Peter - Chapter six

Peter - Chapter six
Lipton pulled up behind Peters van and saw its driver through the opened rear doors rummaging through a stack of tat, tools and bedding. With a nod Peter invited Lipton and his dogs in to his vehicle where they packed a rucksack with various kit to take up the first hill fort that loomed above them. Cloud meant dark would fall early, blue, grey and bruised, caught in swift high winds that opened briefly revealing the three quarter moon before hiding its illumination. Rain was in the air. It would be a dirty night.
The first of the three hill forts is smaller than its siblings. Covered in thick overgrowth of brambles, hawthorn and nearer the top, gorse. The odd sycamore, no more than thirty or fourty years old are the only trees, large enough to provide coverage but suggesting at some time, during Peter and Liptons childhood, the hill had been bald. Grazed by sheep even. Though few visible workings revealed its past purpose the interest in our nations history had developed greatly since the Second World War, picking up an obsessive momentum by the sixties. Chunks of land that farmers at one time worked clean across now found themselves cordoned off. Burial mounds isolated and barbed wired off. Major hill forts like the two further on were maintained. The final one, Bury Ditches, was developed into a tourist attraction. No cafe or souvenir shops but a car park. Boards set up by the National Trust giving rudimentary details for the curious weekend historian. This first was pretty much unknown as being a hill fort. Only academics or serious amateurs knew it was more than an odd shaped hill. The odd mystic may brave the vicious thorns that protected it but people of that ilk, the Peters and Liptons of the world, active shamanic witches, Druids, pagans, made little use of its power. As both men knew most of these types were hopeful and keen pretenders. Stretching of their belief in the manner of Christian faith. There can't be more than thirty in the whole country who have a clue how to use the mystical experience, even if they were fortunate enough to have one. Their names of this elite but disparate group were mostly known to the two shamans, some of them were personal freinds.
As they made their way up the hill, battling through brambles, Peter pulled an air seal plastic bag from his pocket. Offering Lipton two tabs of 1p-LSD. Britains legal lysergamide. Lipton frowned. Should he take them? What was Peter hoping to summon up?
"What's the crack, Peter?. Is this trip for my benefit?"
"I've been struggling, Lipton. Since we took on Abel my drug use has spiralled back from the recreational to the pursuit of oblivion. If I don't keep out of Stroud I'm going to be back on the gear full time again. I havnt got another rattle in me. Another habit and I really don't think I have the strength to get clean headed again. I'm not ready for that. When I reach seventy or eighty I'll have to pack in these missions, maybe then I'll settle down to a smooth heroin habit to take me on to the grave. My body at least. I don't reckon Skree will even feel it if the flesh goes. LSD once in a while, despite its magical properties, can steer a man clear of the gear. See it for what it is. A trap. A pipe and slippers existence"
"It's the way most go, Pete. My old lady spent her last five years held together with morphine. The home she was in was full of old OAP national health junkies. It's the future for most of us."
"What about yourself? Have you been hitting the skag much?"
"To be honest I've been doing nothing but. Archer said she won't come near me whilst I'm on the gear. It doesn't bother me when I'm out in the countryside. I don't even mind the rattle. Soon as I'm in the town the pull of the brown just takes me over. I don't want to be in touch with my emotions whilst among the crowds. I'd rather be numbed to it all. Sail above it."
" I know where you're coming from, this night ought to kick that shit clean out of your system." nodded Peter. Most people he knew were pretty thick. Most just saw a grey world. Separating himself off with opiates, fuck it, any drug beat talking to the walking dead.
" You mention, Skree. What happened with you?"
" You know, you made arch angel too, didn't you?"
"Jesse reckoned I would but I felt nothing much. I know a part of me slipped off, but I can't say I've felt him looking out for me."
