It doesn’t take long for a habit once broken to become a distant memory especially when its demise is supported by the greater society.
Look around. Nobody smokes anymore.
I still remember coming home from pubs reaking of cigarette smoke and it was a given I’d need to wash my hair the next day, dry clean my clothes after one wear out, or worse ruin them from cigarette burns. Then there was the passive smoking and constant hand waving of others' smoke from our faces.
There were some benefits: “Got a light?” goes down as the easiest chat up line of my late teenage and early 20s. No, these days, smoking is uncool. No decent guy wants to date a smoker.
But recently I took a hiatus from society's widening reality of an implicit smoking ban when I celebrated Christmas with rellies. I reunited with my aunts, uncles, cousins and their spouses across a few lazy days out bush at Koomooloo station – a sheep farm about 160kms from Adelaide and north of country town Burra where my mum grew up.
My aunt and uncle are farmers and their kids too work the land. All of them smoke. My other two aunties smoke. Put us together and as a 'once a casual smoker' I’m now the odd one out smoke free.
Rollies, alpine lights and ashtrays littered with white butts stained with pink lipstick were the visual mainstay set against the blue bush and red dirt.
I’m pleased, obviously, that within my adult life, I’ve seen smoking go from perceived cool, to undesirable.
So it was kinda surreal to be set among a sea of smokers once again. A time warp and slice of what once was very normal.
Addiction is a shocker and let’s face it, the family members still smoking would no doubt have given the deadlies away if it weren’t for the cold, hard reality that after years on years of choofing away – they are well and truly nicotine hooked.
So this Bush Christmas there was a lot of smoke, but fortunately after 15 years of drought, no fire.
