Smokes and Mirrors
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday October 19, 2013

Smoking was my religion once. I worshipped at the altar of Benson and Hedges. I was convinced that slim gold box had a certain prestige that would rub off on me. It didn’t but I kept smoking anyway. That was until I discovered Sobranie cocktail cigarettes and was smitten with the idea of matching my lavender dress to my lavender cigarette.

In the 80’s, Sobranies had gold filters and came in rainbow colours like a (flammable) box of crayons. At 19, a girlfriend and I, going to a ball, split our waitressing money to buy a pack so she could match the turquoise Sobranies to her eyes. I thought those coloured cigarettes gave me what the French call panache: a combination of charisma and reckless courage. But all they really gave me were head spins and a throat made of sandpaper.

I was sure it was the tobacco haze that gave smokers their air of worldly sophistication. I desperately wanted membership to their club. At parties, the non-smokers stayed warm (and dull) inside, while the smokers gathered in conspiratorial huddles on the veranda, laughing at their in-jokes and admiring each other’s magnetic personalities.

Inhaling burnt leaves was fundamentally unpleasant but I persevered, fearful of being labelled a wowser. Before long, I discovered a lit cigarette became a smoke signal luring interesting people my way. “Got a light?” was the password to smoking solidarity between strangers. No matter where we came from, we had our addiction in common.

I thought boys liked girls who smoked. One night at the pub, I watched a girl sidle up to a group of blokes. She leaned in provocatively, dangling an unlit cigarette between her ballerina fingers. The conversation evaporated. Those four lads couldn’t extract their lighters fast enough. Four Zippos burst into life as their owners jostled to anoint the young lady. When I passed in front of her ten minutes later I realised her male entourage was more enthralled by her high beams and low singlet than by her smoking prowess.

Radio bred serious smokers. Aged 21, my first newsroom was a glassed cage where plumes of smoke spiralled from ashtrays like genies from lanterns. Old hands smoked while they read the news – cigarette in one hand, script in the other.  The new girl-cadet decided smoking might give her some journalistic cachet. I joined the A-grade smokers and lit up at 6am. By the end of a breakfast shift, our overflowing ashtrays were ranked in order of effort. My boss, Murray Dickson, always beat me by a packet.

Back then, choosing a brand was like choosing a footy team: would it be Dunhills, Alpines or Kents? No woman ever smoked Camels. No man smoked menthols. A man’s man smoked Marlboro Reds, Peter Stuyvesants or rolled his own, one-handed, while driving a semi-trailer. Brickies dragged on their Winnie Blues and wolf-whistled from scaffolding. (I felt indignant and self-conscious, but if it happened tomorrow, I’d be thrilled).

No-one told me I could betray my brand without being charged with treason. I worked out that I could smoke John Player Specials one week and Sterling Extra Milds the next. In London, I joined the pallid crowd and bought Marlboro Lights. In the early 90’s I settled on Benson & Hedges and dedicated myself to a decade of nicotine addiction.

At family dinners, I thought I could slip outside for a dozen quick puffs and no-one would notice. I’d bury the stub in the potted palm by Mum’s front door. Then I’d sneak into the bathroom and perform a surgical hand scrub before brushing my teeth and rejoining the table. I thought a smear of toothpaste could mask the stench of tobacco embedded in my clothes and hair. Who did I fool? Just me. How on earth did non-smokers put up with us?

I can remember when pop-out ashtrays were built into seats on buses, in cinemas and on planes. What an outcry there was when gutsy politicians banned smoking in pubs and restaurants! But for me, smoking had become robotic. I despised my foul habit but it owned me. One by one, friends were giving up but I was the straggler who deluded herself by declaring she still enjoyed it.

Once, on an Air France flight in 1997, I wandered through the ash-coloured curtains into the smoking section. I found myself sandwiched between four Japanese chain-smokers while I waited for the loo. Our toes almost touching, they exhaled their smoke over each others’ shoulders. No-one spoke. Stale fumes thickened the air, but those men stood puffing away for most of the flight. I realised I didn’t even need to light up. I could just inhale.

Many times I tried and failed to quit. Common sense and willpower eventually triumphed over my 10-a-day stupidity. (On weekends, I didn’t count). Giving up was just as well, really because ou recall that potted palm outside Mum’s front door? The one I liked to use as an ashtray?

It died.