having what little enthusiasm they managed to muster up for the day squeezed out of them either on over-crowded, over-priced, unreliable public transport or from sitting in traffic, I'm usually shooting the breeze with the old boy over a cup of Rooibos tea. So there are definitely some advantages to the job and there’s something about living with someone who's nearing the end of their life which teaches you the importance of making the most of yours.  

Anyway, I've just returned after a week off in my old home town, London. After a month of seclusion and abstinence from my usual vices (there aren’t that many), I was determined to make the most of it and with the help of my old friend Mary Jane, I feel like I succeeded admirably.

Now let me make something clear from the start. I smoke weed. I like smoking weed. Does that make me a stoner? I don’t know, does having the occasional glass of wine make you an alcoholic? Unfortunately there are still a lot of ignorant people out there who believe everything the government spoon-feeds them and who, all too often, are very quick to judge you. These are usually the same types of people who brag about how many beers or bottles of wine they drank on the weekend – HYPOCRITS! The use of marijuana dates back to the Bronze Age. That’s around 3000 years before Christ. I think it’s safe to say it’s been a part of human culture for a very long time and was only made illegal recently for numerous reasons, none of them anything to do with your health! How can you make nature illegal? It’s the most bizarre thing!

Anyway, back to my story. On my first night in London I managed to get hold of something called Sour Diesel - a strange-sounding strain of Mary Jane I've never heard of but nevertheless was eager to try. Now there are many different varieties of pot smokers. One of them is the "enhancement smoker". That's me. Life is great, don’t get me wrong but it's even better on weed. So, I decided that the best place to experience the effects of my new-found friend was a museum. So, armed with a pack of sour cream Lays, wine gums and a cup of hot chocolate, Mary Jane and I headed to the British Museum. After I set fire to her outside and inhaled that sweet sweet Cheeba, Mary Jane and I entered the building.

After navigating through some people in the entrance hall, I found myself standing in front of the Rosetta Stone. I’m not sure exactly how long I stood there for but I remember a feeling of complete and utter awe. I tend to analyse some things in a lot of depth and from as many different perspectives as possible. Here was a stone dating back to 196BC with so much history surrounding it and value placed on it. Yet, when you break it down, it was just a rock, a bunch of atoms vibrating together really fast in order to give the impression of being solid, just like all matter which makes up our world, including us. Almost everything we see is an illusion! In essence when we look at those statues, relics and artefacts, we’re not just looking at some random object but rather a piece of ourselves.

The French philosopher Alain once wrote “L’histoire est un grand présent, et pas seulement un passé”. Which means history is a grand view of the present, and not simply something in the past.

We need to learn our history to understand who we are, and to speculate on where we are going.

The rest of my visit was spent in much the same frame of mind. Standing in front of every artefact, every relic in that museum, I was filled with absolute wonder, amazement and gratitude.

After 3 hours, I felt it was time to move on, despite not having seen everything. A different environment was called for and so I hopped on the tube and went to the Natural History museum. I love nature so this was fascinating for me! Apart from standing next to the bones of a Blue Whale, what really stood out for me was the Darwin Centre’s Zoology spirit building. Apparently there are 27 kilometres of shelves and 22 million specimens, one of them being a giant squid and other specimens collected by Darwin. All that was going through my mind was what an amazing planet we live on!

Before eventually dragging myself out of the museum, I bought three books from the shop. It took me less than a minute to choose them since they happened to be on the first book stand I came across. I mention this because, once I started to read them, it really struck me how these particular books stuck out on that table and how relevant they were to my experience that day. The books are called How Pleasure Works (why we like what we like) by Paul Bloom, Pandora’s Seed (why the hunter-gatherer holds the key to our survival) by Spencer Wells and Collapse (how societies choose to fail and survive) by Jared Diamond.     

The following day I decided to go to the Aquarium but not before stopping at the awesome food market at Southbank for a polystyrene cup of mulled cider. On the way to the Aquarium I had another puff or two on the happy stick and went inside. In all of nature, what I love most is the sea and anything to do with it! I was glued to the glass of the tank with the sharks, turtles and manta rays for ages! Afterwards I went back to the food market to cure my munchies. Again, I succeeded admirably! The walk in between the Aquarium and Southbank is just spectacular at night. On one side there were the houses of parliament lit up in bright orange, Embankment opposite and the London Eye on the other. I admit I had a bit of a moment there in the freezing cold that afternoon as the sun went down between the steeples of parliament.

Saturday was spent with friends. The plan was to get high and go to the planetarium. Unfortunately it didn’t work out because I didn’t realise Greenwich was so hard to get to and we missed our show. Still, I had a great time with my friends! The planetarium will be for another day.

On Monday after meeting a friend for coffee to discuss something very exciting, I got stoned again and went to the V&A museum, which showcases art and design from all over the world from Japanese fighting suits to Greek sculptures. The place closed earlier than I expected so I didn’t get to see much. I got back onto the tube and picked a random station to get out at (Westminster) walked up a street and happened upon the Laureus Sports Awards event. Amazingly there was hardly anyone watching so I decided to go see who was there. I saw Jon Smit, Sir Steven Redgrave, Clive Owen, Martina Navratilova, Novak Djokovic, Alex Ferguson, Lennox Lewis, Bear Grills, Bar Rafaeli (J), Schalk Burger to name but a few! There were so many celebrities and I was right at the front of the barriers. It was quite surreal.

Sometimes we have to leave a place in order to appreciate it. When I came to London 7 years ago, I only truly appreciated South Africa after I had left. That’s because I had something else to compare it to. The same happened to me when I left London. This week I had an education in ancient and recent history (for FREE!), stood in front of a tree that was so old it had turned into stone, saw a fully-grown shark up close without getting wet, got high without getting arrested, satisfied my munchies with food from all over the world and rubbed shoulders with celebrities (kinda).

These are the reasons why I love life, London and Sour Diesel.