Grumpy Old Ken: Smoking, who can resist it.
I see smoking's in the news again. This time it's Australia, passing a law that will make all cigarettes sold only in plain packaging. I wonder if it will help. I smoked for many years, I remember it well. I must have been mad!
An extract from 'A Childhood Revisited' amuses and horrifies me. How disgusting we were. And to pick up discarded 'nub ends' doesn't bear thinking about. How I ever got to seventy plus years I will never know.
And, away from the prying eyes of adults, when the cigarettes were smoked, we secretly learned of the world of grown–ups. Illicit books and magazines spirited away from adults were produced and eagerly examined. The Adventures of Pompeii and the Woman of Rome were avidly devoured and mental notes taken. Naturalist magazines were ogled, naked breasts and pubic hair causing an uncomfortable yet exciting stirring in adolescent loins.
Sounds so very much like my own childhood. Our secret hide out was the creek. You had me laughig when the cigarette stuck to the lip. Thankfully I am no longer a user. Stinky expensive things!
Unbelievable really, that my peers (brought up in the 60s and 70s) were pretty much raised in a cloud of tobacco smoke and yet no one could understand why I would sneeze from morn till night.
It's very much learned behaviour though. If my kids were sent to the back of the garden shed with a packet of baccy, they would probably plant it!
You had me enthralled, nodding as my memories were ignited along with those illicit fags (our favourite was corn husks). I almost wished I had been born a boy at the end. I'm sure those wordly magazines would have been more interesting than our sopping imaginings of true love.
I loved that part of your book, Ken. It took me right back to those halcyon tobacco filled days. And yet we lived to tell the tale - unlike today, methinks. Even so, I'm glad I gave up smoking ... 1982 I think it was.
I get great pleasure from smoking my pipe. During my working life as a designer the occasional break to stop and fill the pipe with tobacco, provided me with a meditative exercise whereby fresh creative ideas would flow into my mind. A pipe of baccy still does more for me than a cup of strong coffee or tea.
I do on rare occasions smoke hand rolled cigarettes and sometimes a cigar however, none of these give me the personal satisfaction that a short pull on my pipe does.
Life choices are personal decisions I have made mine and others theirs.
ChrisJS said...
Amazing what we survive - humans are tougher than we westerners think
Interesting. The creek sounds a wonderful place for youngsters!
Funny but true! How did we survive!
Corn husks, how inventive you were. Re magazines, we read but never got chance to 'practice' our new found knowledge until much later!
1982, so are you rich now, with all the money you saved!
Agreed. I wonder if you would be so productive and creative without the baccy.
I wonder if luck comes into it when we talk about survival.
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