Peter knew he'd hit on it. Lipton would never take his own life through depression. They were both warriors. In many of the street fights they'd had it had been Lipton who knocked out the most. Peter was far braver when it came to engaging with the other worldly. He'd dive straight into other dimensions, take diverse and powerful psychedelics, sacred shamanic ayuashkan recipes of a power that would blow the normal untrained mind. On several occasions when one had needed to enter darker dimensions to overcome a problem, where sanity could be lost, demons find purchase on the soul, it was Peter who was the stronger of the two. Peter who risked soul and mind. But come down to fighting the straight men, battling the shaven, polished shoes, freshly showered beer monsters. When it came to climbing the highest radio towers, that final structure atop londons Shard whilst it was still under construction, it was Lipton, not Peter, or Skree as he had been known prior to the archangel seperation who took the final climb to the very peak and took the photos that appeared in the national press as urban exploration exploded. When battling the elements, when weather could have taken their lives. Out at sea in small water craft. Atop mountains in bivvies, building shelters from the greenery available. Navigation across moorland, through deep woodland, without map or compass, it was Lipton whose strength got them through. There's no way he'd take his life having battled to keep hold of it so many times. No. What he'd been doing when Peter found him in those woods aside that layby. What his plan was when he put his head into that noose and stepped from that log, it wasn't to kill himself. Though he surely was betting the farm on it. He was testing his alter ego. He was seeing if his archangel would intervene. See if the arch Lipton would save his life or not.
"You thick twat!"
"The fuck! Why am I a thick twat?"
"There, you're looking all miserable. Like my stepping in prevented your little trial. As though I'd spoiled your private party. How the fuck do you think I just happened to be driving past that layby at that precise moment. What chances are there of me turning up in the nick of time like batman? Eh? He fucking steered me. He must have. I can't recall any real motive I had to be passing then. Looking back my mind was on auto pilot. Do you expect he'd land on white wings and unhook you? Fucks sake Lipton, don't you know him?"
Lipton looked confused. Like he'd been the butt of some joke.
" I don't know him, to be honest. I expected it would be something that would happen to me, you know, like when we became shamanised. I thought it would be intuitive, how to use it."
It had been far more ephemeral than being shaman for Peter. He chose to tell Lipton how much he knew, what he'd learned so far.
Peter looked at the dogs, playing together, chasing rabbits and squirrels through the undergrowth.
"Do you have a name for him?"
"Well, no, it's me isn't it?" Lipton asked. "Is that why you've reverted to your birth name."
"It seemed the only logical thing to do. At first I thought we'd just gravitate to another state of being. I wasn't with you when Jesse delivered on his promise. I'd left you and driven up north. I did a trip in woodland where I used to walk as a child. My consiousness joined Gaia and all sense of self left me for a while. I made the bridge using lysergics and since then it's how I connect. Skree roams. The essence can be focused or spread out over the whole of the country, across the planet I imagine. I havnt tested out the possibilities fully yet but I know, when I link on through lysergamides, mushrooms even, once I'm one with Skree I can consolidate to a focal point. Anywhere, in the sky, below the sea or lakes, beneath the earth even. When I'm focused, self is more evident. I'm perceptive from a a central spark of consiousness just as we all are from birth though far more aware, able to take in any matter or spirit around. Once I expand, so to speak. If I let go of my hold on focus each particle of me floats out. I can be covering a county, but as it becomes larger any sense of self becomes irrelevant. It isn't that I am no more because I am able to consider, I retain volition, I think therefore I am, but once out of body the further the spread, the lesser the focal self. Once distributed over large enough a space I can forget altogether that I am a human. Entering the archangel can be traumatic as can re entry. By using my old name for the part of me seperated off I am able to call him back, I can summon up the state. I'm unable to refer to Skree most of the time as the state is of no use in the everyday. A catatonic body is vulnerable. Any agent of the grey could take me whilst I am archangel. A copper finding me like this, my body empty of awareness, he'd at least lock me up. Pass me over to the mental health team, or going on past experience, take the opportunity to kill me. I'm learning, just like you. It's not going to be easy. At that site party in Cornwall they found my body out on the main road, naked. I came to in a caravan, shivering with cold. It was fucking disturbing. I had to drink and take Valium to get over the sheer weirdness of it all. I'm getting more used to it now, but to be honest I've only reconnected on a small number of occasions. Each time can be quite traumatic. We need to learn together. It's almost too much. Given a choice I doubt many would explore its possibility, but then most want jobs, houses and TVs. Most pursue numbness of being. This is the polar opposite."
