Like Burton & Taylor or Anthony & Cleopatra
myself and Lady Nicotine have had a turbulent, tempestous on/off relationship over the past 16 years or so.

My first seduction by Lady Nicotine was slow, and sly, I was a mere youth of 14, bright eyed, bushy tailed and heavily into my 60's music (Beatles/Floyd/hendrix etc) and my friends would have parties at a mates house, and these rolled up things that looked like cigarettes but smelt sweeter would be passed round, ah the herb, the sweet sweet herb, with just a smidgen of nicotine hidden in there to lull the unsuspecting cosmic traveller.

So i continues my dual existance paperboy by day, toker by night, sneaking out in the evening on a bike ride to the local picnic area near here(which is probably also used by doggers)and me and my pals would listen to music and smoke away those lazy. hazy summer evenings which never seem to end when your 14 and stoned.

The Lady was teasing me, but she hadn't got my heart not yet. As time when by and days grew shorter, I ended up working in a supermarket where everyone smoked, you opened the door to the canteen and were hit by a wall of smoke, and did I give in? did she have me in her grasp? No.

It wasn't until I was in my second term of my first year at Uni that I became a proper smoker, the first term was lost to me in a haze of dope smoke, alcohol and unsuitable and unmemorable women as one party flowed into another party until they all became just one giant cosmic party that never stopped. We had exams, we needed to pass so we didn't end up back at home reliquinshing the new found freedom we'd fought so hard to aquire, and so as brothers we all swore off the dreaded weed.

And the Lady pounced, she had teased me, seduced me slowly with her presence, and now at the end of the party and in the taxi home her lips and mine entwinned and she gave me her smoky kiss and made me hers.

In the end I left this lair of bacchanalian excess at the end of the first year, no longer a boy, but now a man, a man who needed two marlborough lights and a cup of strong coffee before he could face the day.

And so back home, my excesses curbed due to a combination of lack of income, and parental guidance I hid my cigs and invested in mints, my furtive smokes done on the back of buses between here and Sheffield where I had returned, back when smoking on the back of buses was big and hard and still allowed!

I was also working at a Motorway service station where not only was smoking encouraged, it was compulsory. So I waited, and cleaned and studied and smoked, the lady keeping me company and rewarding my loyalty with her smoky kisses, the yellow of my fingers atestament to her touch, the cough in the morning a sign of our love affair.

Suddenly tho' I got bored with the cigs, they looked so common, so cheap, my beautiful lady had gone from being exotic, mysterious, seductive, to being nothing more than a common whore, with a wiggle, a pout and a cheap come on. So we parted, my tastes seduced by a more exotic cousin.

So instead of cigs it was cigars, the slim little cubans in their metal tin made having a smoke an event, a ritual, not just something to do with the mouth whilst waiting for dinner.

It was like your birthday and christmas rolled into one, you could pause for dramatic effect, take the cigar out of the box, tap it. Smell it, ahhh nothing beats the smell of a good cigar, if you were drinking at the time (Port or Brandy..always port or brandy) you could swill the glass, then light the cigar with your zippo, and relax as you savoured the smoky taste, swilling it round your mouth like the finest of wines, before slowly exhaling.

The difference between the joint, the cigarette and the cigar like those between the street corner crack whores, the escorts in the back of a newspaper, and the finest courtesans.

Once you have tasted champagne would you ever return to meths?

But then C came along, she was real, she was cute, she was sexy, she was mine, and she disliked smoking, so without ceremony, without a decree absolute and without a pause for thought I stopped. I finished, i quit, all for the love of a woman who I ended up treating badly and who I never deserved.

She suspected me of cheating, and yes I was and not just with Lady Nicotine who had returned to my life, or had I returned to her like the moth to the flame?

I stopped, I started, I quit sober, and would wake up after drunken nights with no memory or what happened, occasionally a strange girl in my bed, a pack of cigs on the side.

The days of recovery take longer, the throat hurts more, the smoking ban ironically made me smoke more initially as it was either stay inside on your own whilst people smoked, or join the crowd or cold smokers in the temple of worship to our Lady Nicotine.
Cigarettes cost more, so I buy packs of ten and pretend I don't smoke anymore.

And like the girl in the pub who you won't sleep with when sober, but you take home when its getting past midnight, you're on your own and going back to a cold house fills you full of fear, and the lonliness becomes too much to bear, you know it'll happen again and again.

And now, as I write this I have no cigs in the house, I may open a nice bottle of wine, and know that whilst I say I have finished with Lady Nicotine I am sure that she hasn't finished with me.....
(Lord Monkey of Yorkshire,OBE killed a gipsy on...., Fri 21 Mar 2008, 21:23, Reply)