A Meeting on a Hill

9th June, 2013 - A hill, somewhere in Malaysia, around 11am.

There she was, barelling her way uphill along her favourite jungle trail, thinking she was God's gift to trekking. " Way hay ... gonna break my record on this one!" she thought, when out of nowhere, a needle sharp twang of annoying stinginess abruptly bothered her lower spine, just above her coccyx.

"What the fuck!” she muttered, stopping dead in her tracks. Shifting her trekking sticks into one hand, she felt her back with the other. "What the ...?" she said looking over her shoulder and pulling a tiny needle-like object, complete with attached string, from the aggrieved area.  A small drop of blood trickled from the needle-end as her eyes followed the line of the string back to its origin. 

There at the end of it stood a wrinkly, gummy, over-sized goblin of a haggard in a moo-moo, brandishing a peashooter. A hankie, knotted at each corner, covered his bald pate. He hacked a cackle at her while resting his free hand on the place where his hip curve used to be, and pointed at her with his bulbous belly.

"Happy Birthday Magzie!" Age cawed with a wink of a cloudy, cataract ready eye. "What's the craic?"

"For fucks sake! What's the craic? Can't ya see I'm walkin here! Shag off ya old fool will ya, and let me be." With that, she turned and resumed her barrelling to the echo of his wheezing laughter. The laughter stopped soon enough, but then, thwhoop, a new projectile came a-piercing, this time, at the back of her right knee.

"Fffffffffuck!" she yelled in pain, leaning over on her trekking sticks for support. Looking behind her again she could see the needle had gone in this time, and all that was sticking out was the attached thread which ran back to the free hand of Age, who minxishly tweaked at it like a puppet string.

"He he he he he ... gotcha now" he crowed as he yanked.

Magzie hopped a little as the string went taut, then limp, then taut again. Sucking in the pain, she reached into her hip-pocket for her leatherman. She opened it up and snipped the thread, then turned to face her aggressor with the look of the devil in her eyes.

"Sure, what goods cuttin' the thread goin’ ta do?My needle’s still in there." he said unperturbed, pointing at the offended knee with his peashooter.

"It's MY knee though, not yours, and it does what I tell it!” she shouted. “It might sting a bit, but it knows it has a job to do. It’ll wait to cry until I let it."

At that, Age loaded up his peashooter again, and took aim, a little more seriously this time, for her right eye. Magzie held her ground, and they glared at each other while he inhaled. He held his breath a second, then, thwoop, a new needle took flight.

Like a slow motion action scene from a Marvel superhero movie, Magzie leaned her head slightly sideways when the missile was within millimeters of her eye, and stopped it in its tracks with her hair.

"Explain that one to me now?" she asked, somewhat derisively, as she straightened up and evicted the needle from her coiffe.

"I know that eye is fecked ... just trying to put it out of its misery!"

"Shag off will ya! It's workin’ fine ... and anyway, even if it does go on strike, I got another one."

"I'll aim for that one next"

"Off  witcha Robin Hood! I may have a hundred pictures in me photo books, but I got a million in me head. I know this path like the back o' me hand. I could make it up here in the dark!"

Age's eyes glossed over with anger, and before she could ready herself he had his peashooter loaded, with a bigger needle and thicker string this time, and thwooped it at her heart.

It bounced off her chest, and fell useless to the dirt.

"What d' fuck?!" Age said with annoyance imbued disbelief.

"Ya gombeen! Do ya think a lass as fabulous as me gets to this point in her life without her heart having been harassed numerous times? It's pure scar tissue yer hittin buddy!"

“Gombeen is it?” Age spat as he furiously reloaded

Seeing where this was going, Magzie threw aside her trekking sticks and, stirring up dirt and dead leaves with the forcefulness of her intent, assumed scrum position.

“C’monnn ya scumbag!” she yelled, thumping her right shoulder with a fine slap of her left hand, allowing him to hear the concreteness of it. He double-took, but continued to load.

“Bring it! Ka Mate Ka Ora Muhhhthur Fffuckur! I been trained by the best ya scut.” she growled, beating at her chest with the palms of both hands now.

Mentally tackled by her violent veracity, Age stopped what he was doing, stepped back, slowly pocketed his peashooter, and held his hands up.

“All right girl, chill out will ya. I'm only havin' the craic.” he said in a somewhat high-pitched tone.

