Colin The Caterpillar Has A Very tasty Face

I wanted my 30th birthday party to be a good one but I didn't want the hassle of organising it myself. That's when Dirt Bird offered to organise it for me. And when Jayney found out she wanted to help. It was she who suggested that we should tell everyone it was going to be a surprise party. So we did.

For my 21st Birthday a few of my closest friends, my (then) boyfriend, mum, dad and respective partners all went to the Dam of Amster. It was brilliant, at least what I remember of it. The main thing is that I learnt a very valuable lesson on that trip. Don't take magic mushrooms in the heart of the city, in broad daylight before you've found Vondel Park. It was only Romy and I at this stage and we were to meet everyone else the next day. The plan had been to find the park, consume the edibles, and lie back to enjoy the good times. The reality was that Romy couldn't wait that long, mushies burning a hole in her pocket, so we sat on one of the many canalside benches, ate our mushrooms and walked along in pursuit of the park.

I think I first noticed that the drugs were taking effect when Romy announced that she didn't like hills. They weren't so much hills as slight ramps but such was Romy's aversion to them that we had to sit on several benches every few minutes to get over the mammoth ramps we were climbing. So while she battled with her fear of hills I was still intent on finding the park with it's lush green grass for us to lie on. We were lucky. We had maps to refer to. We were unlucky. Because although I could see the shaded green patch that represented the park on saiod maps, I could not, for the life of me, relate this to real life. I chose instead to sniff the air and wander in the direction that I felt the park should be in.

This went on for several hours. The closest to a park we found was a little island in the middle of a roundabout. We were almost run over several times while trying to get to this island and when we did we were less than impressed with it's patchy, scratchy grass. And the tranquility of the moment was rather spoiled by the noise and fumes of the traffic rounding us.

Possibly the worst part of the day was when we needed the toilet. I'm still, to this day, not quite sure how we managed to go to a random bar, use the world's tiniest toilet, and live to tell the tale. But we did. Also, after a while it occurred to us that we would need to find the hostel we were staying at and this led to a feeling of impending doom. How were we ever going to find it when we had no idea where we were, where our hostel was and what it was called. Luckily we just stumbled across it. And as we lay in our bunk beds (me willing the sun to go down so I could sleep, unaware that it wasn't the sun but a light in the dorm) we had a long, deep discussion about how nice it would be to smoke a joint but how on earth were we ever going to be able to roll one. I had to pep talk myself for a long time before we went down to the hostel cafe and it took me just as long to be able to roll a joint. It wasn't 'til the next day that it occurred to us that we were in Amsterdam. We didn't have to roll joints we could just buy them.

My 30th wasn't quite so dramatic. In fact, I walked through the wrong door so I kinda spoiled the surprise part, even though it wasn't really a surprise. I had the best night I've had in a long, long time though and that was thanks to my mates for being there, my mates for organising it and in particular, to Jakers who tied everything together and made sure I had a good turn out. And after printing a 1000 pictures of kids and their caterpillar cakes I managed to get not one but two of my very own.