For ten minutes they continued battleing their way to the hill forts summit as Lipton assimilated what Peter had just told him. It did seem unlikely that Peter could just drive past as he tried to hang himself. It could only be his archangel steering him. As the thought settled it returned to him. Notpil, he'd call him, had been looking on. Somewhere stretched out above. Like an owl looking down on the unaware mouse it had seen. He'd pulled peter toward his physical body. His test had worked. Peter could be a soft cunt at times but he'd always been a step ahead on the mystical shite.
As darkness fell so did rain. Heavy and thick and windswept, soaking the urban shamans clothes and stinging their cheek skin to ruddy life.
Sheltering in a cave like hollow to the forts side they found bracken and broke dry wood, gathered silver birch bark. The fire they lit first to cast light for the building structure ahead. It fought to stay alive against the falling rain at first but once burning strongly provided an umbrella of heat that evapourated most raindrops before falling and over came the bolder blobs of h2o. Two stout poles of nearby sycamores made easy meat for Peters wood skills and formed a pair of spiked outriggers, driven into the damp earth. Across this, green pine branches as thick as a mans finger were spread. Bracken woven through this and layers of further bracken formed shingles. Together with the natural incline and their bush craft the shamans had rigged a shelter, suitable for a night at least.
Laying down a tarpaulin groundsheet and there unrolled sleeping bags the dogs soon settled and the five animals sat together, safe from the rain watching the flames. Cooking was out of the question but a four pack of strong lagers and pouches of rolling baccy completed a temporary home of sorts. As cosy as any man could make.
"Stay out here the night and make for Bury Ditches tomorrow, eh" Lipton enthused, now in his element of greenery, woodsmoke and beer.
"There's another hill fort before that. Less well known. Only once saw a man up there. Performing some pagan ritual by the look of it. It's a tricky one to get to the top of but the best of the three to my mind. The three are in line. I f you look out you can see it." And Peter pointed through the dark rainy night. No major towns in the area provided any light pollution to help the eye but they could make out a singular horizon. The black of the land seperated by a line to the dark grey and rain above. The hill fort stood some seven miles away. Taller than the one they now occupied.
"Sound stuff. I'll join you in the acid now if you're still offering, like?" Lipton cheerily asked.
"Fuck yes! About time we got you started working that archangel of yours. Leave him be and he'll slip off, join the global singular consciousness."
"I thought he was me, part of me, any road."
"He is you, but as far as I can make out, with Skree anyway, his ecstasy in the mystical overcomes him and he loses any sense of self. He just relaxes and becomes one with the earth. I reckon that's what happens when we die. I think reaching archangel status might just be the premature slipping off of the soul. Left unattended they just go the way of all souls and like the matter that makes up your body, decays back in to the earth and grows back as something else. Energy never dies. When you finally join the compost I don't think you know a thing about it. Individuality has gone by then, just the same with the mind. But if we work on keeping them focused. Link up periodically to become archangels, they stick around as a focused individual as long as we do. Untended, well Skree does this anyway, they just blend with the one consciousness."
"Sounds like God to me," Lipton quipped.
Though active shamans and the veterans of many first hand religious experiences, both held a deep disdain for the 'religious' who followed a set practice despite no evidence.
" I reckon you're more right than you know. This isn't supernatural, mind. Just because only two dozen of us in these isles understand what the mystical experience is for, well, how to use it anyway, it doesn't make it anymore than a science few understand. Same can be said of quantum mechanics. All technologies look like magic to primitive man. If he needs a name and a metaphor, then why not God?"
" There's more to all this than we will ever know. If we could have been so wrong before Darwin and Galileo, it stands to reason we are equally deluded now. To suggest science is much further on than it was in Newtons day is to take a very homocentric view of time. In the history of earth, a thousand years is a second, less, incomparably less. We are truly honoured to have this gift."