Magzie pounded her chest a bit more, and gave him a Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson-like ‘come on’ with a raised eyebrow and a twitch of her head. Age kept his hands up, sporting a weak, gummy smile as he did.

Seeing he was done, she unhooked from her war stance, collected her sticks, and reconstituted into an upright position.

“You’re some bollix Age boy ... and on my birthday too!”

“Ah relax will ya! Sure, I thought it might be a bit o’ fun, and I was thinkin’ ... it might be cool to introduce ya to me old friend here.” he said nodding sideways to the trees.

At that, Death strolled out of the shadows, rolling a spliff.

He stopped and stood nonchalantly beside Age, looking the complete opposite of him in gait and appearance. He slowly licked the rolling paper, completed his craftwork, and casually placed it in the corner of his full-lipped mouth.

There, the two, Magzie and Death, regarded each other knowingly. He had a little sparkle in his blue eyes, his head slightly cocked to one side as he looked at her while reaching into a waistcoat pocket for his Zippo. Finding it, he turned his gaze to his smoke and lit up. A gentle breeze unhooked one lock of hair from his pomade slicked quiff so that it fell into a bit of a curl above his brow, collecting some white smoke spirals as it did. He clipped closed the Zippo, placed it back in its pocket, re-fixed his attention on her, and extracted a tiny comb from another waistcoat pocket while sucking on his one-skinner.  Magzie watched with a little twinkle in her own eyes as he smoothed the renegade lock back into place.

“Well Brazen, still causin’ trouble I see.” he quipped as he replaced the comb, took the spliff from his mouth, and exhaled the smoke as he spoke.

“Mr. D, ... lookin’ well,” she replied with a cheeky wink.

Age muttered in confusion at the sidelines.

Without moving her gaze from D, Magzie responded to Age’s crumpled and creased look of disconcertion.

“We’ve met before.” she said.

“Twice!” said D. “Ten months ago at my most recent count. I took a piece of your head then.”

“Ya did.” she nodded. “Not any bit that mattered though. Left me a bit scattered for a while, but taught me a lesson too. I see ya’ve had a bit more ink done since the last time we hung out.”

Looking down at the exposed forearms peeking out from the rolled up sleeves of his crisp white shirt, he nodded and smiled.

“Yup, Samoan fella I been waitin’ for finally stopped by and put his skills to work catchin' up on some overdue additions. Check this gem out!” he said gesturing toward the freshly-inscribed face of Johnny Cash on his right wrist, and starting to move towards her.

“Woah, back off  Big Man. I don’t need to be smellin’ your Hugo Boss. Last time that happened I woke up in a CAT scan machine missin two days of me life!”

“Ha! Fair enough. Our day will come.” he predicted, one side of his mouth curling up into a half smile, sliding the hand of the Cash bearing wrist into his jeans pocket. “I’ve a spot kept for YOUR face right here on my shoulder blade.” he said playfully, pointing to her first and then his left shoulder with the thumb of the spliff holder.

Age was getting twitchy, not really sure what was happening, and feeling a little left out. Magzie, starting to get restless too, reset her sticks and turned to conquer her hill again.

“Yup, it’ll come alright, and that’ll be some session. Better start stockin’ that fridge o’ yours with some good dry cider.” she called over her shoulder as she started to barrel off. Her right knee let a little crack of a weep out of it. “Stop wingin' will ya, there’s trainin' to be done. We’ve Fuji in 3 weeks, an’ I ain’t got time ta bleed” she chastised under her breath as she moved.

“And Mr. D ...” she shouted back as she gained momentum.

“Yup?” he smokily inquired.

“That Shitehawk next to ya AINT invited!”

A Short History of Smoking

Waking up this morning with that metal and mucky ashtray taste in my mouth, and death rattle in my chest, I find myself feeling the need to quit.  It’s that same ‘never again’ feeling that I get after a night on the beer, which, as it happens, is also keeping the no more tabac feeling company today. Thank you Mr. Arthur Guinness for inviting me to your birthday party last night, but really, it was cruel of you to force that last pint down my throat … and as for the bullfrogs? I’m sure there is a convention somewhere in the world that’s supposed to protect people from such unmitigated abuse.

I picked the box of lights up off the beside table as a reflex action on my way to my laptop. I’m sitting here now, flicking the lid open and closed on the damn thing. I find myself tuning in to these little habitual tendencies every so often, and wondering where they came from.  I have a whole lifetime of them wrapped around cigarettes, from how I open a new pack, the pre-mouth fiddling, the hand action when I do decide to light up, to just simply playing with the box, twisting it round and round between my thumb and forefinger.

