Smoke and Mirrors

At the Roller Disco in the Parish Hall, there wasn’t  a smell of smoke.

Yet. 

Friends of mine were looking for a match.

“My arse  and your face ” said one wag beating the old line to death.

“Seriously, lads, has anyone a light?”

Someone always had a damp box of matches in their Donkey -Jacket  pocket. 

 Or a torn off piece of the scarlet sand paper that would suffice.

 Only an eegit would try the brown stuff. 

The Hard Chaws bought their fags singly from Terrys Shop opposite the school, a no- brainer.

 They struck safety matches off walls, or the tip of a shoe, or the zip on the fork of their turned up jeans. They hockered and spat, and smoked the fag cupped between the thumb and first finger, the better to get a good drag.

Stop Horsing it, lave us a dogger will ya, fecks sake they would cry in anguish.

Save us the butt will ya?

Smoking back then did not carry quite the stigma it does now.

 Oh, the days of an arched eyebrowed heroine in a black and white movie, dropping one ringlet over a suggestive eye while she waited for a light, were long gone. The romance and delusion of smoking as sexy   however, was nearing its end. Marlboro Man was getting ready to hang up his Stetson and sue. The death knell had not quite sounded but you could hear the ominous reverb of the bell.

Meanwhile, the interviewers and guests were still smoking on all the chat shows. The bank tellers in Spain would exhale a plume of Ducados down each nostril while they changed your pounds for pesetas. The Irish children were smoking in the streets. Every house in the country had about 19 ashtrays in it, some for using, some not.

 Some held paper clips and bus tickets and miraculous medals and memory cards.

 Some held the butts of cigars or pipe cleaners and coins.

 Some held the memory of the countless fags stubbed out in them by a Peggy Dell that would open pups eyes. I remember a child in school wearing a badge that said – Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray – she went on to have a  40 a day habit.

 Bless.

In London as a pub landlady, I cleaned the ashtrays with a paint brush hanging on a nail under the counter. Woe betide the errant customer who got them wet, or God Forbid put Chun Gum in them.

 In Ireland back then there were only 2 types of cigarette in the whole country, one in a red pack, and one in green.

Major delivered a kick like a mule from the first pull and left you bent double and gasping.

Carrolls was for  weaklings.

We smoked at  the Bingo, in the pub, on the buses, on planes,  trains, and automobiles with the windows closed against the perishing rain, swimming pools, funfairs and Banks . We  expectorated, and thus decorated the paths and the streets.  Every Irish pub counter had about 80 packets of Major on it any one time. The green box with it’s little gold dividers separating one pile of ten from another identical.

 Men lit their major with a match before they sang “Spancil Hill” or “The Rocks of Bawn  “, the burst of sulphur  preceeding the noble call.

 My favourite smell in the world is dark roasting coffee and Cuban cigars blending in a heady aroma. 

I did not light my first cigarette till I was in my late 20’s, having spent all the years before as a non smoker, who never had a light or a dogger.

I regret it still.

We gave each other presents of 40 fags with a ribbon on, and brought back thousands duty free, stuffing them into suitcases and whistling as we walked through customs. 

Now due to the zero tolerance for smokers which sees people look as askance at someone lighting up as shooting up, and the parade of injuries and afflictions displayed on the boxes, I have resigned myself to the Vaper – or e cigarette as it is becoming known.  Apart from the day it broke in half and I was reduced to bumming one from a woman on the street. 

Dear reader, I attach the photo for your delectation and scrutiny and the subsequent  trip down memory lane that inspired this piece.

Pass me my inhaler.

Michelle Dooley Mahon 27th July 2013.