The question is: should I go out and buy a packet of fags?
It’s this ‘Stopober’ thing that brought the matter up. Stop
drinking. Stop smoking. Stop eating luxuriant food. Stop doing all the things
that are enjoyable, the things that make life worth living, and do it all in
the name of charity.
One has to ask whether those self-righteous souls who are
denying themselves pleasure are following this through and actually donating to
charity the money usually spent on fun, and one has to answer ‘probably not’.
In the same vein, one has to ask whether at the end of this week, when October
ends in a flurry of badly-carved pumpkins and unwelcome knocks on the door from
small people who can’t be bothered to dress up but think it’s socially
acceptable to demand coins – not sweets, mind you; they pooh-pooh the proffered
fun-size packs of Smarties and instead rail for cold cash – when the haunted
month gives way, as it must, to chill November and its accompanying charitable
effort ‘Movember’, when all men with a working hormone must cease the daily
meeting with badgerhair and razor, growing instead some abomination on their
upper lip, will they be handing over the necessary to Sue Ryder?
Will they hell.
As a card-carrying contrarian, or at least as one who would
be such a thing if the very idea of officially being anything didn’t bring a
shudder of disgust, I’ve found ‘Stopober’ to be the ideal time to stop
stopping. Since the beginning of this month I’ve enjoyed the first proper drink
since June (although there have been a couple of minor lapses, both involving
dinner with the same woman who stares reproachfully at the lime-and-soda or the
Becks Blue as she gleefully sinks another large vodka) and, as a result of
having an abscess the size of a small orange on my lower jaw, there’s been a
lot of time spent in the blissfully muzzy realm, just a press of the
bubble-pack away, of the prescription painkiller. What a place that is. Just
cordoned off enough from the real world, a place of light-footed pleasure and
winter-jumper warmth, a place that you know would be a delightful holiday home
for a week or three if it wasn’t for the persistent weight on the shoulder of
addiction. I know how easy it would be, and how much it would be enjoyed, so
into the bin the left-overs went.
Returning briefly to ‘Movember’; my face has been partially
concealed for some months now by what can only be described as ‘a beard’. It’s
not a big beard, it’s not the full Brian Blessed, it’s kept down to a number
two trim with the aid of a Babyliss, but I like it. It suits me, it makes me
feel more myself than I have for too long. It’s grey in patches, which isn’t
good, but those melanin-free areas have the effect of slimming the face, of
reducing the increasing sagginess of the jowls. I’m told it verges on ‘sexy’
and given the sudden rise in the number of far-too-young women I find myself
flirting with, I can only concur.
But it’s that month, the month when beards are a badge of
Doing Your Bit, and I don’t wish to be a part of that. Should the beard, then,
be sacrificed in the name of personal freedom? Trimmed a little closer? Washed
in its entirety down the bathroom plughole of social friction? No, I like it
too much. And it likes me.
Back to the fags, then. Our present standard-bearer for the
cigarette is Nigel Farage, he of the saloon-bar bonhomie and the unpleasant
views and the followers who fall like electrocuted flies as one by one they
find their pasts – and their presents – dredged up and flung into the
antiseptic glare of public approbation. Association with him, even if only by
dint of a shared vice, is unacceptable. Obviously there’s the health risk, and
the smell, and the noxious nature of the smoke, which drifts into others’ lungs
and makes their day a little less pleasant. I believe there’s a down side as
well.
As with the drink, I can’t say nicotine hasn’t paid the
occasional clandestine visit over the last few years. Many who consider
themselves to be non-smokers can put away a packet of twenty in one evening,
just as those who consider themselves teetotal can find themselves sprawled on
somebody else’s sofa, awash in empty Lambrini bottles, on a Friday night when
their guard’s down.
Things have never gone that far, but occasionally, at the
end of a long day, a packet of ten has found its way into the jacket pocket,
joined in their journey by a box of Swan or a transparent lighter. Each time
ends the same, like the morning after a bad one-night stand; with the shabby
packet cast into the bin the next morning, still eight-tenths occupied, the
previous night’s exotic glamour exposed as a bad dye-job and an ill-fitting
dress.
So, then, to hell with it. I fancy a smoke so I’m going to
have one. I want to feel the edges of the pack give slightly under the pressure
from my fingers. I want so badly to tug at the tear tape as if it were the zip
on a lover’s gown, to see the match flare and light up my face, to feel the
brief giddy rush as the first deep intake floods my body. A good cigarette,
enjoyed in the moment; as a sole pleasure, not to be a habit but a barely licit
indulgence, is almost – only almost – as great a thing as good, and preferably
equally barely licit, sex.
There’s a shop down the road.
Let’s go.
FOOTNOTE, FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER: Nine pounds eighty five?
For twenty Camel? Nine pounds eighty five?!
Bollocks to that.