I grew up in a smoking household, my father having partaken in some form or another most of my life. Usually Benson & Hedges, though sometimes he would take up the pipe, just for a change.  I remember he collected pipes for a while and used to display them fondly in a stand on the mantelpiece. For a short time, they took the place of socks as his regular present type on birthdays and at Christmas. I think it may have been somewhat of a fashion statement in the early 70’s, judging from the super cool, faded colour photographs of his pitch black moustachioed self with sideburns, blue-sleeveless jumper and pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, that seem to litter the early pages of our family albums.

Of course, he had grown up with it also. Both of his parents were diligent smokers. My grandfather eventually died from them, and my grandmother may well have, though they called it an aneurism.  She died young, so my memories of her are quite vague.  However, I have a picture of her in my head, a somewhat romantic one built from a combination of family images and stories that my father tells of her. She was a classy lady by all accounts, stylistically a bit of an Audrey Hepburn type who never stepped outside the door without being perfectly manicured, attitude-wise more like Katherine, she’d give you hell if you crossed her.  She loved her fur coats.  In my head I see her standing with one arm folded to provide a rest for her gloved smoking arm, wrist slightly bent, palm face up, two fingers gently holding the cigarette that was almost an extension of her hand, smoke curling in a pure, white, single pillar beside her pale face, occasionally getting itself wrapped in one of her short set curls.

I remember my first cigarette. It was on the back of the school bus when I was about 16.  I physically recall that I had craved it for weeks.  Finally, I asked for a ‘drag’ of Martina Keane’s Major and inhaled it like I’d been smoking for years. I used to reckon that I was already addicted before I’d ever properly inhaled, a combination of regular exposure, and genetic predisposition.

That said, my career began pretty much the same for me as it had done for my father, as a fashion statement. Quite simply, it was cool!  When I was 17, I had a leather bikers jacket and loved having my box of Marlboro reds slightly sticking up out of the top pocket. Of course, it had to be a secret. Not simply because that’s what 17 year olds feel they have to do but, because I was also a chronic asthmatic.  It was a late onset illness, diagnosed when I was 15 or 16. My father, life long and committed smoker though he was, would have ‘killed’ me if he knew.

My brother, who is three years younger than me, became aware of the stash. He’d been robbing me blind for months, but it took me a while to twig. I’ve always suffered from a certain lack of awareness of what’s going on around me. I used to question my memory even then. When I finally did wake up to his shenanigans, it riled me massively, but it also put me in a bit of a quandry. What was I to do about it? I couldn’t exactly go to my parents without getting myself in trouble as well. I decided to try and outwit him using the fear factor. I left the box of Marlies in my jacket with a note wrapped around the 8 or 9 fags that were left. “I know what you’re at. Buy your own, or there’ll be hell!”  A day later when I was putting on my jacket, I pulled out the box to find it empty of cigarettes, and the scrap of paper I’d inserted had a scrawled reply on the back, “For who exactly?”  Scut!

I was in the car a few years later with dad collecting my brother from a day out with the lads in town. We pulled up before he saw us, or had time to quench the hard-ass fag that was hanging from his mouth in true James Dean fashion.  My dad lost his temper and started spewing about how, “that boy is in the shit.” I got defensive and argued that he was old enough to make his own decisions. At that point dad turned on me. I was ‘out’ by then. “100% of people who smoke die young”, I think his words were. “Dad, we all die, and anyway, you smoke!” The argument continued, “You’re asthmatic! 100% of asthmatics who smoke die younger and more painfully.” At that point I lost it, and in a very uncharacteristic manner when conversing with my lovely Daddy, got accusatory! “Dad, you’ve been smoking around us all our lives.  It’s probably your fucking fault I have asthma in the first place!”  At that, the conversation ended, he rolled down the window and chucked the nub of a cigarette he’d been puffing on out of it, honked the horn at my brother, and wouldn’t say a word to either of us the rest of the way home.  He didn’t pick up another cigarette for some 7 years after that.

I remember asking him a few years down the line if he missed them. His response, “Daughter, to this day I would still sell you into slavery for one drag of a Benson!"


