'I put it in my scrambled eggs'

THE door to Patricia Tabram's bungalow has been left open in a welcoming gesture as she awaits her 89th reporter in two months. "Grandma," as Patricia is known to friends, neighbours, family, and now the police, gives a warm wave from her lounge window before coming to greet her visitor at the bottom of her primrose-lined path.

"I've had reporters from all over the world," she says, leading the way to her cosy but chaotic lounge. "From Italy, south America. I've had letters as well, from all over. I even got one from a New Zealander who sent a $20 bill and said it was to help with my expenses. Can you imagine that?"

Patrica Tabram is 66 years old. Her steel grey hair frames her make-up free features and she is wearing a black cardigan with a bejewelled owl brooch. Most grandmas would have been tending to their garden yesterday or knitting perhaps. Patricia was at Newcastle Crown Court receiving a suspended jail sentence for possessing cannabis with intent to supply.

Sitting in her black leather armchair at her bungalow in Humshaugh, near Hexham, and smoking a cigarette (she doesn't smoke cannabis), she says she was introduced to the drug by friends in February last year, after falling into a deep depression.

She was "riddled with pain" from two whiplash injuries, had arthritis in her knees, tinnitus in her ears and walked with a stick. She also suffered bruising to her arms and legs and had an angry rash on her face as a result of side effects from her daily dose of 17 tablets.

Patricia had battled with depression before, when her son Duncan, 14, was found dead in his bed many years ago. This time it was triggered by a dispute with an anti-social neighbour. She had come to the decision to take her own life, and "do a Thelma and Louise, driving off the cliffs at South Shields", when a friend called around before she could carry out her plan. When Patricia said she was desperate for a cigarette, her friend went and got her one. But she had no idea it contained cannabis. The next day she had another.

"I didn't wake up until 12 and a half hours later and when I did I felt great," she recalls. "Nothing hurt anymore."

When Patricia did find out what was in the cigarettes she was keen to take more, but did not want to smoke it. Her friend suggested mixing it in with her cooking and where she might be able to buy it.

If ever there was a "tumbleweed" moment, it was when Patricia walked into a dodgy-looking pub in Byker, Newcastle, wearing her best coat and pulling a brown leatherette shopping trolley. Ignoring the looks from the dubious-looking clientele, Patricia, who is teetotal, asked the barman for a cup of hot water.

"I stood out like a sore thumb," she chuckles. "I'd been told a man would come in with a bag at about 11.30am and he'd be selling it. Then I saw him and they all rushed over to him.

"I didn't know whether there was a password or something. I got myself up with my trolley and walked over and said, 'excuse me, are you the cannabis man?' And he said 'yes' and I said, 'can I have a bag please?' and he said it would be £20."

Her attempt to get a pensioner's discount failed, but the pair went on to have a chat about cooking with cannabis. She then set off to Newcastle to buy a book on how to cook with the drug and worked out by trial and error how much to put in her food.

Jumping up from her chair, Patricia heads off to the kitchen. On her gilt tea trolley next to her computer lies a copy of The Little Book of Pot, on top of Blacks Medical Dictionary and The Good Housekeeping Cookbook. She returns a few seconds later with a plastic tub full of hot chocolate powder and proceeds to level off a teaspoon before dividing it into quarters with a knife.

"That's all I put in," she says, pointing to one quarter. "You don't need any more. It goes by your body weight, so if you were Beckham's wife you would cut that level teaspoon into six. I've got a chart - would you be allowed to put it in the paper?"

Patricia says she has used the same dose for a year and carries the tub of chocolate powder mixed with cannabis around with her, in case the pain comes when she is out and about.

"I put it in my scrambled eggs on a morning and in my soup for lunch," she explains. "Later I might have two cannabis chocolate chip cookies with a cup of tea and in the evening I'd put it in my butter and cook a curry or spaghetti bolognese and have it in my hot chocolate last thing at night."

She maintains she has no interest in smoking the drug. (The high from a cannabis cigarette lasts only a short time she says, whereas the digested drug gives her five hours of pain relief). On a Friday evening she will put the drug in her hot chocolate and will not take it again until Monday when the pain returns. In the face of accusations that she is a drug addict, she seems to seek solace in the knowledge that she does not take it at the weekends.

Within a couple of weeks of taking the drug she stopped taking her 17 tablets and watched as the bruises on her arms and legs and blotches on her face disappeared. When she came across a friend in the street who suffered from multiple sclerosis, she remarked on how Patricia's skin had improved. Patricia let her in on her secret.

"I said I'd bake a chocolate cake and bring it over to her," she says. "By the fourth day her pain had gone and after three weeks she could cook and feed herself for the first time in six years. Then she said she wanted to make a sausage casserole with a pie crust.

"The next time I went round there were three other MS sufferers there - a man of 79, an 81-year-old woman and her sister. I said 'why have you brought all these people?' and the old man said 'because we want to feel better'."

The group met twice a week, swapping recipes and marvelling at their improved symptoms. Patricia's chicken and leek pie and lemon and lime cheesecake were particular favourites. The cannabis club had just pooled their pension money together to buy more supplies, when on May 28 last year, Patricia had a visit from the police, who had received a tip-off.

While the five plain-clothed officers crowded into her lounge, she told them they had just walked past one specimen on the hall table. The rest, she said pointing towards the loft, were "up there". The officers took away 31 cannabis plants and left the terracotta pots at Patricia's insistence. She received a caution for cultivating cannabis.

But when they returned on June 30, they discovered 47 sealed bags containing high grade cannabis "skunk" in the fridge with a street value of £850. Patricia was charged with possession with intent to supply.

Patricia insists she was not born a natural rebel, but grew up in South Shields, used to defending her mother from her alcoholic father. "I've never been afraid of bullies or people in authority," she says, peering over her specs again.

Patricia's 25-year-old son Colin, from her second marriage to David, who died from cancer eight years ago, has been very supportive of her cause. But her daughter Alison has been less sympathetic and Patricia says she's not seen her or her two grandchildren for several years.

Patricia sounds defiant and angry that the Government continues to approve medication which has so many side effects. She speaks passionately, saying the reason she takes cannabis is because she is frightened of NHS medication. Newly politicised, she is also planning to stand as an MP in Swansea for the Legalise Cannabis Alliance and to write a book, Grandma Eats Cannabis, which she will pack with anecdotes and recipes.

She does not see herself as a criminal, but in the ey es of the law yesterday she was defined as such. Although she will no longer supply it to friends, she has refused to stop eating cannabis.

"They'll never stop me taking it," she says, her grey eyes twinkling mischievously. "Never."