unfortunately can't remember
my first cigarette. I have a feeling it was one that me and some chums had piked from someone's dad.

my first forays into proper smoking though....

age 15, on the ferry to France with my mate to stay with my aunt for a week

nothing to do on a ferry? let's smoke Marlboro Reds, and play fruit machines and poker

week in france? age 15? nothing to do there either. let's smoke more fags and drink beer.

most of the week was spent cycling round in the sun, beer in one hand, marlboro in the other.

good times.

I still have a soft spot for Marlboro Reds. a man's smoke, like Lucky Strike.

I don't smoke (cigarettes) these days, but I appreciate the enjoyment that others get out of them, and I'm all about overturning the smoking ban.

I get lonely sat in the pub on my own :-(
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:44, 3 replies)

Re: Smoking ban
Considering that people who don't smoke want me to stop lighting up in public,
could they also consider that, as I don't drive, perhaps they would like to switch off their engines whilst I'm walking through the town.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:42, 1 reply)

Might as well...
I bummed a fag once.

He didn't mind.
(tiger blood and Adonis DNA, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:40, 1 reply)

not a cigarette
I had quite a bizarre introduction to smoking, did everything in the reverse order

1. smoked a bong when i was 15, didn't feel a thing other than being a bit pissed off with everyone constantly saying 'you high yet, you feelin it?'....i wasn't

2. Smoked a cigar, was just weird. Inhaled and nearly lost my lunch

3. smoked a cigarette finally when i was 16 to shut up my mate who kept calling me a poof. This started a lovely 3 year addiction.



length? 1. 3footer 2. 6 inches 3. 3 1/4 inches
(Xyphious : Sinkin' Gin since '85, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:39, Reply)

I've never had an actual cigarette
But a few years my friend, 12 years old at the time and desperate to start smoking, resorted to ripping bits from A4 sheets of paper into something resembling a cigarette and smoking that. I did some research and found out paper has some toxic additives. I told him this, and in a determined effort to preserve his health, he switched over to cigarettes.

So there you go, smoking can be good for you.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:28, Reply)

My first -
Homemade - Age 11, made out of newspaper and oak leaves. Disgusting
Real cigarette - Age 15, gone to pub, friends doing it, tried it, hated it, wondered what the fuss was about.
Spliff - Glastonbury 1999. Wasn't really my bag, smoked a few others around that time.

Now 25, love the smoking ban, pubs are so much nicer to drink in, love having healthy lungs!
( Moonraker isn't the droid you were looking for, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:20, Reply)

Where to start?
Recycling my Dad's fag butts at the age of not-a-lot (still in Primary School) in a pipe and being spectacularly sick halway through the Antiques Roadshow...this led to a period of anti-smoking that lasted a few years.

Time passes.....................

Your hero is a strapping 16. He has learned the delights of the female species, albeit in complete ignorance of their mental processes, but that's a flaw that has continued to this day. Anyway....

Now at the time the first series of Red Dwarf was on, and there was more obvious smoking being done by Herr Lister in those far off days. In a curious moment, I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about and proffed one of my Dad's Silk Cut. That'd be about 20 years ago and I'm still smoking.

Now I've quit a few times, but have come back to the naughty stuff every time there is the slightest stress or excuse going. That's because I have the willpower of a maggot. Constant nagging from Mumsie has little effect, as I'm pretty certain the booze will kill me before the fags.

However, I'm a daddy these days. I've never smoked in front of, in sight of, or remotely near my kids and never will. I don't smoke indoors full stop as I hate the smell of cigarette smoke (not cigar, pipe or some rollie baccy though). I don't smoke in the car. So what, I think, is the frigging point? Why don't you knock the booze/fags on the head and lead a nice healthy lifestyle?

Because I like the stuff. Leaving the joys of alcohol on one side, I like tobacco in most of it's forms. I like obscure brands: Sweet Afton, Woodbines, Players, Senior Service, non-filter Camels/Luckies, Gauloises, Gitanes and so forth (it also means you don't get many people nicking them, at least not more than once after they turn green). The smell of a proper old fashioned tobacconist....bliss.

However, I'm determined to have a proper mid-life crisis. Healthy eating, exercise and all that. Away with the demon drink. Get thee behind me lovely tobacco....







I feel like shit.


The odds are I might live longer but I'll be such a grumpy aggressive gitbag that someone will be paid to assassinate me, probably by my immediate family.

And it's all Red Dwarf's fault.
(osok Rebel without a clue, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:17, 3 replies)

It was maybe a month ago
and I was tempted into it by a large amount of gin, my good friend Hannah, and the promise of a little added extra ingredient.

