Pall Mall, mooli, James Dean, and a vegan kimchi
Abundance: 14 December 2023
I am sat on the step by the shed, the sodden ground dipping away from my feet towards the house. The dog has left his morning present somewhere, a somewhere that no amount of walking around has identified. I’m hoping that sitting still and scanning might reveal it; a game of battleships no-one wants to play.
I miss smoking. When sat still like this, a small part of me still reaches for the tobacco - that twin I’d never let out of my sight, now replaced by the phone.
I miss the palaver of rolling a cigarette, the smell of the petrol lighter, the letterbox of card holding the papers.
Back when smoking was good for you, it was perfectly acceptable - encouraged even - to stop what you were doing for a cigarette. You could barely start something before you paused for a puff.
I miss the punctuation it brought.
When you’re a kid, life is broken into manageable slices of contrasting time. Wake up, breakfast, go to school, play, lessons, play, lunch, play, pinch matey's sherbet dibdab, lessons, play, get deadlegged by matey for pinching his sherbet dibdab, lessons, home, play, tea, play, bed. Start term, term ends, half term starts, half term ends, second half of term begins, term ends: Christmas holidays start, and on it goes. Time felt rich, yet passed slowly; it felt like a decade between birthdays.
Go to work and smoking broke the day into pleasing chunks again. It made you stop. It also lifted you above suspicion: stand around doing nothing and you were a sex pest or burglar; stand spend doing nothing but puff on a Pall Mall and you became James Dean1. Like walking does now, smoking occupied my brain just enough to stop it looking for something to do, and as a result things fell into its unoccupied territory. Rollie to hand, I could happily sit within an album’s landscape, every note and word registering; now, I find it hard to submit to even the finest listen without reaching for my phone once in a while.
The trouble with breaking the day up with smoking is what you gain on the punctuating swing, you lose on the heart attack roundabout. Given that I carry the genes of a predisposition to early onset heart disease, and spent the first quarter decade of my life either inhaling the old man’s smoke or my own, it might be wise to stack my punctuating chips on a different colour.
I think I may have accidentally found it. No, not playing dogshit battleships.