Aussie Traditions Up In Smoke

The Sunday Age

Sunday July 27, 2003

John Elder

Among the government's best friends, the lounge bar, Carlisle Street, yesterday: she looks like some wrinkled hatching, with her fluffy blue beanie and her eyes only moving when her chin takes a different stance against the haze of a filter-tip burning in the ashtray.

She sits with her right hand in front of her chest, the thumb and two fingers set as if to accept either a glass or a cigarette, or possibly both at the same time. For the fellow in the booth across the way has his beer and cigarette held in the one hand, like a faulty hotdog - while he keeps his other hand in his lap with his brick-like packet of smokes.

The ancient beanie woman is watching him with interest, as she waits for her almost-ancient daughter to bring over a couple of males from the bar. In slow motion she reaches for her cigarette, takes a dawdling suck on it, eases it back to the ashtray and slowly blows out the smoke. Her daughter is taking a long time with those drinks.

When I say ``hello" she gives a slow nod. Now, I've already observed that the lights are on and the sandwich is fully laden, for when the old woman came into the bar, she was chattering and gesticulating, sharp as a crow.

It's ever since she lit that cigarette that she's gone all dreamy and mellow. Perhaps she hasn't heard that the price of cigarettes - and beer - is set to rise again, next week. ``I love a cigarette," she says, with one of those cutesy granny grins they often use in kiddie movies. ``But I can't smoke them the way I used to."

Meaning, she once sucked down a couple of packets a day. ``Not that I could afford to now," she says. ``I'm back to two packs a week unless somebody treats me I'm on pretty poor rations."

But, surely she couldn't smoke 40 cigarettes now, this far down the line? ``Some people are built for it," she says, reaching to the ashtray in slow motion again. Perhaps her way of simply making it last as long as possible.

She looks me up and down and then falls into a grimace as she says, ``What smart complete bastards they are in the government and stupid too. The Federal Government is losing billions of dollars on the black economy but putting up the prices of alcohol and tobacco will only drive more people to the black market."

She was a school teacher, still keeps up with things - but has she crossed over into the black market herself.

``My son bought me a lovely big bag of chop-chop, about three cigarette packets worth for about $10, I think but I really didn't like the taste for some reason. I haven't encouraged him to get me any more. I like what I like."

Meanwhile her daughter has arrived with their two beers. She's a smoker, too. ``I remember when a packet cost me nine-pence" says the daughter, who wears a parka and a scarf, but no beanie. ``And beer I can't remember actually buying it myself until after my husband died. He always bought the beer."

``And," says ancient beanie mother, ``he always complained when the price went up."

Now her daughter's arrived, she turns her attention back to the fellow in the booth across the way drinking and smoking with one hand - with his big packet of smokes held below the table in his lap. Or maybe she's just vaguing out.

However, the fellow he's sitting with has twice asked the one-handed chap, ``You don't have a smoke, do ya?"

But each time one-handed man kept talking, as if he hadn't heard the request.

``Excuse me, sir," I say. ``Can you spare a cigarette?"

He flinches, pretends to have none on his person. ``Sorry, mate," he says.

All one can say, is that rampant taxation of pleasure is undermining some good old fashioned Aussie traditions, eh?