Dealers

DEALERS 

Chris

One of the first people I used to go and score hash off was Chris. It was the mid-'80s and I was sixteen - too young for most dealers, who didn't need the hassle of lively attention-attracting kids crowding out their flats with their uninvited mates, buying poxy little teenths with their pocket money. Chris had no such scruples. He lived in a gloomy basement in Kensal Rise; he liked to keep the curtains drawn and music on at low volume. He might have been forty or fifty - the sort of age that was hard to gauge for a sixteen year-old. His flat still had the trappings of 1960s counterculture but had slowly degenerated over the years into dreariness. He would invite his young customers to make tea in his soiled kitchen and play chess with him. He had horrible rotten teeth and he would wear the same old woolly jumper. He had quite a posh privately-educated accent, attenuated by Americanised sixties-speak: he would use words such as "dig" and "cats". 

Rumour had it Chris was what we used to call a fink: a sort of dirty old man who would prey on impressionable lads - not an outright paedophile and not merely gay, but a cross between the two. I'm not sure whether Chris really was one, but every time he'd amicably pat me on the knee or wink, I’d clam up inside and count the minutes until he'd sort my deal out and I was free to leave. As far as I remember, his dope was perfectly decent but slightly overpriced: dark rocky (from Morocco) or cheaper sandy leb, which was probably just lower-grade rocky more often than not.   

Lynnie

I used to go to Lynnie's as a last resort when I couldn't score off Chris. Going to see Chris would require a phone call, which he'd often ignore. He kept strange hours and would sometimes sleep during the day. Even when you'd get the go-ahead, he might not answer the door and you'd be left awkwardly hanging about on his steps before giving up and going to Lynnie's. Going to see Lynnie in her low-rise council block in North Kensington was an altogether more straightforward affair. 

She was maybe thirty going on fifty; booze had taken an early toll on her face. Although she was friendly enough, she didn't bother with niceties such as tea; you were in and out of her flat in a matter of minutes. Once she had a German shepherd puppy she was looking after who'd shat all over the carpet, but that didn't seem to bother her a great deal. Lynnie didn't do weighed deals, she did five and ten pound draws of sticky black. In those days even a rip-off dealer like her would still sell clean hash, although street dealers might palm you off with some old weak rubbish cut with henna, barbiturates or god knows what else. I once bought a bag of oregano around that time with my last fiver from a rasta on the "frontline" at All Saints Road, it still pisses me off to this day occasionally when I'm trying to get to sleep. 

Bob and Pat

I met Bob through a friend I'd been at school with. He was from one of those counties in the middle of Ireland that you never really hear much about - perhaps Longford or Offaly. A friend said that Bob was a shirt-lifter and that once he'd stayed the night and woke up to find Bob leering over him while panting and touching himself. I didn't believe him because my friend liked to tell tall tales. At some point Bob moved in with his scouse mate Pat and Pat's girlfriend Clare to a flat above a newsagent on a noisy street in Wandsworth. My friend said they were living as a threesome, but like I say, he did like to talk bollocks. I got on very well with all three of them. The flat was neat and tidy, and tea and biscuits were plentiful. It was a nice little set-up and the dope was good. 

I don't recall buying weed much but the hash was the standard fare for the time: "zero" and "double zero" rocky, hard black rocky soap bar and oily paki black "red seal", plus the pricier "gold seal" that was supposedly from war-torn Afghanistan (there was a badge people wore at the time that said Smoke the Russians out of Afghanistan). Once in a while there might be something fancy like nep (from, er, Nepal) or Indian manali. One of the regulars there was an asbestos stripper who would smoke big fat smelly grass spliffs on the upper deck of the bus home (this was long before the smoking ban on buses). I would be very nervous about him getting us busted but nobody ever said a word about it, even when the bus was packed.

Welsh Paul

Although I was living up in North West London I used to make the regular trek down to Tulse Hill to score off a bunch of people who lived in a rundown, freezing squat with colourful drawings on the walls. It was a very druggie scene and they sold any kind of popular drug you could name. I think I initially went there to buy acid. Although my introduction to them was tenuous, they knew I wasn't a cop because I dropped the acid there and then. One of the older women there took a dislike to me because I mentioned something about human evolution one evening in the kitchen over a cup of revolting herbal tea. She snapped at me, saying that anyone who isn't duped by the Illuminati knows Man originated from all four corners of the Earth, one race from each. I didn't dare point out that I thought the world was round. Sometimes "freaks" are as nuts as the papers would have us believe.

 There was a young convoy type with dreads who would sometimes sell me dope, but usually it was a lovely bloke from the valleys called Paul. He was a gentle honest soul and far too naive to be getting mixed up with some of the dodgier characters who were around. One time I was shocked to find him weighing out enormous slabs of quality hash - pounds upon pounds of the stuff - for a decidedly uncool-looking pair of gangsterly blokes in sharp suits. I had the feeling Paul was biting off more than he could chew. He had terrible psoriasis and would scratch himself bloody, but instead of taking sensible advice and watching his diet and recreational pill intake, he would spend a fortune on useless Chinese herbs and New Age treatment: there's one born every minute.

Mari José

I used to buy dope off Mari José when I lived in Spain in the late 90s. She only had two kinds of hash: the regular rocky and the more expensive egg-shaped oilier dark rocky that people smuggled up their bum. Virtually all the hash in Spain was from Morocco; people would smoke home-grown weed but would seldom sell it. She was a tiny, nice woman in her late thirties and was seriously boss-eyed: you never knew which eye to look into. She had an articulate left-wing view of the establishment which I shared, so we got on well.

 I was the only bloke who went round there, since Mari José was a lesbian and seemed to hang around exclusively with a group of extremely butch women who would try and outdo each other with blokeish behaviour. They would slouch about in their track suits, drink cans of beer and talk about fit birds, cars and football like stereotypical men from some comedy routine. I used to dread being left alone with them when she was out the room because they would literally sneer and tut at me for being an actual man, but not a very manly one.

Joanie

Joanie was an expat yank who lived in Cricklewood. She was pushing eighty and had ongoing health problems. I was half her age and by far the youngest of her customers. She mostly sold peppery Thai weed and also strong indoor skunk, the sort that has become ubiquitous nowadays. She was a sweet lady but I imagine she was pretty streetwise in her day. She was very careful about not getting busted and would make sure everyone concealed their dope properly when they left. 

Her clientele was largely composed of artsy types: writers, musicians, painters, and full-time conspiracy theorists. They were all lovely chatty people but I'd have to bite my lip at some of the farfetched mystical nonsense they'd come out with.