"Humbled to fuck. Just crack the fucking LSD, you cunt. And pass us a beer while you're up."
Peter smiled at Liptons improved spirits. A moody Lipton could put a right damper on a mission.

They sat watching the patterns in the fire, faces forming, sprites and passing demons dissolved in to earthly animals. Dead freinds would flicker making brief contact in the ever changing mesmeric tongues of fire. Beating out quiet rhythms with sticks they formed aural patterns as both shamans sang soothing words of no language, just shamanic spirit guidance, keeping the darker beasts of the night at bay. So many nights they had spent in shamanic ritual no planning or preparation was needed for the two, both long standing and experienced shamans. The dogs now slept in a steaming heap, tired out from the days adventures. The lysregics began to take hold as their mesmeric chants, learned over thousands such nights the two had spent together since discovering the access portals to other dimensions. The rains ceaseless drumming on the improvised shelters' bracken roof helped to build complex sub rhythms in to the earthly shamanic symphony.

I could sense my drumming, my chants and calls, my physical self, somewhere south, across the hills. I'd settled into being and soaked across the matter of the Shropshire hills around church stretton. Notpil joined me as I slipped through rocks and underground springs. The shifting tectonic plates jostled for position as I focused on the twenty first century. Once in Gaia the drift in consiousness from individuation into the particles of matter is not like man drifts into sleep. It is a higher consiousness though less focused. More accurate but less personal. I am the bedrock and soil, I am the damp of the top soil and recall the Brocken down plants and their lives, the lives of each and every insect that forms the soil, the journey from stardust at molecular level to land. My back stretched across the hills, moist with damp short grass, chewed down by sheep who walked across the fields and valleys of my shoulders. Rock clusters where hikers stopped to open flasks and draw out binoculars to look across the land I had become one with. Winds high above these hills were turbulence and waves that were my thoughts and life, so abundant in every pocket of air was my life too. Cloud and water vapour, moisture was my blood. To Notpil I shared and we heard south of us, our physical selves, the meat mass we had arisen from on becoming archangels. They were calling us. Shifting down, undulating along the turbulence, cross cloud and air, we travelled. Time, that most human of constructs, is hard to grasp from within. Their moment became ours and we looked down at the fragile forms below. A stream of heat rose to the sky, dispersing and cooling but instantly detectable as a tickle and blackening of carbon particles, freed from the branches my Peter and Lipton burned. Their shelter glowed out green with life as the five animals huddled under, protected from the rain. Dook, Elbow and Ragland, the three dogs slept. Their dreamscapes of hunting down rabbits and squirrels, swimming in rivers, flowed like streams from their dog minds into our awareness. The two of us, our material selves, calling out in ritual song and chant, drumming and vision focused on their fire. As their awareness of discomforts, their damp clothing and wet boots, their aching limbs and minor physical impairments slipped away and their consiousness of body disappeared through their focus on their rhythms. Linking down we entered. Two archangels sat high up a Shropshire hill fort, starring into flame. The lives of Iron Age villagers still lingered as time slipped away and returned to our perspective. Non linear. As a wave travels down the coastal sea, travelling miles, flowing through the molecules that make up the water, so the particles of matter on the hill felt the waves of time that shape them through the years. Particles forming up in to seeds and trees, living and dieing down and rotting back down in to soil. And animals, people, lives from dust to dust. Each and everyone's story, together, as one. All was present. The archangels were at peace.

Keeping a fire going in the rain requires experience and a supply of dry wood. Throwing more logs on to ensure the blaze was big enough and strong enough to hold off the pouring rain. Assembling a decent supply to last the night without forageing in the dark wet night. As the two Mystics entered the transcendent state the visions in the fire began to alter. From the flickering mind tricks that suggest faces of freinds we are all subject to, the Mystics willed the fleeting suggestions to coalesce. So fast is the patterning of fire most glimpse but a wisp of clarity formed so briefly the visions are discarded as illusion. The skilled shaman in the mystical state can slow time to bring the scene to correct speed and take in the entire occurance, not just a clipped snap shot gathered from its midst.

