The Eight Book One – The making of men

The Grateful Eight – The First Generation by Ted Grateful 

Chapter: One 

Who were The Grateful Eight? The love spreaders that saw the light.

Hi, my name is Tom, and I will tell you this story. I will tell you my story later as theirs is much more important. All you need to know right now is that a tragic event in my life led me to travelling to Goa, in India, in search of a mystery. My search led me to learning the stories of eight incredible beings. I will try my best to tell you their stories. 

To be in your 20’s in the 60’s was to be blessed. It was no doubt the decade of the century or even the millennium. The markets and skirts were rising fast. Money was starting to circulate, and money meant freedom. An insignificantly small, but disproportionally important percentage of the growing number of people on the planet, took advantage of this glimpse of another life to live. This tribe of free-thinking, mind freeing, mould breaking humans, were given a name, The Hippies. 

We will meet a group of the greatest Hippies that ever lived, and travel with them on their journeys through newly accessible worlds, on earth and into the other dimensions. On earth it was India, whose many wonders were accessible, by bus. The door to the exploration of the mysteries of the mind and other dimensions was opened by LSD. 

The Grateful Eight are a glorious product of their time, believing in a beautiful future and realising that they had to make their own. As the future that was facing them, was not of their faith, they would decide what was wrong and right but keep quiet about this rebellion. Stealth, not fight, was the name of the game. 

First arriving in India in the 1960s from one of the so-called, ‘Developed Countries,’ was like travelling back in a time machine. Sure, you could travel back in time when crossing time zones, but more than that, India was in a different century. At this time, people in India were living a life comparable, to living in other countries one hundred years ago, it was like the 1860s, not the 1960s. It was like travelling back in a time machine and was a shock to all those who made the journey. In these early days, many who travelled to India did so on the overland route. On the buses, bought by hippies with money, that had started the early unofficial trade between Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and the west. 

Several enterprising hippies had decided that a good and interesting life was to be had by travelling overland between Europe and Nepal. There were many things to buy in Nepal, some of them even legal. There was a growing demand amongst the rich to furnish their homes in the trappings of the ancient East. The Tanka’s (exquisitely painted mandalas featuring a multitude of symbols and gods, designed to be studied as a guide for meditation, and for trips on acid according to some,) had become greatly valued for hanging on the walls of apartments and houses in the more expensive parts of London and the home counties. Likewise, Buddhas’ statues had become a status symbol, a symbol of your worldliness, or now maybe we call it ‘Wokeness.’ 

These symbols of willingness to embrace ancient cultures that were a million miles away, figuratively, virtually and literally, from the Church of England or similar mindset, that most who aspired to own these icons, had come from. The images of Buddha and the Tanka designs had started to appear in youth culture. 

In the home of the hippies, San Francisco, a band called The Grateful Dead had risen to become the arbiters of the new psychedelic generation. The band had travelled to Kathmandu and returned to sing and speak about their times on Freak Street. Bringing this far off place into the minds of this new, young, free generation. 

New groups were formed around this new culture, The Zippies, The Weathermen and those surrounding the beat poets, Timothy Leary and his merry band of Pranksters. Leary promoted guided LSD trips and used as his guide, The Tibetan Book of The Dead. All this made the ancient East a must-go place for any self-respecting hippie with parents with the money and a willingness to let them go. Or by just going and trusting in making a living on the journey. Some of these enterprising hippies had their dreams cut short when their buses were searched on returning to Europe. What they found were not just Gods, they also found Nepali Temple Ball, which despite sounding like something connected with the statues and Tanka’s, was, in fact, the famous high-grade Hashish. It was made from Cannabis plants and was very illegal. Illegal to possess, very illegal to sell and extremely illegal to transport across international borders. Many years in jail were spent paying for not agreeing with and ignoring these laws. Even if those transporting it did not agree with the people who had the power over them, to take away their liberty by putting them in jail, there was nothing they could do. 

Others travelled by ship and a few even by air. 

So it was that our protagonists, arrived in India in the late 1960s. Our story starts at the beginning of the 1960s and is still going on. 

It was the summer of 1963, and things were happening in the world, not all were good things. It was from this point The Original Eight started to fulfil their shared destiny by meeting each other. 

Chapter Two: 

A problem child is born. 

Two loving parents nurture their child. 

It all starts with a man that made a discovery, Dr Albert Hofmann. Born January 11, 1906, and returned to a chemical April 29, 2008. 

After his discovery and ingestion of LSD, Dr Hofmann had become convinced that the substance was an invaluable tool for humankind. Many psychologists, governments, the military, and the secret services also. Sandoz, the company that he worked for, sort of thought the same, but their reasons were different, money was their reason. The psychologists found it was helpful and spent the early years learning how to use it. Governments also believed it could be of use to them in their secret wars. Later, through the MK Ultra program, they would discover that they could not control it, or the people that took it. It changed them, so they outlawed it. 

On November 16, 1938, Dr Hoffman synthesised LSD 25, or Acid, as it would come to be known. However, that day passed without note, and this seemingly unimportant substance was put on a shelf and forgotten. We do not know why exactly, but five years later, the doctor had reason to take the bottle off the shelf and open it. In the process of doing this, he unknowingly dosed himself, making him the first person ever to experience an LSD trip. The first of very, very many that would follow. 

It was on his way home after this accidental dose that Hoffman took his now-famous bicycle ride. A ride that would change the world. As a result of his feelings that day, he returned to the bottle and took a measured dose of what was inside. He needed to make sure that it was this that had led to his life-changing experience. 

The doctor measured out 250 µg of LSD, an absurdly small amount of anything. One µg is equal to one millionth (1×10−6) of a gram. To make this clear, you get 250 µg by dividing a gram by 1 million and then taking 250 of those parts. Almost nothing has any effect in such small amounts. 

The effects of this, as the doctor thought, tiny dose, were profound. The doctor reported his findings and was immediately instructed by his bosses to make a large quantity. 

Doctor Hoffman’s usual practice was to order double the quantity of precursors needed when instructed to make large quantities of anything for Sandoz. This was a precaution against mistakes being made that could cause deadlines to be missed. He did the same for LSD after he had received the instructions to make it. Hoffman was instructed to make a large amount of LSD for Sandoz to distribute in hopes of finding a market for it. The amount was enough for 500,000, 500µg doses. 

Very few mistakes had been made along the way. The doctor was very skilled in his work, and Sandoz had all the best equipment. There were enough chemicals left to make more, a lot more. Enough for another half a million doses. The LSD that was produced was suspended in water then packaged in vials and labelled as ‘Delysid,’ the name the company had chosen. 

Hoffman did not pay much attention to what stock the company he worked for had of anything he had made, except for LSD. For some reason, he was very interested in and indeed protective of his ‘problem child.’ He was able to access the records of where it was delivered to. There was a long list of doctors, both medical and psychiatric, universities and many others.  

One day the doctor went to recheck the list and saw an entry that worried him. It was not the doctor’s name that drew his attention; he did not recognise it; it was the address that worried him. The delivery address was Langley, McLean, Virginia, USA. The order was of significant quality, enough for one hundred thousand doses. The address Hoffman knew, was the headquarters of the American Central Intelligence Agency. 

This discovery played on the mind of the chemist. He could not get the question as to why this organisation would buy such a large quantity of this substance. Of all the substances Dr Hoffman had created over the years, LSD was the one that would not go away. It was the one he knew had a greater purpose. He decided he would keep a close eye on the order book for Delysid. 

Chapter: Three 

A meeting of Minds 

The right place at the right time 

In the summer of 1965, a new assistant was employed in Dr Hoffman’s laboratory. Elias Alaman was a young man, only twenty-one years old, and freshly graduated in Chemistry from UCLA Berkeley in California. Dr Hoffman was intrigued to know why the company had employed an American and went to the trouble of securing a work visa for him to come to Switzerland. 

There were many people employed under Dr Hoffman, and initially, he could not find a role for this recruit. He seemed to be surplus to requirements. Of course, as the most junior, his role would be to clean up, but something also told Hoffman that he should keep an eye on this one. The purchase by the CIA had alerted his senses and made him wary of all things American. 

So, as well as cleaning up, Hoffman had this young man directly assist him on the workbench. This would also allow him to keep an eye on him and get to know him. Something told him that it was important to do so. 

The two found that they got on very well. The young man was an able assistant, knew the work and procedures, and it was a pleasure to work with him. They soon built up a rapport. 

The two would take tea together in the beautiful grounds surrounding the many laboratories that made up this now global chemical giant. Slowly during these relaxed moments, Dr Hoffman would draw the young man into a conversation about himself. After three months of their tea talks, Elias finally explained how he had come to be in Switzerland and land a desirable job at a world-renowned laboratory, when so many equally suited candidates graduated from universities in the same country. 

Elias explained that his father was a director of the company they both worked for. The director was a well-paid, well-respected family man and a founder of the company. The problem was that his mother was not the mother of this man’s other children. Elias had been born of a lady with whom the man had been having a long-term affair on his business trips to America. He would never openly say that this was his son, but he cared enough to make sure that he had a start in life that befitted his father’s station in life. 

This startling revelation put aside any worries the good doctor had about this young man being a CIA plant. This being something that he had pretty much convinced himself was the case! 

The sharing of this secret put the two men in a strange situation. Elias wore his heart on his sleeve and had not considered the impact of sharing this knowledge. It was only when he arrived home that night did the worries enter his mind. 

This was an excellent outcome to his long-term, low-key interrogation of the young man. Secrets shared lead to deep trust, Dr Hoffman knew. 

Dr Hoffman knew that this information could be helpful to him at some point, but he liked the young man and felt no need to use it against him. His thoughts were only on how it might be useful to him. 

From this point on, it was the doctor who opened up. Finally, he felt he could trust Elias with his thoughts, worries, and misgivings in life and, more importantly, his work. 

One day the doctor decided to open the conversation on LSD. He had, up until then, not had anyone to talk to about his experience with it (except the rather vague report he had given to his superiors) and his beliefs about its uses and purpose for the world. 

Over tea, the doctor told Elias of his experience that day on his cycle ride home. He knew there was more to it from that day forward, and something was telling him that it was vital. 

Dr Hoffman also did another thing. He asked Elias to take LSD with him. He wanted to know that he had not been mistaken in his experience the first time and to see if another also felt the same. 

On August 20, 1966, exactly one year after their meeting, the two chemists ingested a measured amount of 500µg of the 25th purification of LSD, on a bright Sunday morning at the doctor’s house. What followed was life-changing for Elias and life reaffirming for Hoffman. 

They both experienced a revelation. They had opened the pandora’s box that is the human mind. The day was spent in a kaleidoscope of colours and thoughts. As the day came to an end, the overwhelming visions, and ideas slowly subsided. When the last shards of the light of the day had disappeared, they were able to raise themselves from the long grass that they had spent all day lying in and return to the house. 

They were hungry. The doctor’s housekeeper bought them soup and bread. Both tasted better than any soup and bread they had ever eaten. On finishing their second bowls, the men sat opposite each other in two high wing-backed chairs and started the long conversation they both knew was coming. 

Dr Hoffman had not been wrong; there was something deeply meaningful and important about this substance. Elias had now also seen the light, literary, and was a changed man. They talked long into the night about their experience before retiring to bed. They both awoke early the following day. Both felt refreshed, renewed even. They went to work. 

At the tea break, the two men, as usual, were in the garden. It was Elias who spoke first. ‘I agree with you. I believe this is a significant substance and that it is essential for all. That everyone should take LSD, and if they did, the world would be a better place. What can I do to make this happen?’ 

This is the outcome the doctor had hoped and wished for. Someone who thought the same way about LSD as he did. 

The first thing the doctor did was tell Elias of the purchase from the address in America and how this worried him. 

Elias casually said that he had a childhood friend that worked at the exact address, and the agency they knew was based there. As luck would have it, Elias was due ten days leave, and he was booked on a flight home to visit his mother in California. He also agreed to use the trip to meet up with his friend in the ‘agency.’ 

Elias found that his mother had planned a surprise welcome home party for him on his arrival home. Many friends had been invited, including his friend from the agency. 

During the afternoon garden party, he took his friend, Brad, aside. They reminisced about their times together, and Elias asked about Brad’s work. As they were good friends, Brad had confided in Elias that one of the most secretive organisations in the world, had recruited him on the day it happened. He had been overly excited. He was not supposed to tell anyone. 

Brad instead turned the conversation onto what his friend was doing. Elias explained what his days were spent doing. He said it was groundbreaking work, so groundbreaking that the agency that his friend worked for had bought a large quantity of a chemical that they had made. He slipped into the conversation the names ‘Delysid’ and ‘LSD’ and that he wondered why this would be. 

This also made Brad wonder why the organisation he worked for was buying large amounts of chemicals from a Swiss laboratory. 

The conversation turned back to one of the many fun times from their past. The two were then interrupted by Elias’s mother, who wanted him to meet someone new. The two friends shook hands and promised to stay in contact. 

The rest of Elias’s visit passed without much excitement. He spent most of it with his mother at home. 

The morning that he was to leave for the airport, a new black town car pulled up outside the house. Out of the vehicle came Brad, who came up to the door. Elias greeted him, and the agent asked if they could talk in the garden. 

Brad explained that his interest had been piqued by their last conversation (he knew his friend so well, he silently thought to himself) and that he had quietly had a look to see if he could find any information on the agency’s interest in Delysid. For some reason, he felt compelled to tell his friend what he had found out. 

The agency had set up a special team to investigate the uses of the substance. The team was called MK Ultra. They had been giving it to unsuspecting members of the military and filming them. They had also given it to countless patients in mental institutions, as well as prisoners. It was all very much off the record, but as much as the agency was good at keeping secrets from those outside of the organisation, there were few secrets within it. Brad said that he had no idea if this information was helpful to him but that it did answer the question as to why they had bought it. 

Brad then said his goodbyes, and they again agreed to stay in contact. 

Elias was driven to the airport by his mother and could not wait to return to work to give this information to the doctor. 

On hearing this news over tea in the garden, the doctor was even more concerned about a government agency’s interest in LSD and even more so about the way they were using it. He spent the next few weeks giving this some thought. 

The doctor had one day entrusted Elias with keeping an eye on the Delysid order book. After finding out that Elias had made friends with a pretty young secretary in the company’s admin department, the doctor did this. He would go to visit her in the office. Elias used this time to check the sales records for Delysid. This avoided the doctor having to give reasons for going to check this. 

After a few weeks of no orders being placed, there was a new order to the same address in the United States. Next to the order quantity, a column listed the amount of the item left in stock. After this new order, the amount of Delysid that was now available was zero. They had bought it all. 

Elias reported this news back to the doctor. What did they want with it all, he wondered. There must be a very good reason for the US government to be spending their money on it. Then it dawned on him. Not only did not want it all; they also did not want anyone else to have it! 

This news delivered over tea in the garden was a turning point for the doctor. He was now more convinced than ever that his discovery should be available to all. That it would be of great benefit to the world. He believed that it had the power to change people for the better, and other powerful entities knew it too. And they were determined to stop it. A grand conspiracy theory, or rather a truth, was born that day. 

Dr Hoffman sat with Elias and told him what he wanted to do. He wanted to use all the pre-cursers that he had leftover (from his double ordering) to make LSD that would be smuggled out of the laboratory and distributed to the world. ‘Will you help me’ came the question. ‘Yes’ was the emphatic answer from his young assistant. 

Making LSD was not easy, several processes needed to be carried out. It was what was referred to as ‘organic chemistry,’ the study of carbon-containing compounds. The base from which they started was ‘Ergotamine Tartrate,’ a substance that was not easy to get hold of, but it was in the storage. All self-respecting LSD manufacturers would use this in the future; the problem was getting hold of it. If you could not get hold of this, you had to grow the Ergot fungus yourself, which was not an easy process, and you needed a lot. Some also tried to make LSD from Morning glory seeds that contain Lysergic Acid Amide that was, in itself a hallucinogen, but converting LSA to LSD was found to be so complex as to be impractical. 

Ergotamine tartrate was also a very dangerous substance. It was derived from the Ergot Fungus (Claviceps purpurea), a parasitic fungus that grows on Rye if it is not stored correctly. This substance has a known history going back to the 1500s. There are reports of it being used in midwifery, but more interesting are the accidental effects on whole villages. Unknown to the inhabitants, their Rye grain store had been contaminated with the fungus and after eating the bread made from it, they were said to have all danced together. Later, other symptoms started manifesting themselves, including fever, intense pain and visible marks on the extremities and in some cases, death. These poisonings were said to have been caused by a ‘Holy Fire,’ and in those early days, no one had any idea where the poisoning had come from. It is said that some villages were completely abandoned after such events. Ergot was a substance that needed to be treated with respect. 

The Ergotamine tartrate had to go through many complicated and exacting processes to get to the finished product. The use of Chloroform, Anhydrous Hydrazine, and other solvents that are now known to be carcinogenic are necessary. Dr Hoffman did not know of the exact dangers of these solvents, but he knew that they were dangerous. He did not want Elias to die in the process of making LSD. 

Knowing the exact processes and how they work requires a degree in chemistry to understand. But they can be divided up into five processes. In, as layman’s terms as it is possible to describe, these processes are; firstly, the Ergotamine tartrate must be converted into a Lysergic Acid Compound. This is called ‘Iso-lysergic acid hydrazide’ and is achieved using Chloroform and Anhydrous Hydrazine as well as heating processes. Next, the Iso-lysergic acid hydrazide needs to be Isomerised. Isomerisation is the process of changing a molecule into an Isomer that has a different chemical structure. (Feel free to learn about that in your own time!) It is this process that requires the classic arrangement of glass flasks connected by tubes that pass through the glass coil in a glass tube that you see in the photos of LSD labs that have been busted. The resulting liquid must then be cooled, mixed with an acid and evaporated to produce Iso-lysergic diethylamide. Then Isomerisation needs to be performed again to make Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. This final product then needs to be processed to yield what we now know as LSD, in crystal form. 

As we can see, this is not a simple process at the best of times. It would be even more difficult as the whole process could not be done in one go. The reason for this was the need to keep what they were doing a secret. It was impossible to dedicate one of the labs for a prolonged time to get everything done. 

The doctor set about planning how the task would be completed. There were many ongoing experiments and chemical productions in the multitude of labs that the senior doctor managed. There were experiments and productions just being started, and others just being finished. The doctor began by looking at his schedule of experiments that needed to be performed and the chemicals he had been tasked with producing. 

After several hours of work, Dr Hoffman had planned out how this would happen. Experiment times that used the necessary equipment were extended by a couple of days. This would allow Elias to use the equipment under the guise of packing it all down. The other scientists and assistants that were on that project would be moved to a laboratory in another building so that they would not see that the equipment was being used. It would be a time consuming and complicated process. 

The process was made more complicated because there was an audit of all processes that were being carried out on the 25th of each month. This meant that they could not work on this day and had to make sure anything they were doing was packed down. 

Elias was removed from all his other duties and put to work on this job alone. The doctor wrote out a schedule of the processes. What he had to do, what laboratory he was to do it in. When he could start and when he had to be finished. 

It took nearly one full year to carry out the first process. Bit by bit the Ergotamine tartrate was converted into Iso-lysergic acid hydrazide and secretly stored. 

 After another eleven complicated months Elias had processed the Iso-lysergic acid hydrazide into the crystalised Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Elias had taken each batch home in a vacuum flask that he would purchase again whenever necessary. The second half a million doses of LSD ever made stayed quietly under the floorboards he had taken up under his bed. 

It was now June 1967, two months short of Elias completing his three-year contract to work at Sandoz. This Elias knew signalled the beginning of the end of his lab life, and his deep, close, daily relationship with the man that he knew was genius. 

The two visionaries, who by the time they finished their plotting, were communicating on the telepathic level, now faced questions that they had previously, purposefully not thought about or discussed. The flasks had sat under the floorboards for six months after the plot was finished. The main reason for this Elias’ three-year contract in the lab. The two spent those six months taking LSD together and talking about it. Little chemistry was done by either of them. 

The elephant in the room, or rather in the garden, was the total lack of discussions on what to do next. They started on a journey together to make something they believed would change the world and now that they had, they did not know how to get it to the world. This question raised more and more questions. 

Elias had been thinking about this problem. In his alone time, it was all he thought about. There were many things to consider. He knew what had to be done. There was the question as to how to do this and where to do this? Where were the people he needed to have around him? Something told him the place was Amsterdam. Once he had this to grab on to, he needed to think about what he would tell his father, why he was going to Amsterdam. Elias decided to take a risk. 

The Swiss company paid all their staff well, every penny paid was free of tax and his outgoings were very minimal. This had enabled Elias to buy a motorbike, a Norton Dominator and he had fallen in love with the machine. In a short time, he had a total of four and three-quarter motorcycles in a empty building he had found on the campus. No one seemed to have noticed that he was using it. Bike mechanics was a break from his work in the lab and he spent three hours a night working on his bikes. When he knew he would be moving on, he also knew he would have to sell his beloved machines. All except one, the Dominator, he would use this to ride to Amsterdam. 

