Smoking would now become a pre-occupation of the young Gerry which was not surprising considering how widespread this pernicious habit was at this time. Both Gerry’s mother and father smoked, though Mrs. Hood’s idea of smoking was a pale imitation of her nicotine-addicted husband who could, and perhaps should have been selected to ‘smoke for England’. His dedication to the demon weed was such that, having been a Park Drive Plain cigarette smoker he had gravitated toward the new ‘healthier’ option of Embassy filter-tipped cigarettes which he consumed at the rate of several packs each day. Such was his devotion to this brand that in time the entire house reflected his loyalty with furnishings, kitchen gadgets and, naturally, Ronson Varaflame cigarette lighters proliferating throughout the Hood household.
Smoking had yet to acquire its imminent skull-and-crossbones reputation and even George Formby’s premature death from a heart attack might have been foreseen with his latterly acquired bronchitic-prefaced performances on the telly. The telly continued to advertise cigarette brands and it would have been more surprising had not Gerry, his brother, his cousins and most of his associates not felt inclined to imitate the vast majority of adults who submitted to the many spurious claims of health-inducing properties of tobacco. Obtaining ‘fags’, ‘smokes’, ‘tabs’ or ‘coffin-nails’, as they were randomly referred to, was quite another matter. It was a matter of fact that to be apprehended ‘pinching’ a cigarette from one’s parents was a no-no and the hideous consequences of early bed-times and domestic sanctions were best avoided. Gerry’s father had quickly discovered the technique of smoking his cigarettes right down to the filter tip, cupped in his fingers and thumb, the red-end pointing inward toward his palm, so scavenging remains was an absolute impossibility. His mother, less adept and less desperate for a final ‘drag’ on hers, would stub them out halfway along their length but either flush the remains down the toilet in her pursuit of cleanliness and Godliness or place the remains deep inside the ‘ashcan’ as she would refer to it, rendering the butts moist and undesirable even to putative smokers such as Gerry.
A family visit of various aunts and uncles provided the opportunity for a first stolen ‘dog-end’ but not one of the awaiting naughty boys who Gerry shared a brief puff with were persuaded that its foul aromas might give them the kick they had so eagerly anticipated. Occasionally some reckless youth, who had no doubt hitherto been despatched to the shops on behalf of a needy parent had dared to increase their order from five cigarettes - which might often be served loose, inside a paper bag, though slim line packets of five still existed - and thereby obtain a nicotine hit and the envy of his friends.
Gerry’s big hit came all at once. Though Christopher’s big brothers both openly smoked outside their house, this was the extent of their liberal parents tolerance. They were also notoriously mean, not only refusing all imprecations to let the boys have “just one drag, please” but taking great care and some considerable pleasure in even denying the boys their dog-ends by grinding them to fibre under their steel toe-capped boots. This situation looked set to change however when the boys overheard the elder brothers talking about a friend of theirs who had recently robbed the local NAAFI (where his father worked) of a considerable quantity of cigarettes.
Bit-by-bit, the boys gleaned more details, including the name, of the miscreant and made it their business to make his acquaintance. Clearly daring though he was, the boy - Roy, who was five or six years their senior - was no master criminal. He proudly told them all about his escapades and rather ingenuously revealed the whereabouts of his cache of stolen cigarettes, which to Gerry and Chris, assumed the proportions of Long John Silver’s buried treasure. No map however was either forthcoming or even necessary as Roy led the boys directly to his buried hoard of what turned out - after a considerable amount of nocturnal, torch-lit digging and scraping -to be ruined Number-Six plain cigarettes, in their thousands! Roy, in his haste to conceal the spoils of his crime, had not seen fit to wrap them in anything resembling a damp-proof membrane, and they had all rotted within the thin film of their cellophane wrapping. The boys tried to dry out the mouldy and brown cigarettes but were unable in the event to recover as much as a single useful cigarette. The disappointment was not shared with Roy or the elder brothers for fear of the reprisals this would certainly have ensured.
