The Archive

Snuff ‘n stuff

Last night my friend and landlord had a ‘small’ barbeque. I’m glad he’d added the word ‘small’ to the invitation, as I was on the brink of inviting thirty or forty of my closest friends to come along. This would have proved a bit embarrassing when it emerged that ‘small’ meant just him, his wife and the three of us in the upstairs flat. And ‘barbeque’ meant a chicken cooked in the oven.

Anyway, landlord had just returned from a wedding in Bavaria bearing gifts. He presented me with a small bottle that looked suspiciously like the kind of thing an ambitious courtier might pick up from the apothecary when in need of a little something to poison a pope.

Inside the bottle, it turns out, is snuff. Now my understanding of snuff is limited, but I guess it’s kind of like a cigarette that you sniff. In other words, you’re supposed to get a buzz.

And so you do.

I took a small heap of the stuff on my hand (as seen on various period dramas) and had a good snort.

Oh my Christ how it burned. I might as well have snorted a small pile of Ajax powder. It would have caused the same searing pain and at least my nose would have been lemon fresh. As it was, once the pain (and associated endorphins) subsided, I was left with absolutely no feelings of intoxication whatsoever AND snot that has been a muddy brown colour ever since.

Lovely.

Still, there’s plenty left if any of you want to try it. Me, I’m sticking to my crack pipe.

posted by Peter The Great @ 8:43 PM