Elias had not joined a motorcycle club, far from it, he had no time for a social life and had no connection with what should be, like-minded bikers. He had bought the bikes through the classified columns of the local newspaper; he checked them every week and very few British bikes were listed. When he realised he needed to find like-minded people to buy his bikes, it was as if they just appeared for him like magic. 

He was sitting outside with the doctor, and he heard the distinctive sound of large motorcycle engines. As the sound became louder and louder, he stood up and saw what he guessed were thirty motorbikes moving slowly along the curving road from the entrance to the front courtyard of the administration building. 

Elias was unable to resist walking towards the main building, drawn by the sight and sound of the motorcycles. He left the doctor to sit back down and finish his tea. As Elias arrived at the large gravel rectangle in front of the main building, the bikes were parking up in lines. The well-dressed, by which I mean they were not dressed as members of a motorcycle club, they were dressed for riding, but riding in style. No live fast and die young for this lot, it was more live class, die rich and old. The group that included some females, (only on the pussy-pad of course) were walking towards the imposing building where an extensive buffet and bar and been setup, maned by as many staff as bikers. Elias could see some members of the top brass shaking hands and being in animated conversation with the group. 

The brass then went for a walk around the bikes, chatting with each owner as they admired the stunning machines. Elias split his time between checking the movements of his bosses, and his father, who he had suddenly noticed, and looking at each bike. They were fairly evenly split between British, Italian and German machines. It was of course the British bikes that most interested Elias. 

After some time, the men in suits had all moved back inside the building that was their gilded home. The buffet was being packed away and Elias sensed that the gathering was coming to an end. He had spied three British machines side by side and decided to walk over to those bikes with the hope of engaging the owners in conversation. Elias made a point of looking carefully at the machines, which caused the owners (ever keeping an eye on their steeds) to walk over to safeguard their investments. Elias still had his lab coat buttoned up and was reflecting the sunlight in contrast to the darker tones of all the others present. By the time the group arrived Elias knew everything about their bikes and had chosen a modification on each bike to mention to the owner. Within no time it was obvious that Elias knew what he was talking about, and it was at this point he said that he has three and three-quarter British motorbikes that he wished to sell. He was immediately asked what they were, and the three men were instantly surprised and interested. Within a few minutes he had explained where the garage was and asked them to come by early the next morning. 

Elias wended his way back to the lab through the gardens extremely happy with himself. The doctor was still sitting in the chair, fast asleep. Elias sat down thinking happily until his friend woke up. I have sold my motorbikes Elias said, Dr Hoffman smiled, and they closed their eyes and the two of them fell into a relaxed sleep. 

The next morning Elias was in his garage at six, spitting and polishing his already gleaming machines. At seven twenty the first of the men arrived, he looked at the three bikes and the parts for a fourth and made a huge offer on the spot. Elias had thought long and hard about how from this day forward he would be a salesman, and he should be the best one. Always strike the best deal. Elias knew the other two would arrive soon, so he hummed and erred and did more polishing. Very soon the other two men arrived within a minute of each other. These two had the same glint and longing in their eyes when they saw the bikes. They also wanted to buy them all. 

Elias suggested they agree a price for all the bikes and then split them between themselves, this would take the problem away from Elias. The price the first man had offered was four times what he had expected. Elias doubled this price and told them that this was the price. The three men said yes in unison. Elias then handed the first arrival a piece of paper that just had a long number on it. This was the numbered bank account he wanted the money paid into. He had just recently found out about this part of the Swiss banking service. Elias just said, ‘deposit the money and come and collect the machines at the same time in two days’ time. 

The money was paid, the bikes were put on a truck, Elias was free of them, and he had a chunk of money in a numbered Swiss bank account. He had also multiplied the money he had spent on the bikes by twenty-fold. 

Elias had few meetings with his father, the ones that he did have were regular, weekly, and short. The motorbikes had been something he could talk to his father about; lab work was too much of a busman’s holiday. His father could see that his son had an interest in this and now he could say that he had made money from it also. Elias told his father he would use the money from the sale of the bikes to set up a bike shop in Amsterdam. He figured that he could reason with his father that he had done what his father had wanted him to do, (three long years in the labs) and it was now time to let Elias do what he wanted to do. This surprisingly led to his father’s agreement for him to do this. Another mission accomplished and this was the last mission, Elias was now free to leave Sandoz. 

Chapter: Four 

From Elias Alaman to Mr Sandosa of The Eight 

A man with a mission 

On August 20^th, 1966, Elias arrived in Amsterdam on his Norton Dominator, that now had a side car. The side car was more than half full of thermos flasks with his clothes on top. It had been ten hours of riding since saying his last goodbye to Dr Hoffman on the steps of the administration building, to reach Amsterdam. It was early morning, as Elias had chosen to ride during the night, when he pulled into a gas station on the outskirts of the city. 

Elias now had to find somewhere for himself, his large motorcycle and the flasks to stay. He filled the tank on the Dominator and went to the shop to pay. Next to the till was a fold out map of the city, which he picked up and paid for along with a bag of sweets and a pint of milk. There was a small area of grass to the left of the gas station forecourt where Elias laid out the map on the grass and sat down. He put one of what he now realised were black sweets into his mouth expecting a sweet taste and a sugar rush. Instead, what he was experiencing in his mouth was the deepest salt flavour he had ever tasted in a food. Elias had tasted such an affront to the senses before in the lab and later he would find what the culprit in the black sweets was, it was ammonium chloride. 

The milk did little to dilute the extreme saltiness in his by now black mouth, but as he looked over the map of his new home, in that moment he already knew he loved the taste of this city. Wherever Elias was from then on, a packet of dubbelzoute drops (as the Dutch called this double salted liquorice) was always very close by. 

After studying the map Elias confirmed to himself that riding into the narrow streets of the centre of town on a large, unusual and loud motorbike was not the best way to keep a low profile. His eyes fell on an area west of the city where the airport was and was marked as Schiphol-Rijk industrial estate. This is where the first terminal building for Schiphol airport had been built and where it got its name from. The airport was still a relatively small affair at that time but that would change with the building of the much larger terminal building in 1967 and mark the turning of the city into a global air transport hub. 

Another reason for Elias choosing Amsterdam was that he had a Dutch passport as well as an American one, his father was Dutch. This would make paperwork in the country much easier and elicit fewer questions than an American coming to setup a business in Holland. 

Elias folded up the map and threw his leg over the saddle for what he hoped would be one of the last times before he could lie down. He had found the gas station on the map and had the route to the industrial estate in his mind’s eye. It was not far as he had wisely stopped well before he entered the city and before long, he saw the terminal building and then behind it a lot of industrial units, some large, some small. 

Elias pulled into a gate that enclosed ten small units with roll up doors and stopped to survey the scene. Four units had the doors rolled up, the one open to the furthest right corner was clearly a tire change garage. Then moving to the left was a sheet metal cutter, then a glass cutter and finally a mechanics with a selection of very scruffy cars inside and out. The unit next to that was not open. To the right of the last building was a shipping container with ‘Office’ painted on it in dripping paint. 

Elias rode slowly up to the container and cut the engine. Looking around at the busy units, he was pleased to see that no one was paying him the slightest bit of attention. He had however managed to draw the attention of the person manning the office. The door opened and a middle-aged man, overweight and balding man was standing in it and staring at him in the way that people do when they have just woken up. 

Elias climbed down from his machine, fixed the man in the eyes and said ‘Hallo, goede morgen.’ Dutch was another thing that his father had failed to teach him, but from his first attempts, it was looking like it was going to be easy. Elias said this greeting as a new person, not as the white coated lab assistant that he had lived as for the past three years, but as an eager young man who grew up in the states, who had come to the land of his father to open a motorcycle business. He had had in his mind that he needed a new name. 

Fortunately, the man spoke English and he beckoned Elias inside where they sat opposite each other at the desk that was the hub of this small industrial estate. Elias was already convinced he had found what he was looking for and told the man so.  

Let’s go and have a look the friendly man suggested. They walked together to the opposite side of the enclosure. There was a large padlock, a thing that gave him a great feeling of security, at each end of the roller door. The man swiftly unlocked them and with some effort rolled up the door to get inside. The man took long strong stick with a hook at the end that was leaning against the wall and used this to push the door all the way up. As the door had curled itself around itself completely at the top, the morning light flooded into the building. 

What greeted Elias was a space where the walls were lined with metal shelves and four large and substantial metal work benches. Elias went inside and the first thing he did was pace the length of the benches and to his delight surmised that they were long enough and strong enough to have a motorcycle on them. He also noted that there was a movable winch system above. Against the back wall, covered in a dusty sheet, was a selection of chairs, a table and a large sofa. 

Elias had seen enough and said yes to the man. The man smiled and beckoned him out of the unit and back to the shipping container and said that they just had to now talk about money. Not a lot of cash changed hands and the young American/Dutch who was now Dutch/American, had the keys to the first unit on the far-left side as you came in the gates. 

The Dominator was started again and Elias rode into the unit for the first time. He found the light switch and pulled down the door and went straight to the back where he pulled the sheet off the sofa and lay on it and fell asleep. 

Elias woke up at four o’clock in the afternoon feeling surprisingly fresh. After shaking the sleep away and confirming to himself that he had indeed rented a garage for his (cover) business, his thoughts turned to his stomach. He had to work fast to do what he needed to do before going somewhere to still his growling stomach. 

The first thing on the list was to hide the flasks. On standing up and thinking where a good place would be, he realised that he was looking at it, the sofa. The large piece of furniture proved to be an ideal stash for the many flasks. Elias took the cushions off and found that he could put the flasks one by one down the back of the sofa, where many things had been lost, he smiled to himself. But he shook that thought off and very shortly had all the bottles hidden and you could not tell they were there when you sat on it. 

First mission accomplished. The next was to remove the sidecar from the Norton. He laid the tools he carried with him on one of the work benches, choose the spanner he knew he needed and started to unbolt the large and rather un-gamely attachment. As he had attached the sidecar himself, he knew how to take it off again and it was not long before the two were separated. Elias then packed his small but surprisingly spacious bag, that went over his shoulder and rested securely on the fuel tank and rolled the Dominator out of the garage. He then pulled down the shutter and locked the chucky padlocks, double and then triple checking that they were locked. He then kicked the bike into life and was on the road again. 

Elias knew where he was going, to Damrak, the main street in Amsterdam city centre. This was the tourist hub and Elias reasoned that this was a good place to start his adventure in the city. He needed food and a comfortable bed for the night. According to the map his destination was less that fifteen miles away and the place he was heading for was the central station where he reasoned he should find a secure parking spot for this valuable machine. 

It was an easy journey and before long Elias had indeed found the parking for the station. There was an option on the price list board that said ‘overnachting’ and it was ‘overnacht behagen’ that he said to the man in the kiosk. Money was paid and the barrier was lifted. Elias was confident the Norton would be safe here, he found a spot at the end of a row of three bikes, turned the key in the steering lock and headed into the station through the side entrance from the carpark. 

Once inside the huge building he swung a left towards the main entrance/exit and found himself looking down the Damrak and strode onwards. Walking felt good after his long journey, and he took in the early evening sites of the entrance to the city. He had been striding for a while when he looked up and in front of him was a building with large neon sign that said ‘Popularis.’ This word seemed easily translated and Elias entered the huge dining room of this imposing building and was immediately greeted and shown to a table where he proceeded to eat a six-course meal. 

Feeling full but now very tired, Elias paid the bill, left the restaurant and looked around. He then set off on the short walk to Dam Square where he had seen the hotel, he had decided would be his sanctuary for the night. As he arrived in the square, he looked up again at the sign and mouthed the words to himself ‘NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky.’ It looked expensive, he hoped not too expensive, but Elias had already decided that he was owed some comfort, he had money and he intended to start as he meant to continue, being a success. He also knew that money would come, he just needed to find the right people. 

Elias walked into the door that was held open for him and a few minutes after having a short conversation at reception he was in a very comfortable room. He opened the large windows and looked across the city, he drew a several deep breathes to taste this new place. It was at this moment that he decided, he would introduce himself as Mr Sandosa or just Sandosa, depending on the circumstances and who it was. 

Mr Sandosa then closed the curtains and climbed into the massive bed and fell into a deep sleep. 

Chapter: Five 

From Edward to Mr English of The Grateful Eight 

A Leader of Men 

The summer of 1948, one early morning. There was a stir in a house, a terraced house, but not your usual imagination of a terraced house. No, this was a grand, curved, and appropriately, Edwardian terrace. Built for the great and the good, overlooking the English Channel in a popular town on the south coast on England. A glorious place. Glorious to the father with the rich wife he had snared at the dating agency that is the Young Conservatives Club, in a wealthy part of London. This was the rich families summer home on the coast. This insignificant man had aimed high and scored, raising well above his father’s station in life, as had been his mission. 

Little had ever been accomplished by the man’s family, but now he was in a place for greatness to be born. The Unstoppable March of Darwinism was in full effect. It started with a barely audible sigh, followed by some time of heavy breathing, and ended with Edward being, quietly, peacefully, and significantly, for the rest of our story, born. Edward started his first day knowing nothing and needing to know nothing of this wide world. Edward was born with only one thing on his mind, a dream of Utopia. The first child to be born with a dream of his life ahead. 

Our hero was given the name Edward by his father. His father, a cantankerous bastard of the old school. He harboured racist tendencies and had a deep-seated hatred of the royal family. Two beliefs that were to some extent at odds with each other. The only member of the royal family that he did like (liked was a totally inappropriate word, admiration was much better) was the previously, King Edward; Edwards’s father even choosing his potatoes over all others. He felt that the duke, as he was now referred, had royally stuck his two fingers up at the rest of the royal family, and not Winston’s two fingers. He had done that and then buggered off and taken the job as the governor of the Bahamas. The miserable old man had thought this was an excellent career move. All the protestations of his wife were ignored and that is the name that went on the birth certificate. 

This royal name had however never stuck, his mother for some never explained reason called him ‘Lolos’, and it was this name that had followed him. 

Lolos grew up in this privileged land. A place where everything is prim and proper, a fact ensured by his living in the Victorian era father. His father was an accounts clerk (not for long he knew) and his mother a housewife. His wife’s father had been a wealthy businessman and had left his daughter very well cared for financially, after his early death.  

This money also provided Lolos with an education in England’s public school system, at an excellent school. It was the beginning of the 1960s, and Lolos was not enjoying school at all. He did not see the point. Being always at loggerheads with his father about his results and bad reports from school. His father just could not understand why he was not taking advantage of the considerable benefits that this expensive education would give him. The old school tie as he always said. Lolos detested the tie he was forced to wear, he felt it was a noose around his neck and a symbol of servitude and membership of an exclusive club, that he felt no part of. What is the tie for he would always ask his father? This would just draw the same comment from his father every time, ‘stupid boy, get out of my sight.’ 

Lolos’ school was based on religion; a relatively new religion called The Church of England. There was a chapel service at eight every morning. They would repeat prayers from the Bible that he profoundly disagreed with and must endure a lecture form the headmaster, that would make his blood boil at the start of every day. There was some light relief with hymn singing, but this contained the same undercurrent of stupidity, as the prayers and lectures. The chapel services were the most irksome part of school life for him, and he just could not understand why they were not optional, for those like him, who could see through it all. 

This school produced an unreasonably high percentage of students who would don ‘The Cloth’, in later life. Many of those high up in the Church, had been students at this school. It seemed to Lolos that the students were being brainwashed. However, it was not that he was not interested in religion, he was very interested in religion, just not this one. 

Lolos struggled through the years until he was sixteen and to his great surprise, and to the surprise of his parents, he managed to pass his exams. He was desperately hoping that he had failed miserably and would be kicked out of the school. In most cases, it did not matter how much money you had, if you did not do well enough, they would kick you out. The school had a reputation to keep up, and they did not want any student to bring down the average grades, so they could maintain their standing as an elite school and justify the long waiting list and the exorbitant fees. 

Due to the long-standing reputation of the school there were many pupils from other countries whose parents were, for a variety of reasons, based in England. These were the sons of some of the wealthiest people from the Gulf and The Emirates, families that could afford to pay for a whole new science block with all the latest equipment inside, these boys could do no wrong. They would later build outposts of the school in the far-off places of these students. There were also a few others, these were the ones from the great families, those whose parents were, and their sons would go on to be, Archbishops, Minsters, Colonels and members of the secret service. 

Due to his surprise success, Lolos could carry on his education at this august institution for another two years. He would do this and then on to either Oxford or Cambridge, to get his degree in something useless. This had been the plan; but Lolos’ plan was to leave school and find his way in the world, but it was not to be, he had no choice. 

After a year of doing very little in terms of his education, Lolos’ seventeenth birthday was suddenly upon him. He had a growth spurt and was able to grow a beard, something he wanted to do, but of course, that was not allowed to under the school’s regime. He reluctantly had to shave every morning, meaning he had to get up even earlier to get to the irksome chapel service. There was however a silver lining with this. The fact that he looked much older than his seventeen years with some facial growth, which allowed access to the hallowed ground, that was the pub or public house. Or a bar as the rest of the world would call it. 

It was the start of the summer holidays in his last year at the school. Lolos had a plan. He convinced his parents that he and another friend would travel in a friend’s father’s pale blue Ford Anglia and with another two friends, who would travel in another car, for a summer holiday in the British surfing headquarters of Newquay. He said one of the friends was keen on surfing and he felt that he would like to try it also. After some persuasion, he was given permission. 

It was the summer of 1965. The world was screaming to the music of the Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and many other new bands playing new music. England, and more specifically London, was the centre of everything that was cool in the world and Lolos wanted to see it. So instead of heading west the four friends took the cosmically numbered A23 north to the capital. 

The four friends spent a week in the city of cool. They crashed in a cheap hotel in Shepard’s Bush and spent those precious days going to gigs and hanging out in the hip and cool places they were given tips on. They found a whole new world. 

On their first night they ended up at a party in a house in Ladbroke Grove after a gig. They wandered into the kitchen to see if there was any alcohol, they found a lot, but they also found a very strangely dressed man making tea. The man’s clothes were so colourfully patterned as to make it hard to make out his form, like some type of disruptive camouflage. The item of dress that particularly caught the attention of Lolos was that the man was wearing his school tie as a belt! He later found out that they had attended the same school and shared the same hatred for the noose around their necks and this was the man’s payback. 

It was not long before the man had convinced the young friends to forego the alcohol and try his tea, on the promise of a much better time. The man was not wrong. 

The next time they had any specific awareness of where they were, they were in a park, sitting around a tree. This turned out to be, rather appropriately, Queens Park Gardens. It was shortly before dawn, they were tired, they were stunned, they were silent. They were also feeling a bit exposed and decided to find the first bus they could that would take them back to their crash pad. 

They slept until late afternoon, and all woke up with the same strange and unpleasant taste in their mouths. They went downstairs to the room that served as a common room for the guests and were greeted by the landlady who offered them tea. They all exchanged glances with each other and declined the offer one by one. They decided the pub was the best place to go. 

It took several pints of London Pride for the taste in their mouths to go away, and for them to again gain some pride in themselves! They were confused, unable to put into words the experience of the previous evening. They did all however know that they were forever changed. They had seen things other people would never believe. They had eaten the magic mushrooms. 

The rest of their week in the big city passed in a whirlwind, mainly because the next night they discovered speed. The not so white powder was cheap and freely available and made the nights of pubs, gigs and parties a lot longer and a whole lot more exciting. It also however made their drive back home a great deal longer, stressful and argumentative! 

The following year passed very quickly, as if the speed they were doing every weekend had also sped up time. This combined with a constant supply of (locally grown) mushrooms they had led to a year of some very bad decisions by Lolos and his friends, culminating in the events of a year later. 

It was the 21^st of Augusts 1966, it was the day after his eighteenth birthday. Lolos had left school some weeks earlier. It was on this day that Lolos found himself being announced using birth name, by the clerk of court of his local Magistrates. It was not the first time he had been there to hear his name. This time however things were different, he had come of age, which meant that he no longer had the leniency of his previous legal transgressions, afforded a minor. He was charged with stealing a car, even though he had no intention of stealing it, just sleeping in it. Unfortunately, the two policemen that saw him breaking into the car were having none of that. They also had no way of knowing that at the time, Lolos was not making any sense at all because of the effects of the over two hundred magic mushrooms he had consumed. The ten pints of beer that he had legally drank added to his lack of ability to communicate and the speed added urgency to his dilemma. 

The inability of the police to understand that all he wanted to do was sleep, coupled with the fact that these two dark suited officers looked like evil demons in Lolos otherworldly mind and eyes, meant that he was also charged with assaulting two police officers. The other three officers that it took to restrain him at the police station decided two charges of assault were sufficient and could not be bothered to do the paperwork. 

There was also a charge of drunk and disorderly thrown in for good measure. The drunk and disorderly was not too serious. The charge of stealing a car was. The assault charges were even worse. The powers that be took a very dim view of assault and this action against a police officer was beyond the pale. Lolos was in trouble. 