As little more than ideas, essences of dead freinds of the Mystics trudged aimlessly through the fields below. Martin saw first. Near the summit of the hill fort he saw the light of a fire. Other ghosts, Turps and Richard trudged nearby, unaware of their surroundings. Martin had always been sharp and was swift to draw the connections. All three had been close freinds of Skree/Peter. All had died from heroin overdoses. The archangels had summoned them tonight to send a message to the two flesh and bone shamans. To bring to a close any drug dependence. The light on the hill drew Martin towards the warmth of fire and old freinds on this dirtiest of nights.

Amongst the flashing blades of flame Peter saw Martins smiling face looking back at him. Through the snaps and crackles he could make out words. He glanced at Lipton who too appeared focused on the fire ghost. The leaping shadows the flames cast back in to their shelter and against the dome of rain that light picked out of the darkness. And sat across the fire was Martin, his long term freind. At age eight Martin had been living in the Bahamas. Born in London till his father took a job at a franchise of the casino he worked for and took the family from grey wet England to a sun drenched paradise. Each day was hot, white sand beaches, flawless blue skies and green pure sea. From here the father brought the family to 1970s Leeds. Martin knew no one in this dark city where Rippers stalked the night, street gangs, rain, class barriers. A country where birth dictated life's path for all but a handful. A myth of upward mobility was being spread at the time. But the odd one to travel to a better life through hard work and good fortune were oddities. Industry was collapsing.
They moved on to a suburban estate where, to try integrate their lost son in to the locality his parents organised a party. Martin knew no one well but picked a handful of boys from his year who attended for a trip to the cinema and a tea, or dinner as these outsiders called their evening meal. The boys there couldn't see the thread and it was only Skree Martin bonded with. From age eight till Martins death at thirty one they were closest of freinds.
What drew them together was a hunger for more. Martin hated Leeds. Skree wanted to explore further and their common goal of escape forged their bond. Martin was the quieter of the two and looked up to Skree. They both had their lines beyond which they would go. Though topping their classes in intelligence both quickly grasped any new exciting developements of growing up. Together they discovered magic mushrooms and organised a series of parties amongst their freinds. Through this they both met their first girlfriends. It was through Skree that Martin was to find most of his girlfriends. Though the first steps on his shamanic path, Skree took the sacrament with an earnest manner and prolific use. Martin tripped less often and was as drawn to alcohol, seeing intoxicants on the whole as a route to oblivion. Skree saw alcohol as a drug to muddy the mind. His father was a keen drinker and this put him off till well into his twenties.
Once the parties came to the attention of the school authorities most blame was apportioned to Skree. He was always in trouble, came from a broken home with an alcoholic father and lived wild in a house that seldom had electricity. It suited the mushroom cult to paint him as ring leader and, if truth be known, he was that.
Martins parents who had brought him from paradise to hell were desperate to find a scapegoat to escape the guilt for destroying their sons happiness. They blamed his actions on mixing with the wrong crowd and tried bustle him off to a private school in Wales. Martin once again was to be torn from all he knew. Having opened the psychic door through European native shamanic sacrament, the Liberty cap, he had found a new way to see the world. Finally having found a circle of freinds he was loathe to throw this away.
When his parents dropped him off at leeds train station with a ticket for some dark boarding school in another country he didn't know he was having none of it. He ran away. Hitching round the country, visiting Stonehenge and other sacred sites the young mushroomers were drawn to. The local paper ran a series of stories. "Missing Boy with Drug Problem," ran the headline. The story spoke of the bad influences Martin had fallen in with. The fingers pointed at Skree. He was always in trouble. A little more wouldn't hurt. Besides, Skree would have been quite put out if he wasn't regarded as ring leader.
After three weeks hitching round the country Martins funds ran out and he returned to Leeds. In the local woods where the teenage mushroom enthusiasts had fires and built a shelter from birch poles, bracken fronds and sods of earth where they often camped out on psychedelic missions. Martin made this his base but soon word got out. His girlfriend grassed. Skree ran down to warn Martin but was too late. Police led him away.