Well...it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, it tastes ok, I guess. I was tremendously guilted though, when upon visiting my Grandfather this last weekend, a pikey arrived at his door with offers of tree surgery. However, said pikey was smoking, and my Grandad is dead set against it, after contracting (and beating) throat cancer.*
His little lecture made me feel quite small indeed.

As for that "special ingredient"...no effect, whatsoever... ^{_{except for feeling really horny.}}

*My Grandads fucking awesome. He was one of the engineering team on the Bluebird rocket car, raced motorbike and sidecars back when the sidecar was basically a board with a wheel on it, has beaten multiple heart attacks, the aforementioned throat cancer, pretty much built his own house, has a ridiculous amount of cool technology and he looks a bit like Gandalf. When I'm old, I hope I'm half the bloke he is. Which is why I'll never smoke again. So I can get old.
( Mr.Ons knows you can hear him, Earthmen., Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:15, 1 reply)

Aged thirteen...
...I hosted a sleepover. In the morning, with parental approval, we went for a healthy walk in the woods. In my pockets? Cheap French lager I'd taken from the fridge, sellotape, teabags and white A4 paper.

Standing in the mud in Epping Forest attempting to construct a fag from the above ingredients (minus the beer) wasn't particularly easy, and neither was trying to inhale the acrid smoke without getting our faces burnt. See, we hadn't quite managed to get the thing to smoulder and all the tea fell out anyway, so picture four girls passing round a flaming mess of paper and sticky tape.
Yummy.

Incidentally, 75% of those present at the time now smoke habitually, though I doubt they're trying to recapture the magic of that first puff...
(mingping, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:15, Reply)

"It's not going to suck itself!"
But touch wood, I'll be giving up as of April 1st when my mate's pregnant wife goes for her second scan.

As for my first cigarette though, that was not an enjoyable experience at all.

I was 16, so it was all legal (as I was all on the straight and narrow back then, I didn't even have any illegal mp3s). I was waiting to go home from 6th form with some friends, one of whom piped up "Piston, it's time you tried your first cigarette".

I'd never even considered the idea before, as having relatives who have died of smoking can somewhat put you off the idea. But, considering she was a rather nice-looking friend and even back then I was game to try anything once, I decided to try it.

She lit the cigarette for me, and then passed it to me. I looked at it for a few seconds, before she piped up saying "Well, it's not going to suck itself!". So, with the more irrational parts of my brain shouting down the sensible parts, I put the cigarette in my mouth, and after a second, inhaled.

I felt the smoke go into my lungs. It tasted ok, not of the ashes and poo and other vileness I'd convinced myself it would taste like. I exhaled, glad to know I wasn't missing anything, however.

I then opened my mouth to say "Actually, it's not that-" and then was rudely interrupted by a choking fit and nearly going blue in the face. I only managed to get as far as croaking "Water!" in between bouts of coughing, to my friends, who were by now laughing their arses off at their unfortunate colleague.

I didn't try smoking again for a long while after that, and even to this day wonder why I started.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:11, 2 replies)

Never really started... just smoked to look cool
I was about 9 when I had my first, it was with my younger sister (8) and her friend, we stole one of our mums fags, and went round the back of the house to smoke it.

The both suffered coughing fits, and I took a massive drag, and was absolutely fine.

I had a few more since then, but never really got addicted, I smoke weed instead. It's much better
(Maccy Divided by 0 on, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:08, Reply)

...
Last night I spent a few minutes pairing socks after they came out of the dryer. It was fascinating. Fascinating by comparison to this que...

... oh. Hang on. I've got a red-unread in my inbox. I'm pretty sure that that will be interesting.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:07, 4 replies)

It was always going to come down to this.
From Morocco I had tracked him across North Africa, I missed him by minutes in Algiers (the fire embers were still warm) and I pushed all night through Tunisia following a bad lead and a cold trail. Finally I caught up with him in Libya near the Egyptian border. I knew it was never going to be easy, I was on his territory and he could travel for days without food and water, not a bad trick when you make the desert your home. We faced each other, miles and miles of sand dunes the only witness to our final endgame. He had the upper hand as he had his back to the setting sun, and of course, he had those damn eyelids that filtered out the sand and grit that was so cruelly blurring my vision. He went for his piece, I went for mine, two shots rang out…I staggered, the bullet had grazed my temple. He stood there, all two metres of him from hump to ground, staring at me with those big eyes, and then fifteen hundred pounds of dromedary crashed into the sand. I had smoked my first Camel.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:07, Reply)