It did not take long for Lolos to be found guilty on all the charges. No consideration for the fact that he was celebrating his eighteenth birthday was given. Or the fact that he was completely unaware of what he was doing due to the mushrooms, speed and alcohol, which he felt were mitigating circumstances. 

The magistrates conferred between themselves for a few minutes before the one in the middle announced that such serious charges would warrant a custodial sentence at her majesties pleasure. This made Lolos laugh out loud at the irony of the name of the head of the royal family being evoked to someone named after one of their own. This did not please the three pillars of society, that were seated on the raised bench in front of him, one little bit. 

It was at this juncture, that his up to this point useless solicitor, said something that made his very existence worthwhile. He informed that court that Lolos was coming to the end of a three-month course in motorcycle mechanics, under a government scheme. As Lolos had failed to leave school with any of the A Levels he had studied for in his last two years of school, he had convinced his father to let him study something he was interested in. 

The lawyer requested that sentencing be deferred until this was completed in three weeks’ time. The diminutive solicitor went on to say that Edward would need something to fall back on after his stint in prison and not allowing him to complete this would put him at an even bigger disadvantage in life. 

After another five minutes of conferring, with obvious disagreement between them, the magistrate in the middle said, ‘very well, sentencing will take place in three weeks’ time. To his great surprise Lolos walked out of the courthouse a free man. 

By the time he stepped out of the dock Lolos had decided that there was no way he was coming back to hear how long they would put him in prison for. 

Neither of his parents had bothered to come and support him. His mother would have come but his father had locked her in the bathroom. Lolos went home and told them that the charges had been dropped due to a clerical error related to his arrest. He added that the police had lied about his assaulting them and that the court accepted that he had only wanted to sleep in the car. His father said nothing and went back to reading the newspapers. His mother made him a nice cup of tea. 

Lolos had a plan; He had a couple of hundred quid in his bank account and about the same in birthday Premium Bonds. He also had a stash of motorcycle parts in the shed in the garden. Parts he had half inched from work. He could take seven days off during his three month course. He went to see his boss and asked to take those days now, which he agreed to. 

The next day Lolos set about selling the motorcycle parts. Selling them around his hometown on the south coast was not an option. He had a friend in London. He was not really a friend; he was the parts van driver that delivered to the garage. For his plan of not ending up doing porridge to work he needed to go to London. He called his friend from a phone box and after some persuasion he agreed to let him crash on his sofa for two nights. 

The motorcycle parts were small parts for Italian motorcycles that had all been imported from Italy. Lolos bought a strong backpack from the army surplus store and the next morning he was on the train to London. 

He met his friend at his house at lunch time and decided to confide in him. Hoping to appeal to his compassionate side, this was a risk as he was not sure that he had one. 

Lolos told him what had happened to him, it was a fit up of course, and that he needed to get away. There were two things he needed he said, one was money from the bike parts and the other was a passport. 

The selling of the bike parts as it turned out was easily solved. They had all come from the company his friend worked for and he could see that there was the opportunity of a earner for himself. He simply took them to work and told his boss that they had been returned, who did not question this. The only question came when he asked which company, he should make the check out to? The driver knew his boss well and just said it was a cash deal. The canny man looked up from his check book and said, ‘cash deals loose twenty percent!’ No problem was the answer to that. A drawer was unlocked and six hundred and sixty quid in cash was counted into his hand. The boss winked at his driver, and he headed out of the door to finish his deliveries for the day. 

As it turns out this guy was fair. He had no allegiance to Lolos, but he decided to be straight up with him, considering the situation he was in. He said he had received six hundred and sixty and that he felt one hundred sixty quid was fair for his side of the deal. Lolos felt the same and gratefully pocketed the five hundred pounds in used notes. 

The next day Lolos went to the passport office with his birth certificate and a photograph of himself. He had a couple of days beard growth and changed his hairstyle. By five in the afternoon he had a very dark blue hardback book with the queen’s crest on the front in gold. His name, other details and photo were inside. This was his means of escape from what he considered to be a fate worse than death, an English prison. 

After a second round of a few beers and an uncomfortable night on the sofa he was on his way back home. Before getting on the train, he went to the coach station that was just next door. He bought a bus ticket to Amsterdam for the day before his sentencing. He then used his remaining days off to say goodbye to the friends that he knew would not say anything. Enjoying a fair few beers with them also. 

He then went back to work, finished his course, and received a certificate in the art of motorcycle maintenance. He had taken his backpack of clothes to work with him and went straight to the station when he was done. A couple of hours later he was on the overnight bus to Amsterdam. 

On the bus Lolos decides that from now on he will shed his old life and identity and take a new name. He would now introduce himself and as simple, Mr English or English, depending on who it was. 

Chapter Six:  

From Samuel Farstein to Sam Fran of The Grateful Eight 

The First True DJ 

Samuel Farstein was born on Haight Street, San Francisco, the epicentre of the hippie movement of the 1960s. His father was the manager of a large venue on Geary Boulevard built in 1912 and originally called, The Majestic Hall and Academy of Dancing. His father became the manager in 1939 due to his unusual friendship with an African American businessman, who bought the building and turned it into a roller-skating rink. By the 1950s roller skating had lost the huge popularity it had previously enjoyed, and the owner asked Sam’s father to book bands to play while people were roller skating. This proved to be a stroke of genius. Within a couple of months, people had given up with the skates and were only coming to see the bands. Seeing the potential for a dedicated music venue, the name was changed to, The Fillmore Auditorium and known to everyone from then on as just, The Fillmore.  

In 1966 Sam’s Father, in his capacity manager at this up-and-coming venue, was approached by Andy Warhol, who was looking for a suitable place to put on what he said were ‘ground-breaking sound and light shows’ with bands from New York, that he had decided to promote. A deal was done and in May 1966, The Velvet Underground took to the stage, in what turned out to be indeed a ground-breaking show. This put the Fillmore firmly on the map, as a must-play venue for not only US bands, but for bands from across the world when they came to play in the US. 

Sam was twenty-two in 1966 and had finished university, where he took religious studies, for reasons he never understood. Until later. He took full advantage of the access he had to the venue through his father and attended every gig that he could. He was backstage for performances by homegrown bands such as The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds, Santana, as well as British bands, The Who, Cream and Pink Floyd. Even though all these bands were all interesting in some way, it was not until the night of the first show by a local band, that he really felt something.  

The Grateful Dead had arrived on the scene, and they were booked to play at The Fillmore the 3rd of June 1966 with Frank Zappa and Quicksilver. Sam had heard some talk about this local band but had not seen them or heard any of their music. The band arrived at the venue and immediately Sam felt that there was something different about them. Not just because they had bought their own sound system with them and not because they had also bought their own light show with them, it was something else. They had bought something new with them, it was called acid.  

Sam had befriended (as he usually did and not by accident as it turns out) the band’s manager, Rock Scully, backstage and sat down with him as the band prepared themselves to go on stage. The manager offered Sam a drink, which Sam thought as strange, it was normally the other way around. The manager offered Sam ‘Cool Aid,’ a recently popular soft drink. In less than an hour, Sam’s life would change, forever.  

As the band left the dressing room, Rock and Sam followed them to the side of the stage, where he always watched the band. Sam was immediately enveloped in the sound and the lights. A multitude of kaleidoscopes of shapes and colours that pulsed with the sound and the energy of the band. For the first time at The Fillmore, Sam felt compelled to leave the sanctuary of the secure backstage area and go in front of the band. To join the writhing mass, the lights and the power of the enormous speakers. He smiled at the manager, who smiled back, Sam was sure that they spoke telepathically at that moment and the man knew where Sam was going. 

Sam pushed himself along the rows until he found himself the middle of the seats (as it was a concert venue, seating had been added as it was at this stage in the concert game,) some twenty feet from the stage. The people were not seated though, they were a tumbling mass, straining against the seats and jumping over if they found a point of less pressure in front of them. It was impossible to get closer, such was the crush and enthusiasm of the audience to be right in front of the stage. Sam was having great trouble keeping his feet and his legs were being crushed against the seats in front, but this did not matter, as he was being supported by this mass of humanity that moved in unison. He just went with it. He also had a vision of there being no seats, which would come back to him later. 

Sam could see that on each side of the stage were two women dancing. They were both wearing long fringed leather jackets, that made their bodies look like they were made of liquid as the moved. He was entranced by the sight of them. He could also make out that they were also doing something. They both had a hose in their hands with a long nozzle, attached to a bottle with a pump, that they from time to time pumped up and down, the type used by a gardener to spray roses. They were holding these out across the audience and a spray of liquid was coming out of them. Most people were oblivious to what they were doing, while others were trying to climb up on the backs of people in front of them and opening their mouths to drink the liquid.  

In the melee, Sam was forced to climb over the seats in front of him, such was the pressure from behind him. He ended up right in front of the stage. He looked up and realised that the manager was staring straight at him with a wild look of satisfaction in his eyes. He then moved his head and suddenly opened mouthed; found he was directly facing the hose held by the woman on the right of the stage. He felt his face become wet and started swallowing involuntarily, as the liquid entered his mouth.  

Sam finally came to his senses, surrounded by trees in the park, having no idea how he got there. His head was resting on someone’s lap and that someone was softly stroking his hair and softly singing. This turned out to be Heidi, and from then on, they would be an item. Heidi was a nurse, so they saw each other around her shifts at the hospital, spending as much time together as possible. They would be inseparable for the next twenty years.  

From experiencing that first night of The Grateful Dead together, Sam became firm friends with Rock. The manager had taken quite a shine to Sam and asked his father if Sam could come on tour with the band. This was the start of the legend that was The Grateful Dead tour. A tour that broke all records with a total of three thousand, four hundred and twenty shows over four decades. 

Sam was put in charge of securing an important area away from the backstage known as the front of house mixing desk. He did not operate the desk, he just looked after the roped off area and made that place his own little kingdom. This suited Sam just fine as it offered the best view and sound of the show. 

Rock had by this time confided in Sam that there was LSD in the Kool-Aid he gave him the night they first met. After that Rock would give Sam a tab of LSD before every gig and Sam would take it and enjoy every show.  

The front of house mixing desk area or FOH, as it was known, was always situated in front of the band (as the name would suggest!), in the middle of the audience, in what was called the ‘sweet spot.’ The main piece of equipment was a huge mixing desk with sixty-four moving sliders that controlled the volume of each sound source put into it. This piece of equipment, as well as all the speakers, instruments, microphones and everything else needed to make the incredible sound produced by the band, was owned by a man known as, Bear. At every gig, there would be more speakers, bigger speakers and more equipment to go with them. This would be named the wall of sound. The cables from all the band’s instruments and microphones, and there were a lot of these, were laid down on the floor, from the stage to the FOH, where they were all plugged into a separate channel (as they were referred to), each with its own volume control as well as controls for the high, mid and low range frequencies. Then more cables would come out of the mixing desk and go back along the same route of the other cables back to the stage, where they were connected to huge banks of amplifies, that were then connected to the multitude of speakers.  

The band would get on stage and play one by one, and the mix engineer would then set what he thought was an appropriate volume and EQ the frequencies, for each channel of those sound inputs. The band would then play together, and the engineer would make subtle adjustments to each channel until he felt that the ‘Mix’ or the balance between each instrument was right. When this was done to the satisfaction of Bear, he would say, ‘that is the wall of sound.’. 

Several months of constant of changes and additions of equipment, ear splitting volume and general craziness, that went with these gigs followed. Sam was also having to defend his territory from crazed fans, trying to climb in and over his fiefdom. With more and more equipment to look after, Sam’s job became very important. As if he did not have enough to deal with, one day Rock came to him with a new piece of equipment. It was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, in a suitcase. Rock told him that this was now the most important piece of equipment and that he was to guard it with his life.  

The suitcase was plugged into the mixing desk, into two output channels, next to the larger ones that went back to the stage to feed the speakers. Above the two tape reels were two windows that had a needle inside, that would swing from left to right depending on the volume. There were numbered one to ten and were coloured from green to yellow to red. Rock explained that it was Sam’s job to make sure that the needles never touched the red, only into the yellow. To control this, he was shown the two sliders that controlled the volume going into the tape recorder. He was shown how to carefully adjust these sliders to always keep the needle in the yellow. Sam was also shown how to replace the tape with a new one when it came to an end. He was told it was vitally important to pay attention to when the tape was coming to an end and then to change the tape as quickly as possible.  

Again, Rock told to him to guard the machine and the tapes, with his life. So it was that Sam was now in charge of recording The Grateful Dead. At the end of every gig, Sam would give Rock the tapes. After a month of recording, he had screwed up a few times. Either changing the tape too late or forgetting completely. He needed to get a system going, so he decided to make a large egg timer. He managed to find a glassblower who somehow made two thunderbolts out of glass. Sam then approached the tour carpenter and together they made a strong wooden frame that enclosed the two pieces of glass and joined them in the middle. Sam added sand that he collected from a gig in Hawaii. Sam kept removing sand and timing how long it took to flow from the top to the bottom thunderbolt, until it took the same length of time, for the sand to flow to the bottom, as for the tape to run out. He kept this on the mixing desk, and he never forgot to change the tape again.  

Sam was enjoying himself, but he was not paid a regular salary, Bear would just give him twenty Dollars at the end of every show. This was starting to irk him as the band were playing bigger and bigger venues and were obviously making money. The whole production was run with a lot of people, but with just a few core people getting paid a lot. The rest seemed to just be caught up in it and doing whatever they were doing as they loved it.  

One day Sam found out that everyone, including the unpaid people, were being paid in something else. One night he saw Bear give an envelope to the mixing engineer, at the beginning of the gig. The engineer then leant out over the barrier that surrounded the FOH and gave it to a young guy dressed head to toe tie-dye, the unofficially uniform of what were now known as ‘Deadheads’. Having set up the tape recorder already, he jumped over the barrier and followed the Tie-Dye guy as he left the building and headed into the carpark.  

What Sam found there was surprising. He was aware that lots of folks were coming to the shows, but he was always in the venue, from early afternoon at the latest. Sam slept in one of the crew buses that was parked behind the venue. So, he had not yet become aware of the huge scene that was by now happening in the carpark at all the Dead’s gigs. 

He followed Tie-Dye guy into a huge makeshift campsite comprising of a crazy selection of painted busses, trucks and Volkswagen vans. He followed Tie-Dye into the middle of this huge camp, to a stage that was set up with big speakers that were playing the Dead’s music. Tie-Dye went onto the stage and into the truck, that formed the back of the stage. 

After several minutes Tie-Dye came out and walked straight towards Sam. The guy said hello and said that he had seen Sam at every gig, in his position, FOH. Tie-Dye also said, with a wink, ‘I have seen you with the tape recorder’. Sam then said, he had seen him take an envelope from the sound guy before every gig, ‘what’s in the envelope?’ Tie-Dye smiled and pulled out the envelope from his pocket, saying ‘you don’t need any, you get your own.’ Tie-Dye opened the envelope and inside was several sheets of cardboard. He took one out and showed Sam. It had a repeating pattern of orange flying saucers and was divided up into tiny squares, one of which he was given every night by Rock. ‘It’s the LSD that comes from Bear, everyone knows that’ said Tie-Dye. ‘I sell it and give half the money back to the sound engineer.’ Tie-Dye was very open, as were most of the Heads, but Tie-Dye was taking a gamble knowing that Sam was part of the crew. 

It may seem strange, that Sam was so close to the inner circle and did not know about the business of these pieces of paper and indeed was not included, but behind the scenes, a deal had been done. The deal had been done between his father and Rock, who were both, by now, very good friends. Sam’s father did not want his son to get into trouble, so made Rock promise that he would not include his son in his LSD distribution network. Rock also made sure that Sam did not see what was happening around the Dead shows. Sam just took his trip, did the gig, then went back to the bus and went to bed. That was his routine. Sam’s father had also taken acid with Rock and felt it was par for the course for Sam to be taking it if he was working for the Dead. 

One day when Sam was back home, his father sat him down and said that he had something to tell him. He explained that he had arranged with Rock, that he would pay money for Sam’s work to him, his father, and that his father would invest it, for Sam’s future. Sam’s father said that he had bought a property and was using the money to pay off the loan from the bank. Sam was incensed by this betrayal and demanded that the property be put in his name and that he should receive the money himself. Sam threatened never to speak to his father again unless he did this. 

It was after this conversation with his father, that he realised that it was his father, who told Rock not to involve his son in the envelopes, that Sam now realised were given to nearly everyone on the crew and this was how many salaries and bonuses were paid. It was also that Rock was to keep Sam busy before during and after the gigs, so that he did not get involved in what was happening outside the gigs. The carparks at Dead concert had become a mecca for those wanting to buy LSD and then take it back to their hometowns to sell. Sam was oblivious to this.  

Sam was more than a bit put out by what had been going on, but he enjoyed what he was doing. After the threat to his father, he was now receiving a good amount of money every week, that was paid into a bank account that he had set up. The bank loan on the house was being paid back and he felt that he would have money for a rainy day, should this adventure all one day come to an end. So, he kept his mouth shut, said nothing to anyone about his feelings, but he still bore a grudge about the way he had been treated. He kept this to himself.  

Leaving home, he was back on tour again. Tie-Dye came up to him after collecting the envelope as usual. He asked Sam to come with him as he wanted to talk to him about something. Sam decided to follow him to hear what he had to say. They went out into the carpark and into Tie-Dye’s van. A proposition was then put to him.  

Tie-Dye told Sam that his stage played the Dead’s music for people that either could not afford to buy a ticket or could not get one, as the venue was sold out. They promoted their stage by having a raffle at each gig for what was known as a ‘Golden Ticket’, a free ticket to that nights show. The music for the stage, Tie-Dye explained, came from recordings made from tape machines smuggled into the gigs by fans known as ‘Tapers’. Then a guy called Sam would then play the tapes to the crowd and they would sell the LSD. Like this they made a lot of money, he said, ‘Oh, and people had a good time.’ 

Tie-Dye was obviously smart. He went on to say that questions had been asked about where the music for the stage in the car park was coming from and the guys in control were confronted by Rock. They told Rock that they had recorded it using tape machines, that they had smuggled into the gigs. Rock was happy with this explanation and admired their resourcefulness. Rock decided to turn a blind eye to this as he realised that many people could not get into the gigs and that they were selling Bear’s LSD, which is what they were most interested in, as it turns out. So, he left them alone to carry on. Later a decidicated area for tapers would be made infront of the FOH steup. 

Having explained all of this to Sam, Tie-Dye had a proposition for him. He explained that the recordings that were being made were of low quality and many times the stages had to play other bands music, as the sound was so bad. What he said was needed was a recording directly out ofthe mixing desk, just as Sam was doing for Rock. Tie-Dye said that if Sam could get such recordings, he could make some money. Due to Sam’s feelings of resentment towards Rock and his father, he had no qualms about agreeing to Tie-Dye’s suggestion, to smuggle in another tape recorder.  

They arranged to meet at Tie-Dye’s van in the carpark, before the next gig, for Sam to collect the tape machine. That afternoon Sam went to find Tie-Dye who showed him a small rectangular device. Inside was a new recording device. It was called a Compact Cassette Recorder and was made by a European company called Philips. Tie-Dye showed Sam how to use it. He explained that the tape had two sides, and each could record a maximum of forty-five minutes, but that he could not risk being seen turning the tape over. So instead of recording the whole concert, he would just record certain songs each time. 

Tie-Dye would tell him which songs to record, and Sam would find out when it would be played by secretly checking the setlist. The setlist was written on paper and taped to the floor in front of the band members. All Sam had to do was go onto the stage and take a look. When he knew that track was about to be played, he would set the machine to record. Tie-Dye showed Sam how to press the record, play and pause buttons at the same time. He then grabbed the small bag that Sam always carried and put the machine inside. He then showed him that he could press the pause button, through the bag without having to take it out, this would start the recording. 

The next thing Tie-Dye gave Sam were two long thin cables. These were for connecting the mixer to the tape recorder. Tie-Dye explained that there were two more out connectors for the sound on the side of the mixing desk and that he could connect to without the mixing engineer seeing. He then had to connect those cables to the tape recorder, and he was all set. The only other thing that Sam had to ensure was that no-one saw him. Or else there would be very big trouble for both of them.  

Sam left the carpark and went back into the venue. First, he went onto the stage and found the setlist. He then went back to his position, FOH house and managed to connect the tape recorder, as he had been told, without anyone seeing him (as it turns out he had been seen, nothing escaped the mixing engineer, but as we will find out he was up to his own tricks). He pressed the three buttons on the cassette recorder, and he was ready. The first song chosen was ‘Dark Star’ and just as he had been told, Sam managed to depress the pause button and start the recording. Then did the same for another three songs that night. 

At the end of the gig, no one was any the wiser, so it seemed. Sam grabbed his bag and headed out to the carpark and found Tie-Dye waiting for him in his van. Tie-Dye grabbed the cassette recorder and pressed rewind. He then connected a large pair of headphones and spent the next ten minutes oblivious to Sam being there, lost in the ‘Dark Star’. When the song had finished Tie-Dye was ecstatic and thanked Sam profusely. It was at this moment that Sam realised that he had not come to any arrangement for this service. He asked Tie-Dye how much he was going to pay him. Tie-Dye said he had a better idea; they would be partners and that he had a good idea of how he was going to make money from this. He would see him before the next gig, and he would know how much they would both make.  

