âYou can NOT afford to smoke!â
No, this is not a âBlocked Dwarfâ rant about the Smoking Ban, nor a âlike Gildas without the IQâ thesis about some fascinating tit bit of tobacco history;  I save those for Grandadâs site. (where, hopefully, this week, there will appear my humble treatise  on Picardian Smuggling Dogs of the C19). [Ed: Must Google Picardian Smuggling Dogs.]
âNow you are married, have a child and responsibilities you can NOT afford to smoke!â said my late pietist Prussian mother in law, who obviously mistook me for the German, even Prussian, son-in-law she had hoped for.
Prussians, for those who donât know, are Germans with a Pickelhaube inserted where âdie Sonne notten shinenâ.   To be fair to the woman, whom I grew to loveâ¦after 20 years or soâ¦I was a bit of a heavy smoker back then â up to 5 packs a day when I could chain smoke in an office. Though to put her command into some financial context,  a pack of fags cost 4 DMs, and had for as long as anyone could remember â Iâm talking even âqualityâ brands. 4 DM. Which was, in 1989, about £1.30!
Canât recall what 20 B&H cost me in the UK then but I have a feeling it was well over twice that. At the time I was bringing home, net cash, £1k or 3K DM a month and we had but the one baby and we were living rent free-ish with the parents-in-law (NEVER DO THAT! How my mother in law survived the 6 months of sharing a 2 bedroom flat with us I shall never know, I came close to swinging for her on an almost daily basis).
Could I afford to smoke? Probably not, says the older wiser me, but at the time I replied: âI work 60 hours a week with 20 hours travelling time in the dark and cold of a Hessian winter. I canât afford NOT to smoke!â
Then there was my mother-in-lawâs bestest friend, Edda the evangelical Norwegian. For those who donât know, Norwegians are Germans with a ski stick inserted âSolen skinner ikkeâ (âSolenâ from âSolâ or the Latin word for sun Iâm guessing?) who, when The Bestes Frau and I moved into our first flat, admonished us to âsave every beanâ. Â
So, of course, I immediately stopped drinking, smoking and started reusing teabags? No! of course I didnât. Both those good ladies had grown up in the aftermath of WW2, both had been through the sort of poverty in childhood that would now be classed as child abuse. Both had started their married child-rearing lives on a budget that involved adding  water to stew to âextend itâ and not being able to afford new shoes if the children had inconsiderately decided to grow again. Both had felt themselves blessed to have married non-drinking non-smokers. Not for any pseudo scientific health reasons but simply because a couple of Dmarks a day on beer and a couple more on fags would have meant the difference between having jam, butter and real coffee for breakfast or petrol based marg and âMucke Fuckâ (Ersatz barley based fake coffee). Anyone here over the age of 60 or so will probably recognise what Iâm describing.
Life everywhere for young parents was tough back then after the war and in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Hell it remains tough today. The lack of money and lack of sleep donât change with fashion.
What Iâm trying to say is, it is none of my concern what young couples spend their money on. I do not expect young couples (or single parents for that matter either) to bring their babies up in the sort of relative âpovertyâ we ourselves had to. In fact I believe that each generation should âhave it betterâ and when my youngest and his wife spent the equivalent of my first monthâs real wages on a wide screen plasma coffee-making TV I held my peace. Iâm happy that my Grandkidsâ Mom and Dad can afford not only to run a car but his big bike as well, and that on fairly low wages. I accept Granddaughter needs a wardrobe full of more clothes than I think or the wife have owned over our entire lives. And if they want to replace the perfectly good, serviceable and easy clean linoleum floor with carpet hand woven from water proof yak wool then fair enough.
Yet this morning I was chatting to a young, 23 years old, soon-to-be-Father of my acquaintance. Heâs what Iâd describe as a âgood kidâ, works hard at some just over minimum wage job, treats his equally hard working âmissusâ well, doesnât get too drunk too often and aside from the fact he is a Norfolker, speaks âNorfolkâ not English, and insists on discussing something called âfootballâ with me and regaling me with the ups and downs (a lot of downs it seems) of âhisâ team âthe Canariesâ, he seems an all round well balanced young man. Not too bright, not too thick, content with his lot in life, now he has finally gotten his missus in the club and his driving licence. Pretty sure heâll make a good Dad.
