← Second Chance

Back to what you know

The weed game where the meter grasses you up

The cellar, 6 Radworth Road

A graffiti mural on a brick wall: SECOND CHANCE in dripping rainbow letters on a purple sprayed cloud, a grinning devil with a pitchfork on the left and a waving angel on the right.

Denise at the job centre wants you there at half nine. The cellar under 6 Radworth Road has other ideas. Second Chance lets you go straight, and it lets you go back to what you know - and back to what you know starts downstairs, with a lamp, a fan and a meter that never stops going round.

A brick-walled cellar: a white table of grow kit under the SECOND CHANCE mural on the back wall, a green watering can and a plant pot on the floor.
The back wall of the cellar at number 6. The devil’s on the left, the angel’s on the right.

The grow is a proper sim, not a progress bar. The lights run to a timer you set, and getting the cycle wrong costs you the crop. Hang the lamp too close and you scorch the lot. The temperature wanders about on its own from one day to the next, the humidity follows your fans, and switch them off at the wrong moment and mould gets in - past half the crop, it isn’t coming back. Take cuttings off your best plant and you’ve got more of it.

The same cellar with the grow lamp switched on: a pink-purple glow over a plant pot in the corner, a table of kit and a green watering can.
Lamp on. Upstairs in the hall, the meter has started turning.
Close up: six tan rockwool cubes on a white table, a pale seed sitting in the top of each.
Six cubes, six seeds. Everything after this is up to you.
A green watering can tipping water over a tray of rockwool cubes on a white table, the first green shoots poking out of them, terracotta pots stacked at the side.
A drink for the cubes. They dry out, so keep at it.
Rockwool cubes on a white table, four of them with small green sprouts and two still showing only the seed, the mural blurred on the brick wall behind.
Four up, two still thinking about it.
A wider view of the work table: sprouting rockwool cubes in the foreground, a stack of terracotta pots and a Green Boss rockwool bag behind them.
The work table, with the Green Boss kit lined up behind.
Six seedlings, each with a few pairs of leaves, standing in rockwool cubes on a white table.
Seedlings, a few days on.
Low and close: young seedlings in rockwool cubes with thin white roots poking out through the sides of the cubes.
Roots through the sides. Time for a pot.

Then there’s the electric. Every lamp and every fan is metered at 26p a unit, with a 60p a day standing charge on top, and the bill comes out of your pocket every week whether the crop comes good or not. Draw more than 277 units in a week and somebody official starts wondering what you’re up to down there. Leave the curtains open at night and the whole street gets a look at the purple glow. Most drug games worry about the police. This one worries about the electricity board as well.

Side on along a row of terracotta pots on the cellar floor, a leafy young plant in focus in front and more plants behind under a pink light.
Potted on, in a row along the cellar floor.
A young plant in a terracotta pot against a brick wall, a blue bucket and the mural out of focus behind it.
Getting big enough to take cuttings off.
Looking down on the cellar: a cutting held in a rockwool cube over a white table of fresh cubes, Green Boss coconut coir bags against the brick wall.
A cutting off the best plant, going into a fresh cube.
Eight young clones in rockwool cubes on a white table, coir bags blurred behind.
The clones. Same plant, more of it.

When it’s ready you’ll cut it, dry it, weigh it and bag it up, and a plant you’ve looked after properly will give you the best part of a kilo. Neglect it and you’ll get a fraction of that, if it lives.

Close up on a flowering plant: a fat green bud with orange hairs at its tip, against a brick wall.
Flowering.
A flowering plant in a pot, a long green cola at the top and smaller buds on the side branches, a blue bucket on the cellar floor behind.
The colas filling out.
A ripe plant heavy with buds, its leaves turning pink and yellow, more potted plants and a table of bottles in the cellar behind.
Ripe. The leaves turn when it’s ready.
A big heap of green buds with orange hairs on a white table in the cellar, coir bags along the brick wall behind.
The harvest, on the table.

Then it has to go somewhere. That’s the next thing being built: you’ll meet a supplier, sell to customers round the town, and find out how many people notice a lad with a lot of small bags.

Or don’t. The fly-tip round starts at half nine with Wozza in the council flatbed, the bins still need emptying, and Denise has a ruler with your name on it. You can do both, if you can keep your stories straight. It’s your second chance, and you’re the one who decides what to do with it.

The grow sim is built: the light cycle, the mould, the clones and the electric bill. The pictures above are one grow, seed to harvest, taken in testing. Finishing the harvest and bagging up, and the dealing that follows, are what I am building next.

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