Tie-Dye knew that there was a huge market for people to listen to the Dead’s music at home. There were thousands of people who simply could not get to the concerts and there were people willing to pay a high price to listen to high quality recordings. As it happens Tie-Dye knew one person with the money to pay and would want the secret kudos of having such tapes. Tie-Dye knew of this man as he had worked as his gardener when he was a young kid. Tie-Dye wasted no time and went to see this man.  

The man in question lived in a huge house in the Haight Asbury area. It was one of the Victorian houses referred to as a ‘Painted Lady’, due to the decorations on the outside. This particular house was the biggest of them all and towered over the Haight. The owner, outwardly, lived a very straight life, being part of the old San Francisco establishment, old money. He was behind closed doors a dedicated Dead Head and kept a secret room in the huge house that contained his collection of all things Dead. 

There were posters all over the walls, framed tickets from gigs as well as an envelope with the perforated paper with orange flying saucers on them. He was a Dead Head alright, just he kept this a secret and due to his standing in society, he was unable to go to any gigs, for fear of being recognised. He also had another secret; he owned the biggest head shop on Haight Street that catered for all the needs of the hippy population that had made their home in the area. He kept the prices low and sold tickets to Dead shows.  

He was the fairy god father of the Haight, but very few knew it. Tie-Dye pulled up his van around the corner and then stood in front of the huge six-story building and looked up in awe. He then climbed the steep steps that led up to the door and rang the bell. A man dressed in an Edwardian style black tailcoat answered the door and Tie-Dye said that he had something important to speak to the owner about. The butler asked what it was, but Tie-Dye insisted that he could only speak to his master, personally. The butler thought for a minute and then beckoned him in and told him to sit on a chair. The room was decorated in the style of a bygone age, it was as it would have been when the house was built. The Butler returned after some time and told him to follow him.  

He was taken up the grand staircase and into a large wood-panelled library with shelves full of ancient looking books. The disgruntled butler left the room and shut the door behind him. The lord of the house swung around in his chair, looked at him and said, ‘were you not my gardener?’, then without waiting for an answer asked Tie-Dye what he wanted. His answer was that he wanted him to listen to something. He took out the cassette recorder and put it on the desk. He gestured towards the amplifier and speakers behind him.  

The elegantly dressed man plugged the tape recorder into the amplifier. For ten minutes the man was lost in the sound from the small machine. When ‘Dark Star’ had come to an end, he opened his eyes and smiled broadly. The next question was, ‘how did you get this?’ He knew exactly what it was. Dye-Tie then said that it did not matter how he got it or where he got it from, only that he had it and that it was for sale. He went on to say that this was the original copy and that he had made no other copies, which later turned out to being economical with the truth. The man just asked two questions in rapid succession. ‘How much do you want for it, and can you get any more?’ 

Tie-Dye could not hide the smial that came across his face, he had his man, and he was prepared for the two questions. One hundred dollars per song and I can record four sings per gig, you just have to tell me which songs.’ ‘Am I the only person who has this tape?’. ‘Yes’, came the reply, ‘and you can get me the same quality recording of any song I want?’ ‘Yes’, was the answer again. The man then went on to say that they could both be in a lot of trouble if anyone found out about these tapes and that it would be especially damaging to him if anyone found out he had bought them from him. ‘I need to have your word that you will keep this a secret between us’. ‘You have my word’ said Tie-Dye. The man then took out his wallet and handed over four, one-hundred-dollar bills. The first of many tapes was handed over to complete the deal. 

‘From now on you will go the head shop on Haight Street and tell the lady behind the counter that you are my gardener, and you are here to pick up your wages. She will give you an envelope, inside will be two things, the money for the number of tracks delivered and a list of songs that I want to be recorded. As you may be away for weeks on tour, you can also post them to the shop. She will give you envelopes with the address. Is that clear?’ ‘Clear as day’, said Tie-Dye. He was in business. The man in the big house went on to amass the largest private collection of bootleg Grateful Dead music ever collected (apart from Rock of course) and started sharing the tapes by post with a other Dead Heads. He would put the other ‘Tapers’ out of business. He never charged any money for this.  

Over the course of the next fifteen months, Sam had made over five hundred tapes. He had recorded ‘Dark Star’ over one hundred and fifty times on the request of the man. Sam and Tie-Dye shared two hundred thousand dollars between them, with no one being any the wiser to their activities, or so they thought. Until one day.  

It was a strange night. The usual mix engineer was not there, instead there was a new guy that Sam had never seen before. Sam said hello to the guy and asked him where the usual guy was. He said that he did not know, all he knew was that he had been sacked and he had the job now. Sam pressed the guy to tell him if he knew anymore and the guy said that it was something to do with the last guy making secret recordings of the band. Sam was taken aback, and a strange tingling sensation ran down his spine. 

Sam had already plugged in his cassette recorder into his secret outputs on the side of the desk. The new guy started the soundcheck and was not happy at all. He said that there was something wrong with the sound, he said he felt that the outputs were low and there was something wrong with the desk. Meanwhile, Bear had arrived and was wondering what the fuss was with this new guy. The two spoke to each other and then the new guy started checking everything on the desk. Sam watched in horror as he went to the side of the desk and grabbed at the two thin cables that were coming out. 

He looked at Bear and asked what they were for, no idea came the reply. The new guy then followed the wires and ended up at Sam’s small bag that was under the desk. He picked it up and pulled out the cassette recorder, looked at it with astonishment and then showed it to Bear. Sam was busted. He grabbed the bag and jumped over the barrier and ran for the door. Before anyone could follow him to see where he went, he was hiding under the bed in Tie-Dyes van, shivering in fear. 

The next day Sam was on a plane to Europe with a bag full of one hundred dollar bills, with Heidi sitting next to him. Their destination was Amsterdam. It was the 10th of March 1967 and Amsterdam was a bustling place full of interesting bohemian people. Heidi found herself a job as a private nurse for a rich gentleman with a beautiful house in the city centre, looking out over one of the canals that made the city famous. As part of her job, Heidi had a room at the top of the house and the two of them lived there together. When Heidi was not working, they would walk the narrow streets, visit the many museums and eat in the many different restaurants with food from across the globe that was also a feature of the city.  

When not doing this Sam was immersing himself in the thriving music scene in the city. In Amsterdam, there was a new music scene bubbling up. It was very different from the guitar-based music of The Dead, it was a new sound, made with newly invented electronic instruments. The band pushing the boundaries with this new equipment were a German band called ‘Kraftwerk’ that were just four people standing over machines, without a recognisable instrument in sight. The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd and a host of others were starting to use this new equipment in their music, but it was Kraftwerk leading the way in only using this new equipment.  

These new sounds and equipment fascinated Sam and he started buying equipment himself to make music and started a band. The band did not become famous so there is no point in mentioning the name. After several months of lugging his delicate equipment to gigs, arguments with band members, small audiences and the feeling of little chance of success, he decided to sell his equipment. He went to a shop he had bought most of his kit from and told him he wanted to sell it. After coming to a deal and losing a considerable amount of money in the process, he sold it all. As luck would have it, his visit to the shop would be a turning point in his musical career.  

As he was about to accept the money for his equipment, he saw inside the counter glass cabinet, something he recognised. A compact cassette recorder. However, this one was different. It was made by a Japanese company called Sony and was quite a bit bigger than the one he had used to record The Dead shows, that seemed a million years in the past. He asked the shop keeper if he could have a look at it. He took it out and the shop keeper said that it had just arrived from Japan and was the first in Amsterdam. He went on to say it was a cassette recorder, but it had one difference, you could change the speed of the tape. He said he was not sure what benefit this was, and he was looking for a reason for someone to buy it. It was expensive and had regretted the purchase.  

Sam was intrigued and for some reason was compelled to buy this expensive and possible useless piece of equipment. For whatever reason he made a deal with the shop owner that meant he lost less money on selling his equipment than he would otherwise have done. Sam paid and took it home.  

Sam lay in bed and put in a cassette tape, of Kraftwerk. He fiddled with the speed control and heard some very strange effects. He speeded it up and felt that the music sounded better at a faster speed. There were no vocals in the songs to get distorted, there was just a faster beat and the electronic sounds seemed to come alive. I was at that moment he had a revelation, maybe he was the first to have this revelation. He realised that if he had two of these, he could play continuous music. He liked this idea as for some reason he felt that there was no need for gaps in the music, especially for people who wanted to get lost in dance. 

The next day he went back to the shop and said he wanted to buy a second one. The owner was bemused but very happy that he was going to make another big-ticket sale. The only problem was, he had only had the one. He would have to order another, form Japan. He took a deposit from Sam and went through the process of ordering a second one. It took three weeks to arrive.  

When Sam finally got his hands on the second machine a couple of other things struck him. Firstly, that he could record from one to the other and make a duplicate. Also, that he could copy a song at the highest speed setting and then record it again and make it even faster. He then realised he needed to be able to play the two at once and adjust the volume between them, just as the mixing desk had done at The Dead gigs. He went back to the shop and bought a two-channel mixer. This, unlike the huge desk at the Dead gigs, just had two volumes for two channels of sound. This allowed him to connect the two Cassette players and adjust the volume each. He took it home in excitement and plugged everything in.  

Sam put in two copies of the same cassette tape and chose two songs with a similar beat to them and turned up the volumes so he could hear them together. He then adjusted the speed control, or ‘Pitch’ control as he now knew it was called, until they were both at the same speed. After juggling the pause button a few times, the beats became synchronised and to his great surprise he could listen to them both together, they were both in time. He was amazed. Sam collected tape after tape until he had a selection that all had a beat. He then played one song after the other, without a break, all at the same speed. He knew he was onto something. 

He went back to one of the same live houses that he had played at with is his band that went nowhere and begged them to let him play music from his cassette tapes. After much persuasion, the manager agreed. A week later an electronic band, very much like what Sam had tried to do were due to play. He set himself up on a table at the back of the stage and waited for the band to finish and then played his first speeded-up track that had a regular 1-2-3-4 beat, one of many that he had found. He then listened to his next track through his headphones and carefully adjusted the pitch control and juggled the pause button, until the beats in synch. Then he slid up the volume control of the new track and without missing a beat they merged until the first track disappeared and the new track took over. 

It was not until he had mixed in his fourth track that the looked up and saw the whole room dancing. After an hour he had played his first DJ set, probably the first DJ set like this that anyone had ever played. He music was an instant hit and finally, he had found his instruments and the adoration he had craved and had not managed to get in his previous attempts at being a musician. Sam would always wear the same thing when he played, expensive branded black jeans and a t-shirt. The t-shirt was always tie-dyed, an obvious nod to his roots with the Grateful Dead, the black jeans, however, were a sign of the fact that he had money. He played the role of a hippy, but something set him apart, money. He still had a pile of cash from the tapes as well as a handsome monthly income from the rental payment from his house in San Francisco. He would offer his services to every venue and band without payment, this ensured he got every gig. Within a month Sam had become a minor legend in the small clubs of Amsterdam. 

A year past with Sam playing every weekend in the Dam, and other cities, until one day the gentleman that Heidi was working for died. She was out of a job, and they were both out of a home. They both decided to move on. 

Chapter Seven: 

From Giovanni Basso to Jersey John of The Grateful Eight 

A true believer 

Giovanni ‘John’ Basso was on the run. He was attending university in California studying business under the encouragement of his father. His father had not been successful with money in his life and this he put down to a lack of education. He was determined that this was not going to be the case for his only son. So, business studies at university it was, and he and his wife would go without to give his son a better life. John would have rather studied art, or music or anything but business. For John, this was crushingly boring, and he felt that it would not contribute to the world, only to him. 

John was a product of the sixties and was one of the first to challenge the accepted capitalist world view. This change of mindset might have had something to do with his frequent trips south of the border, to Mexico. John would drive down in his old car and head to the beaches or into the hills. He liked the undeveloped life, the nature and the people. While on his trips there he discovered a few things. The main thing was that there were plants in South America that you could take and have fun. North of the border this type of fun was restricted to alcohol, a substance that did not agree with him. 

The first of these plants that he found was one taken as a tea made from a cactus. In fact, there were two Cacti he found out about. One was big, tall thin classic desert Cactus called, San Pedro. There was also a smaller Cactus that grew with what looked like round button attached to it, this being called, Peyote. Both, he had been told contained the same special ingredient. He would later find out the name of this ingredient, it was called Mescaline. 

John would drive out into very remote areas to find people who would make him the tea from these Cacti. He found many people who would welcome him and who were willing to let him drink the tea with them. Due to his not so good Spanish and the total lack of English known by his hosts, he found out very little about all this apart from through his experiences. Every experience that he had had with the Cactus tea, was very profound. He was missing lots of lectures back at the university, but John felt like he was in another university and that what he was studying was much more important. 

On one trip he found himself driving much further south than he normally did. He had decided that he would spend two weeks on this trip, rather than the three or four days spent on his previous journeys south of the border. He headed for a town that he knew was near the southern border of Mexico and hoped to find something different to the Cacti that he already knew about. He was right, he found out that neither of the two Cacti he had previously drunk the tea of, grew this little bit further South. He found this out by befriending a barber who trimmed his hair and beard in a back-alley shop, always the best place to go to find out what is going on, anywhere in the world. As always barbers are a mine of information and gossip. Fortunately, this one spoke pretty good English. He said he had learnt it from studying books from America about hairdressing, he said that Americans were the best hairdressers in the world and that if he was to learn hairdressing, he must learn English. John decided to just come out with it. He said that in the north of the country he had drunk tea made from a cactus and that he really enjoyed it and was there also the same Cactus here in the south of the country. As it turns out the hairdresser had been to the North of his country and had also drunk the tea. He also said that he had been to America, but he was not sure that he believed him and put it out of my mind as irrelevant to what he wanted to know. 

The hairdresser told him that there were subtle differences in the climate between North and South. That the two Cacti did grow here, however they did not flourish as they did in the North, it was too hard to collect enough, so it was not used. There was however another plant here that was used to make tea, it was a vine, that grew on other trees. He said that they called it Ayahuasca, and it was a very powerful medicine. John was very happy to hear this. ‘Where can I drink it? John asked. ‘I take you there tomorrow’ said the hairdresser as he finished the last of John’s beard. ‘Come same time tomorrow, bring your car, I saw you had one.’ 

The next day the two new friends drove two hours along unpaved roads until they arrived at a large farmhouse with several outbuildings. Their arrival was announced by several large dogs and an old man that appeared from the doorway of the main building. The old man smiled as he saw the hairdresser in the car. The old man shouts each dog by name, and they disappeared to where they came from. The two men greeted each other and spoke in Spanish that John understood none of, the old man nodded and invited the two visitors into the house. 

The old man immediately set about putting an old metal pot half-filled with water on the fire. He then walked between a large open cupboard and the pot adding a hand full of something then two handfuls of something else until he had put nine different dried plants into it. He then sat on a small wooden stool in front to it and started chanting in-between stirs of the pot. This went on for two hours at least until the old man stopped stirring the pot and took it off the fire using two pieces of wood. The pot stood steaming on the ground as he chanted some more. He then stood up and collected three wooden cups from a shelf, then using a large wooden spoon and being careful not to stir up the pot, filled the three cups. 

All three drank in silence. So started one of the first-ever Ayahuasca ceremonies by a non-native American India. It lasted eight hours and was the most incredible thing John had ever experienced. He thought the cactus had made him dream, but this different, he had made the dream. 

Eventually, they all fell asleep. When he awoke in the morning, he was alone. He went outside and found the others laughing together. The two men both stood up and gave John a very deep hug. Nothing else was said as they went to the car and John steeled himself for the journey back, the car seemed out of place in the world. Their conversation on the journey back was filled with the questions that John had. The hairdresser answered as well as he could, but in the end, he said, ‘you need to think about it yourself more when you return to your home.’ John decided to do just that and passed the rest of the journey telling and explaining jokes to the bemused hairdresser. 

Next John discovered Coca, first by chewing the leaves on a jungle walk with the father of a family that he had befriended in the mountains. He really enjoyed the feeling of chewing the leaves. They made him feel very good. 

It was not long after many sessions of chewing that one day, sitting in a restaurant in on of the larger towns he had stopped at, that he was offered something else, Cocaine. He asked the guy, using his limited Spanish and the guy’s limited English what it was. He managed to understand that it was a powder made form the same Coca leave that he had been chewing. This made sense to him as he felt that the chewing of the leaves was a bit impractical. He had considered taking some leaves back to university but decided against it after one day checking some old leaves. They were mouldy, tasted terrible and gave him a bad stomach upset. Suffice it to say, the leaves would not travel well. This Coca powder, however, promised to be a much better idea. 

John pulled out a US ten Dollar bill and the guy gave him a square of a brown paper bag folded over into a small envelope. The guy stood up to leave and as he walked away John remembered to ask him, ‘how do I take it?’ ‘Chop it up fine and then sniff it with one of your US dollar bills rolled into a tube. Only take a small amount at a time to start with, oh and don’t get it wet and left. 

John took the packet to his room and did what the man had told him. He did not really know what a small amount was or how much he had, but he divided the powder into ten equal piles. He then took one pile and spread it out in a line about two inches long and then he sniffed it. He observed the effects, first the pain to his nose at the sharp white crystals hit the sensitive skin inside his nose. Next, he noticed his throat becoming numb, then the same further down, as the saliva soaked in the crystals slowly trickled down his throat. Then came the same feeling as he had before when chewing the leaves of the plant, a feeling of uforia. This time it was much stronger and faster, much less subtle. John felt the effects rise to a peak, stay there for a short while, level off and then subside altogether. Then he did the same thing again. When he had finished the packet, he looked up and saw that it was daylight. He crawled to his bed. His body felt good as it lay on the mattress, but his mind did not. His mind wanted to get up. To do something, anything. John fought this battle between mind and body until the mind gave up and shut down. When he awoke, he said to himself out loud, ‘I know what coke is all about now.’ 

The Ayahuasca, the San Pedro, the Peyote and the Coca had had a very profound effect on John. He felt that they all had their uses and that many people would enjoy their effects, especially the liberal forward-thinking members of his campus. Not the students in his business course, but the art students. He wanted to be able to take these back with him, but as he found out, they did not travel well and were bulky. As soon as he would have got them home, they would have started to ferment and rot, or he would have dried cacti that he needed to make into tea. There was also the fact that you needed quite a lot of the natural material to make a tea, but also the making of the tea was complicated and time consuming. Other ingredients were also needed, he had understood. The coca leaves would stubbornly refuse to have any effect unless you put some lime (from the ground not from a fruit) on it as you chewed. 

One thing that had been thinking about was that Coca leaves could be processed into a crystal, that was easy to transport and did not rot or go off. He was however not so interested in the coke, he felt it was like coffee and was useful, but it did not give him the visions that he saw when taking the teas. He decided to find out how he could do that same thing with the Cacti as had been done with the coca leaves. Break the plants down and just have the one ingredient. He could then transport it a give it to the people he felt would enjoy it. He planned to find out how to do just that. 

John returned to the holy man who had given him the Ayahuasca previously and asked if he had any of the dried plants that he could take away with him. He managed to find out from him that it was not possible, and that the tea could not be made from the dried plant, only the fresh living plant. A dead end. Maybe and maybe not as he did not believe him, he felt there was another reason for this answer. He would find out more. He said his goodbyes and said that he would return. He felt a very strong bond with the holy man as well as the forest he lived in, from taking the tea with him. With some sadness, John stood by the hand-operated gas pump and filled his car with gas. He jumped in the car and headed north. 

On his way, he stopped by at the family with whom he had serval times drunk the cactus button tea, his reason for doing so is that he was sure that he remembered seeing buttons threaded with cotton, hanging in the kitchen along the walls. He arrived and greeted the family and then asked the father if he could go in the kitchen. Sure enough, there were the strings of buttons hanging on the rafters. Some were very green but others at the far end of the kitchen were brown and shrivelled and looked like they had been there for some time. In now slightly better Spanish John asked if he could have some, taking out a ten, then a twenty-dollar bill as he did so. The man went to the far end of the kitchen and broke off the cotton and took down four large, dried buttons. The old man explained that for one person two buttons were needed. That they needed to be sliced thinly and then boiled and then simmered in water for several hours, until the water was a dark brown. The tea was then ready to drink. John thanked the old man profusely and offered the man the money. He would not accept it, saying something he did not understand, he only understood that the man said, it was from the Gods. John thanked the man again and promised to return. 

John was in his car again and heading north. He was not far from the border, but he was tired so stopped and spent the night in a small town. He ate corn tortillas and beans for dinner and then went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately. The next morning, he was woken early with stomach pains and had to rush to the toilet. He decided against eating anything else in the town and was on his way back to California. 

He was not aware of it at the time, but on another campus of his university, there was a big Chemistry school. The business, arts and chemistry campuses were all in different areas as if these people needed to be separated. He realised that chemistry was what he needed to make his plan a reality. John started hanging out near the chemistry campus. Sitting in the coffee shops until he got to know some people. 

