Did your Granny Take a Trip?

‘You didn’t Gran, did you really take LSD?’

‘Yep, I did...got to be honest...’window pane’...that’s what we used to call it in those days.’

‘Window pane’, that’s quite a neat name for it.'

‘What do they call it now?’

‘Oh acid, just acid.’

‘So what year would that be?’

‘When I took it?...oh about 64, 1964, they were all doing it then, the Beatles and just about everybody.’ 

‘Where were you living then?’

‘Chelsea...just off the King’s Road.’

‘Tell me about it, Jeez, my Granny took a trip...that is uber cool.’

‘Oh there was this hairdresser I used to go to...what was his name....memory...just seems to be getting worse and worse...’

‘Doesn’t matter about his name, Gran.’

‘Gabriel, Gabriel, that was his name. Anyway he was one of those groovy King’s Road types, married some titled Lady in the end till she kicked him out, so he sold his story to the tabloid papers of being this suburban lad who married into the aristocracy.’

‘Oh that’s enough of Gavin, so tell me about how you took it...the LSD.’ 

‘No, it is important Gavin died young, very young...a lot my friends did.’

‘60s casualties?’

‘That’s right. Can you pass me my glasses?’

‘Sure, here. Do you want the walking stick?

‘No, no, stop fussing will you?’

‘So go on?’

‘Go on about what?’

‘The acid, the LSD you took.’

‘Oh right, well Gabriel hands me a piece of blotting paper one evening.’

‘Is that it? I say.’

‘Yeah, ‘enough ‘window pane’ there you should have a good ‘trip’.’

 ‘So you took it?’

‘Well I have to be honest...not before... well, I was the careful type; I mean I never did Heroin, that’s why I am still here. Can you stop doing that?’

‘What?'

‘Stop rocking my chair like that, you are making me sea sick, are you nervous?’

‘Naw...no, I’m not. So go on, so you didn’t take Heroin.’

‘No, well it was close.’ 

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh I had friends in the music business and Heroin was around...they took it, talked about the glow it gave them, mind you I snorted a lot of cocaine, it would be laid out...the lines of white powder, and there would be a few gasps when I continued snort line after line... then 'coked up' arriving at some guy's place and him asking    

 ‘Do you want an injection?’                                                                                       

 'Of what?’

‘A booster’

‘Yeah...yeah sure.’

‘Right give me your arm.’

‘Dangerous Gran...anything could have happened.’

‘Right, lucky I am here and lucky you are here, for I was playing Russian Roulette with my life.

Anyway you wanted to know about the LSD I had read of some alarming stories about people thinking they could fly and jumping off buildings...always been a bit of a coward about heights. Anyway, so I put a bowl of sugar by the base of my bed as I was told it takes you down if you are flying too high.

So  I place the blotting paper in my hand tore a bit off and swallowed it and waited nothing...then I took a bit more, chewed it...nothing. Then I took quite a chunk ... and the window in the basement started moving.

There were bars in this basement window and then a face began to appear holding the bars; not quite a human face then another and another and then a body and then I realised that these were not human form but monkeys and I have always had a phobia about monkeys...'

'So it brought out your worse fears...?'

'I’ll say...and the monkeys were trying get through the window to get through to me, and God, I remember the bars were being bent by them pulling at them and...'

'Steady on Gran, I don't want you to get upset, have a sip of the cocoa.'

'So then...then I reached down for the sugar but as I did the bed seemed to be a hundred feet high as if I was atop some skyscraper, so I thought if I fell off the bed reaching down for the sugar I would fall to my death.'

'So what did you do, oh here your blanket has fallen off,'

'Don’t fuss.'

'I am trying to remember, oh right and then I looked at my watch because I had heard  that the ‘trip’ would last for so long, but the hands of the watch started spinning round and then I shook it and it got giant sized and turned into Big Ben. Then I desperately tried to think of my boy friend, he was a dancer in the Corps de ballet and I would try to vision him dancing just to get away from the vision of the monkeys trying to bend the bars of the window, I tried so desperately and then that vision came of him dancing and the monkeys, seated now, looking on in quiet appreciation. I will never forget the beauty of that. Then the windows started to turn into these beautiful stained glass windows like some Chartres Cathedral...oh the beauty of it...’

‘The Cathedral?’

‘No, my 60s innocence...I don’t know, the innocence of that waste.'

'Don't upset yourself Gran, why are you crying?'

'I am weeping for the lost innocence that was the 60s...I am weeping for my innocence in losing a decade of my life through drugs...I am weeping for the world as it is now compared to those innocent misguided days of the 60s.'

'Don’t upset yourself  Gran, here's a tissue, dry your eyes now...come on now, put your shawl round you. There, there.’

 

c Peter P. Cheevers