Niall’s virtual diary archives – January 1999

1st January 1999: 4.19am, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Tis now 1999, the last year of the millenium. Amazing really. I can't believe it!

When I was younger, I used to look at the turn of the millenium as being a distant event. I knew I would be twenty one when this millenium ended, and that seemed so far away that it was inconceivable. When I did my Leaving Cert in 1996, I looked at my four year course and realised I'd be graduating in the year 2000. Ditto happens with my current course at Hull, it being a year shorter. But even only three short years ago, my expectations and outlook on life were radically different.

New Year's celebrations were okay this year. I went into town and met up with loads of past friends, although far fewer this year than last - but there were some very very past friends I saw which was well cool. I ended up this year at Moore's Hotel disco for the countdown with many drunk Irish friends, and it was pretty cool. I had enjoyed the night so far, even though I came back from Northern Ireland only hours before after a tiring trip up there to see relatives.

However, we went back to a house party after the disco at around 2am. Now it was bad enough that I didn't know anyone there except those who had come with me, and it was even worse given the dead atmosphere there, but it was worst of all that this was the same house that I went to a party in almost exactly a year ago. Yep, this was the house where Siorca had lived, and it had the same rooms, decor etc as before. It had the same stairs where we had first met and talked so intimately, the same stains from the beer keg that had fallen over and nearly soaked me and Siorca on those same stairs, and the same room and layout where we had slept together which caused so much pain and loss to the both of us and Kathryn thereafter. It brought back ghosts of past deeds, echos of words said, nuances which were bittersweet in nature. It brought back the past, and it left me feeling very poor, so I left at the earliest opportunity. Pity - it might have pepped up later and it did contain good memories there too.

Today I spent most of in bed, recovering from alcohol drunk, and that brings us up to today. Days before going to NI since the last update weren't particularly interesting, so I'm not going to bother going into detail given I have a new year's present for you!

As I mentioned last update plus one or two, I traditionally do an end of year summary in my diary, and I intend to do nothing less this new year as well. Also, as time permits, I'll type in years gone by summaries just so you can appreciate how much has changed in my life in so little time.

Well, let's see, what's happened this year:

• Ending
  Yeah, after last Christmas' little skirmish with infidelity, me and Kathryn began that long winding road of breakup. It carried on until the start of February of last year at the annual Douglas family party, where Kathryn's incessant jealousy finally broke my resolve. Looking back on it, I can understand it from her side better, but what I didn't need constant reminding of from her was my strange unexplained actions which I didn't understand the cause of, never mind her. That of course led to ...
• Depression
  I've been suicidal only three times in my life for long periods of time, and this year saw one of them. As with the last one during the Laura years, it was because of a paradoxical situation in my brain, leading to instability and deconstruction. I won't go into detail (it's too long), but essentially the point was that if I was in love with this girl and was willing to marry her, why was I able to so easily sleep with Siorca? The answer of course was that I could not have been in love with her, but I didn't want to believe that as it would remind me of my loneliness and I didn't want to think I had deceived her so. But as I realised during the Easter break of last year, I was not in love with her, and hence was so easily able to be unfaithful. Hence my recent attempts to define love in case you were interested, as if I understand the beast then I can better say in the future if I am in love or not so that I do not deceive her, and more importantly, myself.
• Rebirth
  The few weeks of the second semester left after Easter until the summer break in June saw a massive increase in productivity. I was now mended, but the scars needed lots of time to heal, and I found it best to plough into work. Not academic work mind, but that time saw Tornado II being started, this diary was created, and my socialising went drastically up. You can see in the entries of the time though I was now stable-ish, but still very much limping and I referred to Kathryn almost every entry. I also reacquired my pot habit, and much of the foundations for the remainder of the year were set during this time.
• Hiatus
  And so, in June, the summer break began, and I returned for the third year in a row to Cambridge to find work and spend summer days lying in the sun drinking beer and smoking spliffs. And this year, not anxious to make the same mistake as the prior year, I returned to the expensive YMCA where I had a pretty good time. If I hadn't as many options in life as I do, I would live there. It's pretty damn good.
  
  And I also met Suzanna, off whom I got a letter recently actually. It was my first relationship since Kathryn, and it was a good one. She was nice, and I hope to see her again this Easter along with Ruth.
  
