It's not cool and sadly, it won't impress your friends. Or your Mother...
I was a spectacularly uncool adolescent (who has morphed seamlessly into an equally uncool adult) and thus the whole “smoking’s cool – it will impress your friends and the boys will think you’re sexy” was pretty much aimed directly at me.

So I bought a single Benson and Hedges for 10p down the newsagents (showing my age a bit here), lit up and thus began a love affair which has lasted for 15 years, on and off. Well, if by love I mean that the object of my desire makes me throw up, get irritable, smell like crap and feel awful first thing in the morning, but so, so much better after a beer, then yes, a love affair it is. Actually, come to think of it….

Aged about 19, I was sat in the hairdressers, (in those unenlightened times where it was perfectly fine to spark up while having the latest perm / flock of seagulls sweep / quiff applied to one’s barnet) and I decided to have a smoke. I stuck my head down, lit up and sat back up to see myself in the mirror, taking a good drag on my cancer stick.

And my mother stood directly behind me.

My mother does not smoke. My mother’s father died of a smoking related heart attack aged 45. My mother is unaware of my filthy habit… Till now.

Her first words were “How long have you been smoking for?”

Like a total utter chippy fucking 19 year old, instead of either lying, crying or apologizing, I took another drag and responded…

“Not long, I’ve only just lit it.”

My mother turned on her heel and left and that day I learnt a) that my mother has a surprising temper for such an outwardly calm lady and b) that I’m a fuckwit.

Anyway, I’ve had a couple of attempts to quit, one lasted a good 18 months, I’m now a few months into another, spurred on by an aggressive resident at my local clinic who recited a litany of horror stories of pulmonary embolisms and necrotic lungs in women my age, that I was finally forced to sit up and take notice.

If I could go back, Bill and Ted style to the teenage Rakky and tell her two things they would be one, to never, ever start smoking in the first place and two, don’t piss your mother off.


And maybe a third thing. That haircut I was having? Don't. Just don't...
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Thu 20 Mar 2008, 21:45, Reply)