I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the drugs or religion section but this happened around 1999/2000 -around the time we were running the RLA (Readingstoke Liberation Army) and the night time broadcasts of a community radio station playing drum and bass, breakcore, gabba etc which was known as the Voice of Free Readingstoke (VFR) which is where rtnVFRmedia originated from.
Over the years I have got high with at least 4 Scousers who all had the street name “Scouse” and all had a Catholic background; although most of the time we just discussed it jokingly as none of us had been to Mass for ages although they all had some remnants of faith although it was stuff like “if you nick something, you should give 10% of its value to your mum, or any nuns in the area” :laugh_at: and that it was sinful to sell people poor quality / contaminated drugs so you should test them on yourself first..
There was this one “Scouse” around at the time who clearly remained more religious than the others. I cannot remember if he was older or younger than me but he came across as “older”; he was tall but thin, and balding on top – TBH the dude would have made a very good friar and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has since joined the Franciscans or Salesians.
It was also around the same time the sisters at ETWN had prayed for me (I’d helped get some faulty equipment in their studios repaired quicker); they also prayed for my Dad who had recently passed away (the sisters even noticed I had been away on compassionate leave) and that I may one day regain the faith.
TBH this was genuinely holy of them considering as Mother Angelica had also been taken very ill at the same time that they would bother to think about praying for a sinner in a far away foreign country…
During this weekend there was some especially strong acid doing the rounds; we’d taken it the day after this Scouse dude had built a car from an abandoned one and some bits in the scrapyard and we’d travelled in it to Luton and back.
A few hours into this trip whilst we were observing all sorts of pretty patterns he suddenly goes into a full on theological discussion about faith and asks me “have we committed Sin this weekend?”
I replied – “well you didn’t steal the car, it was abandoned, possibly some minor traffic violations were committed but nothing dangerous as we got there and back safe – and even if we have spent the whole weekend taking hard drugs we’re not robbing things, fighting or breaking windows. So any sin would surely be minor….”
Just a few seconds later both of us had visions of Nuns appearing on church pews in front of us. Just like those we would have encountered in junior school and sometimes in our towns.
And we were both compelled by some force to count all the nuns. This wasn’t that simple as the sisters and the pews were not staying still but in a slow circular orbit; and there was still all sorts of other distracting patterns.
If we lost count and/or burst out laughing at the absurdity of what was happening the sisters looked disapprovingly at us; but if we concentrated and counted correctly they would start to smile.
They were to be fair also appearing in easy to count groups of 5, 10, 15, 20 (the number of sisters and speed the appeared at increased as we counted more correctly). When we had both counted 1500 of these sisters whoever “Upstairs” was responsible for this must have decided “OK, they’ve had enough” and all the sisters floated up back to Heaven leaving us with the patterns to look at.
I could even envisage what may have been at the “other end” of all this; a load of the guardian angels, Jesus ,Mohammed and the other Asian gods and the others from the Germanic afterlife all watching the both of us on CCTV monitors (connected to an NTL style cable system) and rolling about laughing..
maybe it was a sign from the guardian angels to look after ourselves; being able to still do accurate arithmetic even when under the influence of substances could prevent you from an unwanted early entry into the afterlife (I think they only keep me alive as they don’t want me in there until I’ve got a bit more maturity :laugh_at:)