  And there was the other major event, that of being busted for possession. Unlucky, but perhaps provident. I am now a minor player in the national UK movement to get the stuff legalised, and next May we should (hopefully) see a thousand or so Hull students at the legalisation rally in London, which will all be down to little old me!
• Return
  September saw me back in Hull, and now I really took off. I coordinated the building of the Lawns smoking ring, joining smokers from all over the Cottingham area into one massive if disjointed ring. I introduced a motion for union council (which I ran for and was elected to) seeking support for next May's rally and endorsement of the legalisation of cannabis. I also took to task Lawns' issues (where I live when at uni), ran a number of events at the Lawns after joining the Lawns Residents Association, wrote a template LRA constitution, began the whole constitutional and reform process and made sure the uni bods knew it was happening. I also went out with another new girlfriend, Elli (who is also wonderful), and managed to balance all this with programming Tornado II and a number of other projects. I went to Amsterdam, experienced its wonderful sights and smells :), and generally pushed myself to the limit and had shit loads of fun at the same time. What more can I say!
• Christmas
  And back home for Christmas, saw all my family and friends for the first time in nine months, and had a pretty good Christmas holiday (better than expected anyway).

And that is that I think. Not a bad year, not a great one either - just a good year. But definately one showing a lot of improvements over prior years, especially as it shows I am learning and improving and making far fewer mistakes than I used to, which is excellent to realise as it gives hope. And now it is 1999, I will be twenty-one soon, and it promises to be an excellent year. Though I said the same last year I think ... not sure, Melanie has that diary at the moment - when I get it back I'll type in that year's summary and preview of 1998. As for the preview of this year, well, I look forward to happiness and accomplishment. I reckon next relationship should see massive increases in likelihood of sucess than before given all the new stuff I've realised. I reckon I'll make a change to the lives of at least a few thousand people this year, and maybe a few million. I also hope I'll see more programming sucesses, and maybe even more recognition for them. We'll see.

Right, that's the new year update done! Happy New Year, may you have a peaceful and prosperous 1999, and goodwill to you all out there reading this. Have a good one, and be happy!

6th January 1999: 6.51pm, mmm, I could do with some sleep! I stayed last night at a mates, didn't get much there, was into Cork early this morning. Got a haircut I did, and went to the movies mainly for something to do. I watched a movie called Enemy of the State, probably was out ages ago in the states.

Now this is a scary movie. I was probably the only person in there to appreciate it, but this movie is hellishly accurate. Right down from the listening capabilities to the satellite surveillence. Except maybe they exaggerated a few things, and they certainly made the NSA richer than they are. As in, yes, the NSA can and do frequently watch the every action of a person.

The movie however had the NSA deploying the works against nice Mr. Smith, which is very unlikely in real-life situations because it costs so much damn money. Yes, there are over a thousand satellites looking at every part of the globe up there, and yes most of them are owned by facist America, so called "Land of the Free", to spy on their own people and everyone else's people. However, they rarely are used to track someone in real-time, helicopters with infra-red cameras are used for that as they're way cheaper. They're usually used post-incident to pick up details, and they're incredibly accurate - in the 70's they could read a newspaper headline. Now, who knows?

Probably most of you readers don't know it, but there is a world-wide surveillence network codenamed ECHELON dating from at least the 70's which scans a minimum of 100,000 telephone calls, faxes, emails etc a day (that was the eighteen acre supercomputer Gene Hackman mentions). Probably, nowadays, that figure is more like half a billion. It is run mainly by MI5/MI6 and the NSA/CIA, being originally the product of the UK and USA's joint run cold war surveillence apparatus (run in the UK from the NSA base at Menwith Hill), but since the fall of the wall its existance has become dubious. Why bother spending hundreds of millions of dollars on something that has no use? Well, as the movie put it, we now have a war against our own population, to prevent the "10,000 crackpots and terrorists from blowing up our cities". But this reason is imaginary, and it's hard to stick, even to the most conservative white collar tory voter. As justly reviled as the USA is, even the most hardcore muslims find it difficult to wage war against a people who are blatently as manipulated by their government as the poor muslims are. Allah isn't the devil the American media would like you to believe - in fact, he's very benevolent.

