Marijuana Time: Join the Army, See the World, Meet Interesting People and Smoke All Their DopeKen Lukowiak
Gebundene Ausgabe
Ken Lubowiak is a class A exponent of the art of Literal-ture. He describes what he knows and, importantly, he does it very well. Despite the laddish cover, however, Lubowiak is no Howard Marks (< I> Mr Nice, an ageing hipster for the pop-cult generation. More akin to K. Hawkeye Gross' < I> Reefer Warrior, < I> Marijuana Time describes his often hilarious experiences on a six-month posting in 1983 to Belize with the Paras, with nothing to do except skin up and party. The long days are palliated by a constant and increasingly compulsive supply of drugs and japes, until he starts using his position in the army post-room to send improbably large bundles of the stuff home-to his army flat in Aldershot. Finally caught, < I> Marijuana Time now becomes Jailbird Time, but with no let-up from the weed. Whilst doing his stretch, his wife Carol has their baby, and the tale darkens. A spiral of bad luck and self-destructiveness leads him to a mushroom-inspired epiphanic moment and a born-again Christianity, but this doesn't last: he memorably attributes his lapse to his right hand not being submerged when he is baptised. The right hand, that is, that squeezed the trigger, rolled the joints, held the beer bottle, and wrote the betting slip. And there is no happy ending, at least for this book: he confesses on the final page to having not seen his wife or son in 10 years. And he's still rolling. While his experiences in the Falklands, the basis of his acclaimed book < I> A Soldier's Song, inevitably inform his subsequent behaviour, it's to his credit that he refuses to indulge them, and blames none but himself. A born raconteur, he was certainly a very good soldier, with an intelligence and honesty that has been journalism's gain, as well as a surprisingly good memory, considering. If his chummy, spiky narration, particularly early on, twitches and puns too much, over-anxious to please, then this is compensated for somewhat when dark clouds replace the fug, and the paranoia becomes real. An entertaining, yet troubling, book. Just don't inhale. -< I> David Vincent
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