Ive no chance of giving up smoking now until about May.
Ive been on what they call a tobacco run, which means you flirt over to
Belgium on the overnight ferry from Hull in the far North of England and are back
the next day with about three kilos of the stuff. It costs
a little more than it would in Ibiza, even allowing for the fact that Spain is
the only country to have Golden Virginia in 40g rather than 50g packs sold everywhere
else in Europe. Its 3.75€ in Bruges and what a lovely medieval town
that is. Apparently they make mighty fine beer too, but
Ive sniffed a barmaids apron and that was quite enough for me. Ill
just have to digress here to explain how I got that € sign in there. I
had to get a new Apple keyboard some months ago because mine insisted in putting
spaces where spaces shouldnt be. The € sign disappeared from where
it had been before (Alt+2) and I had to ring the Apple helpline which is in Cork
in the South of Ireland. It took them ten minutes and no doubt it cost me a tenner
(say, 6€) for the telephone call to find that my new Apple Pro keyboard was
American and it was now concealing the € sign on Alt+shift+2 and I was ringing
an Irish girl in Cork to find out how to extract the thing for your delectation. I
couldnt help noticing that the European flag was proudly flying on some
of the beautiful civic buildings in Bruges and even over a tobacco shop. I dont
know about this, but Ive never seen a Euro flag anywhere in the UK and we
pay about £9 for the same packets of tobacco. (Finding the £ sign
was a dream; its Alt+3). The people on the ferry
were amusing and I think it would make a wonderful TV sitcom. There were lots
of tattooed truck drivers who were quite obviously taking home a lot more tobacco
than me, but the customs and immigration people seemed to be interested only in
a Korean couple having trouble finding their passports. I was having trouble finding
a decent cup of espresso though and I think its another cultural divide. Just
down the road from the Hull terminal was a proper smugglers pub and we stopped
there for what turned out to be a most pleasant cup of coffee and I think you
could have got anything you wanted to smoke, never mind the tobacco. Up
the road I spotted a lay-by full of trucks and the drivers were swapping everything
from stories about their overseas conquests to washing machines and fridges. You
know, theres a real world out there where people dont do their shopping
in Tesco and you would have had to read my column a few weeks ago to discover
that they are moving into Ibiza big time. No doubt the
tobacco barons are moving in on Ibiza, too. Do you realise you can pay for a weeks
holiday with the amount of cheap tobacco theyll let you take home. And
now I have to tell you that my 82-year-old mother slipped and fell and broke a
bone in her hip while I was away. I drove back from Hull like a maniac and straight
to the hospital. My heart was pounding and I think I was more petrified than Ive
ever been in my life and certainly more than a tobacco smuggler must feel as he
goes through customs. But shes all right. Theyve
operated and put a steel plate in there with two nails. She apparently had what
they call an epidural and I thought that was something they gave you when you
were having a Caesarean. Shell be in hospital over Christmas and thatll
make a change with Carol singers and hospital turkey. What an image that conjures
up. I, of course, will be having a rib of beef and if shes a good girl Ill
even take her a sandwich with horseradish and proper mustard for her tea. May
I take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas, even if your Santa
is rowed ashore and mine has just operated on my Mum? We might even join you and
eat a dozen grapes in Ward Two of Tameside General Hospital on New Years
Eve as the bells ring out. Its also the time to tell
you that were taking a break from our Electronic Pages each week.
But dont despair because the archive of more than 500 articles we have carried
over the past 95 weeks is still here. Were calling it The Electronic
Archive and thats exactly what it is. Personally
I cannot think of a better way of spending the winter, whatever country you are
in, going back through the archive. Go
back and re-read Emily articles bring the History of Ibiza to life. Have
another look at Kirks devastating writing about the anthropology of the
Ibicencan way of life, especially his series on how they make the soberasano
sausages. Have another look at Joses pieces on bees
and honey and the way he brings ancestral voices into the twenty first century. Re-read
Martins brilliant stories about stories that have been written based in
Ibiza and Harold on how he found Ibiza in the early sixties before the hippies
did. And just let Garys pictures speak for themselves. You
could always have another look at some of the Sober Life columns, too.
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