Given this reason is so hard to stick, there's one very easy alternative option open - that being drugs. Drugs, according to the establishment, corrupt people and turn them into drug crazed hippies who love each other and eschew money and the American dream. They make people ask why their government is so corrupt and worse, let them think even further on than that, such as ideas of communism, equality of blacks and whites, and worst of all - friendship and peace with their brother man. In such an environment, war becomes pointless, and lots and lots of people who run these systems become unemployed. They don't like the idea of that, so they call for people to "just say no to drugs", and direct the cold war military machine against drug users, drug suppliers and drug traffickers.

Except you see, they don't really. They are only too well aware that if they fired all cannons, they could completely wipe out the drug market overnight, and now their precious reason for existance is gone. So in the beginning, they went lightly, only taking out the big guys who wouldn't pay for protection, leaving vacumns ripe to be filled. Thus the war can go on forever.

However, this is a dangerous game to play. Capitalism is inherently unstable - house prices rise and fall for example. Ditto with drugs. The DEA became so successful at stopping cocaine entering America that the CIA/NSA became worried they'd be out of a job soon. So they tapped all the DEA communications, and got their boys to move the cocaine themselves. After all, they were already very used to it, they did it right throughout the Noriega years to support the Contras. Now cocaine floods America, leading the then President Reagan to declare that drugs were the greatest blight ever witnessed by American society (we'll forget the 1920's prohibition here), and now a war against drugs had to be declared. The DEA were only too happy to oblige, as were the FBI. Meanwhile, the CIA and NSA sat back happily, and waited for cash to pour in, firstly from ever increasing budgets and best of all, from cocaine sales that they themselves had imported.

The chances are that when you snort a wrap of coke, it at some stage went through CIA hands. It is estimated they traffick over half the total world cocaine production, and they receive a hefty commission for doing so. Every time the DEA try to bust a Columbian drug lord, the NSA has already intercepted the communication and the lord is given a chance to get out. And so the cycle continues.

So where am I going with this? Well, I'm currently drawing up my plans to raise money to send a thousand Hull students to London next May. They're pretty massive, and they almost certainly will attract MI5 attention. Given that the arrangement is that only the NSA are allowed spy on British citizens and MI6 on Americans, the NSA will also know of what I am doing. And more than likely they'll let me wend on my pretty little way for the time being, along with the rest of us trying to get cannabis legalised.

However, if we should get, say, over a third of a million at next May's march - more than the pro-hunting rally last year - then we can expect strange things to start going wrong. Our mailing list will no doubt stop working, or get flooded with spam. Police will oddly be tipped off to our whereabouts, knowing we'll have at least personal quantities of smokes about is. We'll all get arrested, harassed, and it will be hoped we will give up.

And what if we don't? If we keep going? Looking at MI5 vs. the provisional IRA, we can expect a minimum of active surveillence such as bugs, phone taps, email filters. After that comes a van parked outside. And perhaps if we soldier on, there may be a few black bag operations and some of us will disappear.

Has all this cannabis made me paranoid? Maybe. But I, personally, feel I'm standing at a crossroads right now, with many important choices just ahead. What I describe above I believe is a possible outcome - I am watched, followed, maybe arrested, perhaps finally assassinated. On the other hand, the government might capitulate and legalise the stuff. Either could happen. Who can say which right now? These are the thoughts running through my mind at the moment ...

Well, I'll be off to finish off the plans and assign some sort of timetable to them. And I'll get started on them in a week. And if, someday, I stop updating these pages, then you know what's happened to me. Please feel free to make a fuss if this happens! And until whenever the road ends, look after each other, and be happy.

Sunday 10th January 1999: 4.17am, as you can see by the time I'm back to my old tricks at uni. I got back yesterday, absolutely fucked beyond all recognition, after going out clubbing on Friday night (snogging this fit girl on the stairs - dunno why or anything but it now occurs to me that she might have been a tad err ... young - which might explain why she was so interested in me ... my excuse is that I was too drunk to realise at the time ...), getting home about six hours before the plane flew, spending the early hours close to puking my guts up through a terrible hangover, then finally dragging myself out of my "on the floor slumped watching crap on telly feeling really shit" state to packing my bags and getting ready to leave.

