SOME LESSONS take longer to be learnt than others, to which many a smoker will attest.
In my youth it was fashionable for young Jamaican men to smoke cigarettes as a manhood insignia. I was always in fashion. My habit was influenced by my peers. So I moved from brand to brand. Starting out with 'Four Aces' then 'Zephyr' the mentholated then on to 'Lucky Strike' in affluent times, then 'Gold Flake', because the tobacco was blended with honey, then on to 'Royal Blend', a brand which lasted longest because it smelt more manly, especially with alcohol.
Eventually I shifted to tipped cigarettes when it became the 'in thing' to decry cigarette smoking for health reasons. When I was leaving America for England I travelled with a carton of L&Ms, which was then my favourite of favourites. In Windsor I found a tobacconist that stocked them and we became each other's favourites.
Some years after moving to London I was in my apartment watching television when on came a BBC documentary about the ills of the smoking habit. There was nothing good to be said for cigarette smoking. Regardless, I kept smoking my L&M's right through. The documentary showed some disgusting images of smoking people's lungs and what came out of them after years of smoking. Those stories never fazed me. I kept puffing away.
DOWNHILL TREK
The main story of the programme was the downhill trek of a man who was a two 20-pack smoker all of his adult life. First, we saw when he had his first operation to remove one of his lungs. But he kept on smoking. Next he was shown losing one of his legs because of poor blood circulation. On his crutches he was still smoking. When we saw him next he was in a wheelchair having lost his other leg. By that time he claimed that he didn't have much more to lose and since he enjoyed smoking so much he might as well continue.
Well, the next time he was featured was at his funeral. Although the story impressed me as the waste of life of a foolish man, I continued to light up. What impressed me more was the thoroughness of the BBC documentary.
Near the ending of the programme we were introduced to a typically bowler-hatted civil servant with a valise chained to his wrist. His basic job was to go to the offices of the cigarette companies daily and collect over nine and a half million pounds sterling in tax, lodge it in the appropriate account and keep books of the transactions.
On Mondays he would collect for Saturday and Sunday. I was stunned! Over nine and a half million daily? I suddenly visualised the chairmen of the cigarette company's boards as non-smokers. If they can be paying so much in taxes, how much was their companies earning? I stubbed out my L&M and put the rest of the package in a drawer. For nine years I never lit another cigarette. It was intended to be never again but I have had to stop twice since then.
The other time 'never--' challenged me was in my work.
In England in the 60,s racial discrimination and prejudice were rampant in every field of endeavour from the House of Parliament to the infant school-room. As usual the arts tried to come to the rescue. A couple of playwrights came up with an idea for a situation comedy series for television featuring some black and white neighbours.
The weekly series was called 'Love Thy Neighbour'. It took off like a rocket. Everyone was talking about it but not everyone had the same point of view.
PREJUDICE
As far as the creators were concerned, they were hoping that if the white British could laugh at themselves and their prejudice then maybe it would go away. For the blacks it didn't work that way. In the schools there were black and white children who wanted to get together and be friends but neither of them really had any terms of reference that they could call upon without causing acrimony. For the blacks terms like 'Sambo', 'Jungle Bunny' and 'Nigger' were fighting words. What was worse, they had no sort of equivalent retort for their white counterparts.
To be called 'whitey' or 'snowflake' never gave the same degree of satisfaction since they've always been taught that to be washed in blood would make them 'whiter than snow' and that would be acceptable to the Lord. So when in a friendly gesture, a white child calls his or her would-be friend 'Sambo' or 'Midnight' and there is a fight, nobody understands. It happens every week on TV and there is no fight. The black child is then labelled as 'difficult' and having a learning disability.
The TV programme obviously occasioned a lot of work for black actors but knowing what I knew and feeling the way I did about the programme, I told my agent that I would 'never' want to work on it. There were some things that I would 'never' do!
That went fine until 'Love Thy Neighbour' was to be made into a feature film for the big screen. A new character, that of the grandfather of the black household, was introduced into the plot and he came with his West Indian philosophy and academic know-how of the British way of life.
The character brought some respectability to the TV plots. My agent was sent the script and an offer was made. I could 'never' turn it down.
