Postcards From Across the Pond

So, how late did you stay up? As has been our habit for the past few years, we watched the telly until 10:00pm, then went to bed with tea and our books. The new year came in, as it always does, without us keeping vigil for it.

And we still got to see some fireworks. At midnight, the sky lit up as WWIII began outside our bedroom window. We watched for a while, then tried to go back to sleep as residue shots were fired for the next forty-five minutes.

So, Happy New Year.

This is a momentous one because I ended up accidentally making a resolution.

Resolutions, as I have previously written, are best not made on the first of January. It’s the worst time of the year to do something drastic. You’ve just come off a few weeks of excess, you probably embarrassed yourself at the office Christmas Party (and if you didn’t it wasn’t a very good party), and you are likely filled with regret and shame and a bit of indigestion.

Wait until February is what I say. If, after a few weeks of quiet contemplation, you are still determined to drink less, exercise more, or eat better, then go for it. That starts your year off better than proposing life-changing habits on the first day of the year, only to cast them aside by the fourth.

Unfortunately, a life-changing decision came to me mere days ago, but I am not going to put it into practice for several good reasons, the date on the calendar being one. The other is more practical.

The decision came about suddenly, but the lead-up was slow, consisting of several nudges as well as the long-standing conviction that this was going to happen one day, and as I have recently entered a new decade in my life, this seemed to be a good time.

That resolution was to quit smoking.

As many of you know, I have been a long-time aficionado of cigars and pipes. It is a habit that has served me well, brought me peace, calm, and many moments of quiet contemplation. It is also, in no small way, the reason I am where I am. The story of how this came about is best told via an excerpt from my book Postcards From Ireland:

Ultimately, it was all because of the cigars.

I was several months into an eight-year relationship with a woman I now refer to only as She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named when I finally took notice of the Tupperware container in the far reaches of the fridge.

“I see you’ve found my cigars,” She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named said, coming up behind me. “I keep them in Tupperware in my fridge so they’ll stay fresh; put them back or you’ll make them go stale.”

I complied, but my curiosity got the better of me and I asked her why she had them; I’d never known her to smoke a cigarette, much less a cigar.

She explained that she and her old college friends used to go camping together once a year in a cabin in the Adirondacks. One of the traditions of that get together was the smoking of cigars around the fireplace in the evening. They hadn’t done it in years, but she kept the cigars because she saw no reason to throw them out. So, when we began staying in the cabin in the Adirondacks, we brought the cigars with us and resurrected the tradition.

After that, events escalated at a surreal pace.

We began tapping into the computer frontier equivalent of Facebook and Twitter: newsgroups. There was a newsgroup for cigar smokers and we became active participants. Soon, our little group began to grow, and we started holding weekly meetings at a sympathetic local restaurant.

As you might expect, we considered ourselves cigar aficionados, which meant—in addition to you not wanting to talk to us for very long at a cocktail party—that we were on a constant quest for the world’s best cigars.  This quest was something of a sticking point with the US Government, as the cigars we considered the best originated from a country America was not eager to do business with. But we weren’t going to let a little thing like the Trading with the Enemy Act stop us.

One of the many ways She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named overcame this speed bump was to cultivate an on-line friendship with a London cigar merchant who was willing to sell and ship cigars to a location that, technically, he shouldn’t. Packages from this merchant arrived in thick, padded envelopes purporting to carry travel brochures, which they, in fact, did; the travel brochures contained cigars.

There were other deceptions—some more interesting and inventive—employed by members of the cigar sub-culture which helped retain America’s title as the number one importer of cigars from a country that the US, officially, conducts no business with, but they are not relevant to this story:

The cigars from London, when they arrived, were lovingly liberated from the travel brochures; She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named got the cigars, I took the travel brochures.

In this way, the petty smuggling of contraband became responsible for me ending up, some years later, in Heathrow airport at 5:30 in the morning on my way to Ireland. The idea of going to Ireland had been evolving for some time and the ads in the brochures about hiking the Irish coast had provided the opportunity for me to turn the notion into reality. Heathrow, however, was my own idea; one of many bad ones, as it turns out.

So, you see, cigars hold a cherished place in my life, which has kept me loyal to them these many years.

But all things—good and bad—come to an end, and I figured this was the time to give them up. This won’t be a problem. Cigars are a habit, not an addiction. I often go on two-week holidays without bringing any with me and have no problem being without them. Stopping would not require a lot of effort, or put me through any withdrawal.

The problem was quantity. I have recently returned from the US with $800 worth of cigars and pipe tobacco, and I am loath to dump it in the skip. Even my wife agrees with this. Also, as noted above, I’m not one to make New Year resolutions, so, while the resolution remains admirable, the timing is awkward.

My calculations—given the rate I smoke and the amount of tobacco I have—means this stash could last me into March. Of 2027. So, I have amended my resolution.

Instead of giving them up at the start of 2026, I’ll give them up at the start of 2027. That way, I’ll have a smaller quantity of tobacco to dump when I switch to a tobacco-free life.

And it means I get to look forward to a year of quizzical looks from doctors, nurses, dental professionals and other well-meaning folk when I tell them I have resolved to quit. But not until next year. I really wonder how they’ll take that.