Where there's smoke, there's fire
16th June, 2007
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It was my cousin who remarked that she had just endured what she rather unkindly described as a "Cousin Marc day". It began when she sprayed toothpaste over her blouse. She followed this up by dousing her skirt in tomato sauce at lunchtime and finished up spectacularly by falling through the steps - sober - when she arrived home. "Well done," I said, smiling my benediction, for it has become accepted wisdom that my impressive misfortune has somehow become contagious and infected my cousin's family.
There was that time when her brother was called to play in a crucial school football match. All eyes were on the team as it ran onto the field, the one prominent omission from the lineup being my cousin who had fallen over in the dressing sheds and injured his ankle, being effectively carried off before he had even run on. The conversation turned to other embarrassing moments. My uncle recalled the time when he decided that his public image would improve immeasurably if he began smoking a pipe. As my aunt tells it, he was walking down the street resplendent in suit and tie, every bit the urbane and knowledgeable public servant he was, puffing away thoughtfully on his pipe. Pausing at a traffic light, he took a deep puff, exhaled an impressive plume of blue smoke and watched in horror as the bowl fell off his pipe, bounced onto the footpath and landed in the middle of the road. It was lunchtime on a crowded city street, all eyes suddenly turning to regard the man standing with a startled look on his face, the stem of his pipe still clenched between his teeth while the bowl, still smoking, lay in the middle of the road where seconds later it was run over by a passing taxi. All smoking, I believe, is dangerous to one's health but pipe smoking is particularly so. "Ah, yes. Pipes," said my father, as he recalled his own pipe-smoking experience, which occurred at a bar where he was attempting to impress a young female person with his wit, erudition and sophistication. Taking out his pipe, he filled it with dark, rich tobacco, thinking that if the Old Spice aftershave didn't get her, then surely the masculine aroma of pipe tobacco would carry the day. He placed the pipe in his mouth, struck a match and watched in horror as the flaming phosphorous head snapped off, arced through the air in slow motion and landed in the open matchbox. A nanosecond later, 49 matches ignited in a spontaneous blaze. He stood there, still clutching his pipe, face blackened and with smoke curling from his singed eyebrows. By the time the haze had cleared and he'd stopped gasping for breath, the female person had remembered a pressing engagement on the other side of the city and run out the door, leaving him alone with the smell of tobacco, charred flesh and burning hair. Then there was that time he put his pipe back in the pocket of his suit coat after puffing his way down a city street. In a scene reminiscent of my uncle's display. My father was waiting to cross the road amid a pedestrian throng when his coat suddenly burst into flames. Apparently he had failed to properly extinguish the pipe and the smouldering coals had ignited some tissues in his pocket. If you appreciate a challenge, says my father, try looking calm and controlled when your coat pocket is on fire. He ripped off the jacket and belted the fames into submission on the footpath but the jacket was never the same. Health authorities have not yet addressed all the perils that smoking can present. There should, for example, be a photograph on cigarette packets of a man standing on one leg and holding his foot while smoke comes out of his shoe. This also happened to my father when he stood on a lit butt that penetrated the sole of the shoe he had been meaning to get repaired for some time but had postponed because of a temporary liquidity crisis. It took at least 30 seconds for him to undo the knotted laces and rip off the shoe, by which time the butt had burnt through his sock and was scorching a hole in the sole of his foot. The world is a dangerous place. |
