...and why having to smoke often ruins an occasion rather than enhances it.

By Steve O

(First published in alt.smokers republished with permission of the author)

The average smoker tends to make the claim that they smoke because of the taste. Convincing them otherwise is not an easy undertaking, and I can understand your disbelief if you are a smoker. So why do certain cigarettes on occasion taste better than others? Don't those really special tasting cigarettes tend to be after a meal? With a drink? With coffee? Home from shopping? After exercise? In the morning? After sex?

Different smokers have different priorities. However, the occasions when cigarettes appear to taste better, are not when smoking is unhindered, but where there are two common conditions ; after a period of abstinence and when we tend to be relaxing and enjoying ourselves anyway.

Let's use the one after a meal as an example. Particularly the evening meal when work for the day is done (which happened to be one of my favourites), or even better , after a meal on holiday, when we have completely forgotten about mundane things like work, bills and decorating.

The following example actually happened to me in Italy. If the restaurant has a pleasant atmosphere, decor and a panoramic view, so much the better, and the situation is even further enhanced if you are in the company of people who are as equally pleasant, cheerful, attentive and broad minded as you are yourself. Even the waiter is smiling and happy.Why can't those petty minded miseries at home be the same?

He actually hugs you, and kisses your wife on both cheeks. He has never met you before, but he acts as if Frank Sinatra has just walked in. He treats his next customers exactly the same, but what does it matter? The meal is quite the best you've ever tasted. The drinks are exotic. You are tanned, wearing your best holiday clothes , and provided it's the beginning of your holiday, have plenty of units of the local currency in your pocket.

The music gets to you. You start to sing. The other customers join in - you later discover that they are also shy, inhibited Brits. To your amazement you actually sound better than Sinatra - even he could never have felt better than this.

You are on a complete and utter 100% high. (actually, 90% because you still need a cigarette, but you won't know that)

You reach for a cigarette...shit!

Packet empty already? Oh well, there's another pack in your jacket pocket. You start to systematically search your pockets for it. All completely empty.

Then it hits you ; that idiot of a woman that you call your wife - the very same woman that you were dancing with just a few moments earlier, into whose beautiful eyes you were gazing, as you serenaded her with your arrangement of 'Lady in Red', tune and lyrics a definite improvement on Chris De Burgh', telling her that the song must have been written with her in mind, you believing every word of it, her believing that you must be drunk, - that stupid interfering bitch made you change your jacket at the last moment. Still, no panic.

You can buy a packet of the local brand. They taste like stale tea leaves dipped in vinegar but who cares at this stage of the evening? But Guissepe the smiling waiter informs you that they don't stock cigarettes or cigars.

Genuine panic now begins to creep in. But wait a minute- there's your fellow Brits! They won't mind you asking. You'd do the same for them. They've been smoking your cigarettes all evening anyway. Amazingly, all but two of them claim that they are non smokers. Out of those two, one has run out and the other only has four left, enough for his own consumption, the selfish bastard!

The panic begins to take a hold. Back to Guiseppe, he's been crawling around you all night expecting a big tip. He's going to have to damn well earn it! Surely one of the waiters smoke?

"Ima sorr-ee"

You know that the chef smokes, because you definitely saw ash dropped onto the 'Speciality of the House' earlier.

"Ima sorrree sir, no can 'elp."

For the first time you notice the nicotine stains on Guiseppe's fingers. You get angry, and suddenly Guiseppe, who was earlier explaining how he'd spent 16 years living in Soho, "Dusenta understand eenglish."

Now the type of panic the size last experienced on the Titanic sets in. They've built this stupid restaurant on the top of a cliff, surrounded by 100 miles of stinking ocean on one side and 100 miles of barren desert on the other. There is absolutely no way of getting a packet of cigarettes, other than turning Guiseppe upside down and shaking him. You flirt with the idea but soon discard it when you spot the "difficult customer pacifier" leaning behind the bar cracking walnuts with his eyebrows.

Meanwhile , there's this awful raucous going on in the background. You've been unlucky enough to share a restaurant with a bunch of rowdy lager louts.

And why the hell do they have to put so much garlic in the food, and what's this muck I'm drinking? Whoever heard of a purple drink and if I'd wanted half a pound of fruit in it, I'd have ordered the sodding fruit cocktail instead. How fucking stupid? It's got it's own frigging umbrella. Are they worried that it will be ruined if it rains or something? And why does that stupid, grinning twat Guiseppe keep asking me "Iffa everythings alla right?"

He's a smoker, can't he see that "Ima fucking dying?"

Perhaps I've over exaggerated a little, but I hope you can identify with that type of situation. However, could you please explain to me how, in a situation like that it can be an advantage to be a smoker, or that smoking is purely for pleasure and taste? Sure, a cigarette at the end of that would certainly be a huge relief but where does the 'delicious taste and smell of a cigarette which goes so well with good food and drink' come into it? I'd have chuffed on a dried and smoked bull's pizzle at that stage, that night, if I thought it would do any good. Come to think of it, I'm sure that was what Guisseppe was smoking anyway. The bastard.