A new opportunity for tobacco-fuelled larceny then presented itself with the appearance of a new cigarette vending machine at the nearby shopping centre. Appearing, as it must have, to the local criminal fraternity, as the equivalent to mounting a gold-ingot dispensing machine in a public place, it was soon the target of vandalisation and theft. Some unknown person promptly broke the glass, only to discover the impossibility of threading the glass-strewn packets through the steel mesh that had no doubt been a design-feature tested on installations where in some cases the entire machine had been pried off the wall and carried off with its booty intact. Not even Gerry or Chris’ dexterous digits were able to coax a single packet from the violated machine and they returned home with sore fingers and frustrated lungs. It would not be easy to become a smoker until Gerry‘s brother Glenn, seizing the day, slid his entire week’s pocket-money - two bob! - into the newest machine, outside Ye Ever Bubbling Kettle’s café door entrance. Unable to contain the excitement of finally obtaining the wherewithal to smoke his first cigarette, Glenn, involuntarily allowed the spring loaded drawer, to recoil slightly, rendering it impossible to retrieve the packet from the gradually closing mechanism. Infuriated with his elder brother’s incompetence, Gerry slammed the tantalising drawer shut, whilst unconsciously clinging to the adjacent drawer’s handle. In a real-life Open-sesame moment, the adjacent drawer slid magically open providing not only a packet of cigarettes for the astonished boys but also change, taped to the side of the long-yearned for packet of ten cigarettes. Quite unable to believe his luck, Gerry reversed the process whereupon another packet of cigarettes appeared in the tray which was pulled as the empty drawer was slammed shut. When each of the boys had two packets each, the boys fled the scene of their crime to enjoy their ill-gotten gains.
Rendezvousing at the local park, Gerry unwrapped his pristine packet of Park Drive plain, pocketing the two-pence change - whereby the boys had also recovered most of their original investment - and savoured the moment as the white and grey embossed cylinder of longed-for pleasure sat in his hand. The next problem concerned how to light them, but another well-known reprobate, himself the proud possessor of a gas-lighter then presented himself to the small cabal of boys, sat mesmerised on the swings, and for the price of a precious cigarette offered to resolve the problem. Gerry inexpertly lit his cigarette and after puffing wildly to ensure it was smouldering in a satisfactory manner, drew deeply on the tipless cigarette in the manner he had so often witnessed his father do. He wasn’t sure whether his experience was the same as his father’s as, when his eyes suddenly turned up at the sky and he fell backwards off his swing seat and suddenly hit his head on the tarmac ground, it was due to a sudden dizzy feeling and an overwhelming urge to vomit. That aside, the taste was not what he expected, but determined to experience the joys of smoking he tried again, this time drawing less deeply upon the cigarette, and his deal with the devil was sealed. He was a smoker.
After consuming all that he was able to of the contraband cigarettes, the next problem was what to do with those that remained. He was fully aware that cigarettes could not easily be buried but his mother’s not infrequent inspection of their clothing provided the possibility of discovery and unwanted questions about how and where they had been obtained. A small slit in his coat pocket provided the perfect concealment until they were safely home, whence they were transferred to the small hidden shelf inside the built-in cupboard in the roof space of their dormer-windowed bungalow. Perfect! They had not only succeeded in their quest to obtain cigarettes, but Gerry had also calculated that with an initial investment of two shillings, they could effectively smoke for free for the rest of their lives, providing of course no-one got greedy and ruined the scam!
Gerry had seen very little of Ralph Ireland-West since Ralph had unfairly implicated him in his confession to his father about the firework stealing scandal in which Ralph had been caught red-handed lifting rockets and bangers at the local newsagents. Certainly Gerry had been part of the group of boys who had re-distributed them, fizzing and exploding into the startled community, many days before bonfire night itself, but to have to stand in his own front room and receive a lecture from Ralph’s uniformed police officer father (who actually wore jack-boots!) in front of his own father seemed absurd and unjust to Gerry who made a mental note to himself never to share any secret with such a blabbermouth again. But boys will be boys and it was with great hubris that Gerry found himself recounting his new found status as tobacco-baron and small-change entrepreneur to Ralph that fateful day. In truth, it was Ralph’s wheedling for a cigarette and Gerry’s acquiescence - an acquiescence born from his first taste of personal wealth and therefore power - that found Gerry proudly explaining the how if not the where of his recently found fortune and fame. It didn’t take Ralph very long to figure out the where in a one vending-machine town!
Arriving at his weekly looting stop, en route to meet his mates, Gerry was astonished to discover the space on the wall where previously hung his midas-touch cornucopia. No machine! The bolt holes and faded brickwork around the cigarette machine were the only remaining sign of the now vanished vending machine. It had gone, and with it Gerry’s mithril-plated fantasies for a future of plenty. Ralph’s cynical grin told the whole story of how, immediately after their last confidential chat, he had cycled there at the first nightfall and then, in a frenzy of syncopated slamming, looted the machine of its entire contents. The owners, perhaps woken from a reverie of their own by this cacophony had on discovery immediately returned the machine to its owners and it would be several long years before such a fountain of plenty would reappear in the boys’ lives. Gerry couldn’t understand why Ralph had literally ran the well dry and killed the golden goose all in one fell-swoop, a difference that would re-assert itself time and again throughout their respective lives.
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