I was still hung over on the flight, but the absolutely wonderful attendent made me this hangover cure she said worked wonders. I've no idea what was in it, but it was mildly fizzy, definately alcoholic, and tasted of ... nothing much at all. Did the trick though - I was raring to go by the time the plane landed. Not for long though, as customs spotted me out and gave me twenty questions. I guess that MI5 file is beginning to work :(

Anyway, last night there were quite a few people back, most of them went to the pub which I wasn't up to, so I stayed here and unpacked. Once back though, we all piled into my room and watched the two new episodes of South Park which I had just downloaded (from here actually). We also got pretty nicely stoned, although I was the only one with any gear (annoying is the start of term, isn't it?).

I did over thirty-six hours of awakeness between Friday and Saturday. It's hard - I'd challenge anyone to do that on a regular basis without assistance. But it meant I got lots of sleep last night, which was nice. I awoke today at about 6pm, feeling terrible but much better than the day before where I knew I was in pain but strangely it didn't hurt. I quickly popped into Cott for a breakfast pint at the Hallgate with a mate ... mmm, nice - after which we all got stoned back here. How bad I ask you? After that, popped round to see Marion to see about LRA stuff and she how she was, and talked for a good few hours - indeed, I forgot about Babylon 5 tonight, which I'm now kicking myself over :(

Having missed Babylon 5, I called over to my old block. The harder among them were still up (this was around 12am), doing amyl nitrate (known better as poppers) and smoking way amounts of weed. I stayed until about half two, by which stage I was starved (having had a pint for breakfast), and my head hurt lots too. Poppers are nasty like that.

Quite a boring day really, but sufficiently busy to get me back in sync with life here I think. It gets better though - I'll be having my 21st birthday party inside uni in about two weeks (my actual birthday is next Friday - feel free to send me an email wishing me happy birthday BTW), and I have dozens of fund-raising events to arrange to get us some money to send people to London to march in our fun little rally we'll be having (click on the cannabis leaf above for more info). Never mind exams of course - the next three weeks are exams!

Right, I'm off to work on Wimp2. See you again soon, and be happy till then!

Thursday 14th January 1999: 2.10am, well I guess now's the day, it's ...

HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY NIALL!

Yup, I'm now at the big two-one! The reason I chose right now to do this update, is that my mother gave birth to me at around 2am if I remember (not literally of course!), so actually I'm now 21 plus a few minutes right this moment! And of course who better to share it with than you, dear readers!

Pardon me for a moment, I have to skin up to celebrate ... the very last of my gear, and it's hardly great quality, but it'll - back in a minute ... done! Ouch. This is pretty strong. Anyway, I've not much to report other than the Legalise Cannabis society shall exist soon, and with great boomph, so hopefully we'll have an effect - and also, we've got plenty planned for the next few months.

What I thought I would do though is type in my entries of time during 1995 & 1996. Sorry about not having 1994's entry, but I've lost the diary (pity - it had the really interesting stuff in it). Anyway, here they are:

Saturday 14th January 1995: Since it's now 3.17am,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NIALL!

Being 17, I have an application form for a provisional driving licence on my desk. This is crucial, as I must have a full licence by Easter in order that I may visit both Aoife & Pamela.

As for Pamela, I spent 10.00-12.10 on the phone to her. We rehashed the area of what we both felt during Fri/Sat & Sun last week [Ed: this refers to the Young Scientist's Competition I had entered in 96 and came second in my catagory in]. Apparently, Fri. she wanted to sleep with me but didn't after that bloody crank call. She rang my room to ask if she could come up but of course I was in Darren's.

Also, she was in a "funny mood" on Sun, thus explaining that side & why she greeted my present (necklace) so. We also touched upon my frustration on last Fri night & what it led to [Ed: this refers to when she had buggered off to bed rather than do anything together (ie; in bed) and my roommate brought back two girls, and I ended up in bed with one. Unfortunately Pamela saw me walking the girl back next morning]. A lot really, but she was cautious - didn't open up completely. Quite right too, I suppose.

She asked that we cease contact until Easter. Fair enough - it was I who proposed it. She said she had a number of things to sort out in her own head, and that she didn't want me to be a part of it.

Problem is, the call, as long it was, went well. Despite the original initial obvious difficulties, the last hour flew by. Many [page 2] of the possible problems never surfaced, thus removing my most obvious difficulty with continuing contact. However, I respect her decision and will abide by it.

