Smoking used to be cool. Mayans got in contact with the Gods by tripping on tobacco 1500 years ago. The explorer Rodrigo de Jerez was grassed up by his neighbours and imprisoned for 7 years by the Spanish Inquisition just for having a puff outside his house, which is much more glamorous than modern day pop star Pete Doherty getting his collar slightly felt by the rozzers for Heroin abuse. Movie stars like Heburn and Bogart used to light up before getting hold of the opposite sex. Only squares hated tobacco; Queen Victoria, Surgeon Generals, Adolf Hitler and the Swiss.
Nowadays, smoking has a terrible image. Everyone hates it, including the hunched wretches standing outside office buildings in all weathers, begrudgingly drawing breath on their toxic terminus. The sad sallow faces occasionally forming a rictus grin as a co-worker joins the death drag.
Cigarettes are very dangerous. Linda Codstrap proved this with flair in 1987. Because of her 80 a day habit she had a significant collection of John Player & sons cigarette cards. Hypnotherapy courses had cured her of nicotine addiction but not of collecting, and she was only one card away from having the complete set of 50 Territorial Army Uniforms 1939, reprint edition. The 48th Division Midlands Infantry was proving elusive. In an act of total desperation she kidnapped a young new recruit, and by a complicated process of steaming and crushing, shrunk the grunt to 3 inches in height and mounted him on thin white board. The resulting card was a very good forgery and only the expression of astonishment on the soldier’s face gave it away. Linda was arrested and sent to the loony bin. In recognition of his tragic and senseless waste of life, Private Edmund Ruckman was voted Passive Smoker of the Year 1988.
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