The summer of 1988.
I am hot and sweaty with exertion from riding my blue racer bike through the tangle of streets on the 1960s housing estate I call home. I zoom past the identikit mass of family homes and come to a sudden jolting stop with a screech of brakes and an audible exhalation of breath. I’m eager for the rendezvous yet exhausted from the effort of pedalling all the way out of town into the safe anonymity of open countryside.
Phew! He’s already here, leaning against the rickety farm gate, waiting for me. Strange – he’s never the first to arrive…. He’s always reliably, chronically, late for everything; that’s his hallmark. “Be late for his own funeral”, I remember thinking.
I don’t remember if he greeted me with a casual peck on the cheek, or just a cursory “Alright?” as he usually did. We were there on a mission, and that mission was to instruct me in the fine art of cigarette smoking.
I had done my homework; sourced a packet of 10 Silk Cut Lights, carefully hidden in my denim jacket pocket. His pre-agreed contribution was to bring the lighter. Essential for the craft of learning to smoke. A packet of mints completed the toolkit. In my naivety, I genuinely believed a couple of minty sweets would create a fragrant barrier against my dad’s bloodhound-like sense of smell. You don’t survive the battlegrounds of World War II, then a career in the police with no sense of smell. Should have thought of that.
“Come on then, give me a tab,” he said, open palm towards me. I pulled the box out of my denim jacket pocket and picked at the cellophane wrapper with my fingernail to locate the gold-coloured tag and release the magical contents. After several attempts (I was clearly an amateur), I removed the wrapper, opened the flap and pulled away the embossed silver paper covering the cotton-like tips on the neatly arranged cigarettes lined up like soldiers in two neat rows of five. That kind of uniformity appealed to my perfectionist nature. As I extracted one long, slim specimen and handed it over, I felt like I’d passed the first test with flying colours.
“Here we go!”, he said. With a deft flick of his thumb against the tiny metal roller of the lighter, a small but perfectly formed flame shot into the air with a whoosh! He raised the burning flame towards the tip of the cigarette wedged at a jaunty angle between his tight lips, and inhaled deeply. With a crackle and a satisfying fizz, the end of the cigarette sprung into life with a promising bright red glow. One more drag. Then, after what seemed like a lifetime standing there with his chest puffed out, he finally let go; exhaling the plume of fragrant smoke with a long, satisfied sigh.
“Your turn!” He waved the cigarette at me with a wink. I took it from him, not knowing quite how to either safely transfer a burning stick into my hands, or how to hold it without looking like an idiotic amateur. How exactly had he held it? I wondered as I fumbled the cigarette towards my mouth. I exhaled, closed my lips around the tip and shut my eyes tightly. This needed to be my best effort. I was eager to please my teacher.
I opened one eye and caught a glimpse of his face. He watched me, awaiting my first ever glorious inhalation of tar and nicotine; cheering me on to join him in the ranks of the hopelessly addicted. Not that he would ever admit it. He assured me he could go for weeks without a drag. “The only people who get addicted are people who don’t try hard enough not to be” he bragged. Why did I need to worry?
Because I have to worry about everything, I thought, as I tried my best to put thoughts of consequences out of my mind and concentrate on the moment. “Go on,” he said encouragingly; watching and waiting for my next breath. I abruptly snatched the cigarette from my mouth. “I can’t!! I might be sick,” I bleated. I had heard of people being sick after their first cigarette. Given my phobia of puking, I really didn’t want to be one of them. “You won’t!” He insisted. “Don’t be silly’. After a beat, I put the half-burned cigarette back between my lips. My preference of external direction over common sense took over. I wouldn’t want to waste this, not when it had cost me all my nerves to buy the pack in the first place and there were only 10. Well, nine and a half now.
I could hear birds chirping. In the distance, a car swept by with a whoosh of rubber on tarmac, but otherwise we were all alone here in this summery corner of the English countryside; left in peace to learn how to smoke – a lesson that would take me 30 years to unlearn.
The tobacco leaves crackled, and it was done. I had semi-successfully transferred the noxious smoke from the burning tip of the cigarette, through the filter tip, into my mouth and partly into my lungs. The coughing and spluttering were so violent I couldn’t have done it right. Experienced smokers could inhale a vast lungful of smoke and hold it inside for at least 5 seconds before exhaling into the air in a neat plume.
I’ll just have to practice, I thought. The day’s lesson was done. I handed the burning embers back to him for one more drag before stubbing it out on the soft earth. With one last cycle of inhalation and exhalation, he said, “Shall we go?” And that was it.
We climbed on our bikes, pleased with how the afternoon had turned out, and headed back along the dirt track to the main road.
As flawed human beings, when we so desperately want to be liked — to fit in — we will do almost anything to please, even if it means willingly damaging our own health. Of course, I knew smoking was bad for me. But it was the late 80s, when everyone smoked and the pubs and clubs were full of thick, rancid smoke that made your eyes sting and your clothes and hair stink like an overflowing ashtray for weeks. The ceiling of the pub where I worked during my sixth form and uni days was a weird orangey-brown colour. I assumed it was intentional. “No, it was white when we painted it,” the landlady chuckled, cocking her head at my unusual observation. The smoke of a million fags had turned it this unique colour. There seemed little point in spending good money on a new lick of paint when, within months, it would take on that nasty stain again.
If only I had made the connection between the colour of the ceiling and the colour of my lungs! It would be decades before the nanny state would put graphic pictures of blackened lungs on the front of cigarette packets in a bid to stop us hardcore addicts from taking another drag. As if that would make any difference. Between the ages of 30 and 45, I tried every method available to give up smoking. (I somehow managed to abstain during pregnancies, but always got hooked again).
In the end, it was my subconscious that took over. I woke up one morning and decided enough was enough. That was ten years ago and thankfully I’ve not been tempted since.