“Move over girls - I’m coming in!”

It wasn't these two....

It’s 1981 and your scribbler is a 21 year-old hedonist, driving south from my flat in Cambridge to my friend’s house in South Harrow.

We’ll call him Dave, to protect the less-than-innocent.

The world is not yet under the censorious yoke of Woke, and my militant feminism will not peak for another three years.

If you’re easily offended stop reading now, for this is a tale of drug taking and wanton behaviour.

As it should in all things nostalgic, the sun shines from a cloudless blue sky as I speed along, excited at the prospect of delivering my cargo.

Dave has never taken an acid trip, so I’m heading south to deliver blotters for both of us. I know he’ll be excited and trepidatious about it all, probably pacing up and down his living room, waiting for my arrival.

I feel calm and confident about the next 24 hours, as I’m very familiar with LSD, and I’ve known Dave all of my life.

I can see only fun times ahead, and hey, look over there. Two young females hitchhiking, so of course I stop to pick them up.

They both have roughly the same body mass: the shorter one a curvaceous beauty; the taller a gorgeous Amazonian. Both sport blonde hair, the shorter woman’s styled in a bob, the taller worn long and flying free, like ripe wheat in a breeze.

They wedge their smiling faces through the open passenger window.

“Hey ladies! Where are you going?”

“Er em sort of towards London, but we don’t know exactly, I think.”

“Well jump in then! I’m going to London too!”

They both sit in the back of the car, which makes me feel a little like a chauffeur. In my rear view mirror I see two suntanned faces, with Hollywood white teeth shining from broad relaxed smiles.

“So where are you from?”

“Oh we are from Denmark.” replies the shorter one.

“Lovely. And what do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh no, not at all. We are both nurses, yes?” answers the taller one.

My lack of naming them is in no way a device to dehumanise them. If anything, it’s a sign of respect. For the life of me, 45 years later, I can’t remember either of their names, and it would feel glib and ignorant to simply christen them Anni-Frid and Agnetha, so forgive me.

They talk almost perfect English, with only the slightest and most charming hint of a foreign accent.

“So what’s your plan, ladies? Where are you headed?”

“Well really we don’t know. Just towards London and sort of see what happens, kind of thing, you know.”

These two are humans after my own heart. I’ve hitched for years with just such a mindset.

“Well, I’m heading down to a northern suburb, to stay with a friend of mine. You’re very welcome to come along.”

In my mirror I see two faces turn to look at each other, and eyebrows raising in pairs.

“Sure, that sounds great. Thank you. Will be nice to stay in real London house.”

Oh so they’re staying, are they? I think of the grill pan down there, with weeks of bacon fat festering in it, and the loo where, oh, you don’t need to know.

“Well, erm, it’s not very glamorous. There’s three friends of mine living there, all lads, so it’s not the cleanest place in the world.”

“Cool. Real, like we said. Better than a Youth Hostel, I think."

“Anything anywhere is better than a Youth Hostel!” I cry, and we all laugh in accord.

I shove Hunky Dory into the cassette player and turn up the volume.

Okay, so I’m arriving on Dave’s doorstep with a sheet of blotters and two Danish nurses. Haven’t seen a camera anywhere, but this doesn’t half sound like a classic porn movie.

Dave is, as anticipated, twitching with nerves about the impending trip. He shows his unexpected guests to the spare room, and comes into the living room, where I’m rolling a fat one.

“What the fuck, Charlie!”

“Just a little hors d’oeuvres, Davie, to chill you out before the trip.”

“No, I‘m not talking about the joint. I mean the ... the … who are they?”

I shrug.

 “Dunno mate. They’re lovely and they’re happy to be here, so what’s the prob? They know what we’re doing today, and they’re happy to just hang here in the house. Been on the road for months, apparently, so it’s nice for them to have a bath, and a kitchen to use, and, well, y’know.”

This, beloved Colyoomistas, is where my memory becomes unreliable, to the point of non-existence. We take the blotters and endure an hour or so of Dave going

“Is it working yet? Is it working yet?”

To which I offer

“Mate, when it starts working you won’t have to ask.”

I remember us leaving the house. Despite my advice to the contrary, Dave insists on driving his flash Lancia as the acid kicks in, so that he can emulate Hunter S. Thompson, which makes me Dr. Gonzo.

After that I have only the vaguest flash of an image, involving me and him standing on the walkway bridge over the tube line at Northwood Station, both of us wearing full face crash helmets while brandishing a stick and an axe at each other.

The other six hours are gone forever, and then we’re back in the house. Dave is having his first experience of acid comedown. Not unpleasant, to me it feels like I’m floating on a small rowing boat, but poor Dave doesn’t feel great, so he announces he’s off to bed.

All of a sudden I’m alone in his living room, high as a constellation and wondering where I’m going to sleep.

As I wander round downstairs I realise the place is immaculate. The girls have cleaned the entire place. Amazing. Fantastic. What lovely people they are.

Thing is though, they’re sleeping in the double bed that I usually crash in.

The following events I only know because Dave told me about them the next morning. After waking he went downstairs, following a trail of my clothes, from my socks and underwear on the upstairs landing, to jeans on the stairs and my T-shirt on the living room carpet.

Apparently, a few minutes after he went to bed, he heard me knocking on the spare room door, opening it and exclaiming

“Move over girls - I’m coming in!”

Tragically my memory returns only as I awake to daylight.

I’m in the middle of that double bed, the naked meat in a naked blonde Scandi sandwich. Clearly I hadn’t offended our guests in any way, as they were both asleep, curled into and around me in sublime fleshy hugs.

As I move, as the tall one wakes up too. Gracefully sliding out of the bed she stretches her long golden arms to the ceiling, as she slips on her T-shirt.

My god but she is magnificent.

“I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some coffee?” she asks, as if this is how we all awake every day.

“That sounds great! Thanks."

By now the shorter one is awake too. She smiles as she gives me a big squeezy hug, and heads off to the bathroom.

I lie there in wonder. I realise that this is probably going to be the only time in my life I wake up between two beautiful women, and yet I have zero recall of anything happening the night before.

I very much doubt that anything did, but I will never know. I do feel a purely sensory memory of jumping and then flying through the air and landing on the middle of that double bed, which ties in with what Dave heard me yell, but beyond that: zip, nada, nowt.

We four drink our coffees in that spotless living room, and then they thank us both profusely for our hospitality and leave to explore the West End.

Dave and I look at each other.

“Bloody hell, Charlie!”

“What?”



©Charlie Adley
16.01.2026.