Rocky IV
Back in the (far off) day me and my little friends went to see Rocky IV as it appeared in the local Roxie (name changed to protect the guilty) We ran up and down church towers lobbing stink bombs into the market below, sprayed huge amounts of fart spray around in the queue outside the Picture Palais (name changed again to protect some other guilty people) and generally had a cracking good time as only 11 year olds can do. After screaming "Rocky Rocky" until our throats collapsed we mooched around the sunny streets of Bamcridge looking for more interesting stuff to do. And then Knobby Knobs popped into a newsagent and returned with a tin of Tom Thumb cigars and a box of swan vestas. We all lit up. Those goddammed pussies.... I had to smoke all of those cigars myself after the other four suffered coughing fits like you wouldn't belive. After that it was easy...roll ups during school lunch hour, Rothmans at the weekends until the age of 30 when I gave up and suffered from six weeks of cold sweats and nightmares until my body re-adjusted. Bloody midgets, they ruined my breathe for years.
(godisdove I like cheese, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 11:02, Reply)

my last cigarette
I used to love smoking. Never heavily, but just a few rollies a day. I gave up for a few years out of guilt, but then thought 'sod this' and went back to it.

But then that fateful day came. I was seriously behind with some website work for a really important customer, so I'd worked all through the day and night, two days running. By this time I was feeling mighty odd. I decided that I deserved a break, and made myself a black coffee and a rollie and went outside to enjoy the early morning sunshine.

I took a slurp of the coffee, took a drag on the rollie and then just keeled over. I collapsed into a heap, smashing the coffee cup on the way down. I had to crawl back into the house, and I felt incredibly rough.

And from that day I haven't been able to smoke tobacco. I've tried, but it just makes me feel sick and 'orrible.

So there you go. As for length - I can smoke about 5mm before giving up.
(teasus likes tea, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:51, Reply)

O/T - mini creme eggs
I don't have a smoking story cos I don't smoke so thought I would post this instead.

I'm leaving here next week and one of my colleagues has just given me a tube of mini Creme Eggs as a goodbye present - what a poppet.

However I'm trying very hard to shift the lard so I won't be eating them but I'll have to take them home so she won't be offended.

So I thought I might give them away, by hiding them in the old cemetery opposite my flat (it's the sort of very very old cemetery everyone tracks through) for lucky passers-by to find.

If you, dear reader, found a tiny mini-egg with a nice note attached (with a cocktail stick, so it looks like a little egg-boat) saying If You Enjoy This Easter Treat, Please Do Something Nice for Someone Else Today, would you:
a. Be a bit freaked and leave it alone in case Dom Joly jumps out at you with a film crew?
b. Do as it says?
or c. Gobble it up and then start looking for others?

Answers on a postcard please, this qotw is really crap.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:51, 25 replies)

My first and only
was a joint fashioned from a dissected Marlboro and some 'parrot seed' marijuana. After a few deep inhalations, I became totally immobile for around two hours, then threw up and had a headache for two days afterwards.

*Looks at watch. Waits for next Thursday*
(frankspencer, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:50, Reply)

Early starter
I smoked my first cigarette in the summer holidays between junior school and high school. So would have been 11 years old. People are always shocked when they hear when I first smoked. Any one here start earlier?

BTW, congrats on yet another dull QOTW.

Length? You wouldn't believe it.
(hutchers, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:49, Reply)

A Dim And Distant Memory
In the dim and distant past I worked for a firm of solicitors as the lowest of the low. All the shittiest jobs were mine. Linking correspondence to files, sorting out paperclips that had become entangled you know the sort of dross. One of the partners was a lazy twunt at the best of times and frequently made my life hell by failing to put stuff out for filing and then demanding I find files etc.

Eventually the other partners got sick of him and he was asked to piss off (or whatever it is solicitors do to other errant solicitors). After he had left it was discovered he had been keeping a large bag of correspondence hidden away. Yes, you've guessed it. Muggins was given the job of tidying it all away and ensuring the files were given to the correct partners.

That, friends, was my first sack o'writs.

Length? Only when mischievous.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:43, Reply)

First spliff = hash cookies.
Buckle yourselves in folks, this is going to be a long one.

We were in the first year of Uni, living in halls of residence, and I'd bought some cookie mix to make some nice, wholesome Christmas cookies. My mates had other ideas, and bough a quarter of an ounce of hash, laced with ketamine, and added it to the mix. This was going to be a learning experience for the lot of us.