My opinion of her so far is that although intelligent & being in 1a [Ed: this refers to Niall's theory of women which at time labelled all the types and subgroups - now it's too large to even try], she is not very well-educated (her lack of vocabulary & useless information is not condusive to easy conversation). For some reason, she hasn't progressed very rapidly (only at this phase in 4th year). Possibly, she is a max between 1a & 1b - with preference to 1a - she is very quick-minded, notices a lot, but requires dedicated time to do this, losing any conversational flow as a result. Again, although not as educated as usual (nor as progressed - indicating lower IQ - perhaps superficially raised by logical dedicated thought), she is definately compatible enough to be considered. I would love to see what she becomes in two years time.

As for the rest of the day, little. Pamela says she will be doing the YSE next year with Bronogh, and if I have something project-able by summertime then I could enter the YSE too. Possibly I am slightly influenced right now, but then again who really knows? I am sorry not to be able to keep up contact with Pamela, but time is so precious anyway. It's now 3.46am, and I must sleep. My birthday tomorrow.

Talk to you soon,
Niall

[ends]

Tuesday 16th January 1996: Last night I was tired, so tonight's my birthday entry.

Sun night I went down the Rest [Ed: that being my nearest pub at home] with Mick and had three pints + two more bottles at home. Had a hangover yesterday unusually. Made school a little difficult.

It's strange being eighteen at last. It's weird how much things have sped up recently. My [next page] Leaving's just around the corner [Ed: the Leaving Cert is the exam you take to get into unis in Ireland], I'm 18, and so much of my life is suddenly over. Those teenage years you're meant to cherish so much in mid-life, almost gone. It seems like a distant yet near memory of me sitting in a garden in the middle of the night drinking tinnies with the girls & lads. Nostalgic.

And what about the future? Certain, yet not so. The uni years will be fun & good - this is true - but will also be over quicker than I need think. And suddenly, I will be where I shall for the great portion of the remainder of my life. Quite frightening. And there seems little alternative.

Computer's working again. Me & Laura still hate each other. Aoife never rang to wish me good birthday tidings. That's it.

ND

[ends]

Fraid also the 1997 & 1998 entries aren't here - Melanie still has the diary and is only coming back to do exams, so she isn't around to get the diary back from. As you can see, many things have changed and yet many have also remained the same. I'm still the basic Niall I was, but a hell of a lot more stable than I was, and still coming up with theories and such (although the then theory of women was horribly incorrect and in part because all the theories were so wrong, I kept getting things wrong - essentially misunderstanding life - and being far more unstable as a result). But also so different - now I'm in very different surroundings, think very differently, and and generally speaking much more on top of things. Although the women thing still eludes me, I now at least don't keep getting into crap relationships as I see the weaknesses from the start. Except with Kathryn of course, but that was a hard one to have seen then - maybe still even now - although I hope not!

In case you're interested me and Pamela did indeed never really talk again - the next time I saw her was in a Dundalk cafe while I was at Trinity in Dublin. She looked tired, haggered, almost twice her age. And she was very much more a twisted embittered by life type of girl by then, the girl who had done things she wanted, society and culture said no, and she learned to hate herself and society at the same time for what they both were. I luckily never had to endure this, or in some ways maybe I was too stubborn to give in to pressures from either. I think partially it was because I was male in Irish society, not all that different, and kept trying all the time. I was also more intelligent and thus more intimidating to those who tries to repress me. Anyway, the last I heard of Pamela was that she was now ecstatically happy doing a course in Trinity, the same hellhole I escaped. I hope she truly is happy, and stays that way.

And so back to sunny Hull. I think I've said everything I wanted to say about my current outlook on my past and ditto for the future, but I'm really in the mood for it now after reading through all those past diary entries. I think my main impressions are amazement at how fucked up I used to be. I had all sorts of silly notions, was generally unhappy and only too well knew it. And strangely, it's weird how many roots in things I have done since or am doing now are in those diaries. You could almost chart out a map of what I'm going to do from them, and indeed who I am. Although you need to be a person who's already got there to know what it's like and so hence predict it in me. And the other thing is perhaps how it worries me - I still sometimes come across pitfalls I had in my youth, yearnings to do things which are wrong and so on. It's almost as though I've learned to mask things bad about me five years ago, but every now and then the mask slips and I have to struggle to put it back on, only too well aware of the pain it caused in the past. Maybe everyone is like that really - some traits go completely, some you only ever manage to concrete up but occaisionally cracks show and it has to be repatched.

