Trash the ash.

I smoked my first cigarette when I was twelve. I'd pinched it from one of my parents. They both smoked, though they both gave up a few years later. I bought my first packet of cigarettes when I was fourteen: ten Carroll's. Sooner or later I settled on Major as my brand of choice - it was a guy thing. Major were the hard man's cigarette. Deceptively mild tasting but strong as fuck. I got a weekend job in a local hotel (okay it was this place) when I was fifteen. We used to raid the night porter's stash for cigarettes and puff away on our breaks.

An older guy in school taught me how to blow smoke rings. Before we discovered the pub, cigarettes were the social lubricant. That was how you bonded with your friends at break time.

There were two types of people in the world: smokers and non-smokers. There was nothing wrong with non-smokers, of course. They just had less in common with us. They were, quite frankly, missing out on one of the great pleasures of life.

Cigarettes went well with everything. They took away that bloated feeling after a heavy meal. They were the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea or coffee. Once we got a little older, we realised that cigarettes were also custom made for the pub. You'd take out your packet and leave it out next to your drink. In the same way that people bought rounds of drinks in turn, we also adopted the practise of "flashing the ash" - offering your cigs around to the general company, in the hope that everyone else would do the same when it came their turn.

Cigarettes went with beer, and they went with hash as well. Break up the ciggy, crumble in some hash, roll it all up in some papers and Pink Floyd or The Mighty Diamonds or The Cure would sound better. Sooner or later, we discovered that cigarettes went with sex as well as drugs and rock and roll. The shared cigarette after lovemaking was the utmost in intimacy, an act of mutual trust.

I gave them up for the better part of a year when I was in college. No cold turkey, no particular strategy, no patches or vile-tasting gum: I simply had no money and couldn't afford to smoke. After a couple of weeks, I began to feel the benefits. I'd been running and exercising and found I could get more out of it. I enjoyed food more. I enjoyed spending time with my (non-smoking) girlfriend more. I could sing better. I had more energy.

Then one day, before an exam, a friend offered me a cigarette. I was pretty nervous so I accepted. Before I knew it, I was back to my usual ration of ten to fifteen a day, as if the past year had never happened.

And that's been pretty much it ever since. I developed a preference for rolling my own; roll-ups weren't as full of chemicals and crap. I always thought it was funny when I'd produce the tobacco and papers in company with other smokers and they would offer me their "ready-mades", pitying me, as if rolling your own was a sign of poverty or embarrassingly plebeian. "Here, have a real cigarette," they would say, as though something made in a factory and dosed up with chemicals was more "real" than something you made yourself out of the raw materials.

I've always tried to maintain a reasonable level of fitness. Cycling, yoga, swimming, doing light weights. Whenever I went for a chest x-ray, my doctor would always tell me I had a good chest for a smoker. A couple of years ago they banned smoking in pubs where I live. I didn't mind. It even introduced a new social dimension. We'd head out in twos or threes for a puff. There'd be occasion to chat, to bond with other smokers. To get a bit of fresh air. To pull out the phone and grab silly pictures, viz:


We'd gravitate towards pubs that provided outdoor smoking areas with decent heat and shelter. Besides, the pubs were tidier now and didn't smell so bad.

And then I woke up one day and realised that cigarettes were running my life. What was once one of life's pleasures had become a compulsion. Fuck it: an addiction. Something that was ruining my health and compromising my will. Something that could make me cough so hard my guts would wrench, and then light up again straight afterward.

Reg is had been one of my smoke buddies. We work in the same place, and we meet up most Fridays for a few pints of the black stuff after work. We go out in tandem for ciggies. Well, we used to. Last autumn Reg got himself a nicotine inhaler and managed to wean himself off the cigarettes slowly but surely. And he hasn't gone near tobacco since. His life is demonstrably better. His wife has to find something else to nag him about. He doesn't feel guilty about nipping out for a cig when he should be playing with his kids.

Today is Ash Wednesday. I'm not particularly religious, but it's also National Non Smoking Day in this part of the world. I've said to Reg, as I've said to other friends trying to give up smoking, that whenever I see a friend giving up smoking, I feel exactly the same way as the inmates in the prison yard feel when they see someone making a break for the perimeter, trying to scale the fence even though guard dogs are nipping at their heels and heavy blokes in uniforms are taking potshots at them. I'm cheering them on. I'm hoping they make it.

And today, like Steve McQueen, Papillon, The Count Ov Minty Crusto, the fellas in Down By Law and all the rest of them, I'm making my bid for freedom.

I cannot tell a lie: I smoked two cigarettes this morning. Before I'd had anything to eat or even a cup of tea. I coughed myself silly. Then I threw out the rest of the fucking things. When break time comes around, I'm going down the street to the chemist and buying myself an inhaler. That's it.

So maybe this new blog of mine finally has a purpose after all: a chance to chronicle my escape from the nicotine prison. So be it.

Earlier I mentioned the older guy in school who taught me how to blow smoke rings. His name was Liam and he had the same last name as me. Everyone assumed we were related, though we weren't. He was a decent guy, and a very talented musician and actor.

Liam died of cancer before he was thirty. This post, and this desperate attempt to climb over the prison wall, is dedicated to him.