FERRY RIDE TO ADDICTION

Yesterday’s entry took me back to when I was a boy (slightly after Noah). To the time when my mate Terry and I started smoking.

I must have been about 13, Terry a bit younger. We would pool our money and buy five Woodbines (either off an older boy, or get the older boy to buy them), and sneak an illicit smoke in the alleyway between two rows of houses a few hundred yards from school.

Near the end of the alleyway was our ‘humidor’ – a gap in a red-brick wall concealed by a loose half brick. We would leave a long dog end for further smoking on the way home, or a short one to be recycled eventually into a home-made roll-up.

We didn’t smoke many – maybe that five between us in a week. But when I was 16 I went on a school exchange trip to Germany on my own. I was young, I was full of bravado but also full of nerves venturing into Europe on my own. I was also on a ferry for the first time, and it was going up and down like a gigolo’s arse, so I bought a whole packet of duty-frees. Twenty little soothers.

In Germany I bought some more, and then some more duty-frees on the way back. I returned home speaking pretty good German and smoking like an incinerator.

I was hooked. Bugger.

Happy days, though.