After turning to gas mark five and leaving to bake for the alloted time, we retrieved our spiked baked goods, and decorated them with red icing, leaving them to cool for a while, before returning to my room to munch in peace. My best mate at the time, Alex, decided to have the first one, and declared them to be quite tasty, but with a slight bitter aftertaste. Great! We all piled in...

Some time later, Alex nips off to the loo, and doesn't come back for ages. Just as we're starting to worry, he turns up again, pale and drawn looking, like he's seen a Roy 'Chubby' Brown video or something, and he begins to explain:

"I went to the loo and I was fine, then I turned round to wash my hands, and as I looked in the mirror it was like my face wasn't real. It was moving around really weirdly, and it was really dark. I think I want to go to hospital, I don't feel well."

He'd had one cookie. By this point, I'd eaten a whopping six. Oh fuck.

So, we persaude a mate with a car to drive us to Lewisham General, and we sit in the waiting room while he tries to persuade me that it's going to kick in for me soon, and I've really got to see someone too or he doesn't know what'll happenandohmygodI'msofuckingscaredthisisallreallyunreal

While I'm still stone cold sober, thinking what a twat he is, he goes in to see the doc, taking said other mate with him - at which point the horizon tilts by 45 degrees and I'm left on my own, surrounded by sick people, clinging to the arm of the chair so I don't fall off it and into the side of the reception desk ten feet away... Then a guy gets pushed past in a wheelchair. Sober, I'd think he was just slumped and THAT'S why I couldn't see his head... but in this state?

Thankfully, the doc calls me in, and I decide that I'm not going to look like Alex, I'm going to play it cool and ride the waves of terror and try and enjoy this thing. So he takes my pulse (150 relaxed and breathing slowly!!!!), has a look and says to me in a thick Carribean accent:

"What de hell ye wan go eatin' it fwa? Why ye no jus' smoke it like everyone else ha?"

Ace. I like this guy. Obviously we're both fine and he sends us packing back to halls. By the time we get back Alex is back to normal, and chatting away happily about how weird it all was. Another of our mates who'd had a couple of cookies in the meantime was giggling like a loon but otherwise fine. I, meanwhile was walking the decks of a particularly shabby cruise liner in a raging ocean storm and the world around me swayed, pitched and awed...

My swaying pitching nightmare lasted for THREE BASTARD DAYS. When I woke up on the third day, I briefly thought it was finally over, then I got out of bed and it started again. THREE. DAYS.

It was awesome.
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:35, 3 replies)

Just remembered this one
I'm an occaasional cigar smoker, I love the relaxation that you get from a big chunk of good tobacco that you just don't get from a measly cigarette.

But anyway, picture the scene, I'm 18, sitting in a pub, showing off my manly goatee, toking on a nice fat panatella (the only cigars they had in there), when this girl comes over to me. She's hot, smoking hot, crawl through a river of shit and broken glass naked with your eyes and mouth wide open just to be near her hot, and she's sitting right next to me.
Her steely blue eyes fix straight on mine, she introduces herself, then utters the immortal line, 'Can I show you how to smoke that properly?' and she takes the cigar from me.
I'm speechless as she slowly places it between her gorgeous, full, pouting lips, and sucks lightly on the tip, not taking her eyes off me for a second. She hands the cigar back, smiling suggestively as a thin trickle of smoke danced over her top lip.

Now obviously I wanted her, badly, and that's the end of the smoking part of this story, but I feel the need to go on, there was so much more to this girl.
She wasn't tall, nor did she have the best body in the world, she was just hot, there was just something unmistakably attractive about her. She was blonde, not exactly dressed like a slut, not really my type, yet I knew I wanted her.
During the course of the evening she told me that she was a fashion student, and had actually designed the top she was wearing. It was just a low-cut white top, it didn't look like anything special, until she asked me to press the small gap between the top of her breasts. I duly complied, and to my sheer astonishment a tiny bulb in her top lit up her cleavage. This girl was a genius.

"I'm off my face on E," she said, "Do you fancy a blow job?"

And that dear readers, is how I discovered the true meaning of the term fuckbuddy. She was absolute filth. Oh, and something about smoking too.

So, Faye from the Bears, I salute you.
God bless you, and all those who sail in you.

*takes a minute of silent reflection on past days of glory*
(tiger blood and Adonis DNA, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:30, Reply)

My first
Was a cigar. Don't think I got it quite right though....


Monica.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:23, 7 replies)

Not me but my friend
Says she has to smoke because the government keeps telling her she has to have her "five a day"...
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:22, Reply)

And now, for the lecture
One of my favourite ever pieces of research happened in America a few years back. Concerned at the escalating levels of mental illness among the population, a university decided to conduct some research into what the most effective-stress buster was. A few years, and a good few thousand dollars later, the researchers proudly revealed the fruits of their labours.

