Got a Light Boy?

Today finds me looking at the best part of 400 Benson & Hedges brought back from the US. I don't normally smoke B&H but, apart from Marlboro, they were the only brand I recognized [and I wouldn't smoke Marlboro, they make me bark].

I'm not exactly sitting here with my conscience pricking me but I'm on the horns of a Dali Lamah and it's all the fault of my big mouth.

Part of my working day involves dealing with the little loves who attend South Camden Community School. As with most schools, if you get a bunch of kids together, chances are that a proportion of them will smoke. Well, at the end of the school day, with hundreds of kids milling around outside the school quite a few, probably thirty or so, think it's the done thing to wander around with a cig in their hand. To see fair play and keep some sort of order, several of the teaching staff also mill around outside the school [obstinately to disperse the masses]. The teachers don't though wander around with ciggies in their hands.

Because the little loves are not on school property, they are technically out of the jurisdiction of the teachers. So, the teachers going around telling the kids to "Put it out" doesn't have much effect.

One of my colleagues is a non smoker. He keeps saying to the kids that they shouldn't smoke because it's bad for their health.

I follow him around and tell them "Don't fall for all of this crap about smoking is bad for your health". Yeah, I know, it's a bit irresponsible, but I believe it. Wait until the statistics are published showing the proportion of smokers to non-smokers who are run over by busses and you will find that there is no correlation. Being a non-smoker will not save you from a road traffic accident.

Myself and this particular colleague were arguing this point one day after just such an event at SCCS. This was when reality dawned.

I've never been a foil for the keep healthy brigade. Now if there was a "keep wealthy" brigade......

This prompted me to have a stab at working out how much money I've spent on cigs over the years.

This is quite difficult because ciggies are a bit more expensive now than when I first started smoking. I think that they were about £1.10 for twenty back when I was 15. Now, of course, theyarer around the £5 mark.

So, imagine that you are 15, and just starting out on your smoking career. If you are going to smoke twenty a day for the next twenty five years and working on the assumption that cigs will not go up in price [fat fukin' chance] you will spensomethingng in the order of £45.5 thousand.

This does not take into account the fact that you will probably end up smoking more than 20 per day and that there is no way that cigs will stay at five quid a pack.

Now I remember those Health Education lessons whetheyhay warned us about dangers of smoking.don'tont remember anybody telling me it would, over the years, cost me small fortune!

So, having cleared this with the boss and the Head Teacher, colleaguegue and me are going to give them a little talk for National No Smoking Day.

National No Smoking Day is on March 8th.

His plan of attack is the "Smoking is bad for your health" one. Mine is to show them the money. This has involved me sweet-talking the manager of the local NatWest Bank into lending me [for the day only] forty five and a half grand. With any luck, when I go see her again tomorrow, she will have gotten the ok from her boss to lend me the cash without asuretyity.

To add to the effect, I also intend to burn a few £20 notes [my own, so it will only be a few!].

I'm reasonably sure that if when I was 15, somebody had shown me how much I would spend over the coming years, I wouldn't have been so keen to bow to ppressuresure and continue smoking.

As to weather I'll stop smoking myself on the day, well, that remains to be seen.