KEY POINTS:
Before we even get started, I'd like to dedicate this column to my lighter.
It's the tail-end of Oscar week after all, and it seems appropriate to give thanks where they are due.
Even if I'm only recognising a tiny little $2 Bic, as opposed to the Academy or My Lovely Wife.
As a hardcore late-night smoker (never during the day. That's for addicts), many's the time and oft have I found myself trawling the house (flat/bach/studio) for a light. The light that strikes into flame the sweet bearer of nicotine that is the 3am fag.
Whether nestling deep in the crevice of a long neglected handbag, lying fallow in the pockets of a winter jacket or hiding under a dusty bed, a lighter reclaimed is a joyous event.
Prehistoric man was not more grateful for the thin lick of fire that illuminated his first primitive cave daubings than is the smoker for the flame found in the early hours of the morning.
The lack of a lighter is a terrible thing.
Reader, it pains me to tell you the lengths to which I have gone in search of a single, solitary match. Eyebrows, fingernails, fabrics (man-made and luxurious), all have been sacrificed on the altar of The Light.
There's a block of serviced apartments in Wellington that came within a whisper of conflagration thanks to an ill-co-ordinated interface of unlit fag and toaster element one 3am last month.
Needs must when the devil drives. And all for the lack of a lighter.
There are some people who are particularly blessed when it comes to having a light. I like to keep them close, these lucky keepers of The Flame. For I myself have not been so lucky when it comes to combustion.
I have no luck with lighters. Mostly because I treat them with the same disdain I show to keys, bills, cashcards, mobiles and all the other accoutrements of modern life. I never, ever have a light.
Obviously there are upsides to this state of affairs. There are no strangers in my world, only friends with matches you haven't yet met.
And so it is I find myself writing this column tonight, thankful for the little purple tin-wheel nestling by my side.
My thanks would be more heartfelt, however, if I could locate the damn thing because, looking at my latest packet of Marlboro Lights, I find myself in dire need of a fag.
As every smoker in this country knows, lighting up has become a far more hazardous proposition in the last few weeks, thanks to the images of rot and decay which now festoon our right-hand men. The War on Baccy has turned pictorial, the Government having followed Australia's lead and decided smokers need to be terrified and revolted into quitting the habit.
Thus, we're now presented with packets of cigarettes that resemble pictorial dispatches from a field-hospital during the Crimean War. Rotten mouths and gangrenous toes are the latest weapons to be marshalled in the ongoing fight against fags. The result being a pack of 20 plastered with images that will have nervous emphasimics up and down the country reaching for the Winny Reds.
The powers that be say they're unapologetic for these tactics. The problem with this sort of logic is that it simply doesn't allow for those of us who know exactly how bad smoking is for us and yet carry on regardless. Whether because of addiction, arrogance or the misguided imperviousness of youth, there are many smokers out there who will never ever stop. They are forever wedded to the dark teat and it's going to take more than a few pictures of toe tags and black lungs to change that.
How else to explain the sudden preponderance of cigarette cases among myself and my fagging friends? Of course the rub of it is, by the time we do realise we're not 10 foot tall and bulletproof, it will probably be too late.
In the meantime, has anybody got a light?
