You’ve touched a nerve I’m afraid…

I am borderline OCD when it comes to smoking…or rather NOT smoking. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those ‘Urrgh!!! Put that out, it’s a disgusting habit’ mouthy wankers that gets on the funbags of people who are perfectly capable of making their own choices in life. Nah, that’s not me.

Besides, I have too many friends and family who smoke like troopers; yet I happen to love them so I don’t really want to piss over their collective chips. I am in a band so have regularly been in pubs and clubs my whole life. Also, I am way too sociable a person so I understand that if you start lecturing people of the ‘Evils of the demon tobacco’ etc you just make yourself look like a proper twat.

So I put up with it…but I hate it. Smoking is just something that I don’t do…and will NEVER do…here’s a couple of reasons why.

First…of course I don’t like the smell etc – the way it sticks to clothes and walls, it gets in my throat makes me gag etc., but by far and away the worst things about it for me are the memories that are triggered in my mind when I see and smell it.

At the merest whiff of cigarette smoke I am metaphorically transported to the back seat of a shit heap old Hillman Avenger in the 70’s. I am about 5 years old and I am surrounded by the foul cloud given off by my chain-smoking parents. I was always told on every journey that I wasn’t allowed to open the window because the car would get too cold. I was regularly as sick as a dog with somebody's fingers down it's throat. That’s where my revulsion begins.

Aged about 7 I was told by my parents that I had to learn to play the trumpet. I had no choice in the matter – they had spunked about £40 that they couldn’t afford on a trumpet for my brother who had proceeded to try it for 5 minutes before getting bored with it. They weren’t going to waste the money, so they chucked it at me and said ‘Learn that fucker!’.

I actually enjoyed it and was quite good (taught myself the Star Wars theme and everything) I ended up in the Coventry Youth Orchestra and would take lessons with two other kids every week from a man called Mr Baird.

Mr Baird was a giant of a man in size and personality. He was probably only 6’2”ish, but to a little Pooflake he seemed like Hagrid from Harry Potter. Barrel-chested and with a cavernous, booming voice that would put Brian Blessed to shame, he taught with an enthusiasm and patience that you get from only the finest teachers.

So it was a bit of a surprise to see this gargantuan fellow come into school one day looking like a drained shadow. He sat before the three of us and broke down in tears. As he sobbed, he informed his three shocked students that he had just that minute returned from the hospital where he had watched his best mate die. He described how he stood helpless as his friend tried to cough his own intestines out through his mouth and went into full gruesome detail about the poor bloke’s struggling last moments alive. His sorrow then turned to anger as he pointed to each one of us and bellowed “IF I EVER CATCH ANY OF YOU SMOKING I’LL…..I’LL…..please kids….just promise me you will NEVER smoke”

Terrified, and as a tear ran down my cheek, the three of us shook our heads in silence.

(Why he came straight back into school after that experience I have no idea, but Mr Baird was a professional so he probably felt that life must go on and all that. He’s a braver man than I).

Of course, the hardest time to ‘resist’ smoking is when you’re a kid and everybody around you starts to experiment with it. Fortunately, by this time I was already a devout non smoker and after a couple of simple refusals, people simply stopped asking me if I wanted a cigarette. Even kids can tell if you're serious when you say ‘No thanks’. Peer-pressure wise; I reckon I got through that period in my life pretty easy.

I lost both my Nans to smoking-related cancer. I was informed gently and thankfully spared the details. Mum & Dad though, like I had mentioned before, continued to smoke like chimneys on a veritable sponsored smokathon. 60 or so Dunhills a day was a staple of my mum’s life – my dad rolled his own. But smoking hit my mum eventually…pretty hard.

Firstly, she developed emphysema which I believe is relatively par for the course for heavy smokers…I remember her face as she told me on return from the doctors once how she had taken one of those 'lung capacity' tests and it had hardly registered a reading.

One of my most vivid childhood memories was bolting to the stairs in our house (to run up them using my hands as well as my feet of course) to be confronted by my coughing, spluttering, wheezing mum. She had needed to stop to catch her breath halfway up. After half a fucking flight of stairs! Again, at that point something triggered in my tiny mind that smoking is not all ‘fun fun fun’. I cried as I started to come to terms with my mum’s mortality, however, mum was too knackered to even come and give me a cuddle.

She later developed cancer. She was lucky. She beat it. She’s never actually told us where the cancer was because I think it was in an embarrassing place and that’s what she’s like. Somewhere during her treatment she had the inevitable conversation with the doctor that goes something like:

“You have to stop smoking, you stupid mare. Now. From this moment on. None of this ‘I’ll cut down’ namby-pampby bollocks. Just stop. Straight away. No excuses. Never have another cigarette. If you do, you are going to die VERY soon.”

