Having renovated a cottage in Shropshire before moving to frome that belonged to my girlfriend of the time we rented at first in frome going from flat to house. Finally we took the plunge and bought a house in a private terrace. I'd developed my hbreif heroin habit after meeting a freind from leeds, ron tree the singer from Hawklords. I had been able to get away with dabbling on holidays in leeds but now I suddenly was introduced to the traveller site and having lived as a traveller in my twenties I found familiarity where the rest of the town were mainly middle class, hippy or both. A curious side detail is that bar the travellers who were just passing through there were only a dozen or so heroin addicts in frome. Seven miles down the road is Radstock. An ex mining town. I believe there last pit closed in 1974 and the town was full of junkies. Something I guess in the region of a thousand heroin addicts in a town roughly the sama size as frome. There's a PHD in that for someone. It reminded me of the South Yorkshire ex pit towns like askern and connisburgh that are similarly awash with drugs. In times of desperation the young junkies would buy vast bottles of a codeine linctus they called winchesters. This was widely prescribed to ex miners who all had damaged chests from the coal dust. Ex miners were a generation of opiate addicts from the codeine they were prescribed so perhaps it was no surprise heroin took the next generation so easily. It was as much a familiarity with the social class of the Radstock junkies that drew me in. The sons of ex miners were much the same be they from yorkshire, wales or somerset. While my girlfriend was establishing an awfully nice social circuit I was nipping off over the hill and in to the arms of morphia.
As happens to all heroin dabblers there comes a morning when you wake up feeling poorly and you know its got you. I saw my GP who passed me on to the drug services where I was prescribed methadone reduction. I hid these bottles of green syrup on the top of the kitchen cabinets. My girlfriend found them and that was the beginning of the end for us. Despite her dalliances with party drugs she was of the traditional school of thought regarding heroin. You can't shake it off that easily. The average habit statistically is 12 years.
So we split up, sold the house which was mainly hers anyway and I moved in to my van and workshop. This wasn't the first time I'd lived in a workshop and it was here I did my big rattle. Stripped of all endorphins you have the eyes of a baby. Though I couldn't sleep for three weeks, the weight of a sheet hurt my legs, I climbed the walls, all my sins from childhood to adulthood returned to haunt me each night. Fortunately the workshop faced out on to the fields and each day I would build myself up to walking the dog. After a month you are no longer in pain but severe depression lasts for a year, the main reason for relapse.
From here I moved in to a freinds caravan. There were three on the site but mine was a bit special. The guy who owned it had built an extension with carpeted floor, kitchen unit and sink with mains water drawn through buried pipes. A furthered extension had a shower. The caravan itself i rarely used. Tex, my Siberian husky cross German shepherd took this for Hispanic. He was a big dog. A wood burner kept the place warm and so long as you kept well stocked with forewood it was as warm as any house. Mains electric meant my hifi and tv kept m entertained.
It was whilst living here I met my current girlfriend and from then on we stayed at each others. She still has her flat and I know rent a small stone cottage. It was bit of state when I moved in but I redecorated in the same colour so as not to cause a fuss and am currently building new windows and hope to go on to build a new door. I'm just copying the originals though building regs mean double glazing. Given our main heat is an open fire this makes sense.
I also have my sprinter, a mercededes I insulated, carpeted the walls, tongue and grooved the ceiling, cut a window in the side and cut a sky light. A run of storrage shelves runs down the top inner wall with under lighting for the units in ash underneath which house a two ring gas cooker. I left the bed and use folding mattresses when we go away in it so I can still use it for work. They are known as stealth campers. The untrained eye sees a van but I can live in there quite happily. Summer sees us taking to the road, usually the coast and free camping. So much more discreet than most of my New Age traveller freinds. I visited some freinds down moorlands site near Glastonbury. The welcome from my freinds warmed the heart but the hostility of a group of Rottweiler traveller girls, asking what I was doing on site, who was I going to see. I've been doing that shit since before they were born. I was at Stonehenge festival 1981, knocked off school to go and have spent long stretches of time living in vans and caravans so when these new New Age travellers come on all hostile it pisses me off. I also know most of the older faces so its no sweat. But they haven't a clue. I may live in a house now but I've spent more nights out than most of them.
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