Читать книгу The Joy of Smoking: The Light-Hearted Look at Lighting Up - Sue Carroll & Sue Brealy - Страница 6

No one’s allowed to smoke, or tell a dirty joke, and whistling is forbidden

If chewing gum is chewed, the chewer is pursued, and in the hoosegow hidden

If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me, and it shall be prohibited

I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be, this is the land of the free.

So sings Groucho, cigar in hand, as Rufus T Firefly, Leader of Freedonia in the 1933 Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup. It was supposed to be a joke, but in today’s healthist society, where everyone is expected to do their duty by living for a hundred years, it’s fast becoming a hellish reality.

Were you to believe the prophets of doom, there’s very little in everyday life that doesn’t pose a serious threat to our health, indeed, our very existence. Beef burgers, coffee, red wine, white wine (actually, just write off alcohol completely), electric blankets, weed killer, barbecues, salmon, sunshine, rain, HRT patches, butter, bread, garden forks. The list is endless.

But aren’t there a couple of things missing? Ah yes, tobacco and the weak and irresponsible smoker, both under attack from the self-righteous ‘ban public smoking’ crowd. Well, smokers know the bad news, thank you. Read the book, seen those horrible ads on TV and bought the T-shirt. And, in case smokers haven’t quite got the picture, there are warnings slapped on every fag packet (not to mention a massive tax).

Indeed, the smoker is not only endangering himself, but also an ever-increasing list of innocent victims. Ignoring the fact that a morning stroll through Glasgow is the equivalent of smoking a packet of fags, thousands of spurious statistics are reeled out every week about the danger of passive smoking. Has anyone conclusively proved, amid all the hysteria, how many cigarettes are ‘passively’ smoked by abstainers? And at least you get more conversation from someone puffing their way through a pack of twenty than from the exhaust of an HGV.

Our aim is not to get too angry with the smoke fascists, but to display the tolerance they, the greatest killjoys since Oliver Cromwell and his band of Puritans, deny us. We won’t dwell (too much) on the fact that their sanctimonious nagging gets as much up our noses as our smoke gets in their eyes. Or what might, or might not, happen in Britain over the next few years. After all, we’ve witnessed the abject misery of outlawed smokers in America, especially in California where, ludicrously, cigarettes are banned on public beaches. It’s all too depressing. Let’s puff on while we’ve still got the chance.

So what we’ll tell you instead is that, contrary to current thinking, the non-smoker has existed for centuries alongside the smoker. In fact, this book is a collaboration between a cigarette fiend (Sue C) and someone who has never lit up in her life (Sue B), though admittedly there have been opponents to the weed. Hitler was evangelical about his loathing for tobacco and launched the very first anti-smoking advertising campaign. Need we say more?

Well, yes, actually, we do.

No amount of carping or moralising can alter one simple fact. Those who continue to smoke do so because they enjoy it. Writer and former smoker Beryl Bainbridge once said that ciggies are ‘a comfort to the soul’, and she’s right. But there is something else: the pleasure and fellowship of belonging to the society of smokers, a club that faces the prospect of being all but driven underground, yet, to the fury of the smoke-haters, continues to flourish.

We choose to smoke because we can: free will and individual choice are the foundations of any civilised society and must be defended. As we see our rights eroded on a daily basis, it has never been more vital to remain dogged in the determination to maintain our civil liberties and resist the persecutors.

In the course of researching this book we’ve unearthed some fascinating facts about tobacco, tapped a source of amazing anecdotes and found some truly colourful characters. The enduring thread is the unity of smokers, their shared philosophy on life and unfailing sense of humour. Smokers form the largest minority group in the world and that’s really something to celebrate. We reckon this book will cost you about the same as a pack of twenty. And we know it will bring you as much pleasure.

It’s been a joy to write.