Unfastening the safety catch, I pushed open the bedroom window and leaned out. The sight that confronted me was not a pretty one: rain, the slanty sort, lashing down unremittingly, its trajectory evinced in the glare of the streetlight that stood resolute on the sidewalk, consigned to sentry duty for the rest of its days. Beneath the diffused luminescence, the whirly twirled indolently in the downpour, shaking droplets from the spider’s web that vainly sought respite under its thin metal fingers. At its base, the rain streaked past the wild verdure, struck soil and bottomed out before bouncing up again. I averted my gaze and turned to face the other side of the garden, where the unkempt grass would serve as a solar veneration site in fairer seasons. Here, in the shadows, the only shapes that deigned to make an appearance were the wooden slats of the perimeter fence and the neighbour’s garden shed, rubber-necking over the boundary. As vistas go, it was pretty unremarkable. In fact it was veritably dismal. This time last week when I looked out the window, the view had been of trees and hills, of birds and river and twinkling city lights laid out like constellations. The two landscapes couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed and yet, given the choice, I’d favour dismal over dazzling every time. The current vista didn’t look like much, and indeed it wasn’t much, but it had one thing in its favour: it was free. Not only was it free to gaze upon but, should the urge take me, I was free to plunge headfirst out of the window and bury my nose in the wet soil, pull up handfuls of the dank weeds and spin the whirly till the drops flew off and soaked through to my skin. To have interacted with last Sunday’s enchanting scene would have been out of the question. Even if I could have squeezed through the gap between the window bars, I’d have had to survive the 30ft drop and then somehow surmount the prison walls defiantly decked out in razor wire. I hadn’t opened the bedroom window to absorb the wondrous spectacle of the rain lashing down on suburbia however but to imbibe the wondrous elixir of a joint. It might only have contained a few flakes of resin, scrounged off a neighbouring stoner, but it was enough. Indeed, in these humble surroundings, the taste of hashish mixed with diesel seemed to perfectly complement the dreich purview. A blunt of the finest skunk would have been de trop. As I blew smoke signals into the nite sky, I was reminded of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, in which Indy observes that a humble carpenter wouldn’t be seen drinking out of a bejewelled goblet, but rather an unostentatious grail. What would Jesus do if he were alongside me right now and I had a fat cone to present to him, redolent of Widow? I’ll tell you what he’d do - he’d forsake it for twos on the rez, inhaling the dirt into his perfect lungs before exhaling it into the imperfect peripheral. That’s why I savoured the whole experience; the downpour, the dirty rez and the parochial panorama. I did it for me, as a celebration of my freedom, but most of all, I did it for Jesus.