Ask anyone who knows me “What’s Roy’s favourite pudding?” and (hopefully) their answer would be “Easy! It’s cheesecake ‘innit”. So here’s a story about how cheesecake became my thing. And also about an attempt to get my mum stoned. And yes, this contains copious amounts of drug references (again). And yes, this one comes with a legal disclaimer (again): the events portrayed here do not bear any resemblance to any persons, either living or dead, within the past or present – including me.
My mate Arthur; a working class gent who was lucky enough to own his house in Blackthorn. This was back when a house was 3x your earnings – he’d picked his up for about £30k. He was ex-army, not that you’d ever realise that if you ever met him. He was probably 10 years older than us – us being me, Liam, Marcus and …Ted (still an awful alias….apologies….Ted!) and Arthur came our way through a friend of my mum. That friend would be Kim. Kim was my mum’s age (ish) and was a friend of hers back down when we lived in Essex. Kim had had enough and wanted to new start so my mum offered to put her up whilst she saved some money for her own place. So, a household of six people became seven almost overnight. Oh, and Kim was getting my room so I was back sharing with my two brothers (again). Seven very quickly became eight as Kim met Arthur; I think it was in Glenvilles, that charming club located near the picturesque village of Billing Aquadrome. Yes, you know the one, right next to the garden centre; which was right next door the sewerage plant (the country’s largest by the smell of the gases emanating and parking itself permanently over the entirety of the eastern district). Glenvilles was so glamourous that even the name of the road it was on just screamed Boujis – Crow Lane – just opposite the industrial park of the same name.
Arthur and Kim stayed for around 6 months and in that time they’d saved enough for a deposit to buy their home together – their little pad in Blackthorn. I’ve no idea how it happened but weekly visits to theirs on a Saturday night soon became a thing. It was probably because theirs were somewhere warm and cosy to sit, chat, laugh and smoke some hash. Smoking, in peace, without prying eyes (via younger brothers & sisters) or a mum and step-dad declaring how I’m a wasting my life by being a drug addict – which would ultimately lead to my nan & granddad point blank and matter-of-factly declaring how they disown me because I partake in a little bit of smoking. True story that – their hatred as they delivered that line to me cut through – and I never quite understood how something so…insignificant….could draw such ill feeling and emotion and turn people in evil human-hating beings. But anyway, I digress…
Saturday’s grew and rolled over for probably a year; eventually it was myself, Marcus, Liam and Ted attending and would congregate at their house like it was our church.
The start of our Saturday nights would be the shopping trip to Tesco before the long walk back to theirs. On the shopping list would be the usual snacks to satisfy the munchies to come: crisps, chocolate, and – through some miraculous discovery for which I can never remember how – we discovered a £1.99 Tesco Sticky Toffee Cheesecake in the frozen isle.
Wait! I do remember how we found it! We were walking around the isles when suddenly we saw this very very bright light shining down. It was like a laser beam of brilliant white light and we could see it from afar; we moved towards the light: down isle 9, turning left, walking parallel with the tills for 5 isles, then turn left again up isle 4 into….the frozen section….”the frozen section” we all hymned together as we stood shocked at what the heavens had bestowed upon us. We gazed upon the beauty and the glory which the beam of brilliant white light was focused on and we tentatively walked closer to the freezer door, now brimming and reflecting the bright, wonderous light. Through the misted sheet of frozen glass we could just make out the round blurry shape emblazoned upon the packaging. We all looked at each other in pure amazement at the miracle we were moments away from revealing. Liam opened the door and the gift revealed itself to us in all its glory:
“Praise be, the chosen one!” as Liam reached in and pulled one of the £1.99 boxes out and placed it gently in the palms of his hands and revealed to us. It was pure, it was beauty, it was perfect!
“Wait, we’ve got to wait for this thing to defrost for 8 hours before we can eat it!”, I exclaimed.
“Nah, it’ll be fine” replied Marcus.
And with that, in the basket it went amongst our prawn cocktail crisps, Coca cola bottles and large packs of Dairy Milk.
So that was that: every Saturday for one…maybe two years, smoking hash, a few beers, endless cups of tea, Super Bomberman 2 on the Super Nintendo (with 4 controllers), Reactivate 10 and 12 playing in the background on repeat, and with plenty of discussion topics, some along the lines of “what would you do if aliens landed in the garden right now?”.
For disclosure, on that alien subject I was on my own with my answer of “try and talk to them”. Arthur, Liam, Marcus, and Ted all scoffed at that and disclaimed that they would “shoot them dead, of course” as if I was the weird one and would have to justify my answer rather than theirs?!
At some point during all this, Artur and Kim split and Kim went back down to Essex. Even to this day, I still don’t know what happened between them: they never spoke about it. But even after Kim left we continued and gave Arthur company on our Saturday night. We appreciated their (and later, his) offering of a warm and safe place to do what we all loved so what if that involved smoking a bit of hash with Reactivate 10 on repeat in the background (the alternative being going out out and getting blind drunk, puking in the streets and generally getting up to God-knows-what).
At some point I even managed to convince my mum to come up and join us one night – not to smoke, but to just watch and observe. The plan was simple: we’d get her up to Arthur’s, we’d close all the doors and we’d get my mum stoned through just the fumes. I really wanted her to see just how safe and under control you are with the smoking. Getting stoned wasn’t something to get worried about. Needless to say that all good plans go awry. We’d smoked a lot amongst us that night. Suzie (sorry) was also with us and I think the quantity being smoked hit her hard – she threw a whitey and spent most of the night being sick – not the good and comforting look I was hoping for. And at some point my mum was asked the alien question and her response was something along the lines of “You fucking what?!!? Aliens?!?!” So much for trying to put on a good impression. She was shown how some people can’t handle their gear and just how much hash really does make your brain think like you’re a four-year-old. At least I tried, and apropos to her too for trying (for once) to try and understand me, my friends, and what we did.
And yes, we had Sticky Toffee Cheesecake that night too. And I loved it and have never got tired of it since. So now you know the answer to the question “what’s Roy’s favourite pudding”. Thank you for reading this far.
I just want to come back to Arthur very quickly. At some point the weekends began to dwindle and eventually end: my (very tiny) experiment with Ecstasy and LSD had not gone very well and 6th form came to an unceremonious finish: we all sort of moved on with our lives as we all began to get jobs, girlfriends and homes of our own.
But something worse happened for Arthur: a local girl on the estate had befriended him and she had A LOT of issues with drugs. I’m talking heroin. I’m not quite sure what had happened but Arthur’s good nature led him….no, compelled him…to help her out. It got to the point where he was pawning his own belongings to help fund her habit. I’m ashamed to say it but we all kind of walked away when he probably really needed us the most. He ultimately got himself involved with the those drugs too and I believe he eventually lost everything: his house, his job and very quickly, his friends.
Arthur, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for abandoning you. I really do hope you’re in a good place now.
Some drugs are ok and some drugs are bad. But whichever it is, like the gambling tagline says “when the fun stops, stop”.