Anyway, I should go off to bed really. I'm not tired having spent some sixteen hours in bed today (needed it though, and feel world's better from it). But I need to be up at a reasonable hour tomorrow to put up posters, write to people, print invites to my birthday and finalise birthday party details. Last chance tomorrow ...

Right, I'm off. Cheers for reading, hope you found it interesting, and I'll be off to smoke another joint.

Niall

P.S.: Don't forget to be happy until next time!

Friday 22nd January 1999: 2.15pm. Not been a good few days. The legalisation meeting netted only two people, and we've heard back from almost no one we've written to. Also, I purchased a rather nice Honda Vision 80cc moped last Wednesday, only to see it nicked last night. That's three hundred and fifty pounds gone ...

Even better, in the boot were all my school and exam notes, plus my overnight bag. I had an exam this morning which I couldn't do without those notes (it was an open exam), and so this morning I didn't even bother to go in for it. Best of all, I have nothing to smoke except tobacco, and I have no deoderant, toothbrush etc. All the legalisation stuff was in the boot too, but thankfully not the cash box.

Now what gets me is the sheer audacity of the theft. The bike was parked right in front of a busy pub fully lit up. It was around 6pm too. Nevertheless, the two young lads lifted the back wheel and wheeled her off on her front wheel, right in full view of everyone. And yes, the pub's residents did see them, but didn't want to provide any descriptions (it's a pub full of pot smokers y'see, the last thing they want is police coming to interview them). They wheeled her across a busy road and into a park, where it promptly vanished.

Now after ringing the police and getting the impression nowt could be done, I grabbed hold of some Hempology people and let them know. Straight off, we went out for a look, assuming they wouldn't have got the D-lock off that quickly and so would probably be trying somewhere. Handily, we bumped into some local gear suppliers and them being people who know these things, they took us around all the dirt tracks used by bike joyriders and all the stashes used to store nicked stuff that can't be driven (eg; still need their plates changed etc). It's amazing the amount of stuff plainly nicked from the student population here, but it makes sense - students are very rich compared to the locals, and they are viewed as "us and them". I can't blame them - many students look down on the locals, and the clubs which do cheap drinking nights just for students don't help the feeling that students are supposed to be better or something. Anyway, we did not find the moped, but at least the word was put out that this moped was "taken" and it was wanted back. Never know, might work out. Put it this way - if this were Cambridge, I'd already have it back.

So given that this morning I failed an exam, yesterday lost 350 quid, legalisation stuff and notes for the period, and the day before dismally failing to get the ball rolling, I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to tonight's birthday party. Maybe lots of alcohol will fix this? Dunno, suppose I can try ...

Right I'm off to drink lots of beer. See you again soon, be happy till then.

P.S.: I'll be hopefully in London tomorrow for a legalisation conference. I'll let you know its progress when I get back.

Tuesday 26th January 1999: 12am exactly. After my little run of bad luck lasting through my last entry, things thankfully picked up a bit although I have to say I've spent the last few days thinking "damn this bad luck" whenever something bad happened but not saying "oh what good luck" when good things happened. I noticed this especially today when I found a tenner but went "what's the catch" and then realised what I was doing and kicked myself for it. Hmm. I don't like I like the human conscienceness much ...

Anyway, last Friday saw around fifty people turn up to my 21st which I thought poor given how many people are supposed to be friends. Although, since, lots of people have apologised for not being there because of usually (a) I thought it was another day (b) I was too fucked to make it or (c) girlfriend/boyfriend wouldn't let me. I've taken this at face value rather than being horribly cynical, mainly cos I don't want to be depressed again like I was this time last year while I was breaking up with Kathryn.

