As a self-confessed, occasional grumpy old man, I’ve developed a loathing for millennial terminology. “100%”, ”like” (do you like it or don’t you?!) and “next level” affect me like nails down a blackboard.
Throw in the modern day AFL footballer’s incessant need to high five and touch hands and my face screws up like a Muppet. Oh how I long for the days of Lockett, Dunstall and Ablett strolling back to the goal square unattended and nonplussed after kicking their tenth goal for the day.
Having said that, there is a wonderful trend that has been driven by this generation which has been procured by intelligence and common sense. The reduction in smoking tobacco.
My partner Lynda has been reading Myf Warhurst’s excellent biography and she read me a brief piece as follows:
‘If you can’t instantly remember the stale breath of a teacher whose sunk too many cups of Nescafe, chased with a Winfield cigarette, did you even go to school in Australia in the 70’s and 80’s? I think not.’
It triggered some memories of when smoking had ‘right of way’ in our society and secondary smoke was just par for the course.
The only time I smell secondary smoke these days is leaving Marvel Stadium or the MCG but even then it soon dissipates as you reach the train station.
When I was eleven years of age in WA’s grade six, our teacher Mr McClure had his own ‘smoke boy’. Mr McClure was a hard man and a fine teacher who smoked a minimum forty Benson & Hedges a day.
He would stand at the doorway of the classroom puffing away with one eye on the students. His ‘cigarette boy’ would be duly summoned once a day to walk 200m over Medina Ave unattended to buy a couple of packets of smokes from Kattlers Deli.
Imagine sending an eleven year old boy unattended to buy cigarettes these days. Whose even serving an eleven year old boy cigarettes for starters?
To this day, Kattlers Deli made the greatest pies and pastries in the history of mankind. We would also buy our lollies there including ‘Fags’ which were the stepping stone to real smokes.
Cigarette companies in their wisdom, produced packets of ten cigarettes like Escort to lure in youngsters. They were twenty five cents so to put it in perspective, a piece of flake and minimum chips were twenty cents.
The insidious nature of cigarette companies with their pricing and advertising had most of my generation on the ‘darts’ in early teenage-hood.
Benson & Hedges were the major sponsor of cricket, at a time when the game had players that were Gods to us kids. If it was good enough for Douggy and Marshy to suck on a B&H then it was good enough for us!
There was also the suave and sophisticated TV celebrity Stuart Wagstaff who peddled B&H and who could forget ‘Ardath, Ardath, you’re a star, beats the other smokes by far.’
Winfield were the first to move to a pack of 25’s and they became the standard bogan smoke with the help of Paul Hogan’s TV ads.
In my hometown a common request by a local thug was, “Got a durry mate?” If you were clearly a non-smoker and replied, “Don’t smoke mate” you were free to go. If you were holding a lit cigarette and you replied, “Nah mate, none left”, you could expect a beating. Cigarettes were teenage currency, not just a habit.
You could smoke in restaurants, shops and public transport. Aircraft and buses contained some incredible, mysterious screen of secondary smoke protection because you could freely smoke down the back of them!
My parents both smoked and inside the house. It was just the norm. My mum would hide her B&H in her undies drawer so they were easy pickings for my brother Glen and I.
My Dad smoked Port Royal rollies. Unfortunately, and I’m not sure whether this was an old English thing like in the TV show ‘Till Death Do US Part’, but Dad liked to read the paper and smoke in the dunny. It was his quiet time.
The intensity of the stench omitted in the aftermath meant a wide berth be given for an extended period and would often mean an agonising wait if you needed ‘number twos’. A ‘number one’ could be dispensed in the back garden if required.
Years later in the mid-eighties and living in Melbourne I was working for an aircraft company as a contractor to the defence force in St Kilda Rd. I vividly remember sharing a desk with an RAAF Warrant Officer who was a non-smoker.
Despite his abstinence I continued to smoke, my ashtray adjacent to his work space and I blew secondary smoke in his vicinity for a year. I feel sick at the thought now and I can only hope he has had a long a fruitful life given the selfish actions of his so called work mate.
The secret to these evil cigarette companies is adopting new users. Without the advertising they are struggling to do that but sadly they are still making huge profits because of the money they have saved being prevented to advertise.
If this generation can do as good a job avoiding sports betting as they have with smoking, we will all be eternally grateful. The saturation of sports betting and the damage it’s causing to our society is extremely concerning. Something needs to be done and I know just the generation that is up for it.
It’s next level….100%.