He accepted his fate at that Welsh boarding school but their bond remained. By the time Martin graduated Skree was living in a commune in Cornwall so it was a few years before their friendship redeveloped. Martin had taken to prescription benzos, a habit he never lost, and alcohol. Skree was off travelling, they both were. They met up in Portugal on a rocky Atlantic outcropping.
Euphoric in reaquaintance and drunk they climbed as far out as they could into the crashing waves. Skree looked at Martin who he had never seen so joyous.
"We should take care, we could die here," Skree warned Martin.
So lost in happiness he replied, "So what!"
He had a point. This would have been a good death.
Later Skree developed his woodwork, Martin followed. They both began in joinery. Skree moved over to designer making enrolling at Shrewsbury. A year later Martin followed, but to Rycotewood.
They discovered amphetamines together. Skree always knew Martin looked up to him and had always wondered if his use of needles had made the practice ok.
Skree was living in Shropshire when Richard rang to say Martin was on a life support system and most likely would die. He'd got a new job. Instead of having a drink to celebrate he'd overdosed on heroin. A casual user. Stupid to use the needle. Skree said boyhood freind was dead and it never left Skrees head that Martin had followed him. Into girls, cigarettes, mushrooms, amphetamines and finally he'd done heroin, dieing in Richards kitchen.
Guilt poured over Skree as Martin looked over.
"It was my mistake, my choice." Martin freed him.
But at the funeral martins brother had given Skree a right dressing down. Despite Skree being clean. Living in another part of the country. Teaching at college. His family could never accept the damage they had caused Martin. It was easier to blame the bad influences.
Having freed Skree from his guilt, Martins ghost slipped back into the flames and was gone.

The drunken ghost of Turps staggered and fell through the muddy fields below. His greasy blond hair smeared in soil and rain. Through his delirium he saw a light on a nearby hill. A fire. Warmth and company drew the half mad alcohol ghost towards the tripping shamans camps. Skree had looked up to Turps, three years his senior when they met. Never one much for the tripping but alcohol had ripped apart his sanity. He became a derelict. An unpredictable barker at the moon. He'd spent time in Amsterdam before being deported. Returned to Leeds his family took him in but his unwashed body, severe alcoholism and psychosis saw him booted out where he became a face on the homeless begging scene in the city centre. One night, drunk he'd found a bed in St George's crept, a homeless hostel. Here he injected heroin. Never a habitual user his system couldn't cope with a lot. Virtually all heroin overdoses involve alcohol.
They found his body in the morning. He'd made 38. His funeral was attended by a handful of his closest freinds and his families catholic community. Skree and Richard thought they'd gone to the wrong place at first. A sad but predictable death.

From the flames Skree saw his tortured face. Looking to his side, Martins fireside pew had been replaced by this boy who loved the woods. The boy who had introduced him to hawkwind, sold him his first weed, the boy he'd been first arrested by the drug squad with. They'd been sat in a circle at the back of the leeds university concert hall, listening to Rory Gallagher, tripped out on mushrooms. Turps fancied a joint. His trip too strong to roll Skree had took over, turps sprinkled the weed in to the tobacco and three skin bed Skree managed to roll before meaty hands dragged him from behind. At first Skree assumed some freinds were playing an extreme joke but such was the violence it soon became clear this was the drug squad. Thirty year old bullies, brought up in to a Sweeney and Professionals outlook. Cheap Brut or hi karate aftershave. Cheap leather jackets. The knobheads even used the lingo of these TV characters. As they bullied young teenagers for smoking a plant. For enjoying a magic their thick mainstream minds could never grasp. This was Skrees first ever drug bust. Aged fifteen. Strip searched. Sexual assault on a minor. Paedophile power trips that today they would serve proper time for. Time they'd either spend scared on the nonces wing. Or mix with the honest crooks. The thought of how they would have been treated brought a smile to Skree that he shared with the ghost of his dead freind.