Speaking of which, I caught up with her in the Resnikov bar today. She seemed fine until her new boyfriend turned up, whereupon she looked distinctly uncomfortable as me and him started nattering on about the workplace and middle management. I hope she hadn't chosen him with the hope he was the exact opposite of me - if she did, I'd imagine the poor girl's head will be spinning now ... ;)

Nah nah, I shouldn't be nasty. I do honestly wish her the best, but she crushed me, and I know how her mind works, and I find it so weird in the way I know what's she's thinking still sometimes, and I can see these thoughts running through her head. It's weird, and I find it facinating. Which brings me to the latest girlfriend, Elli.

Today before my last exam me and Elli went for a few drinks (yeah, I know, I'm too bloody cocky). She wanted to tell me she had a new boyfriend, which was good of her, but as I told her, I wasn't bothered at all. Y'see, as long-time readers will know, I was never able to commit to Elli, and she broke it off with me as a result. I seem to have plunged myself into all this work and legalisation stuff so avidly in order to have an excuse to keep out of another relationship. With Elli and I, I tried very hard but kept not spending enough time with her with the excuse that "I was too busy". And now I realise, as I probably did then but didn't want to admit it, that really I'm using it to prevent another Kathryn happening to me. And this is bad. I need all the practice at relationships I can get. I can do the simple ones that don't involve getting majorly inside each other's head now (unlike before Kathryn), but as I learnt with Kathryn it's the stuff cutting to your very core which I don't do well. Blame my staunch catholic upbringing I guess ...

Hmm, what else happened over the weekend? Well, other than a fair number of severe sessions, ones with Moroccan Light (that's mine ATM), Northern Lights and Columbian grass all at once. Yeah yeah, I know, I'm always here complaining about supply and then suddenly you get shit loads of the stuff all at once. Blame it on the Christmas break - everyone brings a few ounces home for resale, so now we're in a glut of the stuff. Won't last of course, but hell I'm going to enjoy it while I can ...

Oh yeah - the Exodus conference happened. This was a major point along the UK legalisation highway, but of course I got completely fucked at my party and didn't wake up until pretty late, too late to make it to London in time. Apparently it all went very well, with lots of stuff organised, and we're well on target for May 1st.

Well, exams over now, and I'm not allowed to go to Amsterdam this year cos I don't have a valid passport, and some silly UKUSA pressure thing on the Dutch to make them recriminalise cannabis meant visas being suspended since the start of this year, so I can't go under a temporary visa like I did for the Cannabis Cup last year. Complete cack innit? Well, nothing not to be expected with Tony "I am really a subversive American turning the UK into some US satellite" Blair in charge :(

Right I'm off for a spliff, see you all later. Be happy!

Sunday 31st January 1999: 4.49am, I should be in Amsterdam right now. No matter though, I'm smoking "dutch style" right now, dutch super skunk + rizla originals king size + drum top leaf tobacco. Exactly as in the coffee shops. Mmm, nice, gets you very stoned but given the last few days of debauchery, it's not having much effect anymore. Let me explain.

Well, last entry followed a smoking bonanza I haven't seen since the cannabis cup last year. I found out Wednesday that the UK and Holland no longer permit people to travel without a passport ie; no more visas like I used last time. So my inter-semester week was kinda fucked to put it mildly - no one here and I'm not in Holland like I should be.

Anyway, I was feeling this on Thursday morning when lo & behold, didn't an ounce of jamaican fall through my door. Damn says I, this bad luck streak just keeps on going. So I spent Wed in bed stoned off my tree, ditto for Thurs, Fri. On Sat I get an ounce of dutch super skunk, this is what I am smoking now. Damn my bad luck! ;)

The whole upshot is that I have been permanently fucked since the exams ended. It's cost me lots of money, but I would have spent it in Holland anyway, so no loss. And now it's not having as much effect, I've been smoking since 1pm today, lots of super skunk and jamaican (strong enough is it too BTW), have gone for two *major* caining sessions, but I still feel fairly competent. Although my writing here is a bit odd, I must admit. Strange the way it affects your writing skills, even though you feel fairly cogniscieint (sp?).

Tomorrow sees me file the legalisation motion, it's here for those interested. Plus write letters n' stuff, get other things organised. Supposedly I should be up for 9am tomorrow. Not likely at nearly 5am already is it? I think an all nighter smoking bender session is on - maybe I better get out my bong.

As I said, damn my bad luck right now ... betcha the coppers raid me tonight! ;)

Cheers for reading, I'm off to finish downloading carmageddon 2. Be happy!