I've smoked cigarettes since I was 18. It started out as being all about image. All the bad boys of rock n roll smoked, or at least all the cool people did. This elite group would never be seen dead with anything but Marlboro in their hands, so there was little other choice. Anyway, even with my poor math, I can work out that's 23 years, which is a long old time in anybody's book. On the plus side though, I think it shows great commitment. I started out with JPS Black but rumour had it that they had asbestos in the filter, so I changed pretty damn quickly to something far less "dangerous". It's hard work choosing a brand that says a lot about you - and this was a prerequisite for me.
In choosing a brand of cigarette, what you're essentially doing is making a life choice and if it's not thought out carefully, your entire life can be mapped out before you in entirely the wrong way. To illustrate, here's a brief summary of what the world thinks of you if you have chosen one of the following:
JPS Black: I want to die. Fast. Preferably now.
Marlboro Red: I want to die and love rock n roll.
Marlboro Lights: I want to die but not quite so fast as I made it past 28. I like rock n roll and stand-up comedy.
Camel: Other smokers don't even like me smoking around them.
Benson & Hedges: I am a genetic smoker. My mum smokes them and I steal them.
Black Cat/Raffles: I am so hooked, I smoke 60 a day as this is all I can afford.
Silk Cut: I am not really a smoker
Silk Cut Ultra Low: Smoking prolongs my life.
Roll your own: I fell on hard times.
Dunhill: My company pays me to smoke.
Embassy No 6/Regal: I am an absolute fucking dog and don't care what people think of me. I have no close friends.
Lambert & Butler: I am the dictionary definition of scum.
Even from this small and incomplete list, you can see that your choice of brand speaks volumes about you. Think carefully if you're about to start. If you're already knee deep, maybe you should consider switching brands to one of the cooler varieties - it's never too late for an image upgrade.
Now - here's the killing joke. We all know smoking will kill us. Smokers don't care, but I don't think it needs to quite so soon. Let's look at Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for a moment.
The theory behind NLP is that you can rewire your brain to function in a different way by feeding it subliminal messages. If you are scared of flying for instance, NLP can sort you out with a few well placed subliminal messages and presto - two weeks in the Med coming right up.
I'm a big advocate of NLP, but consider this. On a daily basis, smokers are fed 'death messages' in the form of "Smoking kills" or "Smoking can seriously damage your heath". After 23 years of this, those messages must surely now be hardwired into my brain. Using the tried and tested NLP model, this must be causing my body to think it is sick and thus, begin killing me of its own accord. That's not the cigarette at work. That's the packaging - and in case some of the lower grade smokers (see earlier list) be unable to read or need it spelling out to them, we now have pictures on the packets to help us along. If NLP was taken as seriously as it should be, somebody should surely bring the government to hand over their part in this mass genocide.
Everybody knows the negative side of smoking, but it really is little more than the death which comes to us all. There are some positives if you know where to look - or at least there used to be before we were turned into outcasts. At a company I used to work at, we had free rein to walk outside and smoke whenever we liked. Naturally, this evolved into quite a social routine, so at various times during the day, I would be out there with, amongst others, the I.T. manager and even the H.R. manager. Having a relationship with these people gave me access to such items as a better PC than the guy who sat next to me and in one extreme, advance notice of oncoming redundancies. These are two valuable examples that will never be seen again in any company for the length and breadth of this Isle.
I've also met people all over the world who I would otherwise never have spoken to, formed alliances and long lasting friendships with smoking at its root and I would even go so far as to say when interviewing other smokers, that it's a huge ice breaker. Establishing common ground quickly can never be a bad thing in these circumstances.
For instance, one morning on Euston station, an American in a suit came over to me and asked if he could have one of my cigarettes. Always sympathetic to another smoker in a predicament, I gave him one and he asked me:
"What are you angry about today?"
