A Smokers Lament

Before I started writing this I rolled a fag, (ciggy for you Yanks,), and put my thinking cap on. I'm almost 65 years on this planet and I grew up in a house, with a family of smokers, everyone around me, Aunts and Uncles, Mam and dad, film and pop stars etc all smoked either cigarettes or pipes. My dad smoked a pipe as did Sherlock Holmes, who smoked a Calabash. So it was, I suppose a right of passage into becoming grown up back in the day. Nobody mentioned lung cancer, all we got back then was "cool as a mountain stream" and for a while we all gravitated to menthol, for a while.

So it was that I eventually became addicted, although I didn't know I was addicted back then, none of us did, it was just the way things were. I really liked the aroma of my Dads pipe tobacco, which I think was Condor sliced, it was the smell of home, and a much nicer smell than cigarettes, but pipes were a bit old fashioned so I went for the fags, and I've been a lover of smoking now for almost fifty years.

Now I know that sounds a bit daft to all you out there who have either never smoked or have given up but that's how it's been for me. Down the pub, with a pint and a fag, the atmosphere thick with the haze of  smokers in the snug, whilst the none smokers would migrate to the lounge. Back in the days before all the pubs would go open plan we had our own segregated spots, some pubs even had a smoking room but when they knocked down all the walls that's when the rot set in, I suppose.

When the connection between smoking and lung cancer was made, in the early 60s', nobody took much notice and we all puffed away merrily until drip by drip the Health and safety brigade began to gather strength. It took a long long time, almost forty years until my little habit was to make me into a pariah in public places. But by then it was too late for me to want to kick the habit, it had become a part of who I am. That's why I don't want to give up smoking, and I've always seen myself as some thing of a rebel. I don't like being told what I should and shouldn't do, except for the 10 commandments, which seem a reasonable code of practice for communities to live together, well as long as you leave out the God bits, for me anyway.

And why do they want me to stop smoking; so that I can live longer. So I can live long enough to slide into dementia land and spend my last few years shuffling around some dreadful care home, having a slow lingering death instead of a sooner slow lingering death from lung cancer, that I may or may not succumb to. That's the odd thing about life that we just can't predict, it's a lottery, this one, that one. There's no way we can predict how our exquisitely complex bunch of cells will work their way towards their ultimate demise. None of us will be able to stave off this shuffling off the mortal coil, so I suppose I'll go on being a smoker.

But what really pains me, and what started me on this diatribe was prompted by a scene I witnessed last night on my way back from the off licence. It was pissing it down, driving rain, and cold. Huddled in a shop doorway of a cafe, open for the night for a Christmas party, there were three girls/women smokers. Only just escaping being soaked, they were out there having a fag, inside the party continued with party hats and crackers, the none smokers glib and seemingly unaware of the discomfort that was being suffered by the addicts on the doorstep.

You can see it all over town, as you pass each pub/restaurant, a gaggle of souls cast out into the cold night air to get their nicotine fix. Mind you, you do tend to meet people you would never otherwise meet, and sometimes strike up friendships that last throughout the night. It's alright for the young 'uns, they're fairly hardy, and growing up in this culture, they seem to readily accept that this is how life is. However for people of a certain age like myself it just puts me right off going out to pubs/clubs at all. I now go to the off licence, buy my bottle of wine, a pack of twenty fags and have a night in with my social networking friends, or watch the telly. I've almost stopped going out to socialise as I find the whole idea of standing outside in the cold or wet every half hour night a complete turn off to what used to be a big part of my life.

I suppose your all going to say, give up, quit, and I know you've got a point, in fact your probably right, I've no case to answer.

In the old days they had smoking rooms in pubs, I don't see why we didn't go that way. All I see is some gleeful malice on the part of the H&S brigade that love seeing us ostracised, and shivering as we enjoy our guilty addiction. God knows they've got ventilation systems that can deal with a little smoke pollution and give us smokers a warm space to indulge our filthy habit. The pubs are dying up and down the land, and I wonder if this smoking ban has had a big part in their demise. It also breaks down the fabric of our society in a subtle way, as for hundreds of years these were some of the most important pillars of our democracy, the man in the pub said, etc etc.

Of course we are where we are, and I suppose we'll never return to those halcyon days of nicotined stained ceilings and the sweet aroma of exotic tobaccos wafting across the room. Now it's all sweat, and sweet perfumes because our dulled sense of smell, through smoking has returned, and we can all look forward to dying older, and we call that progress.

I'm off next week to spend a couple of weeks in a place where the H&S police have yet to pounce and where I can socialise with friends again, have a few beers and a fag, like the old days. It's going to be a real treat to not to be an outcast, I might even take up smoking a pipe just for the hell of it.