I started work at sixteen in a design office in Liverpool.
In those days a lot of people smoked. Smoking was allowed at work, on the bus, top deck only of course, in pubs, clubs, cafes, restaurants and maybe even doctor’s waiting rooms for all I know. My mother smoked and one of my brothers smoked.
I didn’t think much about smoking at the time but now when I cast my mind back I can recall that some did it, some didn’t but I was simply too busy with spots, guitars and Airfix kits to pay it much attention.
The Engineer I worked for had the weirdest habit of completely eating an apple. He didn’t reach the core and stop, he just carried on until there was nothing left but a vague apple smell and juicy fingers. It was almost like he was concealing the evidence.
The other habit he had was smoking. He used to smoke like a condemned man and suck on his cigarettes as though the hole was too small to get the smoke out and gave a fair impression of someone enjoying a thick milk-shake. You could see the suction in his cheeks and get the disturbing feeling that if he didn’t keep a firm hold on that Embassy it was going to rapidly follow the apple.
Being sixteen and pretty naïve I didn’t really understand the ups and downs of smoking but as a role model this chap was perfect. He was a cigarette advertisers dream. Every smoke seemed to reward him with so much satisfaction. At the time I was pretty naïve, in the practical sense, about human reproduction but if I’d been asked to paint a picture of an orgasm it would have closely resembled my boss having a smoke.
This was something I just had to be a part of.
Well it wasn’t long before the youngsters who had started their new jobs along with me and worked in other parts of the building had found their own similar mentors and had joined the smoking club and inevitably I too applied for membership and was instantly welcomed with smoky, slightly stinky, open arms.
Now if I could just sort out this coughing, spluttering, gagging and retching business I was going to look so cool and maybe, if I was lucky, a little older and sophisticated. You never know, I might even find a nice girlfriend too.
Well it didn’t take long to master the art of smoking in fact it was a doddle, you could say I was a natural and by the time I went to University I was a master. I could do smoke rings that were actually circular and that funny thing where the trailing smoke from the drag on the cigarette is simultaneously drawn into the mouth and the nostrils and looks simply fabulous. I was pretty confident that if there’s been an O level for smoking I’d have got a good mark in that one too.
I even started completely eating apples for a while but never really felt comfortable eating the pips.