I’m proud to say that she listened. She stopped. With willpower alone and from that moment on she has never smoked again. Of course, she’s still a physical wreck, but she’s stayed alive long enough to go mental. Fair play to her.

My dad quit too to support her. However he only lasted a couple of months before going back on the baccy. He still smokes heavily, but also drinks enough cheap scotch to sink the Ark Royal. Somehow, he is the longest ever surviving Male Pooflake in history. I imagine his insides must be like ‘The Thing’ from Fantastic 4. His coughing fits are the stuff of legend though – when he starts hacking you know you’re good for about 5 minutes of constant spluttercack and rattling, ear shattering snorts etc as he attempts to dislodge his lungs again.

When it came to actually being an adult and trying a spliff I was in more fear of the smoking than the draw. It put me off the whole experience…so it’s been hashcakes all the way with me!

I don’t even like to touch cigarettes or hold them for people – even in a packet! I don’t like songs with smoking references in them – For fuck’s sake I don’t even like typing the word! This whole QOTW makes me shudder. I know it’s completely irrational so that's why I compare it to an OCD…a phobia...and as phobias go I suppose it’s not too bad a one to have…and with the exception of this post I normally keep pretty quiet about it.

So no, I’ve never had a cigarette. I don’t mind people who smoke but it doesn’t stop me feeling a bit smug when I get the constant stream of ‘Oh I wish I had never started’ speeches that I get from friends etc., as I watch them suffer physically and financially because of smoking.

Besides, I have plenty of my own vices so I’ll never be hypocritical enough to preach at anybody else’s.


Apologies for length...but this has actually been quite therapeutic for me. Thanks if you made it this far without a fag-break!
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 20 Mar 2008, 12:28, 9 replies)

have a click
I too remember car journeys when I wasn't allowed to wind the window down... and earlier car journeys where my requests for fresh air were ignored (bloody three-doors, no back windows!)
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 12:32, closed)

I'm with you on this
I'm in the same boat, more or less, with regards to the almost compulsion to not smoke. I too don't mind friends smoking, and I too had the peer-pressure, but the more i was offered, the stronger my conviction to never smoke became.

Thanks for writing your post, it was therapeutic to read as well :)
( Labia Majora You keep on talking but it makes no sense at all, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 12:38, closed)

Mr Baird
I think my trumpet teacher was his evil twin - existed in a haze of smoke, even smoked in the classroom between pupils so by the end of the day there was a dense blue fug stretching a couple of feet down from the ceiling. You'd emerge from the classroom smelling like a spittoon, with rasping lungs as playing brass instruments requires a fair amount of lung use, so therefore a lot of this chaps smoke passed through your tubes. I swear you could smell it as you played at home, days later.

Take this mental image: wee lads and lassies playing away like the band on the Titanic with the blue fog swirling around them, desperately trying not to cough so they can get out of there and hand over to the next mug.

Now that's what I call education.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 13:22, closed)

yeah
I completely support your post. I feel the same way, and i too play in a band (ska ftw)surrounded by smokers. I try not to preach to them, but honestly don't see the appeal.

They are often conspiring to quite smoking, but it hasn't happened yet. It makes me wonder about how hard it is, and how much willpower it takes. But like a lot of the posts here say, it takes some kind of huge madical scare to make people care enough to try.
(ShitBitch, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 14:20, closed)

Brilliant as always, Mr Pooflake
Probably the best compliment I can pay you is that your post actually had me considering giving up the fags.

I've bought the Alan Carr book 'Easy way to stop smoking,' but I've never actually read it. Maybe I'll open it up tonight...
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 23:53, closed)

So
you don't want twos on this roll up then?
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Mon 24 Mar 2008, 11:26, closed)

No! Thanks! Very! Much!

But it was kind of you to offer...
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 24 Mar 2008, 17:36, closed)

I'll get the oven on!
As I know the protagonists in this particular story, I sympathise Mr Poo!
I think your dad should warn the seismic institute before coughing, having been in his presence more than once I think his NORMAL breathing sounds like a sore-troated grizzly bear gargling hot tar and big ballbearings. And your mum's mental in a nice way, FFS she likes ME!



"Click"
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Tue 25 Mar 2008, 13:09, closed)

^Captain...
What's not to like : )
( girlinthehole, Tue 25 Mar 2008, 13:41, closed)