The main problem with going to sleep without having had a goodnight cigarette is that you really, really miss it. Many of you will be familiar with the sensations of an erotic dream. Well take that thought and apply it to a smooth slim gold tipped cigarette. Soon you will be surrounded by Marlboro Reds and Camel Lights, Vogue Blue Slims and Lucky Strikes.
The smoke disperses and you wake up in a sweat, your heart pounding, your head spinning and lips desperately pouting for that extraordinarily beautiful but unobtainable cigarette. As you can imagine, my first non-smoking night was somewhat restless.
There was a knock on the door, it was the old lady who had showed me the room, I let her in. "Hello my name is Madame Joan” she said in her perfectly French-English accent. I said “buonjour Madame Joan, where is the nearest place where I can buy some cigarettes.”
Then without warning she raised her ankle length dress to just above her calf and said “do you find me sexy”. I just put it down to bad English and ignored her, but she persisted with showing me her ankles and asking me if I found her sexy. Listen Madame Joan, I don’t know what your trying to tell me but all I want is a cigarette. Maybe I would have found you sexy about 65 years and 31 teeth ago, when you were forty-something, now please tell me where the tobacconist is.
She started dancing around the room singing “If You Think I'm Sexy and you want my body..” God, I remember having trouble with Rod Stewart asking me that question in the late 70's. I tried to calm her down but she kept insisting, dam, I really didn’t need this on my second day of non-smoking.
I remembered the woman who had rented me the flat telling me something or other about a possible encounter with a non-smoking French lady. I had imagined a younger, toothier sort of encounter. Actually, I think she wrote something down about it in the rental contract.
Reading the small print in the contract shocked me even more that the old lady’s ankles. I was a sub-clause in a very complex and lurid real-estate deal. Apparently as part of the deposit on the property the old lady had been promised a Non-Smoking Toy Boy for a couple of weeks.
God, I never imagined myself as a toy boy, I thought I was passed it, must be one of those benefits in giving up smoking. What was I to do, I had signed the contract, but I didn’t really want to be a middle-aged toy boy. There was only one thing for it, I had to get hold of a cigarette and make void the non-smoking part of the toy boy clause.
Unfortunately, I was back to where I had started. In search of a cigarette, only this time it was for a worthwhile cause, or was I just looking for a justification to start smoking again. I looked at her ankles and decided that the stop smoking lobby would understand.
I didn’t need a whole cigarette for my plan to work so I made my way outside and started to walk methodically around the courtyard looking for decent length discarded cigarette buts. Regrettably I was in a no smoking, no shops, no village, no nothing area, I didn’t even find an indecent length one.
Madame Joan stood on the porch smiling, her lone tooth gleaming in the sunshine. Why doesn’t she go away and leave me alone, go home woman, I thought. Go home woman, umm, I wonder where she lives, maybe she doesn’t live here, maybe she has a phone, maybe she has some cigarettes, maybe she has a great, great, great, great granddaughter who smokes.
I looked at my watch it was only 8am. I still had a whole day to survive. Oh well best think positively, it was just a matter of time before her granddaughter turned up with some croissants, a loaf of French bread and two packs of Gauloise cigarettes.
Then the unexpected happened, Madame Joan looked me straight in the eye, popped a cigarette into her mouth, lit it, took a couple of drags, blew the smoke in my direction and started singing,
“If You Think I'm Sexy and you want a Ciggy, come on honey tell me so”.
Temptation was rife; there in front of my very eyes was everything I wanted. The first verse of the song passed through my mind.
She sits alone waiting for suggestions.
he's so nervous avoiding all the questions.
His lips are dry her heart is gently pounding.
don't you just know exactly what they're thinking.
I looked at my watch again; it was 8:10am. Yep, my second day of non-smoking was going to be tough.
Day One is here
and more from Deety – Weekly Words for the Wise cab be found here