The Idler, Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Durban Poison

now it's

on tap

 

WE LIVE in changing times. Dagga is semi-legalised. Craft beer is the in thing. And now on Florida Road you can get a craft beer brewed from dagga instead of hops.

 

Yes, it's called Durban Poison – Cannabis Lager – and it is served chilled at The Pub With No Name, straight out of the draught barrel. I sampled it the other evening, along with a wordsmith colleague. (For the sake of anonymity, let's just call him Oscar).

 

Yes, it's a lager all right, with a pleasant flavour. But does it have any of the, er, properties of dagga? The side effects? The beautiful thoughts? The buzz?

 

Not at all, the bartender assures us. It's brewed from hemp, which is the stuff they make ropes with. Hemp comes from the male dagga plant. It's inert. The stuff they smoke and get high on – bungi, boom, whatever you want to call it – comes from the female dagga plant.

 

Can this be true? Yet there's a certain logic to it. Mischief always comes from the female side.

 

At which I notice that Oscar has stripped to his underpants and is dancing a crazy fandango. But then he always does that. He's a jolly soul. You can't blame the Durban Poison.

 

We order another couple of pints and while the bartender is drawing them I entertain the company with a Cossack dance on the bar counter. But then I often do that. You can't attribute it to the Durban Poison.

Conclusion: Durban Poison – Cannabis Lager – is a refreshing and pleasant brew with none of the properties of the female dagga plant, inducing no behavioural oddity whatever. It is to be recommended.

 

 

YOU might have gathered from the above that I am no connoisseur of the fragrant weed – Durban Poison, bungi, boom, whatever you want to call it. Correct. It lies beyond my experience.

But I did once observe its effect on my Irish terrier, a large ginger fellow of great excitability. He was barred from three pubs following incidents involving a cat, a giant poodle and a spaniel.

Not to mention knocking the landlord off the bar stool on which he was standing urging calm upon the patrons as a dogfight raged through the place like a Western saloon brawl, causing screams of panic from the ladies.

I spotted him one morning chewing at the leaves on some dagga plants that had sprung up in the garden at the spot in the shade where some workmen repairing the roof had taken their tea and smoke break.

Next thing he was tearing about the place with a high-pitched, screaming bark, doing cartwheels and dog-somersaults. Spectacular. This certainly was behavioural oddity.

I now realise those must have been female dagga plants. You learn something new every day.

 

 

FORMER Springbok great Frik du Preez is among those who can't get over the way today's Boks squandered their comfortable lead against the All Blacks last Saturday.

 

Ian Gibson, poet laureate of Hillcrest, takes up the theme.

 

That old Springbok called Frik,

Said our loss gave him a skrik;

So he's offered to play,

To save Rassie's pay,

Though he'll need a week to get fit.

 

 

Tailpiece

"I'll have the steak and kidley pie, please."

You mean steak and kidney, sir?"

"That's what I said, diddle I?":

 

Last word

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

Oliver Wendell Holmes jr.