A lot of people assume that the drug culture is a late 20th century phenomenon tied in with rock and roll, easy sex and young people. As an historian I can refute that. If you had the cash, the hard stuff has been available for much longer. For instance, it is on record that on this day in 1817, the Prince Regent was stoned in St James's Park.
In other news ...
The Irish poet W B Years died today in 1939. As he himself nearly wrote in one of his best known poems, 'A terrible beauty is dead.'
This Saturday the Maxwell family is taking itself off up to London for the day. Mrs Maxwell - or Detective Inspector Carpenter-Maxwell to give her her full title - occasionally gets a hankering for the bright lights and so we head northish and a tiny bit eastish and hit the Great Wen. Nolan is becoming quite the city slicker these days and thinks nothing of hailing a taxi. The trick now is to stop him hailing a taxi without asking first; it is quite a heart stopping experience to see one's only son disappearing down Regent Street in the back of a black cab. The cabbies like him though - he's a heavy tipper.
