I think, perhaps, it would be a good thing to write about Backwell; it is, after all, the principal setting for most of the shite ramblings to be found on this 'ere waste of cyberspace. Backwell is, as you may well know, home of Lauren - pimp daddy, stoner supremo and generally spiffing person. Now there is very little to do in Backwell, other than talk to your cows or get wasted [of which more later]: and as Lauren is cow-less, she only has one option - and it would be churlish to spurn the local culture, after all. So most weekends, a roving band of friends and well-wishers converge on Lauren's house, to be fed by her long-suffering parents and sleep on the sweet sweet softness of her bedroom floor. The evenings usually progress as follows: arrive at sixish; skin up before everyone else gets there; greet everyone else and get quizzed on the exact reasons for good mood; skin up again, with company; turn on ska; skin up; raid kitchen; watch Disney videos, or rather talk over them loudly and pause to sing along to the best songs; skin up; burn things; another Disney video, as before; more ska; skin up; 4am confessional; skin up; crash out in armchairs and corners, to wake up two hours later and start all over again. There's something quite comforting about the routine.
There are occasional variations to the routine: sometimes it's Lauren, Tobi and I, sometimes Lauren, Sophy and Sam, sometimes *certain people* turn up unwanted and sap the mood of the evening; sometimes we have beer, or vodka, or only a month-old ten between us all that we have to drag out to loaves-and-fishes proportions across the night; in summer, we may even venture out into the cow-infested darkness that surrounds the house, to 'watch the sunset' in a field somewhere. But overall, the basic structure of the night always stays the same: the only regular outing is to the Spar, for munchies, when the kitchen has been picked clean. This is usually a momentously complicated occasion. One of us can't find our shoes, someone's often is unconscious on the sofa (and we debate the ethics of leaving them there like we were switching off their life support machine), or has left their lucky lighter somewhere in the folds of Lauren's duvet and can't leave the house without it. And then when we get out, Lauren always gets overwhelmed by how beautiful the stars are, Tobi starts getting emotional, I take my life into my hands and zig-zag across the road, Sophie is so busy telling me off she forgets to keep walking at the same time. As a demonstration of how utterly backwards country life is, chez Lauren is a ten-minute sober walk from Spar, along a road without a pavement, and that estimate is usually doubled for us, because one of us will pause every hundred yards to stare at the telephone wires and marvel at all the conversations going on above their head. How can you be ten minutes from the Spar? How can anybody possibly imagine it will do their child good to grow up ten minutes from the local convenience store? This is the fucking Spar we're talking about! It's the cornerstone of modern existence, a homegenised little neon haven for many a confused metropolitan. But of course, in Backwell, things close as dusk. So even once we've managed this trek, equal in effort -if not reward- to a solo North Pole mission, we have to turn back. The only shop open is the off-license, which shows pretty much what there is to do with yourself in Backwell. The streets are totally deserted, apart from the occasional huddle of dejected-looking [out-of-]townies sitting around on walls. As Lauren pointed out once, this is because there is nothing to do in the country but wait to pick up. Evenings start with a long wait at a bus stop [bus stops being the only place men in sportswear can congregate without being hassled by the po-lice] to collect your drugs, followed by a long walk home to take them. There are apparently three big-time dealers in the vicinity. I don't know whether the dealers come for the rudes, or the rudes come for the dealers, or whether the dealers themselves were once lowly six-fingered rude boys who used their farm space for something a little more profitable than corn; but I know that if I was there permanently, I'd lose my respect for sobriety as well. Its odd. The only people I have ever seen on the street in Backwell are the aforementioned six-fingered rudes and haggard-looking elderly women walking arthritic dogs. It's something in the water, I tell you. This, of course, provides an excellent excuse to drink nothing but beer when I'm there.