Something tells me the new cigarette is just around the corner
Whatever it was, I remember all the details. The shopkeeper had a fierce hairy nose. I’m talking heroically hairy. The kind of ould lad hair-sprouting that is only to be admired. If the man is a bachelor or has a spouse that has given up telling him, if he is left to his own crevices as it were, it can seem as if all the hair has migrated from top of his head to his nostril or the door of the ear. The shop was dark as shops used to be in those days. Before big windows and deli counters and exciting media partnerships with THE COMPETITIVE HEALTH TV programme. The kind of shop that that a dust on the Chomps or a white coating on the Dairy Milks that tasted manky, like American chocolate. The counter was on the right as you went in. And underneath the right hand side of that counter was a box of golf-ball chewing gum. Still the most uncompromising of all the chewing gums, the golf ball. They gave you lock-jaw. Maybe it was aspirational. No one played golf then except the doctor and someone from the Chamber of Commerce. But we cared not for golf because there were no golf ball ching-gums in that box. Instead it held fags. 12p each. That’s where so many smokers started. Local independent shopkeepers, thoughtfully opening the 10-boxes and selling them one by one. In a way it was the most avuncular of illegal dealing.
Recently I saw some teenagers loitering in a playground. I was shepherding a baby around which in a playground is not unlike being a butler. An adult who is invisible but because of a job he does granted exclusive access to an inner sanctum. So the teenagers ignored me and talked about stuff that teenagers talk about: who was taking drugs and
accusing each other of being a frigid.
But the thing that struck me is that not one of the teenagers were smoking. I know there have been health campaigns, awareness-raising and clampdowns on selling without ID but surely some of the reason is the huge reduction in the number of underage shops that would sell tequila to toddlers if they had a note from their mam. Everywhere is part of a chain now that has a ‘strong corporate social responsibility strand’ and is ‘committed to engaging closely with the community at a grass roots level’ and you need an Age Card to buy cigarettes but no ID at all to eat yourself onto afternoon television with a sausage roll problem.
Smoking prevalence in Ireland is one of the lowest in the EU which kind of seems surprising given our impression of our own health but you understand it when you go abroad and all these subtitle-film looking people are smoking away to beat the band. Although not eating sausage rolls.
There’s no doubt the smoking is an industry that just needs to end. It kills people, hoovers up water and the land could be used for growing chickpeas or kidney beans.
But what will we replace it with? Hopefully we’ll actually become healthier and it’ll be triathlons and pointless races through bogs when there was a perfectly good road nearby.
But are we, deep down, as addictive as ever? Drink will always play the same role in society but what will happen when smoking is just the preserve of a few stone mad hoors and a few doubtful vapers realising they look like they’re sucking on an empty Bic? What will take smoking’s place?
Maybe it’ll be gambling. For some reason no one seems to mind gambling firms sponsoring absolutely everything. Or is it smart phones or computer games but none of those are about ‘consuming’ something the way fags were.
But something tells me the new cigarette is just around the corner. Hiding in the long grass next to the golf-balls.
