Growing up in Smoke

Like a great many of my generation, I was practically kippered from birth. Both my parents smoked - although my mother only a few, and in fact she quit completely when I was 15. I remember dad smoking Woodbines, and also rolling his own (Old Holborne - the tins were subsequently used in the shed for keeping nails and screws). Does anyone remember rolling cigarettes as a child for daddy? Maybe he had one of those natty little machines, that were tricky but fun. If you put the paper in the wrong way, you got an inside-out ciggy!

Then people smoked everywhere. Buses, trains, shops, cinemas, restaurants, offices.... On buses smoking was allowed upstairs, not downstairs. (Single decker buses allowed smoking at the rear). Of course all us young 'uns always went upstairs. Somewhere I heard the saying "Romantics Upstairs, Rheumatics Downstairs". Only old fogeys sat downstairs - we wanted to be up top where it was fun! Yes it stank of stale smoke, but we didn't care. There are worse smells on buses, especially late at night, believe me...

The first office I worked in we were only allowed to smoke up in the "Rest Room" where we could have our coffee and lunch breaks. I didn't smoke when I first started work - a rather timid 20 year old. I had smoked a bit at college with other students but didn't inhale and never bothered about it much. Now the people in the Rest Room naturally fell into two camps - the smokers at one table, the non- smokers at the other. So why did I gravitate towards the smokers? Were they more relaxed, laughed more, friendlier? To be honest, yes. The non-smoking ladies tended to be young marrieds, who discussed new curtains and where they got their hair done. I wanted better conversation than that!

Anyway, a few months after starting work there, I was out one evening in a pub with some friends who were smoking. So as to be sociable, I bought a pack from a machine. That first packet lasted me a fortnight. The second lasted a week.... and the damage was done. So easy, so acceptable, so normal.

I need to do some research I think, into how the practice of inhaling the smoke from the smouldering dried leaves of a particular plant became as popular as dancing, yet more addictive than heroin. And why it took so long for people to realise it.

Anyway, this is now the end of Day 3 - "no comment" as the politicians say.


This, and the next couple of posts, may make you think I actually approve of smoking and don't want to stop. Bear with me though, as I need to work through this.

HAVE FAITH!