Yep, the best stress buster ever invented, is, apparently, a beer and a smoke.

And, while I’m on, I KNOW that smoking is bad for me, I KNOW it costs a fortune (in the UK anyway), and I KNOW it’s a filthy habit that makes my clothes stink. But, consider this:

I smoke. I drink probably more than is good for me, eat red meat, and don’t do a lot of exercise – I have a job that currently involves (a) long-ish hours, and (b) me sitting on my arse a lot, so going to the gym after I get in is the last thing on my mind. I just want to relax.

My ex wife, on the other hand, is a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks in moderation, and is a health nut – gym four times a week kind of gal.

I’m not the one who has just been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour and probably won’t live much beyond my 40th…
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:14, 2 replies)

A love story
For 16 years I've been chasing the feeling of that first nicotine hit. My first was Old Holborn. I was working as a fisheries assistant for a large reservoir in the south. Every morning I'd be out on a boat chucking pellets in the trout cages and the rest of the day would be spent with the rollie smoking grounds manager, bumbling around in a Defender, chopping down trees etc etc. My dream job (instead of working in this damn office). One day I pinched one of his many half full packets of Old Holborn from the 4X4 and sneaked it off home.

Getting home before my parents, I went around the back of the house, carefully looking and listening to make sure none of the neighbours could dob me in, because in those days everyone knew who your parents were, even strangers. Unfortunately I hadn't pinched any papers, so I used a brown sandwich bag from my mums cooking drawer, cut to size.

I remember opening the packet and inhaling the sweet, sweet smell of the sticky tobacco. I rolled what I can best describe as a rather joint size, shabby, brown roll-up. I lit it with a Bryant & May safety match from my own little hidden pyro stash. I inhaled. I collapsed backward against the wall and slid down it in absolute ecstasy as the pleasant dizziness took over my head. Until I discovered weed and sex, it was the best feeling I'd ever felt. From that point on I was a smoker.

To this day I'm convinced there was maybe a little something extra in that packet, something the grounds manager maybe grew himself.

I'm now 30 and my parents only found out I smoke 3 years ago. They've offered to pay for all sorts to get me off it. Hypnotherapy, patches, acupuncture etc etc. But the fact is, I love it. I enjoy smoking. If I wanted to stop, I would try myself. And until I've rediscovered that first nicotine hit again, I'm not likely to stop.

Any other smokers remember trying to buy cigs when you were 15 but had received your N.I. card which you were only supposed to get at 16? Or wearing your dads best leather jacket to look that tiny bit older. 10 Red Stripe for 99p?
(Big Smurf Brush me daddy-O, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:11, Reply)

Let's get it over with
What a crap QOTW. Can we just cut to next Wednesday?

I got soaked to the skin going to church parade with the Scouts when I was 11. That was my first soggy rite.

I saw a french policeman hold up a train in Germany when I was 12. That was my first Zug arrete.

I was accosted by an amiable Liverpudlian drunk when I was 13. That was my first sick "a'reet?".

I iced a cake to look like my face when I was 14. That was my first sugarhead.

I broke the spine of a paperback when I was 15. Saggy read.

Given a parsnip by David Bowie. 16. Ziggy root.

Coach tour of pensioners on the A1. 17. Saga road.

Shot by the ex-king of Albania in an archery competition. 18. Zog arrowed.

SOMEBODY HELP ME! STOP THIS MADNESS NOW!
(ubergeekian, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 10:04, 8 replies)

One of my earliest memories
I was born in November '76, my brother in July '79. My earliest memories, therefore, coincide with the last months of my mother's pregnancy and my brother's birth. Let's call my brother "Amino", because amino acids are small enzymes - or as near as makes no difference for the sake of the joke.

July 1st 1979 was a sunny day. I guess Amino must just have been born, because I was at the grandparents' house, eating loganberries off the cane and playing with Rakky, the cat, in the garden while my father and grandfather had a celebratory cigar.

I was curious, and Dad wanted to share the celebration. A look of devilment made across his brow as he reached out his hand to offer me, the 2-years-and-8-months-old fruit of his loins (ugh!), his smoke. At least now he had a replacement if it all went wrong...





Oh, for fuck's sake. Of course he didn't. The first two paragraphs are true. As for the rest: I just don't have a story to tell this week. Rakky the cat, incidentally, never forgot her password.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 9:55, 1 reply)