This piece is not in any way an endorsement or defence of the act of smoking, but an ode to the art of it. In a book entitled ‘Cigarettes are sublime’ by Richard Klein, he states that cigarettes are “one of the most interesting and significant cultural artifacts produced by modernity”. Smoking has always been one of humanity’s vices, a social stigma in certain parts of the world, but a common activity found outside Glasgow university library. When walking around the west end, you will not be hard pressed to find someone stopped outside a doorway, or looking in a shop window, or nursing a pint or a cup of coffee on the wintery streets of Hillhead, with a cigarette dangling between gloved index and middle fingers.
Despite the obvious health effects of smoking cigarettes, I am of the opinion that it is a truly beautiful habit. Inhaling, tasting the lit tobacco and feeling the burn in your throat down to your lungs. Gambling this way with your health as a young student, you cannot help but feel intensely alive. You are in it, you are in the film. You are Rick Blaine in Casablanca, you are Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop. And with the recent proposals and enforcement of bans related to smoking across the UK, its forbidden nature pushes the rose-coloured glasses further up your nose. Along with the ban on smoking comes the redundancy of smoking areas. The dark lit extensions of night clubs and bars, the gorgeous beer gardens with ashtrays on each table. Nothing is more enjoyable in the long summer, than an afternoon spent in the beer garden with a smoke. Just because Keir Starmer doesn’t have any mates who invite him to the pub, does not mean the percentage of the UK population who smoke should be deprived of such a luxury.
I took up smoking, socially at first, when I came to Glasgow. It was, for me, a good occupation for my hands. I could focus on the conversation and be rolling a cigarette, twisting the paper around the log of tobacco and filter, licking the edge and smoothing out the wrinkles before clamping it around the end result. It was a soothing practice and a great escape from a strange society pub quiz or a disastrous club night. The smoking area was also the place where I first came across some of the most wonderful people I have met in Glasgow. Leaning in stairways and doorways, dragging on the end of a lit cigarette with the frost biting at our fingertips. A delightful comradery can be felt when huddled around a fresh pack and a dodgy lighter, passed round in a circle in these pockets of community Not to glamourise what is, in fact, a very bad habit.
Smoking, however, was once the epitome of glamour and style – in France. In February 1875, Jeanne Calment was born, who despite the bafflement of the French national health service lived to the age of 122. This bafflement was attributed to the contradiction between her age and lifestyle. From the age of 21 when Jeanne started to suffer from regular migraines, her husband, on doctor’s advice, encouraged her to take up smoking throughout the day to ease the pain. Jeanne forever after, until her death in 1997, would smoke a cigarette after each meal and a glass of strong port wine. She was an icon of the Montmartre neighbourhood of Paris, a regular cyclist until the age 100, and after her husband’s death a frequenter of a Montmartre bistro where she was found most evenings, cigarette in hand.
Although smoking, and everything related to it is a very delightful (and BAD!) habit, on a January morning, going out for a smoke can feel bleak. The strongest compulsion I have ever had to stop smoking (despite the ramifications on my health and my bank), was on a bitter winter morning outside the airport. Next to the bus stop, smokers are provided with a small soviet-like shelter to huddle under. The gale whipped underneath our feet, and smokers of every generation came and passed underneath the rattling plastic shields, lips pursed against a cigarette, and shoulders shrugged against the cold. I muttered to my comrade beside me, “it’s over Jorg.”
“You fight them Yen”, they responded, the fire of revolution burning in their eyes, “we must all fight them, we must keep smoking to the bitter end.”
“Jorg, Jorg, such fire. I am too tired for revolution. And we’ve walked fucking miles.”
Don’t smoke kids.
Author: Isabella Bryne [they/them]
qmunicatemagazine.co.uk 