Aged 19, Skree and Turps were still associates but Turps alcoholism had rendered him difficult to tolerate. Crows spoke to him, signs of witchcraft stalked him. He never knew who to trust. His catholic upbringing had met the personal truths of psychedelia. Neither beat the other leaving him confused, superstitious, paranoid. At the time Skree was having trouble with an unfaithful girlfriend and not wishing to return home had walked out on to Woodhouse Moor in the dark to sit and think. Turps staggered up. "Skree under a tree," he smiled. Both had a strong pagan link to nature and this meeting was apropropos. They sat and talked. Turps for once was lucid. Untroubled by demons. After some time Skree took turps back to his shared flat, turps being homeless at the time. At most times from his late teens to his death. 38 is not unusual as a lifespan for a rough sleeper.
They drank and Skrees flat mates weren't too pleased with him bringing home this semis psychotic street person. As alcohol took him under turps fell asleep with his head on the stone fireplace. For a while no one noticed in their inebriated condition. Skree saw his freinds brains would burn out if he wasn't moved. Shifting a violent drunk in sleep can be problematic but he managed.
"Thanks for that night, you saved my life."
"Anyone would have."
"But no one else did." Turps replied.
"What happened to you? You were so astute, so clever. How dis you let drink take you?"
Skrees question hung in the air for a while till Turps broke out in laughter. "Doesn't really matter anymore."
Skree thought of the woods near where they grew up. A stooped beech tree turps named the old mans back. And another. A tree Turps had climbed in his youth to carve PT 78. It is still there.
As youths they had set out with an ideology. A belief in the green outdoors. Anti fashion. A belief in the spiritual possibilities of psychedelics and cannabis. A soundtrack of hawkwind, pink floyd, reggae and punk rock. A free festival scene. New Age travellers or bike gangs to aspire to. A deep culture with routes in the London Underground. LSD. Hippy ideals bolstered by the steel of punk. A disregard for money.
Yet so many had fallen. Some succumbed to harder drugs and psychosis. Others, those who were just playing out, weekenders, cut their hair. Took jobs. Abandoned their ideals. Gave in to the man. Weaker characters.
It had been a war. Their generation who chose their path incurred casualties at a rate unseen since the Somme generation. Many New Age travellers died young. Heroin cut like a scythe through their generation. At least turps had stayed true to his ideals.
Those who survived, refused the bribe of the straight world, survived the drugs, the motorcycle deaths. Those like Lipton and Skree, and brothers and sisters who kept the flame had to be strong. But the tests had left a remarkable group. The portal that opened in the sixties, that expanded with fire in the seventies, had spawned great men and women.

As these thoughts ricocheted round Skree and Liptons minds, understanding of their great folly hit home. Heroin had destroyed so much. These ghosts had returned to ensure that the two shamans remained clean. Just as Jesse had demanded.
A turbulence of fractal patterns grew around them. The cries of other dead freinds called out from the snapping flames. Poppy fields spread out before them. Afghanistan. The source of ninety percent of Britains street heroin that had flooded the country. The wars of Russian groups against the mujaheddin. The American and British campaigns against the Taliban. Our soldiers may have invaded and murdered their children but the heroin epidemic had taken the lives of far more of Britains wild children. Both Lipton and Peter could name twenty close freinds who had died from the needle and the poppy. Their childhood circles, their closest brothers and sisters had been taken young. And both the shamans had succumbed to brown, losing decades to the pain killing powder. No more. Tonight had cured all thought of any return to that.

But their visitations were not yet done. As Turps ghost slipped away a rustling in the bushes turned both their heads. A crippled figure stumbled through the undergrowth.
"I saw your fire but it's taken me fucking ages getting up here."
Richard, Skrees closest freind was back. It was his turn to take the log stump seat round the fire. Neither Martin nor Turps had been addicts. Just stupidly took a shot whilst drunk. Richard had spent the last twelve or fifteen years of his life within the arms of morphia.
