A History Of Smoking

My father rolled his own – puny little worms of loosely-packed tobacco drooping from his lip while he went about his business.

With hands that were calloused and clumsy from working in the factory, he would struggle to produce something stable and smokable. He did try using a magic rolling machine at one point – a tin contraption with a rubber belt and rollers – but it never caught on with him. I think the act of rolling by hand, however disastrous, was part of the pleasure for him.

Before plastic pouches, he bought his baccy in pocket-sized tins, or small packets of gold-effect paper wound in a label. If it was in this form, he’d transfer the tobacco to a tin he’d bought previously, and he’d keep his cigarette papers there, too. I used to love that sweet, earthy smell of a freshly-opened tin or packet.

He wasn’t a chain-smoker – it would have been too much work! – but he smoked throughout the day, with a tall ash-tray beside his favourite armchair if he was indoors, watching the TV or reading his book. Later, my mother – who didn’t smoke – convinced him to indulge in his habit outside. In the summer, it could be in the greenhouse as he tended to his tomatoes and peppers, or in the garden proper. In the winter, he’d sneak out to the coal-shed, converted into a utility room. I imagine his winter consumption would have been far less than in the summer: that coal-shed was like a fridge.

One day, his doctor told him to stop, and he did … for a while. When, predictably, he took it up again, he chose panatellas to satisfy his craving. He was no doubt working under the misapprehension that cigars would be less harmful than his roll-ups, but I think he figured out eventually that they were doing just as much damage, and more expensively. He went back to his droopy tobacco worms; they will have contributed to the heart attack that finally killed him.

So my childhood was spent with tobacco as a constant incidental at home, and not only. On TV shows and in films, cigarettes were often a feature of our heroes’ characters, as much as the hat they wore or the car they drove. It was little wonder, then, that I sought to emulate the real and fictional adults in my life.

Early on, this was through chocolate cigars, or sweet cigarettes – small white cylinders with a red tip meant to imitate being lit. You could flourish these in your fingers, or have them tucked into the corner of your mouth – slowly shrinking with the action of your saliva – while you pretended to be a detective, a cowboy, or an army sergeant. Later on, the government would ban these as encouraging a dangerous habit, but it was too late for me.

My first experience of lighting a ‘cigarette’ and inhaling should have put me off for life. I had a pencil sharpener screwed to a shelf in my bedroom, and the shavings accumulated in an attached container. They looked similar to tobacco, so … my mate Pete and I took some down to the nearby woods and furtively rolled a shavings-cigarette with a paper I’d nicked from my father. It was ghastly.

But it didn’t put me off. I tried smoking on various subsequent occasions, begging the odd ciggy from friends who were already hardened smokers. As the old joke went:

“What brand do you smoke?”

“OP’s.”

“OP’s?”

“Yeah, Other People’s!”

In those days, you could buy cigarettes in packs of five – a seductive invitation to teenagers on limited pocket money. The thing is, you really had to work at liking the sensation of smoking. I remember the roughness in the throat, the coughing, the slight nausea when the nicotine hit a system unused to it.

Once I’d left home, though, and the possibility of objections from my parents was removed, I hit the ground running. I got past the initial nausea and began to find pleasure in the act, as well as the need to fall in line with the habits of my peers. Money was tight at University, but there was always enough for the occasional pack … or if not, I had the OP’s option.

It was at University that I was first exposed to the 20-a-day experience, my days extended by parties that went on through the night, with alcohol stoking the puffing. And the effects on an early-20s body seemed negligible, besides the natural chest-clearing first thing in the morning.

Beyond University, my first salaries meant that money was no longer a rein on my habit, so 20-a-day became the norm. The word ‘habit’ describes the activity well. Most of the time, smokers will tell you that they go to their pack as a matter of course during the day, without really being aware of the need, or deriving any conscious enjoyment.

But there are moments when the pleasure is intense. The first cigarette of the morning, or after some time without – coming out of a cinema, for example – or with a coffee, or after a good meal … these are moments when the act of smoking can be sublime: tapping out a cigarette (from a soft pack), holding the fragile cylinder in your fingers, pressing it gently between your lips, hearing the crackle of paper and tobacco as you light it, drawing in that first smoke, letting it fill your lungs, holding it there, exhaling slowly, tasting…

Of course, since my father’s time, the dangers surrounding tobacco have been well documented, but when I quit, that wasn’t the reason, rather a force of nature … in the form of my ex-partner. She always knew that I smoked – it wasn’t something I kept from her. But her dislike of it intensified over time to such a degree that it began to impinge on the pleasure I derived. I’m sure my father felt something similar – to be forced out of the house whenever he fancied a smoke.

The pressure from my ex culminated in a dramatic act on my part. Returning home from holiday one year, I left my cigarettes and lighter on a table in the airport … which was a rather irresponsible thing to do in hindsight since any child could have picked them up. But it was a symbolic moment, and I came back home lighter, in more ways than one.

I found it unusually easy to give up, compared to the hard-work stories you hear from other smokers attempting the same; I didn’t need to chew nicotine gum, or use patches, and I wasn’t climbing up the wall in desperation. I naturally felt better for it, too, my lungs gradually clearing.

Until recently, years later, when it felt that they were becoming clogged again, and breathing was becoming more difficult. A trip to the doctor’s and tests at the hospital confirmed my worst fears; the specialist’s prognosis was grim.

The period of cursing myself for those misspent younger days has passed and I’m much more philosophical about my fate. I’ll go through the motions of treatment, but I know that it can only delay the inevitable.

Meanwhile, with no ex to harangue me, and no health concerns (the damage is done), I made a decision: I’ve returned to smoking. Not 20-a-day, which would be impossible, but those discrete cigarettes – the most pleasurable ones.

In his novel Confessions Of Zeno, Italo Svevo has his protagonist – Zeno – commit to smoking a symbolic last cigarette for health reasons, but it is never his last because of the weakness of his will, and he ends up smoking a series of ‘last cigarettes’.

My case is slightly different: I feel that every cigarette I smoke now is significant. And I enjoy each one like never before, fully aware that it may actually be my last.