Right: A typical Amsterdam headshop with all it's weird and wonderful smoking paraphernalia and trinkets
years ago and four decades is a big byte. During the previous two weeks I'd taken part in an anti-Monsanto demonstration on Dam square, studied The Nights Watch at the newly revamped Rijksmuseum, eaten apple strudel at the Van Gogh museum and waited patiently in the queue at the Anne Frank House pondering man's inhumanity to man. Besides drinking with Vikings at Cafe Brandon on the Prinsengracht and sightseeing, I'd wandered the streets looking at the people while trying to observe the workings of the mind during coffee shop conversations meant to be forgotten. The two friends I'd started off with had departed, leaving me for the last five days on my own. That fitted well with my understanding of things, that either you have the time or the money, rarely both. I was living proof, poorest of the trio and so the bonus of extra time was mine to spend however I liked. I'm happy to report
that I spent it trying to reconnect with myself in the Amsterdam of my past. Back in '72 I was an escapee from the confines of the Apartheid regime. One night I got kidnapped by Surinamese road pirates in a yellow BMW 320i filled with guns and dragged to club after club in search of something only pirates knew. I smoked Afghan black out of a cl