It's so funny how we don't smoke anymore

When I was a kid, my mum used to work nights. She would sleep in the day, and in the school holidays I used to go into Lytham with the housekeeping money, a shopping list, my little sister and a wicker basket on wheels -- the last two being deeply embarrassing appendages that I would attempt to disassociate myself from at every possible opportunity.

We would go to the butcher's, the greengrocer's, the baker's and finally Booths, where I would be careful to choose the middle queue, because that was Dorothy's till, and she would sell me the 20 Silk Cut No 3 (for my mum) and 20 Silk Cut No 1 (for my dad) that would be on the shopping list. I had a little note from my mum in her purse explaining that they were definitely for her and not for ten year old me.

Which was true. I didn't smoke my first cigarette until 5 November 1983, down a back alley in South Shore, Blackpool, with my friend Amanda and her dog Algie. The cigarettes were hers, they were called Kim and they were super slim and super cool, exactly not like me.

Thereafter I smoked sporadically -- JPS walking the dachshund in the woods, Consulate on the top deck of the 11A, Lambert & Butler in the toilets with housemate S (then schoolmate S). I have particularly fond memories of Saturday lunchtimes: I would take an early lunch from the bread shop where I worked, get my wages, buy 20 Regal King Size, go to the Elms Cafe and sit on my own, alternately drinking hot chocolate through a straw and smoking the adult fruits of my 15 year old adult labours. Economic independence is intoxicating.

I became a proper grown up smoker while living on Kibbutz Yagur after my A levels. I smoked in front of my parents in the Little Chef on the way back from the airport, and I never stopped.

Until I did stop. Fourteen years later, I gave up. And I now haven't smoked -- bar a few spliffs and some enthusiastic passive smoking every now and again -- for approximately 686 days and 23 hours.

Mostly, of course, I see this as a very good thing. But sometimes I miss it like crazy. Right now being one such time, and I am sure this is a side effect of hearing the news that smoking is soon to be banned in England in all workplaces and public places serving food.

I support this ban. I really do. I hate coming home smelling of smoke when I haven't had the (dubious, edgy) pleasure of smoking myself. And I know -- which is why I gave up -- that smoking is not big or clever. We shouldn't do it. We should all stop. There should be laws to help us instead of those really cool B&H ads they had in the 80s.

But oh, it makes me feel old.

joella

Postscript: Bhutanese teenagers don't have these pressures, I surmise. Go Bhutan!