One Christmas however, Dad’s fasting all came crashing down about his ears when his elder children descended on the house for the festivities. I still smoked, and both my brother, and his lovely Swiss wife were unapologetic puffers. Mum, in her ever hospitable way, allocated an inside space for us to enjoy our wicked habits, for we“couldn’t be trapesing outside into the depth of winter everytime we wanted to indulge, and sure anyway, wasn’t it Christmas.”

That room happened to be the living room.  It had a beautiful open fireplace that would take the smoke up and out of the house without too much trouble. Poor Daddy! Christmas day is his day for the kitchen, and he loves it.  The day begins the same every year. Up with the lark to see what Santa had delivered, (a little less early obviously in that interim after we had all grown, and before the grandkids came along), a nice cooked breakfast, then we’d decamp to the living room while he donned his chef’s hat and opened his first bottle of red.  Like most smokers, myself included, the habit is inextricably linked to alcohol consumption, and for any smoker trying to quit, that is the hardest time.

By the time he’d moved on to bottle number two the poor man was tormenting himself over our open boxes of tobacco, holding them up to his nose and snorting in the mere scent of them like it was cocaine.

I began looking around for the slaver at that point.

Then, like a fool, I opened the door for him. “For goodness sake Daddy, it’s Christmas. Stop tormenting yourself and have one.  You’ve given them up before, it’s not like you can’t ‘just stop’ again if you want.”  Easily knowing then that his struggle was one I’d never imposed upon myself. In the following months and years, he went through numerous failed attempts at quitting.

Unlike us, my youngest brother, a late baby, grew up in a smoke free household. The very sight of a cigarette disgusted him. His vocal hatred of the habit led to Daddy becoming a ‘secret smoker’. For some reason he felt safe smoking around me, but anytime I sat in the car with him when he’d pick me up from the airport, or when I'd meet him in the garden shed, the cigarette entering his mouth was always prefaced with a, “Don’t tell your brother.”

Another one of those, 'don’t tell your brother scenarios’  happened after I left university and used to pop home for a visit in between excavations. I have always enjoyed smoking the occasional joint, something Daddy was quite liberal about. Apart from the ‘joy of the stone’, it had the capacity to ease the discomforts of my skin disorder, which would flare up under stress. I was given free reign to smoke in my parents house, as long as I kept it to my bedroom and my youngest brother, still only 14 at the time, didn’t find out.

One evening I was in my room, having a smoke and reading a book, when Daddy popped up for a visit. I can’t remember what it was that we chatted about, but can remember that he watched intently as I packed a three skinner.  It took me such a long time to learn how to roll that when I finally mastered it, I used to take great pride in the end product. Sitting there admiring my piece of artwork, Daddy asked if I’d make one for him.  I have to admit, it stopped me in my tracks, and my shock was both vocal and visual. Unsurprisingly, his response was something along the lines of, “You forget that there was a time before I was a husband and father! I’d just like to remember what it was like.”  “Fair point,” I said as I watched him leave the room.  I duly obliged his request, leaving my labour of love on the windowsill beside his bedroom door, as I left to take up my next job posting. I rang home a few days later to check in.

Me:     “So, how was it?”
Dad:    “Never again!”
Me:     “How d'you mean?”
Dad:    “Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have had half a bottle of whiskey 
             beforehand, but it didn’t take me long to remember why I
             never kept up the habit."
Me:     “Eh???”
Dad:   “Massive crisis! Just two pulls into that yoke, 
             and I was in the toilet desperately trying make the correct 
             choice. Squat or kneel" 

My mouth tastes like pants.  I’ve brushed twice already, and I can still taste the tar.  I don’t know what it is about me that makes me smoke like a chimney when I go out for a few drinks.  I guess, living in one of the few countries where one can still smoke in a bar doesn’t help.  Or maybe it’s just a weak personality.


Dad in his wisdom occasionally tries to give me a pep talk, sometimes in a cruel but kind way, using a bit of emotional blackmail. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve attempted to quit. I’ve fallen off that blasted wagon so many times I’m black and blue. My latest move has been to take up a new brand of extra light, extra slim, menthol cigarettes.  After only a few days, its clear that I’m smoking these cigarettes with the same mentality that a career dieter approaches fat-free cheese.  

“Oooo, no bad stuff, that means I can have double.”

My dad on the other hand is now three years clean. It took a heart attack to get him there, but then sometimes it takes an extreme kick in the backside to find the willpower. Keep it up Daddy!

Personally, I hate having my bottom kicked, so here’s hoping I can find some willpower before boot and flesh meet.