I smoked
cigarettes for a week and a pipe for one evening.
The cigarettes
were Peter Stuyvesant, filter, king size, “rich choice tobaccos”,
the brand name in
goldish letters against a white background. I remember
a blue label seal
on top of the packet. It was a stylish brand and smoking was
as cool as cool
could be as me and Sean Allison, sauntered around Carnlough,
just a couple of
young guys on holiday,
make that a couple
of classy dudes on vacation.
After a week, we
couldn’t be bothered. We gave up
smoking.
The pipe? Ah, the
auld man’s dummy, as someone said, tempting
to a kid of ten or
eleven. There it was, where my brother had left it,
on the hearth. I
was in on my own. I looked at it and a dare sounded.
I had seen a man
called Maigret on TV. He needed a pipe to solve crimes.
I needed a pipe to
be a bigger boy. I lifted it, I put the stem in my mouth,
I sucked and sucked
and sucked. I attempted to light it.
Four matches
later, smoke.
More sucking and
sucking and sucking until my legs went weak,
my stomach
churned, my eyes rolled and the room became rubber,
walls and ceiling
bending as I staggered to the toilet.
Four steps later,
boke.
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