One evening he met aguy that he immediately hit it off with, probably because he was also from New York, not from his home of Jersey, but Manhattan, the rich part. Manhattan, as we will call him, he was a large man, and he did indeed come from a rich family and his family business was drugs. His family made drugs, the kind of drugs that you got in a drug store or from a doctor, those drugs. Hence his being sent to study chemistry so that he might have an understanding of the basics of the family business. Manhattan found the whole thing extremely boring. He found chemistry in itself very interesting, just what he was doing was not. He was just repeating things that had been done before, he was very smart and felt he was wasting his time. 

He told John that his family business employed many chemists who were constantly searching for new drugs. John saw his opportunity and pulled one of the buttons out of his jacket pocket and showed it to his new friend. John seized on the opportunity and the man’s previous comment and came straight out with it and said, ‘I know there is something very good in here, I want to find out what it is. Will you help me?’ Manhattan said he did not really understand, but he was interested as he was bored. They arranged to meet the next evening at sunset at Manhattans apartment. As John got up to say goodbye he said to Manhattan, ‘don’t eat anything before I arrive tomorrow.’ He left Manhattan with an inquisitive look on his face and a, ‘oh, ok, see you tomorrow.’ 

Tomorrow came and John headed over to the chemistry campus just before sunset. He found the nearby apartment, parked and knocked on the door. It was answered by his new friend and was welcomed into a beautiful space. John was offered tea or coffee, John just said, ‘I will make the tea!’ He had already chopped up the four buttons into the thin slices as directed and asked for a saucepan to be filled with water. Manhattan put the saucepan on the stove, turned on the electric element below and then John added the sliced cactus. They both watched the water come to the boil, they sat down at the table after john had turned the gas down and left the liquid to simmer. 

Manhattan asked some questions. ‘Where did he get these buttons?’ that was an easy answer. ‘What do they do?’ Not so easy that one. John thought for a while and then just said, ‘they make you dream.’ Manhattan seemed ok with this answer, and they continued with small talk about John’s trips to Mexico. Out of the corner of his eye, John was keeping an eye on both the time and the amount of water in the saucepan. After one hour he decided it was time, as he could not wait any longer. He got up and looked inside the pot, there was a thickish brown liquid as his friend had said. He asked Manhattan for a piece of cloth to filter it. Manhattan went away and came back with a square of white cloth that looked like he had cut off his bedsheet. I would later find out that is exactly what he did. John poured the liquid into another pot through the cloth, leaving all the solid material behind. He knew that it tasted terrible and that my friend had added other things to the brew to make it taste better. He cursed himself for not asking for this also. In the end, he decided to just add regular tea, he put a cup of water into the mixture, put it back on the stove and added two tea bags and four spoonsful of sugar for good measure. He bought the mixture to the boil again and poured it evenly into two teacups that had appeared next to him. 

The two young men then went back to the very comfortable living room and without saying a word to each other, just a nod, they drank their tea. They sat in silence to start with, until Manhattan said that he was not dreaming, John just said, ‘wait.’ The silence returned and before long Manhattan was stretched out on the floor, his hands covering his eyes and his face was squashed up. John was still sitting upright even though he could feel the tea coursing through him. He was very much aware of everything and was not in that state on unconsciousness that he had been in when he had drunk the tea in Mexico. He thought about this and decided on two things. One was that the dried buttons were not as strong as the fresh ones, and he also had the thought that he might have built up some tolerance to the effects of the cactus. He decided that he must give these ideas some thought and then turned his attention back to the prone Manhattan. 

Manhattan had started to groan, his hands had moved from his eyes to his stomach, which he seemed to be pushing on hard. John stayed silent as he watched him and then remembered that he had had strong stomach cramps and had vomited the first couple of times he drank the cactus tea. Even though he was feeling some effects, they were nowhere near as strong as in the past and he was able to get up and grab a wastepaper basket from under the desk that was by the window. 

He returned just as Manhattan opened his eyes and his mouth. In one smooth action, he placed the rubbish bin in front of his mouth, just in time for the contents of his stomach to violently appear. By the look and smell of what was in the bin, the man had not done as he had been asked and it looked like he had eaten a whole cow. Manhattan let out a very satisfied groan and settled back down as before, his hands returned to covering his eyes, however now instead of the grimace of before, a huge smile was across his face. Three hours later the big man opened his eyes, looked down at himself and then eased himself onto the chair that he had fallen off earlier. 

Manhattan spoke first. The first thing he said was, ‘what was that?’ ‘What do you think it was,’ came the reply. There was a moment of silence then the answer came back. ‘I think it was God.’ From that moment Manhattan was under the spell, the spell of finding out more, experiencing more and Jersey John. Manhattan said that he was tired and wanted to sleep. John insisted that they eat first and the two of them went and ate burritos in a Mexican joint nearby. John hoped this was more sanitary than it’s counterparts in Mexico. They ate fast and said their goodbyes at the entrance to the apartment building. It was Wednesday and they arranged to meet in the same Mexican joint at midday on Saturday. John got into his car and drove home a very happy man. 

John spent the rest of the week killing time. He even went to some lectures and handed in some written work that he had hastily done, ensuring he would not get kicked off the course for lack of attendance or course work. He was totally not into it, but he knew it was important for him to keep his place at the university while he put his other plans into action. He also went to the campus library to find any books that might be able to help him, but there was nothing. He then tried the public library and apart from finding a book by some explorer who went to the Amazon jungle, there was nothing. He did skim through the book and there was one short chapter that talked about the tribe all drinking tea together and then dancing all night. The explorer explained it as a depraved scene of people screaming and vomiting while dancing naked or rolling on the ground. He made no effort to explain this behaviour or join in, he just recounted it as he saw it and that was it. John felt that the explorer had missed the point of his journey of discovery. He made a mental note of the explores name so that he could avoid reading any more by him, in the future. He did find a book on chemistry that had pictures of boiling liquids in glass flasks and some strange spiral glass inside a long tube. He, of course, had no idea what was actually going on there, but he had a guess that something similar would be needed for this project. 

Saturday came and the two students met in the Mexican joint. Manhattan was excited. He said he was feeling much better since his experience with the tea. He said that something had been lifted from him, he felt lighter and had a more positive view of the world. He sincerely thanked John for giving him the experience. He continued to say that he felt he would like to do it again and he also felt that others would also benefit from the experience. That ticked all the boxes for John, and he wasted no time in telling Manhattan what they needed to do next. 

John went on to say that what he wanted to do was extract whatever it was that made the dreams from the cactus and to make it into some other form so that it could be taken more easily. 

Manhattan listened intently and then just said, ‘I know how to do that. Well, I know how to do it with other plants. There are many standard ways of doing such things. I need to experiment with different methods to find out how best to do it with this. I need more buttons’, he added with a smile. 

John said that they would need somewhere to do the necessary chemistry, as well as some chemistry equipment. He did not know exactly what was needed but he knew there would be some boiling and most likely some other chemicals would be needed. He bought this up with Manhattan who said that he had already thought about that. He had a spare bedroom in his apartment, and they would use that as their chemistry lab. He then went on to say that he could get any equipment they needed through the university and that he had already started. He invited John back to the apartment to see. 

Manhattan had taken the time to go to the library on campus, where he found (where John failed) several books that were pertinent to their project. he did not find anything that referred to extracting anything from Mexican Cacti, however, there were similar books containing details of extractions from other plants. He went on to explain that he needed to ascertain what type of chemical it was in the cactus, as this would help guide him as to what chemicals and processes to use. Different chemicals were used to crystallise different compounds from plants, and he was sure that this was the end game, to make a crystal of the pure substance. This made total sense to John, thinking about the cocaine, and he commended Manhattan on his diligence and said that in the morning he would drive south over the border again and bring back more buttons. Manhattan’s comment was, ‘bring fresh ones and bring lots, I will make a lot of mistakes before I get it right.’  

The two men went to shake hands but decided to hug each other instead. This they would do from now on every time they met and say goodbye. The two had bonded and wanted to reinforce that every time they met. It was an unlikely partnership, but they were now joined in their common endeavour. 

John was up at the crack of dawn the next day and drove straight to his friend with the buttons. He arrived and told the old man that the dried ones had been good and that he wanted some more, a lot more and this time fresh ones. ‘How many did he want the old man asked?’ ‘One hundred buttons’ was the reply. The old man looked around the room, maybe he was counting the buttons strung on the wall. He shook his head and walked out of the house asking his daughter to come with him. 

 The two of them went inside a storeroom and after some time the man came out with a large corn flour sack. The old man then carried the sack into the barn beside his house. Inside was an old set of scales. He set the bag on the scales and then added weights to the other side. There were fourteen kilos in the bag. he picked up a stick and wrote the number fourteen in the dust and the next to it he wrote the number five. So, fourteen kilos at five dollars a kilo was seventy dollars. This seemed like a very fair price, and John paid him directly. It seemed that drinking was free, four buttons were free, but one hundred was business. The man tied the bag up with some string and offered John food. Thanking the man and saying he had already eaten John slung the sack over his shoulder and walked towards his car. Johns host was a bit surprised as I had always eaten with him on his previous visits. He just wanted to get back and take the bag of buttons to their laboratory. That was his only thought. 

John gunned the car all the way back to the chemistry campus and to the apartment where Manhattan was waiting for him. The chemist opened the bag and looked inside, he seemed very happy with what he saw. He took out ten of the freshest buttons he could find and placed them on a set of scales in a glass case. It was one point three kilos or thereabout and this was carefully noted on a pad on paper. Then Manhattan set to work. 

There was little to see except watching the sliced buttons bobbing around in the clear glass flask, jostling for position with each other. John fell asleep in the living room and woke up a couple of hours later. 

Manhattan was standing by the window and had a round piece of white filter paper that he was looking at with a handheld magnifying glass. He looked for serval minutes and then screwed up the paper and put it in the bin. he then reached inside the bag again and took out another ten buttons. John fell asleep again then woke up another couple of hours later and went into the makeshift lab. He saw the chemist was again boiling and this time I watched him finish boiling and then add some chemicals to the liquid. He then used the spiral inside a long tube thing he had seen in the book, which made him happy, and he knew that this was proper chemistry. 

The chemist had attached a rubber tube to the glass spiral that was running out of a hole into a bucket that had been placed on the top shelf of the cupboard. He then turned on a small tap that was also connected to a rubber tube that came out of a glass flask that contained the liquid. The glass flask was also positioned higher than the spiral in a metal stand and as he turned the tap, gravity did its thing and the brown cactus liquid moved down into the spiral. At the bottom of the spiral was another tap that the chemist opened, one by one little droplets fell onto the white absorbent paper. The liquid was white with a slight yellow tinge to it, and was only barely visible on the paper as a wet mark. After drying the liquid with a hairdryer the chemist took out his magnifying glass and studied the paper. He blew on it and then looked again. 

Manhattan walked out of the lab and into the living and John followed. Manhattan then said, ‘we are lucky, it only took six tries. I know how to do it.’ He then went on to say that he needed more equipment, more chemicals and more buttons. They arranged to meet the following weekend, they hugged each other and then John was out the door and back to show his face at another lecture. 

The next week started with another trip to buy more buttons, to the bemusement of his button dealer. John delivered them to Manhattan and was told to come back at the weekend. The remainder of the week passed very slowly for John, as he had no money to entertain himself, he had spent everything on buttons. One reason he went to Mexico was that it was cheap, food was cheap, he rarely paid for accommodation and the gas for the car was cheap. He daydreamed of a different life. 

When he returned to the lab the first thing that struck him was the smell from outside the door, as he waited for Manhattan to open it. The chemist opened the door and hugged John eagerly. John pulled away from the embrace and it was a moment before the chemist could get over this perceived slight and understand the situation. He was wearing a gas mask with large filters on each side on his face, and his clothes were covered in liquid stains, some of which seemed to have eaten into the cloth. This made for a very uncomfortable hug and a strange smell was now coming from Johns shirt and holes were starting to appear in it. 

The smell inside was overpowering. One smell John knew from before, it was boiled Cactus, and the other was a strong acidic chemical smell. 

Manhattan welcomed john and said, ‘just in time.’ He gestured for John to come inside, and John went straight to the window and opened it wide. It was then that the chemist realised the strong smell and said ‘good idea!’ He then led John into the lab. John was taken aback by all the new equipment that was in the room but had no time to look as he was being pulled towards the makeshift workbench, where the chemist was pointing to another round blotting paper. On the paper were clearly visible several crystals, some were attached to each other while others were separate. 

That my friend is pure Mescaline, the active ingredient in your buttons. Mahantan  had discovered that a chemist neamed Arthur Heffter, who, unbeknown to either of the explorers, had first isolated and named the compound in 1897.  John gazed in wonder at the crystals before him. He could not believe he had been right, and they had actually managed to get this far. John looked up at the chemist and said, ‘eat them?’ Manhattan licked the tip of his little finger and pressed it into the crystals, lifted his finger, looked at it then put his finger in his mouth, then pulled it out making a popping sound as he did so. Without a question, John did the same. 

The two partners went into the living room and took up the same places as before, the first time they had eaten the button tea together. This time Manhattan decided to start off on the floor rather than end up there later. For both, the effects came on harder and faster than before, something that even took John by surprise. After several hours they both came back to their senses and looked at each other and smiled. It worked, better than they could have expected. ‘What do we do now?’ Manhattan asked, ‘get more buttons came the reply.’ 

John made his next trip across the border the next day returning to his friend. He bought another twenty kilos of buttons. While he was away on that mission the chemist had been buying a lot more chemicals and a lot more and bigger glass flasks and other equipment. When John returned to the lab with the twenty kilos the room was full. New tables had arrived and there were a lot of bottles of chemicals against the wall and in the cupboards. The two friends sliced the twenty kilos of buttons into a big steel boiling pot and lit the fire. ‘This might take some time’ he said, ‘and you will have to help me.’ Over the next seven hours, John helped the chemist to go through all the process that was necessary to turn this huge pile of cacti into the powerful crystals. When they had finished there was a huge pile of crystals in a glass dish. John was surprised at the amount. The chemist put a similar dish on the scales, weight it, then poured the crystals into the bowl, leaving some behind. There were just over two hundred grams of crystal. ‘That’s twenty grams per kilo, not too bad,” said the chemist in a satisfied tone. 

Manhattan put the crystals in a vacuum flask and gave it to John, saying, ‘this is for you, I am off to bed.’ He turned before he left the room and said, I am off to my parents for a week so let’s meet at the usual place on the Saturday after that, see yourself out, before running over and giving John another huge, chemical stained hug. 

John left, got into his car and drove home. He put the flask on the table and looked at it. Now he had it, he was suddenly not sure what to do with it. He thought for a moment and tried to decide. It was at this point that John knew for sure that there was money to be made in selling these the crystals. Money that he really wanted. His parents had no money, only what they had saved for his education and nothing more. He knew that if he was to truly enjoy himself and live the full life that he knew was out there, he needed money. He then applied himself to turning the flask of crystals into money and have some fun along the way. 

The first thing he needed to do was to decide how to sell it. There were over two hundred grams in the bowl. Each gram was a huge amount. He thought back to dipping his finger in the crystals and how strong an effect that was. It was obviously very powerful stuff. He had an idea. He knew there was a shop nearby that sold amongst other things, a small set of scales with weights, he decided he needed these and went out to get them. He came back, opened the box and put them on the table. He then used the corner of a book of matches to scoop up crystals until the scale registered one gram. He then put the one gram of crystals on the glass top table and took out a twenty-dollar bill, put it on top of the crystals and used a glass to crush them. This being a trick he had learnt later on from the man with the coke. He lifted the note and there was a fine powder on the table. He then used a knife to divide this into ten equal parts. He studied each little tenth of a gram and decided that this was the amount you should take. Next, he decided that he should charge fifty dollars per gram. He did the maths, fifty times two hundred, ten thousand dollars. He was stunned. He smiled to himself then went about the task of grinding all the crystals and packing one gram in folds of paper ready for sale. This was a long job and when he was finished he fell asleep on the floor. It was a night filled with dreams. He later learnt to use gloves and a mask for this process. 

After waking up slowly, John put twenty gram wraps of Mescaline into his pocket and headed to a coffee shop near the arts campus. It was good timing, he met three guys that he had spoken to at a party at a friend’s house. John knew they were cool and for the first time, made his Mescaline sales pitch. He said he had pure crystal made for the Peyote cactus from Mexico. That the Peyote cactus gave the best dreams and visions. John sold his first gram. They said they would do it together, later that day. John decided to call it a day with this his first sale and wait for the results. Time to catch another lecture. 

The next morning, he went at the same time to the same coffee shop. They were there again, and John had the feeling they were waiting for him. They said hello to him as he went in and then waited for his coffee, he then went and sat down with them. The spokesman amongst them said, ‘wow, thank you, that was great. We will take one hundred hits.’ The next day john gave them ten packets of one gram each, again saying that they should divide each into ten. John sold another gram to four different people that morning in the coffee shop. Within a week John had sold one hundred and fifty grams. John drove back to Mexico and bought another twenty kilos of buttons. He sold the last fifty grams to one guy the night he left. Business was booming. he had to keep it going. 

The next day he was scheduled to go back to the chemistry campus. He put the buttons in a backpack and drove to Manhattans apartment. There was a long delay in him opening the door. John found out why when he saw him and went inside. Manhattan had taken it upon himself to properly test out what he had made. The apartment was in a mess, there was a mattress, cushions and blankets on the floor in the living room. Sitting on the table was a glass dish that he had instantly recognised. The last time he had seen it, it had a pile of crystals as well as, crystals all around it. It was empty, it looked clean. Manhattan came back into the room having been to the toilet. He lay down on the mattress and rolled over to look at John as he sat in a chair. He smiled and said that he had been an amazing journey since he had returned from his parents. ‘You did it all” John asked? ‘Yes, I finished the little bit left over!’ ‘You OK?’ John asked. ‘Yes, never been better’ was the reply. 

But Manhattan was a mess, he looked like he needed to sleep for a month. He also seemed to have only eaten ice cream, John decided that he needed to eat some proper food. The chemist had passed out again. John realised that he needed to get Manhattan back on his feet so that he could make more crystals, and fast. It did not seem like a clever thing to be asking him to do right now. So, John set about cleaning the apartment. He changed the bedsheets in the bedroom and managed to drag and then manhandle the chemist on to his bed. John cleaned the kitchen and the living space and then lay down on the sofa and fell asleep also. He woke up at ten o’clock, went out and ordered expensive Italian food from a restaurant nearby and had them package it. He took it back, laid it all out on the table and then woke up the weary chemist. He was not happy to wake up but changed completely when he saw all the food. He sat down and eat nearly everything. John ate very little. John then helped his friend back to his bedroom, grabbed a blanket from the open cupboard and fell asleep on the sofa. 

In the morning John went out and bought breakfast. Pancakes, doughnuts and coffee. Woke his friend, fed his friend and then put the new bag of buttons in front of him and told him he needed to do it again. John told him that he had sold everything, that people loved it and they wanted more. The master salesman knew what to appeal to, money was no good, doing good was what his friend wanted to do. ‘They really like it,’ the chemist asked. ‘Yes, they really really like it and everyone wants more”, came the reply. 

They went back to the laboratory and repeated the process. This time there were four hundred grams. ‘Getting better,’ said the chemist. The four hundred grams was again put into a, this time bigger, dishand an even bigger pile was left in and around the glass dish. The friends had their goodbye hug and John left saying he had people waiting for him. 

A week went by in a blur for John. He was selling fifty grams a day and had had no time to go to the chemistry campus. He suddenly had a feeling that he should have checked in on his friend. In a panic he headed out to the apartment. There was no reply there, and no sign of anyone. John decided to go and eat at the Mexican joint, when he was making his order the owner came over and said that his friend had been outside his restaurant naked, and an ambulance had taken him away. He had been naked for the past three days, terrorised the neighbourhood and he seemed to have forgotten where he lived, as he was sleeping on a bench in the park. 

This was a big problem for John and his plans. His supply had dried up. He decided that he should try and find Manhattan, but he did not think that would be easy. Anyhow he started by calling the local hospitals but as he did not actually know his friend’s name they could not help. 

John had an appointment at the coffee shop on the arts campus. He jumped in the car and drove there. He met his contact and did the deal. After they had completed that business (John’s last fifty grams) the contact asked John if he sold anything else. ‘Like what?’ John asked. Like LSD came the reply. The contact then placed a single square piece of yellow paper with jagged edges in John’s hand. Take it now and go to the park, meet me here again tomorrow. John did as the man said, and his life changed again in the park. 

The next day, John was an LSD dealer. The problem was that the drug had just been made illegal and the very next day he was the first person in America to be arrested for selling LSD. He decided he needed to run away. Prison was no place for such a person as John. That is how John came to be on the run. He would find Manhattan again a few years later and that is another story. A new life was needed, he needed to leave his Italianism and home behind. This was done by boarding a flight from LAX to Amsterdam and adopting a new name, ‘Jersey John.’ 