So this morning he âdo say he dooâ that he and she had been out shopping at the weekend and had bought a baby buggy. For £500 (in words: HOW BLOODY MUCH?!?!)  I hadnât had time to pick my jaw off the floor when he added âit was 2nd hand, new they cost £1.2Kâ. Â
In what universe does any young couple pay more for a 2nd hand buggy than his or mine car is worth? Â I-Candy? I can bloody not!
I get that every young parent wants to give their child the best; I surprised myself and shocked my own Aged Mother Dwarf by paying £25 for a pair of welly boots for Granddaughter2 not so long back (in my defence, they had pink cats on them and proper pull up handles!).
But five hundred nicker for a buggy? Stroller on, mate! Leave it outâ¦.in the porch all night John, not!
Sweet Jesus wept but he was scared heâd get tear stains on the i-upholstery.
The price is what gets me. Not the fact that my young friend was doting enough to part with what must be a weekâs wages + for them both for a buggy, a buggy that will be no more serviceable than the one I got for £5 at the car-boot for Granddaughter2 when she is here. That and the fact that there are young couples out there who think that paying £1.2k for a buggy in âThai fusion lime green and pastel grey with McPherson® suspensionâ  is somehow ânormalâ or the âright thingâ to do â I donât care how much they bloody earn.
The landlady once recounted how she made nappies for her baby daughter out of old curtains. You can imagine her reaction when I recounted my experiences of this morning to her.
[Ed: Mighty fine nappies they were too, with tasteful brown fern leaves dotted about on the most expensive terry towelling that the Canadian Embassy could run too; sadly, folded in the required triangles, they looked disconcertingly like skid marksâ¦.sweet memories!]
I hate to sound like either âHeli The Outlawâ (my mother in law), Edda or even my own Aged Mother Dwarf  but the saying âCut your cloth to fit your coatâ seems appropriate.
7 thoughts on ââYou can NOT afford to smoke!ââ
Comments are closed.
(Resisting the temptation to google âMucke Fuckâ⦠doubting that a barley based fake coffee would be top of the search resultsâ¦)
Like
Actually youâd be (almost) wrong & yes, it surprised me too!

Like
âMocca fauxâ â it all makes perfect sense! Thanks for that, TBD.
(Iâll still stay away from an image-search though!)
Just been looking for prices of ciggies here out of curiosity, but theyâre still a âbitâ behind when it comes to updating websites. I paid â¬6 for a carton of 200 a couple of years ago â the cheapest available. Can only find mainland prices which still seem reasonable compared to UK, starting at â¬1,30 for, ahem, âPopular Negroâ. There are some great names out there â âCorset Pink Superslimsâ, for example. Almost makes me want to start again!
http://www.elpreciodeltabaco.com/orden/precio/
Like
Iâm titillated by âSantiagoâs Catheterâ and âExcite Blandoâ (either Blando is very lucky or there is a dichotomy there somewhere).
Like
Excellent post TBD, I enjoyed it very much. And it WAS as good as a Gildas post!
Like
Very good, T.B.D. I think that, had perambulators cost that much (or the equivalent) in my day, my mother might not have left me outside a shop on the High Street!
Î Î
Like
Nice one oh short one.
I was seduced into smoking by my missus who was a smoker when I met her aged 18. Ahhh the memories of a kiss from those smokey lips reminds me of all that was great about discovering that life was for living rather than just studying, passing exams and mindlessly marching on into âmindlessâ middle class life to the mantra of gotta get on gotta get on.
Like you I am pretty much a chain smoker and have been for more than forty years and still hold to the view that a drink before and a cigarette after are the three best things in life.
Childrenâs spending priorities ??? They defy analysis â¦..why is a takeaway pizza costing £12 (x 2 of course) sooo worth more than a top of the range Supermarket one at £3 (x 2) but involving five minutes in the oven at home ? Actually I do understand (though it makes me fume) â¦â¦its about giving in for a moment â¦..not unlike a cigarrette in an odd wayâ¦..a declaration that despite life being tough one can escape for a few brief moments.
Perhaps the beach buggy purchase is something similar â¦..a declaration of sorts â¦..necessary not for the thing itself but in the statement madeâ¦..despite everything I am who I am â¦â¦man cannot live by bread alone so to speak
Liked by 1 person