Party Vibe

Where Requiem lives was once “Japan on Britain’s shores”.

They made all sorts of clever gadgets there; as well as carried out many complex scientific and industrial processes (some of this might still happen today). Unfortunately they were also equally bad as the Japanese for vices and Britain in the 1980s was even less stable politically than Tokyo.

Whilst the unions and Thatcho fought one another and everyone also smoked, drank and took a shit ton of drugs (prescribed, diverted or just illegal; hard to keep things out in a coastal area) important issues like safe disposal of unwanted chemical byproducts were just ignored; leading to rampant contamination of the North Sea.

It got to the stage there was at least one official warning from the rest of Europe in the 80s and it was pointed out too it would be harder to encourage the Soviets to comply with anti-pollution laws if Britain was behaving worse than them. Thatcho and her lot whinged and moaned about the extra costs but reluctantly complied but only after destroying a lot of the industry there. I think it is still one of the main bits of Europe for getting harsh chemicals processed; or raw metal hammered or cast into a shape that is more useful for the end product.

TBH Northumbria may be in a better position these days; the weather is no worse than Japan, people are smarter than in many areas of Southern England; I don’t think there are earthquakes there (unlike Birmingham), any bears are safely in the zoo and and people aren’t going extinct.

There is still loads of science and engineering carried out in NE England (much funded by Singapore) and I can understand the local dialect as well as Scots – just as well as my knowledge of Chinese and Japanese is just about non existent. They still do a lot of brainy stuff with computers in this bit of the UK.

II could just about work out the important character in a Japanese warning sign against bears; but if I was in Japan the bear would have already had me by then (Japanese bears are notoriously unfriendly; unlike nearby Malaysia where they now have to stop people keeping the “fierce” sun bear as a pet and feeding it unsuitable human food).

All I can say is that between 18 years and 36 years old where I had my opiates (heroin in my case) “life period”, I also stopped completely drinking alcohol, and before 18, i was really a Drunkard drinking always until i felt and couldn’ t normally
remember what i had done and how I came home. But now, it’s not often I drink alcohol, cuz I really don’t like the taste of it, but i love the alcohol drunk sensation, and if i plan to drink with friends, I always drink shots of Red Wine to avoid the ugly taste
and knows that am gona drink until i end in the Coma…

:alcoholic and i always regret next day cuz i feel so :sick:

in the late 1980s I worked in an Asian shop which was frequented by all the local nuns from my young sisters Catholic junior school; as well as the Father from there and the local heroin addict (who wasn’t a bad guy – he was friendly, didn’t nick anything from the shop nor harrass anybody, and always politely greeted the nuns and the padre, who seemed to know him by name).

TBH as this shop was in a more affluent suburb of the town I then lived in I think he had gone to the same school (albeit some years ago) and was a Catholic – a Catholic charity had got him rehoused there so the kids would have an example of a “poor sinner” to pray for 😉 I was 17 then and he wouldn’t have been more than about 10-15 years older…

As I am also a baptised Catholic I had to haul all the nuns supply of booze into the trolley every Saturday when the Sister turned up to buy it (over 2 years it was enough Guinness and Gin to fill two large shipping-containers) – as the other staff were either young women (who in those days were not expected to haul heavy things) or Muslim (their young women are allowed to do heavy work but not with haram commodities). It was half a pallet of Guinness, plus gin and sherry every week; and there were only 5 sisters in that school.

The father bought his own booze – a bottle of sherry every day. I could see he was still a good and holy man as he could easily have nicked it by stuffing the bottle into the large pockets priests get in their robes; a bottle of sherry often bulges out at the bottom and is otherwise hard to conceal.

The heroin addict also bought some booze; curiously similar in selection to the nuns and priests; but no gin and susprisingly little of it; and he said the bulk was for his girlfriend and he didn’t like it all that much. it was even less than us teenagers would drink.

TBH I only take opiates if I am genuinely suffering pain (sometimes my knees give me gip from cycling too hard in my youth) and only occasionally drink; but there does seem to be this interaction. Although unhealthy in the long run; mixing booze and amfetamine-type stimulants does work to some extent as one cancels out the other (but you wiill pay for it in the end).