The third anniversary of 9/11. Our thoughts are with the victims of that terrible day.
I was out with a friend in a little hidden away bar that is surprisingly secret given its proximity to Leicester Square tube (yeah, I'm not going to tell you what it's name is and ruin the secret for everyone). We were sitting at a table next to a middle aged couple who were enjoying a bottle of wine. My friend is a light smoker, but she had no cigarettes on her and she spotted that the lady at the next table had a pack.
"Do you think she'll give me one?" she asked me.
"Yeah, of course she will," I replied having noted a kind of camaraderie between those idiot human beings who partake of this habit. They are so complicit in their self-destructive leanings that they will happily give a fag to a nicotine addict in need (unless they suspect that the smoker is someone who doesn't possess a home in which case many of them will pass on by. Cigarettes must only be doled out for nothing to those with the means to pay for them. Don't we live in a remarkable world?).
My friend was slightly tipsy and embarrassed to interrupt the next table's conversation and perhaps did not ask the lady in the most polite way possible (not that she was impolite, merely a little gauche). Eventually she asked, "Can I have one of your cigarettes?"
The older woman looked at her with disdain and pulling a cornish face and closing her eyes replied with an unexpected "Why?"
My friend was somewhat thrown by this blunt and redundant question and couldn't really answer. Although the answer should have been, "Well I am a nicotine addict and I don't have any cigarettes with me at the moment and so wondered if you'd just help me out, seeing as you clearly share the addiction and know how debilitating it can be." This was not said though.
"Why should I give you one of mine? Why don't you buy your own cigarettes?" came the haughty rejoinder.
It seemed unnecessarily rude and unfriendly. If she didn't want to share her cigarettes a simple "No, I only have a couple left" would have seemed a less confrontational way to get out of this situation. It wasn't an awful request. She hadn't been asked if she would mind if we punched her in the face. In a way we were going to help her out. Taking one of her cigarettes away from her might prolong her life a few more minutes. Though from the miserable look on her face I wondered if giving her an extra few minutes to live might be a negative thing.
You know, it's fair enough not to share your cigarettes with a stranger, but this response seemed excessive. I wondered if the older woman had never cadged a fag in a moment of need in her long life. I wouldn't have minded if she was saving her cancer sticks for a homeless person, but my guess is that they would receive even shorter shrift from her than my friend.
I made a few loud comments about how unpleasant I thought this behaviour was and when the waiter came had thought about ordering our own drinks and whatever our friends here are having as well, just to point out her miserliness (I'm a bit like Jesus in that respect). My friend went to see if she could buy some cigarettes from the bar. They didn't sell them here, so she was forced to go to the shop round the corner. Maybe this was fair enough. Maybe the lady had a point. But I don't think so.
Later in the evening, when the mean lady was in the bathroom my friend realised that she knew her companion. She had worked with him a few years before, although they couldn't remember each other's names. An awkward conversation began, with the whole cigarette debacle hanging in the air still. The woman returned to find us all in by now animated conversation and the connection was explained. Suddenly he rudeness had seemed inappropriate. She attempted to bridge the gulf that her brusqueness had created and offered my friend a cigarette. "It's all right, I've got some of my own now," she replied. It was a sweet victory to see those proferred cigarettes taken back.
We had a nice chat with them in the end and the lady on hearing I was a comic asked me to keep her informed if I ever had a gig near to her and gave me her card. So I have her address. I am tempted to put it up on here so that I can encourage all of you to send her single cigarettes in the post. But that would be mean. Wouldn't it?