Chapter Eight: 

From Donald Shinefield to Ram Das of The Grateful Eight. 

A modern-day Krishna 

Donald’s life before arriving in India is hardly worth a mention. He led the normal of a child growing up in the second largest city, on the coast of the Australian state of Victoria. He spent his time listening to music, that is about all he did. He was infatuated by music and to the places it took him to when he closed his eyes. It was Don’s destiny to study music and this destiny was fulfilled. It was straight after graduation that he set off on his travels. 

It was in India that he took on a new persona, that of Ram Das He, like so many after him, received his new name from a Guru. Don was one of the first to have come to India searching for spiritual enlightenment, from the faraway land of Australia, at a time when few of his countryfolk had ever left the island. Trips, such as to the party island of Bali, much favoured now, were not yet a thing. 

Don first heard about India from the Beatles and their visits there, to meet with their Guru, in the early 1960s. This inspired Don, after finishing his studies in music, he boarded a ship, to this far off country to follow in the footsteps of his favourite musicians. He arrived in the crazy city of Delhi and immediately took the train northeast to the ancient and sacred city of Rishikesh, just as his hero’s had done. He visited the ashram that the Beatles had stayed in, but he did not feel any great connection with the place, or the self-proclaimed guru of transcendental meditation. He did not feel that trying to float in the air was a necessary skill for him to leran. He visited many other ashrams and met many other Guru’s there, but sadly nothing about them grabbed his spirit, as he had so much hoped. He found only ‘Fake Gurus’ as he named them. 

Sitting one evening on the ghats (steps) on the holy Ganga River, trying to find space to clear his mind, which was very difficult due to the number of people who wanted to ask which country he came from, perform a special Puja for him or try and sell him something. Whilst offhandedly waving everyone away, he was suddenly confronted by a small child. He was dressed like Mowgli from the jungle book and started playing a wooden flute. The music that came out was magical and Don was very surprised by the child’s ability. “Buy a flute from Krishna”, the little boy implored. It was then he noticed a bag at the child’s side, that contained several of the wooden flutes. 

‘Kitna paise’ Don asked, using one of the very few phrases he had learnt from the Hindu language, how much is it, was the question. The little boy held up his hand and opened and closed it twice. Don did not think twice, and as if under a spell he took out the not inconsiderable sum, (for a small wooden flute at least) of ten Rupees from his pocket and gave it to the young Krishna child.  The boy smiled and gave him a flute from the bag and raised his hands up together in Nemaska, the Hindu greeting for thank you, welcome, hello, goodbye and a multitude of other expressions. The boy bounced away down the steps, not looking for his next customer, but to go and give this princely sum to his mother. 

Don put the flute to his lips, as he had seen the boy do, and blew. As he did so a beautiful sound came from the flute. The notes seemed to swirl around his head, before extending out into the universe. It was in this moment that Don realised that he had found his instrument. He also at that moment, vowed to find out more about this Krishna, the Hindu God, that the boy had spoken of. 

Don went back to his guest house and asked the owner about Krishna. He said, you are in the wrong place here, you need to go to the place of Krishna’s birth, Vrindavan. I can book you a bus, now, if you want, said the hotel manager, cum travel agent, cum anything else you needed. So it was that four hours later, having carefully wrapped the flute in a piece of cloth that he had bought especially for the purpose, Don was on a bus into the night, towards the birthplace of Krishna. 

Don arrives and meets his Guru in no time. Not one of the Fake Gurus, a real one. The leader of the global ISKCON. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness. A man very grandly named A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. 

It was through this man, or rather Swami, that Don became Ram Das. With his new name and his new mission, Ram Das starting his new live in devotion to Lord Krishna. This life was not for the faint of heart, but it offered a chance of escape. Escape from the humdrum life that he left behind and the chance to find himself and the place referred, to as Nirvana. Where all your earthly cravings were satisfied, and you lived without wants or needs. This was very appealing to Ram Das, and this became the focus of his journey. 

At this time, India was still in the thrall of the British, even though the British had left, and the country had long been divided, it was not necessary for him, as an Australian citizen under the rule of the Queen of England (and Viceroy of India) to have a visa for India (unlike today) and any thought of leaving and returning to Australia, soon passed from his mind. There was nothing but time ahead of him and he relished this. 

After one year of no communication with his family, Ram Das wrote them a letter. He included the address of the post office in Vrindavan, with the strange words, Poste Restante, at the beginning. This was a British invention, despite the obviously French name, that allowed people to use a post office, as their own mailing address. He told his mother and father in the letter that they could write to him using that address. He said he was fine and well and busy finding himself. He thought about writing some of his many thoughts on life, the universe and everything that he had pondered since being in India, but thought better of it, thinking they would just think he was mad. 

A month after writing the letter, a young boy came to his guest house and walked straight into his room as he was meditating and shouted, “letter, letter, post office, challo”. The boy then held out his hand and said, Paise, Paise, (money, money. The Indian Rupee is divided into one hundred paise) each Paise was a significant amount of money for a young boy in the India of the 1960s. The Rupee is still dived into those hundred Paise, but with inflation, it has ceased to be daily tender, with everything now rounded up to Rupees. It was then Ram Das recognised the boy, he had seen him hanging around the post office and had set himself up as it’s unofficial messenger boy, to tell the few foreigners that were around, that the Indian post had in fact done its job and delivered a letter from a faraway land. Most time these letters would be a lifeline for their recipients as they most often contained cash in the form of banknotes. 

Ram Das reached for the small cloth pouch that was serving as his purse and fished out what he realised to be the last coin. The last of his money. He had become distracted by his study and meditation, that he had forgotten about money. He did not actually need any, so had not bothered to pay attention to it anymore. His room was a very basic one, on the ground floor of the Ashram of his newfound Guru and in return for teaching his Guru English and studying the teachings of the Guru, his room was free from rent. Likewise, he had a choice of places to eat, all of which were free to him for some reason. Why did he need money? 

Ram Das guessed that the letter was from his parents and was interested to have some news of them. So, he got up from his crossed legs mediation position on the floor. He tightened his Lungi, the piece of cloth worn by many Indians and nearly all holy people. It was simply a piece of cloth long enough to cover the legs and wide enough to wrapped around the waist with enough spare to gather it up and tie it in a multitude of ways. It had the added bonuses of not having any seems, seems it seemed restricted the flow of energy around the body and for this reason were shunned by most of those in his particular calling. He put on the too thick, now off-white shirt made of Kadi, a generic term for local homespun fabric in India. Kadi was popularized by Mahatma Gandhi himself, who preached that one should spin their own thread and weave their own cloth for them to wear. This was also on the long list of things to do, that Ram Das kept in his head. Lastly, he pulled back his hair that had now become heavy with dreadlocks and used a piece of red cord to tie them back. 

Suitable dressed he headed out of the door and the gate of the Ashram, out into the hustle and bustle of the daily life of India outside. He skirted around the cows and their dung, that was liberally scattered around, waiting to slip up the unwary. He jumped out of the way of the bicycle rickshaws and even had to avoid a huge Elephant, that had appeared out of nowhere in the narrow street. After this obstacle course, he pushed his way through a crowd that had gathered in front of the shrine to Sai Baba of Shirdi and came out on the other side, right in front of the post office.  

Ram Das entered the post office and pushed his way through the arms grabbing at the thick wire mesh around the counter. He immediately caught the eye of the postmaster (or was it the brass badge with the word postmaster on his cap that caught his eye,) who sat in a large chair behind a desk, behind his minions that did his bidding. On seeing Ram Das, he immediately realised was different, his prey. This was a realisation, that only came to the trained eye, as Ram Das had made a point of making himself look as much like any other follower of Lord Krishna and generally his western origins went unnoticed. 

The man beckoned Ram Das to enter his inner sanctum through the now opened cage door, just to his right. He entered and the man gestured him to sit down and then put two fingers up and shouted, Chai, in the general direction of a man crouched on a pile of beige cotton wrapped parcels, in the corner of the very messy post office. The man jumped to his feet and headed out of the door. Minutes later he appeared again with two glasses of the ubiquitous, sweet, spicy, milky, hot chai in a wire basket that could hold eight cups at once, for such delivery purposes. This was this man’s only job. 

As the two chai glasses were placed on the desk, the postmaster picked his up and looked up towards the crowd in front of him, smiling in satisfaction. Ram Das turned around and saw that everyone had stopped waving their arms around and were staring, open mouthed at this important man, sitting drinking tea with what they had now realised, was a foreigner. This is what the Postmaster wanted, along with another thing. 

After basking in the glow of the adoration of these people who would never have the chance to drink tea with a foreigner, the man asked, in perfect English, “what may I do for you, sir?” I believe there is a letter for me, from Australia. “And what is your name enquired the postmaster?” Ram Das came the reply, which caused a change in the expression on the other man’s face and called into question whether the man in front of him, was in fact a foreigner. Ram Das quickly realised his mistake and blurted out, no sorry, my name is Don, Donald Shinefield is my full name. 

The man clicked his fingers and immediately a small man appeared from behind him. He said something to him that Ram Das did not understand and then disappeared, before returning with a wooden box containing around twenty letters. The one distinguishing factor about all these letters were the stamps, nearly all had a picture of the queen on them and had the letter ‘P’ after the number. The postmaster had the box laid in front of him and picked up one seemingly at random and read out the name, it was not Donald Shinefield. The postmaster then repeated the process, very slowly with every letter that was in the box. He was going to milk his moments of perceived superiority, of sitting with a foreigner, for as long as possible. After nineteen other names, covering people of obviously European original, none of whom Ram Das recognised, came the last letter in the box. The postmaster, still extending his time on this very quick job to the very limits of possibility, squinted at the stamp and said, posted form Melbourne Australia and then a date that was some several months in the past, before finally reading out the name he had been waiting for, Donald Shinefield. 

The postmaster was skilfully running his fingers over the letter (he had already done this with every letter) and using his years of skill to ascertain what was inside, he was, of course, feeling for money. He held it out to Ram Das and then deftly pulled it back again as he tried to take it. I will give to you, if you give me some of what is inside, said the shady government employee. It took some moments for Ram Das to realise what he was talking about, this sly one had felt something inside, something his fingers were trained to find, there were banknotes in the envelope. 

As is the case in many situations in India, where you need someone to do something for you, you must pay. Even if that service should be free, a tax is charged, this tax is universally known as, ‘Baksheesh’. It was not the first time that Ram Das had come across it and it was sure that it would not the last time either. Then came the game, the game where the person who can charge the baksheesh, sizes up his opponent, like a boxer before a fight and then decides what number he is going to say. The postmaster thought for some time while looking and feeling the envelope, calling on his previous experience, and looking Ram Das up and down multiple times. The man then finally leant forward and whispered one hundred rupees. He had gone in high, thought Ram Das, who put on his best-shocked expression. Thinking carefully before making his reply, he leaned forward so only his adversary could hear and said,” the Post Restante service is, if I am not very much mistaken, a free service for foreigners in your country, as well you know. However, I understand and appreciate that you have taken great care of my letter and sent the boy to my Ashram to tell me it was here and for that I thank you. And for this efficient service, I am happy to pay you ten Rupees, as a gesture of goodwill.” 

The government official (which is what he was) seemed to be taken aback by this statement, however, he did not seem to be to put out, by this low return offer. He weighed up his options and came to the decision that this was fair and easy, no more discussion would be necessary, and no further attention would be drawn to the fact that he was blackmailing a foreigner, something that could lose him his very cushy job, as a high-ranking member of the Indian Post office and all the benefits that came with it. 

He learnt across his desk with the letter flat down-facing upwards displaying the stamps and the name of Ram Das in another world, holding his fat index finger hard down on it. Give the ten Rupees to the young boy, when you get outside and this will ensure prompt delivery, at the same nominal fee, of all future correspondence. Ram Das looked the man in the eyes and said, “thank you very much sir”, as he grasped the letter and slid it across the desk from under the man’s finger. He promptly stood up and quickly made his exit back out into the sunlight and the madness outside. 

Ram Das headed through the chaos to his favourite spot under a tree, in the garden of the main Krishna Temple. He sat down against the tree and out of, what was now habit, looked around to make sure there was no one watching him. Behind another tree he saw the eyes and fingers of the boy, watching him. Satisfying himself that this was the only person watching him he carefully opened the letter, using a small twig from the ground to use as a letter knife. 

There were three pieces of handwritten paper inside, and inside these, there were three American one-hundred-dollar bills. He carefully removed the three handwritten pages, leaving the three notes inside the envelope, so that the young boy could not see. He folded the envelope four times and put it inside his cloth purse that was hidden in the folds of his lungi. He then opened the letter and started to read. 

At the top of the first page was written, in large blocks letters, ‘COME HOME’. Then there were three pages of not very interesting family updates. Nothing bad had happened, nothing good had happened, nothing bad had happened. Life back home was just the same as he had left it and it gave him reassurance that he was right not to be there. On the last page, after the last of the family news, there was a line drawn across the page. Underneath was written, this is your father, and this was underlined. His father wrote, ‘I made enquiries as to the cost of a passage, on a mail ship from Bombay to Perth. The cost of the journey, plus the train from Perth to Melbourne I have calculated to be three hundred American dollars. I bought the American dollars at the post office as there I made enquiries and was told that it would be hard to change Australian dollars in India. So that is what I sent you. You will use it to come home. Book your passage today and then reply with your arrival date, your mother and I will be expecting you. The very last thing that was written at the very bottom of the letter was, Happy Birthday. 

Ram Das was elated; he had more money than most sadhus would see in their lifetime, and this would enable him to continue his studies and journey towards Nirvana. He had absolutely no intention of coming home, especially having read the content of the letter. He stood up and headed home, the boy followed him. 

Back in his room at the Ashram, he left the boy sitting on the wall outside and shut his door. He removed his purse from his waist, took out the envelope and carefully removed, just one of the valuable green pieces of paper, which he folded up again and put in the purse. He then shuffled to the wall where he had previously noted that some mortar seemed to be loose, and the mortar had made a small pile on the floor. He then reached over and picked up his one utensil, a teaspoon and started to scrape away the mortar from one side of the brick. This turned out to be easy and Ram Das wondered if there was any cement at all in the mixture. Before long he had made a narrow groove between two bricks. He kept going until he judged it to be just wide enough and just deep enough to fit the folded envelope. He then pushed the envelope into the gap. Then using some water, he mixed this with the powder, that had been in the gap, to form a paste. He then used the spoon to cover up the envelope with his makeshift mortar. It looked good, no one would be any the wiser, even if they looked at it closely. The last thing that Ram Das did was count the number of bricks from the corner and the number of bricks up, making a mental note of those two numbers. He was determined to not forget where his stash of cash was, and this would make sure of that. 

Ram Das headed out the door again and made his way to the money changer that he had been to see when he cashed his last note, some months before. He went into the dark street-side office that doubled as a travel agency and quickly exchanged the foreign note with a big pile of Indian currency. He asked the travel agent for change of one hundred-rupee note, into ten-rupee notes, begrudgingly the man agreed. Ram Das then put all, but two ten Rupee note back into his purse, stashed it securely in his waistband and was on his way out the door when he noticed a calendar on the wall. The days of the month were crossed out and the next non crossed out day was the 1st of October, his birthday. 

He did not need to look far for the boy, and true to form he was outside sitting on another wall. He looked up at him and waved him over. First, he handed him the folder ten Rupee note, saying, Postmaster. The boy wobbled his head, in what Ram Das knew as a yes, (Ram Das could now tell what this mysterious Indian gesture meant. It meant many things and both the shaker and receiver knew what it meant, each time), then Ram Das gave the boy the other ten Rupee note and pointed to him, the boy smiled at what he felt was a huge gesture of generosity and instead of running off to take the money to his boss at the post office, he looked Ram Das in the eye and said. ‘Stamps.’ Ram Das instantly realised that the stamps were of not only interest to the boy, but maybe even worth money to someone. Ram Das answered with another of the very few words he knew in Hindi and said, ‘badme,’ later in Hindi. The boy did not seem happy with this but was no doubt itching to get the post office to collect his second reward from the postmaster. He disappeared across the grass and out of sight. 

So it was by some strange coincidence that a letter from his parents would arrive on his birthday, every year, wherever he was, containing the same three hundred US dollar bills. It was like this Ram Das supported himself during his several decades in India, the cost of the journey home, sent by his loving father, however every year, instead of his son returning, he just became three hundred dollars poorer. 

After a period of time that Ram Das really had no concept of, something changed. It was a sudden realisation was that he had learnt all that he could learn from this place. This was born out by the huge amount of his day that was now spent playing his flutes, he had quite a collection of them now, and very little of it studying or meditating as he had done in the past. He had even found a teacher. Music had taken over him and he felt that this was his next path in life. It had however been important for him to come here, to find Krishna’s flute. He thanked Vrindavan for that. 

That day, for the first time since his first week there, he went to eat in a restaurant that was popular with the tourists who had started to come in greater numbers to this sacred place. He had a desire for something exciting to eat, a change from his daily dal and rice. He read everything on the menu and decided on a ‘Paneer Dosa.’ A Dosa was a rice flour pancake that usually contained a potato curry, but this was different, it was filled with delicious spicy paneer, the cheese used in Indian cooking. He was very surprised at how tasty it was, and it awakened something inside him. He had a revelation; it was time to move. He did not know where, but he knew it was time. And his flutes would come with him. 

Chapter Nine: 

From Timothy Golden to Anantaya Sona of The Grateful Eight 

Timothy was a follower. 

Timothy had bright orange hair. Golden hair his mother would say. His skin was pale and with freckles. He was more of an academic child than a sporty child. 

The car his mother had persuaded her husband that she would purchase as a birthday present for their son, arrived. It was a Mini Clubman, a fine choice by his mother. The rear half was made of wood, and this Clubman version was much longer than the standard version and offered not only space to have other people in the car, but lots of room for luggage. He soon realised that there was another advantage to this particular car, a benefit that he would later make great use of. It was just long enough for him to sleep in. 

Timothy had managed to pass his driving test three months after his seventeenth birthday. He seemed to be a naturally gifted driver. There was a glimmer of pride in his father as Timothy shook his hand after passing the test the first time. There was finally a test that his son had passed. Also, something positive his father could say about his son at the frequent dinner parties held at home. This got his father off his back for a while. 

Timothy’s father was a surgeon who performed organ transplants, specialising in kidneys, which led him to be very well paid. His Fathers income with the cash and investments of his mother enabled them to live in a large country house and have a flat in one of the smartest addresses in London. 

His school term finished on July 19th, 1970, and as he had found out ‘The Phun City Music Festival’ would start on the July 24th. He had gleaned this information from the new friends he had made in the local pub, during his secret visits there. It was decided that one of these newfound friends would ride shotgun with him in the Clubman and the other two in a Volkswagen Camper van, (which made Timothy a bit envious as this was the ultimate hippy vehicle of the time and now) to this hoped for journey into another world. Timothy was in search of another world. 

The end of school came, and Timothy had managed to gain permission for a week long ‘camping trip with some friends,’ and he lost no time in making his preparations. On the 23rd he was ready, he had a full tank of petrol, a small pile of cash given by his mother that was significantly increased by the notes he had been stealing from his father’s wallet over the proceeding months. Having bought a sleeping bag and a small camping stove with some cooking pots and stocking up with rice, lentils and a few other things that he felt he would be able to cook, he was ready. 

He said his goodbyes to his parents and set off for the rendezvous with the friends his parents would definitely not approve of. What they did not know, would not hurt them he believed, and Timothy was on a mission, a mission from God. His God, not the one spoken of in school. 

The festival promised a truly mind-blowing experience. A gathering of the growing tribe of hippies. The headline band was ‘The Motor City Five’ or ‘MC5’ who had taken their name from, Detroit, the famous centre of car manufacture in the US and their home city. This was almost unbelievable, a band from the US, and the American funk rock wave leaders were playing at a free festival in the south of England. There was also a strong line-up of homegrown bands and poets, freaks and the founding members of the embryonic free party scene in the UK. 

It was on the second day of the festival that the merry band of travellers had arrived, late the previous evening. Timothy felt and an air of expectancy on the breeze, as he excitedly opened the back door of the clubman that first morning. His excitement was immediately dampened by the fact that his first view of the festival in daylight was of the large white arse of a very well-built biker chick having a shit. Timothy’s utopian dream was shattered as the public shitter went back inside the tent of whose doorstep she had shat on. 

Timothy fell out of the back of the car and tried to shake off the image burnt into his retina. He got himself together and decided he needed tea and decided the others would also. So, he woke them all up. The first thing he said to them was to not walk in a certain direction towards and certain tent. They asked why and Timothy, not wanting to relive the event just said, ‘just don’t.’ They set off in search of tea. 

It was Saturday, the day of the big bands. Everywhere Timothy looked unusual people were doing usual things; washing themselves, eating together, chopping firewood, he even saw one washing his clothes. Timothy realised they were just doing one thing, living their lives. Living as they wished with who they wished without a thought of society’s contractions and conventions outside of the magical space that they had created. Timothy was instantly hit by the reality that it was possible to find a place and way to live outside of the home counties upbringing that seemed to be his destiny. 

