I had mixed feelings as I drew up to the allusively named Absynt. Would it live up to my long-nurtured imaginings of an absinthe fuelled lair of Bohemian excess? The infamous Green Faery, once banned throughout Europe as a dangerous psychoactive intoxicant, the chosen tipple of all your favourite 19th century decadents. I mused wistfully of Rimbaud’s call for ‘a systematic disordering of the senses,’ and stepped pensively over the threshold. Abit like sampling absinthe for the first time, things don’t quite add up. Greeted by a confused medley of miscellaneous relics, souvenirs and absinthe related paraphanalia, I waded through the clutter in search of the emerald elixir. Some time later, hallucinations in short supply, a curious flow of stimulants counterpoised by sedatives in equal measure overwhelmed my sense of acuity and sent me into a limbofied half-slumber. Couched languidly on the ever-so-comfy sofa, I fancied I might glance over the Sunday papers, reach for my non-existent calabash pipe and fetch the slippers I'd never owned. In absinthe talk, this state is known as ‘lucid drunkeness’. I decided it was time for another draft. Drink enough of their Czech made absinthe, and you may just begin to feel at home. In my case, the jumble of starkly restored antique furnishings fell into the jagged fragments of a cubist dystopia. This wasn't totally unpleasant in itself but feeling slightly out of sorts, I bolted for the door, in search of rhyme and reason.

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