Having left home at sixteen and soon escaping the inner city misery for Cornwall, Skree had discovered the countryside. But a cottage commune with five men in their late teens and one girl, Skrees girlfriend Sibyl, with little to do, had led to a fractious end. She was of a different make up to the boys but sex drives at that age can be stronger than loyalty.
They'd returned to Leeds and found a flat. Soon the two flats below were taken by freinds and their secret nest became a haven for the ravaged tail end of their younger teen, green psychedelic dreams. Alcohol and speed were slipping in. Jo and Phil took the middle flat, Pig and Feddy the bottom. Soon all other lost souls were round drinking all days. Violence and friction became too much so Skree and Sibyl moved across town to live with Dean. It was here Richard came on to the scene.
He was fourteen or so. The child of hippy parents he'd grown up in a collection of streets that had been squatted throughout the seventies. A child of the Leeds underground. Leeds Free School didn't provide a great education in reading or writing but, living within spitting distance of the city centre and opposite the university, the free school kids were far more street wise than Skrees suburban gang. Perhaps due to an Ian Dury like disability, Richard was never pushed hard. His brother, Julian earned the name frog gob for his good fortune in being schooled in the Pyrenees where a bunch of Leeds alternatives had set up a commune. He became a builder and later a lecturer. Richards sister became a researcher at the university. They were all bright but Richard ran wild along with his fee school buddies. Glue sniffing more than studying. This semi illiteracy proved a greater disability than his physical one. But he knew how to socialise with people of all ages. His father had dealt dope and that alternative lifestyle was in his blood.
Ironically, when I met him he was rebelling against all that. The casual scene saw a division from his parents.
Why he bonded so well with Skree is hard to say. Though growing up in a squat scene his parents and the community around him were largely educated and from middle class backgrounds. Most first generation hippies were. But we clicked and they remained close till his death.
He shone brightly in his late teens and early twenties. Dealing hash and speed made him centre of attention. He pulled girls but never felt secure. He saw his disability far more than anyone else. He took to drink and for his last two decades always had a can of brew on the go. This and the speed made him a little bitter. When heroin hit he took to it like a duck to water. He dealt this too. After a couple of overdose deaths at his house straighter freinds moved away. He became darker, perhaps with a guilt.
It wasn't long after Martin died round his house that he was busted and jailed for three years, serving eighteen months. He never recovered from this. He dropped deeper in to heroin use and alcohol. He fell in love with a girl who used him badly. He had various accidents or attacks orchestrated by her and her freinds. No ammount of talking to him would make him turn away from her.
He was found dead in his flat surrounded by urine filled cans, full of special brew, heroin and methadone. His death could have been an accident or suicide.
Skree loved Richard. Hated witnessing his decline. Went mad and reckless in his own drug use after his death. Richards had been his haven. Whenever life got too much, whatever state he was in he could turn up at Richards without warning and find sanctuary. His death affected him more than any bar his mothers.

From across the fire Richard just stared at Skree. Not speaking but conveying every unspoken word, every discussion they never had. If it hadn't been for Richard, Skree would never have done heroin. Richard set him free.

Liptons head was bowed. What trip he had endured Peter knew not. He had his own lost brothers. Their ghosts were different but equally close freinds. The details may be different but the essence of the trip was the same. It was time to wake up. If not for themselves then for the lost. It was their duty to carry on. Life had been treated with a casual disregard. This most precious of gifts. This sole chance. The one shot had been thrown away by so many. Why they had survived whilst others fell was down to a degree of luck. Yet there must have been a certain caution. A little self preservation. Perhaps the fortune of strong constitutions. But largely luck. They would never risk it all again. They were done. Little needed saying. They both knew.

Lipton through the last of the logs on the fire. The colours were fading. They both cracked a beer and stared at the fire for another hour considering their loss. Saying goodbye to opiates is like waving off a lover on a departing train, knowing you will not meet again. They shared a smoke before sorting out their sleeping bags amongst the dogs. Angels drifted off in to the night as the boys nestled down amongst the dogs and drifted off to sleep with their private thoughts. Their den was moist but cosy. The body heat of three dogs and two men and a fire stoked up to last till morning.


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