It was on the four friends first walk around the festival that they came across a new religion, a new one to Timothy anyway. A religion from India. It was called ISCON or The International Society for Krishna Consciousness. It was based on the teachings of one man named Srila Prabhupada and had the Indian God of Lord Krishna as the figurehead. He first came across this group when they had made their daily rounds of the festival site. About twenty non-Indians and four Indians had their heads shaved, save for a thin piece from the back of the head and wore yellow or orange cloth. They all had an instrument, drums and bells, as they walked with a dance in their step while repeating the words ‘Hari Krishna. Hare Rama’ in unison, over and over. If this did not make them stand out, then the inordinately happy looks on their faces did. 

They eventually found a place that sold tea. It was a very strange spicy tea and was listed on a piece of cardboard as ‘chai tea.’ Whatever that was. I was not unpleasant, and it was hot and reviving. For the same price as the tea, they ate a flat round bread each. It did not look like much, but it was still warm and tasted very fresh. These two items had moistened their throats and settled their rumbling tummies. 

The four friends walked aimlessly until they were stopped in their tracks by a voice that said, ‘Tabs, best clean acid tabs’. They all turned in the direction of the voice and saw what could only be described as a Wizard. A tall man with a large wooden staff, pointy hat and a long velvet coat covered in stars, lightning bolts and other symbols. Timothy immediately thought of Gandalf and the Lord of The Rings, favourite books of his childhood. 

The quartet all looked at each other, and by telepathy, they all agreed that the answer was yes. The Wizard bowed and beckoned them inside the tent that was just behind him. A deal was swiftly done. Four squares of paper were placed in their mouths. 

The group then stood up to leave the tent. Timothy was the last to stand up, and he thanked the Wizard. ‘Stay awhile, have a cup of tea,’ said the kindly man. ‘It would be good for you to sit awhile with me before you leave.’ Timothy decided to stay, his friends left the tent seemingly oblivious to the Wizards request. The Wizard had a concerned look on his face as he watched the others leave. 

Timothy drank a cup of ‘normal’ tea, in silence, with the man. He did not know for how long, time was standing still and a strange feeling was coming over him. Timothy suddenly started to laugh uncontrollably. The Wizard laughed with him, and when Timothy had controlled himself a bit, the tall magical man said, ‘you look good to go’, and said ‘take care, go slowly and find your space, you have a long journey ahead into the Strawberry Fields.’ Timothy thanked the Wizard again and left the tent. His friends were nowhere to be seen. He walked off into the festival. 

‘Strawberry Fields’ as it turns out was the name given to the tiny square piece of paper with a tiny amount of a magical substance, that he had put on his tongue. It was something that had been whispered in the pub and Timothy now remembered his travel partners saying they wanted to try it, but he had not understood what they were talking about. This was LSD. Timothy had heard his parents talk about this and had asked them what it meant. ‘Pounds, Shillings and Pence my boy, the most important thing in life is LSD.’ his father had said. In pre-decimal times in England, Pounds had (and still have) a symbol that looks like an ‘L’ and the pound was divided into ‘Shillings’; hence the ‘S’ and ‘Pennies’ had a ‘D’ symbol. This gave rise to the term LSD being used unwittingly by the straight people of England. 

This was a completely different type of ‘LSD’. So different, the irony of this could not have been more emphatic. 

Timothy found himself to be happy on his own and wandered around the many makeshift shops and saw many things he had never seen before. He saw bags with mirrors on them that danced in the afternoon light and colourful bedspreads with camels that chased each other around in circles. Everything was so colourful, he could look at them for hours, which as it turned out he had. 

It was nearing the end of the afternoon when Timothy’s mind took a break from the beauty that surrounded him, his mind returned, and he wondered where his travelling companions were. In this sudden moment of clarity of mind and vision, as if by magic he was again in the presence of the great wizard. ‘Back for more?’ was the question this time. ‘The second one if free for you today.’ So it was that Timothy placed a second tab on his tongue, without question. 

As Timothy stood there, he had had time for one more moment of clarity, the thought that there was a magical night ahead. The night of the big bands on the stage, and he decided he was going to enjoy it. This thought did not last long as he felt the rushes of beauty and light rise up inside him again, more strongly this time. 

The sun was going down, and he could hear the calls of ‘1 2 3 testing, 1 2 3’ from the stage as the soundcheck got underway. On his way following this sound that was drawing him, he stumbled across the Krishnas tent and campsite. The side of the tent was open, and it was full of people. Many were lying down, but some were standing up shouting and physically restrained by those in the yellow robes. Others were dancing with what looked like a tremendous amount of joy. Several people were eating, and he could see some large pots of food in the corner. There was Indian music playing loudly that covered these shouts, the overall impression on Timothy was of a place of comfort and refuge. He felt drawn to some energy created by this group of people. He wanted to go in and join them, but something else called him. He would come back.  

Timothy again made his way down the hill, there were many people, but he carefully walked around them, right to the front of the stage. He was intrigued by the equipment and all that was needed to put a band on a stage and wanted to see how it was done. He was engrossed in watching all the activity and then suddenly a band came on the stage. He realised that he was now surrounded by people and that a strong, unknown feeling was coming over him. 

The band started, and he was enveloped by the music and the people. For the next five hours, he was lost in communal headbanging. The music was going deep into his core as he became one with it. He knew every word of songs he had never heard before. He had no idea who these bands were, but he loved them all. More bands passed in a blur until the music took a new direction with the arrival on stage of the ‘MC5’. The music was different, heavier, more industrial and did not at all fit the setting of Timothy’s feelings. A darkness came across him, and he felt an overwhelming desire to escape it. Escaping was not so easy, he was surrounded, he panicked and pushed his way through people who were mostly oblivious, however, some were not. 

A large group of Hells Angels were in his way as he careened off to an unknown destination. He burst through them, which made several of them upset, two punched him, and a third grabbed his legs and bought him to the ground. Quickly the group picked him up and threw him into the air. Fortunately, this was towards the back of the crowd, this aided his escape somewhat; however, the two people he landed on were also upset. He did not apologise, he was incapable of such a human sentiment at that time, and he just pushed on his way and out of the crowd. 

Everything was dark, and he felt evilness around him. Peoples faces were distorted and looked like witches and warlocks, all out to get him. He was terrified. He lumbered along as quickly as he could, away from the sound of the stage. In this state, he arrived again at the big tent the Hari Krishna’s. Before he knew what or why, he was inside, sitting on the matted floor with his knees held closely by his arms to his chest. Someone appeared in front of him with a smile that was too wide for his face. ‘What is your name?’ it was not possible for Timothy to reply. The inordinately happy man pushed a metal cup of hot, milky, spicy, sweet tea in his hands. As soon as he drank the first sip, the demons went away, and a matching smile appeared on his face. The man leant forward and said ‘you will not tell me your name, so I will give you one, Sona, Anantaya Sona, that means endless gold in Sanscrit.’ 

He was in a completely different place, suddenly he felt surrounded by love and good vibes and this new name had stuck in his mind and he felt to embrace it. As part of a rebirth if you will. Timothy spent the next few hours laughing, joking and singing with the others in the tent, until being woken, the next morning, under a blanket with the words ‘a cup of tea for you Sona.’ 

Timothy had stepped into two new realms. The magical world of perspective change from the LSD and the realm of the other religions of the world. He felt he had found something, and his life would change, as it had for so many others, that night in a field in Sussex. He also had a new name! 

Timothy returned home after his adventure, but this would never be his home again. He started playing truant from school, smoked a lot of Cannabis and started selling LSD. His parents were not happy. Even his mother had stopped defending him to his father. Very soon after, under mysteries circumstances, the police turned up at a party at a friend’s house. The door was open, and they walked in. They stood in the living room and told everyone to sit down. They said they had had reports of noise. The peaked cap in charge then said he could smell Cannabis and that his officers, there were seven of them, would now search everyone. Timothy was chosen first. 

Unsurprisingly, two plastic bags were removed from his trouser pockets. One contained a slab of what Timothy sold as ‘Afghani Black’ a very strong cannabis resin and in the other a sheet of sixty tabs of Acid. They were made of clear gelatine and had small red hearts on them. He had just collected them and was yet to have shared them around the party. He was busted. 

Timothy went to court in his small hometown. The local press was there, and the following Friday he was front-page news. The court case was adjourned for reports on him and his family to be prepared. Official people came to his house to speak to his parents and him. For his father, this humiliation in society was almost more than he could bare. His anger and disappointment with his son was ever-present. The atmosphere in the family home was unbearable for all. 

As a result, Timothy decided that waiting for the next court case and the possibility of a jail sentence (the magistrate had said this was a real possibility, she was also his old English teacher) was not worth waiting for. He planned his escape, selling the Mini for cash. On the day of his escape, he took all the money out of his father’s wallet and headed out the door with a small bag of clothes. He ran for the railway station and got on a train to London. He walked out of the station and to the large bus terminal. Two hours later he was on a bus to Amsterdam. 

Chapter 10 There are a few options for the last member of the eight that I have to decide one.

Chapter 11 The English meets Mr Sandosa. A fortuitous meeting

On arrival in the Dam, as he had heard it called on the bus, Lolos managed to get a bunk in the YMCA and spent his days walking the streets, stressing about the choices he had made in his life so far.  

He did manage to get a job washing up on a small ‘Brown Bar,’ the name given to pubs in the Dam. Was it because of the colour of the beer? It was very badly paid as he was not Dutch, but the money kept him in food and paid for a bunk in a lively hostel he had moved onto. This went on for the six months of the summer. It was turning cold, not that The Dam was not always cold, and Lolos was starting to get depressed. He knew he should be doing something else. 

Every evening in the brown bar, he would wash glasses unto eleven. The bar closed at midnight and any glasses that needed cleaning would be stacked in the sink for him to clean when he arrived in the morning. He would then go and sit in the bar and have a couple of glasses of beer, that were part of his payment. One evening Lolos was particularly depressed and had had more than a glass of beer. A man walked into the bar, someone he had not seen before, he now knew all the regulars by sight. The man bought a beer and sat down next to him. The man asked, ‘Why do you look so unhappy?’ 

Due to the unhappy demeanour bought on by his situation, Lolos had not made any friends. All those at the hostel were just passing through. He was touched by a stranger asking him why he was sad. Due in no part to his loss of inhibitions bought on by the beer, he told the man his story. After listening without interruption, the man said something strange. ‘I am happy to hear that. I would like to talk to you some more. I think I can help you. Come and talk to me tomorrow at midday, at the place by the canal where people play chess. Good night, Lolos.’ The man then left. 

On waking the next day, Lolos was gripped with paranoia. He was also seized with a terrible headache, made worse by the memories of his conversation with the stranger. He had told him that he was on the run. Maybe he was a policeman? Should he go to meet him? He thought about it and felt it probable that he would have been followed home if he was a policeman and the question would have been answered by now. He decided that he had little to lose and something to maybe gain. The man had, after all, said that he could help him. It was late already, and he showered, dressed and headed out to where he knew the chessmen were. 

Lolos leaned against an empty section of the railing used to lock some of the ridiculous number of bicycles in Amsterdam and looked across at the chessmen. He was just in time to see the man from the night before knocking over his opponents King, then turn his head and smile at him. The man stood up and walked over to Lolos and said, ‘Let’s walk and talk.’ 

The man was straight to the point, ‘I am not normally a straight talker. I like to take my time before making my move, that is how I win at chess. However, my situation in life demands that I change this habit for now. There was a reason for me to be in your bar last night. I have been to many many bars over many months, looking for someone. I think that last night, I found him. We have one thing and maybe more in common.’ 

‘Last night you said that you had taken magic mushrooms, which is a psychedelic. I also have experience of such things. I have a similar substance to sell. It is called LSD and I have been looking for someone to sell it. Will you sell it with me?’ 

This direct approach sat well with Lolos. No beating around the bush. It seemed he finally had a skill that someone was interested in. Selling LSD sounded like as good a job as any! He had no prospects as a dishwasher, he knew that. A simple question deserved a simple answer he felt. 

‘Yes.’ was his simple reply. 

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘Again, I usually would wish to get to know people that I work with, but in this case maybe, for now, we leave that until later. For now, the less we know about each other and the less connection we have, the better for both of us. But we must start our work now. It is important work, for several reasons. The world needs this, and we need money. Please ask me any questions?’ 

Lolos quickly decided that this made sense to him. He formed the first question in his mind: ‘ what do I have to do?’ He then thought a bit more and decided this was not the best question to ask. He needed to be more specific. The first thing he needed to know was what he was selling. He decided he needed coffee and asked the man if they could sit outside a cafe to ask his questions. This was a yes from the man. 

With a large espresso in front of him, Lolos asked what LSD looked like? 

The answer was not what he had expected. ‘Crystal’ was the answer that came back from his question. This was not the answer that Lolos had been expecting. The man continued. ‘That is a good first question to ask. The Light, as we shall call it, is in crystal form. It is necessary to process it into a form that can be easily sold. This is the first part of your job, the second is to sell it. As I understand it in California, it is diluted and soaked onto cardboard that have designs on them. This would seem to me to be the best way to proceed. You will need to do some mathematics, get some necessary equipment, source the cardboard, choose a design, print the paper and then add The Light. Do you think you can do this?’ 

This was not going to be as easy as Lolos had first thought, but he was intrigued and excited, so the answer came easily. ‘Yes, I can do that,’ came out of his mouth. He had said yes to that, there were now only two more questions that he knew he needed to ask. ‘How much money will I make?’ 

‘We will split the sale price after costs evenly between us. 50/50.’ 

This sounded good to him. ‘How much do you have.’ This Lolos felt was the final question he needed answering before he could agree. 

‘Enough for half a million hits.’ The other man said this with no emotion, like a poker player. 

Lolos was stunned into silence. He felt sure he must have misheard so repeated the worlds. ‘Enough for half a million hits?’ 

‘Yes, half a million hits. Will you do this with me?’ 

This was Lolos’ big break. The break he had been looking for. He instinctively knew that this meeting would change his life. He was ready for a change in his life. ‘Yes, I will do this with you.’ 

The two men shook hands on the deal. The other man told him to meet him at the chessmen again in three days. He told Lolos that he would need to use this time to think about and solve the problem of dividing and processing The Light for sale. He should make a shopping list. The older man then said ‘You should call me Mr Sandosa and I will call you The English. Good day to you.’ With this, the man stood up and walked off into the distance along the canal. 

At the next meeting, Mr Sandosa handed Lolos an envelope with some money in it. He also gave him a small glass tube with a cork stopper. Inside was a light orange coloured crystal. ‘Use the money to buy what you need and keep the one-tenth of a gram of crystal that is inside out of the sunlight, it does not like sunlight.’ With that Mr, Sandosa wished him a good day and left. 

Lolos went shopping. He managed to find a set of very accurate scales at a Pawn Brokers shop. They were for weighing gems stones and were perfect for the task ahead. He also found an art shop and bought cardboard. Next was a hardware store that sold kitchen equipment. He was unsure what he was looking for in there but felt there might be something he needed in there. He found it, a pastry cutter, a sharp disc on a hub that could be rolled and put an indentation in the cardboard. He passed a shelf of metal files, and a triangular one caught his eye on his way to pay. He picked that up as well. Next door was a chemist, and he went inside and bought some eye drops that came with a small dropper. He also purchased some cough medicine that had a small measuring container with it, it was marked with lines on its sides. He was done, he had what he needed. 

He took out the pastry cutter and the triangular file. He used a pencil to evenly divide the disc into ten sections. He then used the file to make notches in the disc. He took out the long ruler that he had also bought in the art shop. Lolos cleared the small table in his room and placed a piece of the off-white card on it. He then used the pencil to draw the lines, five evenly spaced vertically and twenty evenly spaced horizontally. He then followed the lines using the ruler again with the pastry cutter. This marked the perforations in the card. 

Next was to make a liquid from the crystal. This would take some maths, again he mentally thanked his maths teacher at school, he had at last found a use for the fractions he had been forced to learn that he felt he would have no use for. 

One-tenth of a gram was four hundred hits. His paper had space for twenty-five hits. This meant that there was enough for sixteen sheets of paper. This also meant that he needed to add water to the crystal and then get one-sixteenth of that liquid into his dropper. That was not such an easy thing to do, he realised. But he had an idea as to how to solve it. He put the one-tenth of a gram into the cough syrup measuring cup and then from a glass of water filled the dropper sixteen times and squeeze it into the small cup. It was about three-quarters full when he had finished. 

He used the dropper to stir the liquid, then held it up to the bare lightbulb, and he could see that the fluid was clear. It had all dissolved into the water. Next, with his elbow on the table holding the dropper and his other hand steading his shaking hand, he squeezed the dropper very carefully so that only one drop went onto each square. There were at least a few drops left at the end, so he made a second drop starting again at the beginning until he had done the first seven and the dropper was empty. He then hung up the cardboard square with a clothes peg on a piece of string that he had hung for this purpose across his room. 

He went to work. As he rode his bicycle to work a strong feeling came over him. He remembered what it was. Lolos had the best day at work ever. He finished his shift and instead of having the usual after-work beers, he cycled home at what seemed like an incredible speed. When he was back in his room, he turned the lights on, and to his surprise, there were bright orange dots on the piece of cardboard. The first seven had two orange dots. 

He had his first product, twenty-five ‘Orange Dots.’ The next day he met Mr Sandosa and showed him. The older man was pleased that progress had been made. He did have some suggestions, however, and gave them to him on their next meeting. These proved to be very insightful. He opened his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper and gave it to him. ‘Please read this and then throw it in the canal.’ 

This was written on the card. 

1) The card needs to be more absorbent to get the solution to spread across it. Don’t drop it on, soak the sheet. 

2) The card needs a design. I suggest a cat. I have a cat; I love my cat. Felix the cartoon cat, he is known as the ‘Bringer of The Light.’ 

3) One gram should be divided into 4,000 hits. 

4) The number of hits per card need to be bigger. 500 hits per sheet. 20 x 25. 

5) Use medical gloves and a face mask. Do not touch your face. Wash your hands with alcohol. 

6) The price should be one US Dollar each when sold individually. Less in bulk. 

It was evident that Mr Sandosa had also been doing some thinking. It was also apparent that Lolos had more work to do. But that would have to wait. He had to get to work. 

When he arrived at work, his boss was waiting for him at the back door. He said ‘I am surprised you came to work today after yesterday. We don’t need you anymore.’ Lolos was taken aback. He had no idea why. He asked his boss why. ‘I think you know why,’ came the reply and the man went inside and closed the door. Lolos had no idea why; he had had a great day at work yesterday. He never did find out why. 

Under normal circumstances, this would have been devastating for Lolos. But under the less than normal circumstances, he was happy. He had another job! From that day forward, Lolos would be a full-time LSD dealer. 

The next day, as it turns out, was April 27th, or Queens Day’. The biggest holiday in Amsterdam to celebrate the Queen’s birthday. As he had found out, it was also known for the ‘vrijmarkt’ or ‘free market’ where people sold whatever they had made on the street. The day was also marked with everyone wearing the national colour, that colour is orange. It was also basically a huge party. This did not seem like a coincidence to Lolos, he had something to sell, and it was orange! 

Lolos decided tomorrow was the day he would open for business. He would go home and set about finishing what he had started. First, passing by the art shop, he went in and bought more cardboard, a different one this time. He arrived home and then remembered something else that had been written on the paper. He rode off again to the hardware store where he bought some rubber kitchen gloves and a face mask that was used by builders or painters, he was not sure which, but it looked like something he needed. 

Even though Mr Sandosa had suggested dipping the cardboard, Lolos had already had it set up to drop by drop, so he reasoned he would finish that and then move to the new method with the next batch. Back home at his table, he marked out the other fifteen sheets and made the perforations. He used his pencil to make the hole in the dropper a little bit bigger. He then put on the gloves and the mask and undid the knot he had but in the bag with the cough syrup cup in it that he had stashed in the corner of his bunk. By a stroke of luck, the bigger hole in the dropper, meant that when he had finished putting the last drop on the cardboard, the dropper was empty. He now had fifteen sheets of cardboard hanging on the string. By the time he had finished the same, now familiar, feeling had come over him. He lay on the bed and studied the feeling, it was not as strong as before, but it was still there. He got up from the bed and drank two shots of the Snhapps that he had bought. He lay down again, and after a night of colourful dreams, he woke up feeling refreshed. 

He set the price at five Guilders. This was a comfortable amount, the five Guilder coin or the ‘Vijfje’ or ‘Little Five’ was easy for everyone. This he knew as about fifty pence in the UK. And was about one US Dollar. This meant he sold two for a ten Guilder note, five for a twenty-five guilder note and ten for a fifty guilder note. He also noted to himself that he would sell a whole sheet for one hundred Guilders, which was five free hits. This all sounded easy, as indeed it would turn out it was. 

