I was going to write about our ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s, appearance at the inquiry into the Iraq War last Friday, but I’ve changed my mind. As we all now know, he was his typical ‘Tony’ self with his ‘I did what I thought was right’ cant and his self satisfied ‘God is on my side’ shtick. Yes, but what about what everyone else felt was right, Tony? What about your criminal lack of knowledge about the middle east? Mr Blair it appears did not know that because Saddam Hussein was basically a secular, Ba’athist dictator he was highly unlikely to have too much to do with ultra-religious al Qaeda. And to make matters worse it would appear that our current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was rather more worried about the future of his own job than about the many deaths that may occur in Iraq when Blair was canvassing his cabinet for their opinions. I despair. So thank heavens, I say, for The Green Fairy.

No this isn’t a bottle of well known washing up liquid that is apparently very kind to my hands, but rather it is a place that as yet, only exists in my head and to which I openly retreat. The Green Fairy is an imaginary absinthe bar that I hope, one day, may become a reality. It’s on the northern shore of the River Thames and is in an old building somewhere between the London districts of North Woolwich and Limehouse. It’s a brick built structure that nevertheless has a large wooden platform out the back overhanging the river. Inside the floors are bare, covered with just a layer of sawdust and the bar is made of old, highly polished mahogany. The Green Fairy is lit by gas lamps and its walls are covered with gilt framed mirrors and posters advertising music hall performances, arsenic based beauty products and tobacco.

All types of absinthe from all over the world will be sold at The Green Fairy. The emerald green of the bottles will glow in the gas-light as well as in the reflections from the river. Gin and whiskey will also be available for those not wedded to the tipple of Toulouse Lautrec. But most of the customers will take absinthe and many will chew on fat cigars or pluck cigarettes from small, silver cases as they lounge outside on the wooden platform over the moonlit London mud. And there will be entertainments! In an upstairs room a Phantasmagoria magic lantern show will shock and horrify ladies of a nervous or superstitious disposition while their husbands marvel at the lifelike waxworks of murderers in the small museum of curiosities next door to the bar. Magicians will come and go from time to time, demonstrating illusions such as that of the disembodied head of ancient Egypt. It will be wonderful and inside my head, it already is. I hope that one day I can make it a reality.

But in the meantime I am glad to be able to go to The Green Fairy in my head. Yes, it is escaping into a Victorian age I cannot possibly remember or really appreciate. But sometimes I just have to get away from WMDs, from the threat of nuclear destruction, from listening to morally redundant people banging on about how ‘evil’ it is to smoke or drink or eat chocolate fudge. Tony Blair cracked down upon dissent and upon what he thought was ‘bad’ about this country as hard as Margaret Thatcher had done in the 1980’s. What he has created is a guilty, sad and often joyless place where everyone is afraid of everyone else. Some people drink themselves into oblivion in front of the TV, others keep their heads down and just focus on preserving their jobs and funding their families (we all do this to some extent, myself included). But I also go to The Green Fairy too. It’s fun, it’s carefree and no-one will ever judge you in there (we throw out judgemental types!). Pop in, any time.