I told him that I wasn't angry about anything, I was just waiting for a train, to which he replied:
"Everybody is angry about something," and he handed me his business card saying, "when you remember what it is, give me a call, I'd like to know. Then he walked away. Looking at the card afterward, apart from the address and phone numbers, it said in big letters right across the middle:
Since the internet came along, I have looked for John Silver many times out of curiosity but to no avail. I suspect he has probably died of cancer by now.
To my mind, there is a far more dangerous side to smoking than the ones we are warned about on the packets. I've set my hair on fire countless times, nearly blinded myself with stray ash once or twice and on one occasion (I can only venture I was hopelessly drunk at the time - or at least I hope I was), burnt my penis whilst going to the toilet. That was just damn careless and in my defence, it was in the very early days.
Yet smoking accidents come in all shapes and sizes. Mine, apart from the penis incident, all come with the territory but I know of a couple of guys who were simply stupid. One, whose name I honestly forget, set fire to his face and torso smoking over a bucket of petrol he was sniffing. Those burns were bad and nobody deserves that, but if I recall correctly, there wasn't a lot of sympathy for him either. The other guy I know, whose name I do remember but choose not to mention, spent his whole life drugged up on whatever he could get his hands on. He eventually cleaned himself up, got a job, a decent place to live and even a girlfriend. Then he went and fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. That's not a nice way to go at all. Perhaps, these warnings should form part of the packaging - they're far more useful than feeding us information we already know.
At the other extreme, I once found myself in a shopping mall in Syracuse on an absolutely freezing afternoon. Waiting for my friend, I sat down on a bench and lit one up only to be pounced upon by a security guard who told me I couldn't do that. On offering a truly indignant "What are you going to do, arrest me?", his hand went to the butt of his holstered gun and he replied "I can if you want." This is thoroughly uncalled for in any circumstances, but in hindsight, I wish I'd pushed him now to see how far he really would have gone with that itchy finger.
Yet, for all my commitment, I feel like it's time to call it a day. Not for any health reasons and certainly not because it's now so expensive I'll soon have to start housebreaking to afford it. Like an old friend that you simply have nothing in common with anymore, I think it's time to say goodbye.
We may run into each other on holiday sometimes and I may even call him in a moment of extreme need, but I feel as though our day to day relationship is at an end. We don't really have anything to say to each other anymore. The cigarette knows it will be smoked and I know I will smoke it - that's just taking each other for granted and is certainly no basis to live in each others pockets.
I wonder what kind of non-smoker I will be? After all, once a smoker, always a smoker. It just depends when you last had one. I know I won't be one of those people who sneers at a smoker when they're nearby because there aren't ever any smokers nearby anymore. There are no places you can smoke anymore in the company of friends or strangers. I certainly won't be one of those who says to everybody he meets that they should give up either.
What I do know is that when we part, there will be no substitute. The will be no gum or a patch because nothing can replace my friend. There will be no sweet sucking, nail biting, worry beads or knuckle cracking. I will identify the last one in the packet, we will go somewhere quiet together and part with dignity - although I must admit to being very tempted to light up in the middle of Marks and Spencer or Holland and Barrett, just to stick two fingers up at the world we have found ourselves living in.
It's simply just time. I watched my Dad's father smoke himself to death in the most disgusting way. He was a huge man who got Emphysema and spent his final weeks coughing up dirt and spitting it into a glass in between taking another drag, until eventually, I think the Reaper just took pity and came to take him away. My Dad's mother who was also a smoker, fared slightly better but eventually went in exactly the same way. They were both in their eighties though. I have no doubt that my Mother's father would have gone the same way from his pipe habit but my Gran nagged so much that he stopped - however, I think he would sometimes have preferred the pipe death to the nagging variety.
We - my brother and two sisters - were all brought up knowing that if we smoked, we all faced the beating of our lives. Yet somehow, we all wound up in this place - well, my sister with Down's Syndrome didn't. If fact, I don't think I've ever seen anybody with Down's Syndrome smoking which begs the question - who's really the one with the missing chromosome?
Next: Chapter 3: The Books of the Dead
Posting 15th June
Footnote: please feel free to leave comments, factual errors, report typos etc. Anything that will sharpen this up is much appreciated.