Chapter Twelve: The English meets Sam Fran. The first sales 

The English headed out into the streets that were already full of people. He followed the crowds. He found himself in ‘Oudezijds Voorburgwal,’ otherwise known as the Red-Light District. A famous part of the city. The ladies of the street were on their steps and in their windows, all dressed in Orange. Some with flamboyant orange feathered outfits. These ladies definitely had something to sell. 

As he walked down the street looking at the sights, his attention was caught by a large truck that was reversing up a side street, halfway down the road. Lolos joined a brightly dressed man sitting on the curb and watching what the truck was up to. The man he was sitting next to was wearing black jeans and a predominantly orange Tye-Dye shirt. After it had reached the end of the side road, two men appeared and opened the back of the truck. It was full of black speaker boxes. The man next to him turned to Lolos and said, ‘time for work, you want to help?’ The next thing he knew, he was helping to unload the speakers from the truck, then making a stage from scaffold poles. A large table was placed on the table, and Tie-Dye then opened the large box he had and took out some electrical equipment. Lolos stood next to him as he connected cables from his equipment to the amplifiers stacked behind the stage. 

Tye-Dye turned to Lolos and said, ‘Time for lunch before we start, you want to come?’ Lolos nodded, and the two of them headed through the back streets to a small restaurant that they could smell before they arrived. They went inside. ‘Two Special Thalis pleased Mr Ashok.’ ‘Of course, and nice to see you again, Mr Sam.’ 

They ate and spoke; this was Lolos’ first taste of Indian food since eating in the Hari Krishnas tent at the festival. It tasted good and filled him with memories. “My name is Sam, but people call me Sam Fran. I play music, today we will party.’ 

‘People call me ‘English’, and yes, today we will party!’ 

Sam seemed like as good a person as any to tell about his ‘Orange Dots.’ He put his bag on the table and slid out the brown paper bag that contained the cardboard sheets. Opening the bag just enough to show the cardboard to Sam. 

There was a quick exchange of words. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ ‘Yes, I think it probably is!’ ‘Let’s have one!’ ‘OK.’ 

Sam checked that there was only one orange dot on the cardboard before tearing two pieces off. He had a satisfying feeling as two tabs easily separated from the rest of the sheet. English put his bag back over his shoulder, held the two pieces in his hands and separated them also. He then put one tab onto their now clean thali trays. They picked them up together and put the pieces of cardboard onto their tongues. 

By the time they had returned to the stage, the street was packed with people. The two new friends sat on the back of the stage. ‘I think I need to sit here a while’ said Sam. ‘Me too,’ said English. Another quick exchange of words. ‘Wow, this is coming on fast.’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘Joakim, get some beers for us will you,’ Sam shouted to one of the large guys sitting onto the stacked rack of amplifiers. 

After some time, the man returned with a large dustbin. He was struggling to carry it. He placed it on the ground behind the stage. ‘Will that do? he asked. The two friends looked inside the dustbin, it was full of beers and ice. ‘Yes, that will do, thanx man!’ They both cracked a beer open, toasted to the Queen and took long drinks. They drank two more beers in silence as they dealt with the overwhelming change to reality that was happening to the two new friends. ‘Wow, that is better,’ said Sam. ‘That is like taking off in a rocket. I think I have a handle on it now. This is amazing man. Before I start, I have some friends who would be interested in some of this. Wait here, I will come back soon.’ 

After a few minutes, Sam returned with a large group of people. ‘How much are your ‘Orange Dots?’ Sam asked English. ‘Just a Vijfje each, special price for the Queen’s Birthday’ he said. English saw every one of the crowd of people reach into their pockets to find the coin. Then he opened his bag again, and one by one tore off squares of ‘Orange Dots’ and exchanged them for the coins. When the crowd had dispersed, he had finished nearly two whole sheets. 

Suddenly, music started, and he looked up to see Sam standing behind the table concentrating on the machines in front of him. The sound was thunderous with a continuous dance beat. He watched as Sam used the equipment to merge one song into the next. He then turned to look at the crowd in the street. He saw the faces from the group bought by Sam at the front, dancing like crazy. He then felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around and realised he had been oblivious to another group of people standing behind the stage. ‘You the one with the Orange Dots man?’ ‘Yes man, that’s me!’ 

This went on all day. English sitting on the back of the stage selling The Light, to a constant stream of customers. As the sun was starting to go down, he reached into his bag and realised that there was only a strip of seven trips left, he also noticed that these had two orange dots on them. English could not believe his luck. He was just about to get onto the stage to say hello to Sam when some of the first customers appeared. They asked for more. Sam shouted in the ear of one of them, called ‘Warlock,’ explaining that he only had double dose ones left. This guy then spoke to his six friends then turned to English and said, ‘Yes, please.’ The money and cardboard were exchanged. 

He saw Warlock in front of the stage. You could not miss him or the group of six friends around him. They were all naked. 

English searched around the dance floor for their clothes. He found a lot, gathered them up, and took them to the truck. Sam stood on the front of the stage and said ‘that’s it, folks. My name is Sam Fran. Thank you for dancing and thank you to the Queen for this wonderful holiday.’ He then pointed to Warlock and said, ‘You lot, your clothes are in the truck behind the stage!’ The crowd broke out into laughter, then clapped, cheered and whistled. 

It took some persuasion by English to get Warlock and his crew to stop dancing to the now imaginary music they could hear and come behind the stage. English felt some responsibility for their condition, and it was also by this late hour quiet cold. After some time, they regained some consciousness of self and realised that they were naked. Then there was a mad scramble for the clothes in the back of the truck. This resulted in most of them wearing each other’s clothes, they did not seem to care about this, but they looked more ridiculous than they had when he had first met them. They were each dressed in their own particular styles for sure. A bohemian bunch was the best description English could come to. 

As they started to regain themselves, their attention turned to the English. Many questions were asked, but the main and most repeated one was ‘What was that?’ The only answer Sam had was, ‘That was The Light.’ 

Slowly each said their goodbyes and thanked English and drifted off into the night until there was only Warlock, Sam and English, now sitting on the floor as the two truck guys had already packed up the stage. After some difficulty helping to load the speakers back onto the van, they said thank you goodbye to the two truck guys. The three decided to find a bar to warm up and have something more potent than beer to drink. 

Warlock took them to his favourite local bar. It was late but was still busy with the people of the Amsterdam night. Sam Fran ordered and paid for Schnapps, and they managed to find the only empty table in the bar. They toasted to the Queen and downed the first glass. Then Warlock went to the bar and came back with two more each. 

Warlock was a big guy, a muscular guy. Sam asked him if he had a good party. At which Warlock started to cry! Sam and English looked at each other, why was he crying was the unspoken question. Warlock wiped his eyes and said, ‘that was the best time of my life.’ On hearing this, Sam said, ‘that was the best gig of my life. I want everyone at my parties to see the light!’ 

‘Do you have more?’ asked Warlock, ‘eh, yes,’ said English. ‘I will sell them at Sam’s parties, and I know other people that will buy them. Let’s talk business tomorrow. Now I need to get drunk! To the Queen.’ 

English woke up in bed. He could not open his eyes as the pain in his head was too great. There was a droning noise that he felt was inside his head. He waited, hoping that the noise would go away, but it did not. It crossed his mind that the loud music had broken his hearing in some way. It was only when he finally opened his eyes that he found the source of the noise. It was not coming from his brain, it was coming from Warlock, who was sleeping on the floor next to his bunk, flat on his back and open mouth snoring. He got out of bed and carefully stepped over the large figure on the floor and went to the bathroom, then out of the hostel. When he came back, Warlock was sitting up against the bed with a massive smile on his face. ‘Good morning, English,’ he said. 

‘Tea,’ asked English. ‘Yes please,’ said Warlock. Over tea Warlock said that he had carried English home as he was incapable of walking. He said English was still capable of speaking and telling him where he lived, just that his legs did not work! And that after doing that he had no choice but to sleep on the floor. ‘You have a comfortable floor,’ Warlock added. ‘Let’s go for breakfast.’ With that, the two friends were out of the door (after a small payment to the hostel manager) and in no time in a cafe across the street eating a hearty breakfast. 

‘It’s Tuesday, Sam has his next party on Saturday. Let’s get people dancing with the The Light then. We can meet on Saturday before the party. I have some things to do.’ English said yes. Even though he knew he had to make some more trips before that could happen. They said their goodbyes which included an overwhelming hug from the Warlock. 

English went home to lie down again. He lay in bed thinking about what had happened, he then remembered his bag. He jumped out of bed in a panic until he found it under his pillow. He opened it and a cascade of coins tumbled out and then a cascade of bank notes. He counted it. There one thousand nine hundred and sixty Guilders. It was not a dream; he had sold them all. And better than that he had customers for more and new friends. English jumped back into bed and slept until late afternoon. 

When English woke up, he was ready and singled minded about the task ahead. The first thing he did was calculate how much money he had spent, how much the advance was, and the one thousand nine hundred and sixty Guilders he had made. Like this, he arrived at the amount of money he had to give to Mr Sandosa to keep to their agreement of splitting the money down the middle. He put this money in an old envelope, put it in his bag, and then headed out of the door to where the chess players sat. English waited at a cafe where he could see his partner in crime, then followed him as he walked away. Catching up with him, he carefully handed over the envelope. As they walked together, English told the story of the previous day. Then said that he needed a full gram of The Light. Mr Sandosa turned, smiled and said, ‘meet me, in the same way, tomorrow, well done English.’ With that, the two parted company. 

English walked back towards his home with a spring in his step. Passing a shop with newspapers outside, he picked up a local paper and sat on a bench overlooking the canal. He turned to the classified ads section at the back and read each one of the properties to let notices. On returning home, he circled all the notices that were of interest to him. It was already late in the day; he was tired and hungry. He went out and ate what for him felt like a celebratory dinner, then returned home and fell into a deep sleep. 

The next morning waking up early, it was time to find a new place to live. What was needed was a separate room to live in and another to work in. The nature of his work made living and especially eating, in his workspace difficult if not dangerous. After numerous telephone calls and going to look at potential places, a new home was found. English had realised that he would be able to afford a certain standard of place to live. 

By late afternoon a lease had been signed and he paid the first two months’ rent on a four-story house overlooking the canal in the city’s centre. The house was one of those that were often made of ceramic and bought by tourists who visited Amsterdam. It was not in the best condition, there was some peeling paint on the outside windows, and the whole building could have done with a lick of paint. But English looked upon this as a positive, it did not stand out, it did not draw attention. Some of the houses along the street looked very grand, especially the large one on the corner by the bridge. English would keep a low profile. 

By the time he had collected his few belongings from his old place and spoken to the landlord, it was time for his meeting. English headed out and went to collect the, this time, larger quantity of The Light. 

On returning home, English made a survey of the house. Taking in every room to decide where he would live and where he would work. 

The top floor of the house had a doorway with a lock at the foot of the stairs. There was one big room with a sink set into a stone worktop. There was also a bathroom. This looked like it might have been a servant’s quarters or a room for a lodger. Whatever it was, it was the perfect place to work in. The door would be kept looked, and if anyone asked it was rented out, and the tenant was away. The third floor would be his bedroom, the second floor his private living space and the ground floor would be a place to enjoy with friends and conduct business. 

With all this decided it was early evening and his thoughts turned again to food. English went out again and had another hearty meal, feeling very happy with himself. It was not until he returned home that he realised that there was no furniture! With no bed to sleep in an uncomfortable night was spent sleeping on his clothes. 

Again, waking up early, English washed and went straight out of the door for coffee and breakfast. After that, he went in search of a bed. After having no luck finding any shop selling beds, he had an idea. He made a call to the agent that had let the house to him and asked where he could buy furniture. Armed with the address of a warehouse on the city’s outskirts, he took a taxi there. On arrival, he was greeted by a friendly gentleman, the owner, and a vast building full of what he was looking for. 

‘What is it I can help you with?’ the man asked. 

The first thought that came to mind was to say, ‘I need a bed.’ This was quickly changed to ‘I need to furnish my house.’ ‘I am sure I can help you with that,’ came the reply, as the man gestured towards the contents of his store. 

Looking around, a large bookshelf caught English’s eye. The man saw him looking at it and said ‘I see you are a man of taste. That is a piece by Cees Braakman, an outstanding Dutch designer. I have more pieces by him and others that would make a complementary modern style to your home.’ English liked the sound of this. He also liked the idea of having a home furnished with a known designer, especially a Dutch one. 

After several hours, an order had been made of enough furniture to make his new home comfortable and look very stylish. A couple of large stainless-steel tables were also found, probably these had come out of a kitchen, and they would serve well for his work. A down payment was made (with the rest payable over a year) and delivery was booked for the next day. English would have to spend one more night on the floor. 

By midday the next day, English was ready to start work. He went shopping again for all the items he knew he would need. By late afternoon he was sitting at his shiny new stainless-steel workbench. It was time to set about solving the problems that he faced. Working through the night, he experimented with different ways of making the process of putting liquid on the cardboard as easy as possible. The next day after sleeping most of it, he was ready to dilute the crystal into water and soak the cardboard. When they had dried, there was no longer the orange spot on each square; instead, the paper had an overall orange colour. 

English had the new stock he needed for the party with Sam Fran at the weekend. The cardboard and the rest of The Light were stashed under a floorboard that he had taken up, a trick he had learnt from Mr Sandosa. It was at the edge of the room and was as good a place as any to hide it. Now it was time to apply time to another of the suggestions on the list Mr Sandosa had given him. To print a design on the cardboard. 

On his way out for dinner, he met Warlock in the street. His smiling friend handed him a piece of cardboard. English looked at it, it was a flyer for the upcoming party. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. ‘From the printer, of course,’ came the reply. ‘Can you give me the address of the printers?’ After getting the address Warlock said ‘see you on Saturday, my friend, don’t forget what you must bring. I got flyers to give out.’ 

It was Friday and English headed out to go to the printers. An old man was sitting at a desk with various people behind him working at desks and operating large printing presses. The man greeted English and asked what he could help him with. It was at this point, he realised that his request might be a bit of a problem. I was not going to be a usual request to have a square of cardboard printed with lots of pictures of a cat! He had to think quickly. ‘I want to print some tokens.’ He decided that the word token was a technical term, and what the tokens were for would not be asked. ‘I am sure we can do that for you,’ came the reply, much to his relief. 

‘Do you have a design for your, um, tokens?’ ‘Yes, they should have a cat on them.’ ‘Do you have the cat?’ ‘No, I was hoping you might be able to help with that.’ ‘Let me see if I have any cats!’ The man left his desk and searched through a desk loaded with papers, books and magazines. He returned after some time with a pile of what looked like birthday cards and a comic. The man started showing English pictures of cats on the cards when he looked and noticed a black cat’s face on the cover of the comic at the bottom of the pile. ‘That’s the one,’ English said, pointing his finger to the comic. ‘Ah, Felix the Cat,’ the man said. 

‘Yes, just the face of Felix.’ ‘What size will the face be?’ English closed his eyes and visualised the size of the cat’s face on each tab. It would be very small, he realised. Again, he had to think quickly and decided that having the face on a square of four tabs would be better. It would also look like a less strange request. English knew the size of one tab, so he doubled it and gave the printer the dimensions or each image and then that these should be printed ten across and twelve down. Next, he gave the dimensions of the paper. ‘What type of paper would you like?’ The man got up again and retrieved a pile of samples of different paper that included cardboard. English studied the cardboard carefully and decided that one was very close to what he had been using. He could not be sure it had the same absorbency properties, but he had to take the risk. 

‘How many sheets do you want printing?’ English had to think again. After a quick calculation, he answered ‘500 please.’ The man did not bat an eyelid and finished writing out the order on his pad. 

The man gave English the carbon copy of the order with the amount to pay at the bottom and said, ‘your order will be ready for collection after three days sir.’ The payment was made, thanx was given, and English was out the door. 

Pleased with himself, English took the weekend off. His only job was to meet Warlock before the party and hand over the tabs to him. He then went out to eat and then to the party. He hung out with Sam on the stage. Warlock did as he had said and made sure that everyone was on the same trip. In the morning, when the partygoers had left, Warlock handed over the money as agreed. The three friends spoke about what a great night it had been. They would all see each other at the same time and in the same place next week. 

English spent the next two days relaxing, reading and waiting. Waiting for Tuesday and his visit to the printers. 

Tuesday came around. Eagerly he set off to the printers. The man welcomed him and beckoned him to sit down. He then reached onto the floor and picked up the cardboard pile wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The man untied the string and slid out one sheet and placed it on the desk. It looked great, except for one thing, the bottom of the sheet was blank. English realised that he had made a mistake in his calculation. There were twenty-five rows down the sheet. He decided to worry about that later. He said thank you to the man, the package was tied up again, they both smiled at each other, and he was out of the door. 

English was now sitting at his workbench. In front of him, he had enough cardboard to make to make fifty thousand tabs. He also had to make the perforations on one hundred sheets by hand with his pastry roller. Something that he was not looking forward to. He made a mental note that he would have to solve that problem somehow later on. 

The other problem was the blank area at the bottom of each sheet. It was a problem, but nothing could be done about it, so it was best ignored. English set about getting to work with the pastry cutter and the ruler. He could use Felix’s image as a guide, so he saved time not having to draw the lines each time. After a few hours, he was halfway through the pile. At which point he stopped and went out to find Mr Sandosa. Before leaving, he tore off four tabs that had the whole picture of Felix’s face. 

As before English waited for his partner to finish his game and passed him the small four squares folded into a piece of paper. Mr Sandosa looked at this as he walked, turned to English, and said, ‘this is very good. I loved Felix, the cat comics when I was a child.’ ‘How many sheets do you have? ‘Five hundred.’ ‘Very good, meet me tomorrow, and I will give you what you need.’ The two nodded in mutual respect and parted ways. 

On his way home English bumped into Warlock again, doing his rounds putting flyers in the shops. After saying hello to each, Warlock said he had something to ask. ‘Are the tabs on one edge stronger than the others?’ English thought about this question for a moment. He thought about if this could be true and if so if there was a reason for it. It then dawned on him that maybe when he hung them up to dry more or the liquid would end up at the bottom. He had not considered this, but now he had thought about it he decided it was very possible. Choosing to be confident with is the answer, he said, ‘Yes, I should have said that to you. Next time you will know which ones they are, and you can let people know.’ Warlock seemed very happy with this answer. They said their goodbyes and English headed home. 

This chance meeting with Warlock had solved his problem with the blank area at the bottom of the sheets. He would hang them up to dry with this at the bottom. It would then be obvious, which were the stronger ones. They could then be given to people with a warning or even sold for more. They would also be a bonus for customers who bought whole sheets. English was not sure whether it was actually the case that the tabs were more potent along the bottom edge, but he would go with it. 

The next day after getting the now much bigger supply, it was time for English to get to work. To make a large number of sheets. He went to the shop to stock up on food. He knew he would not be able to go out until he had finished. 

It took three days to lay the one hundred sheets. Three days of no sleep. Three days of tripping. 

After the last sheet was hung up to dry, English went to bed and slept for twenty-four hours. 

It was Saturday morning, again. English felt broken. He did not want to go out, but he had an appointment to keep. After washing and shaving, he went for coffee and breakfast. The world outside was still a shifted reality, the effects of his contact with The Light had still not worn off. He questioned whether he would stay like this permanently! It dawned on him that he would have to go through this process again and again. He had to put this out of his mind. He had to move forward. 

Back home, he went upstairs. At the beginning of the line, where he had started were, thankfully dry. He thought for a moment before deciding to pack up ten sheets. 

English read for the few hours he had free and then grabbed his bag and went to meet Warlock. After handing the package to his friend, English asked them to sit on a bench to talk. ‘Inside, there are ten sheets, that is five thousand tabs. They have a design on them. They are called ‘Felix the Cat.’ The blank row on the bottom are the strong ones. Can you sell them and then give me the money?’ ‘Five thousand!’ was the startled reply. English nodded. ‘I will see what I can do. See you tonight, man.’ They both went on their ways. 

It was another fantastic party. In the morning Warlock handed over the money for two thousand tabs. He was ecstatic. People had come from Rotterdam and other cities as they had heard about the party and the Acid. He would have sold more if the people had bought more money. Warlock said he had arranged to meet people during the week and that others would bring more money to the next party. 

Warlock and English arranged to meet on their bench on Wednesday. At the meeting Warlock handed over the rest of the money for the ten sheets and asked for another ten. English ran home and packed another ten and returned to the bench to do the deal. ‘Bring me another twenty sheets on Saturday,’ said a grinning Warlock. The two friends stood and hugged each other and went about their business. 

English went home and counted the money. It was a lot of money. After taking out his expenses he divided it in half and put one half in a large brown grocery bag. It was about the time that a chess game would be ending. He arrived just as the King was falling again and headed up the road to meet his mentor. The grocery bag was handed over. Mr Sandosa did not break his stride but weighed up the bag in his hand and asked, ‘what is this?’ Money said English. ‘You have done well. It seems that Felix is a popular cat again.’ ‘He is indeed. I will come and see you again in five days. I will need another five grams. Have a good day and thank you.’ 

English went home and prepared himself for what was ahead. Another three lost days.