It looks as if we're about to lose variegated cigarette packet designs in favour of some old-style Soviet Bloc plain, dull, prissy, lifeless, po-faced, equalitarian, health-Nazi, state-enforced single design. The fact that the Conservative Party is behind this piece of grim, joyless, finger-wagging, pursed-mouth, putianical nonsense is enough to make an old right-winger throw up. What next? Cars are dangerous - let's make them all the same size and white. Sweets are bad for us. So is fast food. And, as many immigrants tell us, men are unable to control their base urges when they see a woman's face, so maybe we should force all females to wear niqabs...
Oh, what the hell! I've just spent a nostalgic half hour looking at vintage cigarette packet designs on the web, so before our shops are stocked with nothing but achingly dull packets that look like this...
...let's remind ourselves of the past, when we might all have been coughing our lungs out as we headed for an early grave, but at least we enjoyed a bit of entertainment and colour on our all-too-brief journey:
Of course, this one would have fitted the "plain packaging" bill:
...but mainly because it was a 1945 promotional give-away for a popular Chicago radio show, and, as the packet promised, there were no cigarettes inside.
How far we've come from the days when the Conservative Party was happy to produce a poster like this:
And while we are drawing deeply on the Sweet Afton of nostalgia, what about cigarette cards? Beautiful and educational, I have a set of Kensitas silk Wildflowers of Britain, dating from 1923 and still wasting their sweetness on the desert air.
ReplyDeleteThey might be wasting their sweetness on ebay as well, MartinD - do your cards look anything like these?:
Deletehttp://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/J-Wix-Son-Ltd-KENSITAS-SILK-FLOWERS-6-small-silks-with-folders-/171659115987?pt=UK_Collectables_Cigarette_Tea_GumCards_CA&hash=item27f7ae3dd3
or these?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Clln-12-KENSITAS-SILK-FLOWERS-TYPE-B-C-realiZe-GLOBE-FLOWER-FOXGLOVE-THISTLE-VGC-/251796689790?pt=UK_Collectables_Cigarette_Tea_GumCards_CA&hash=item3aa040937e
I can't see a reference to a date for them, so they could be another set. Anyway, they're beatiful.
The very things, Scott. They don't seem to be going for much so they must have been produced in great numbers. Enchanting, nevertheless, and well worth the emphysema.
ReplyDeleteI admire a man willing to die for beauty, MartinD.
DeleteSpeaking as somebody who gave up smoking eight months ago and who misses it very badly I would like to thank you for this post. At least you did not show the Benson & Hedges Red Tin, The Player's Navy Cut 50-Drum or the Peter Stuyvesant Soft Pack. You have precipitated a crisis.....
ReplyDeleteAs the Godfather said, "YOU CAN ACT LIKE MAN!"
DeleteBut then, you already have - ten years after giving up fags, I'm still chewing Nicorette gum and smoking e-cigarettes, while you - an even heavier smoker that I was - have done it cold turkey. RESPECT!
The playwright Robert Bolt gave a lecture at my university once,during which he chain-smoked from an enormous packet of 100 Senior Service untipped. Paid for it in the end, poor bloke.
I attended a lecture once at the LSE given by A.J.Ayer in the mid-sixties. He smoked incessantly fiddling with a silver cigarette case and using an elegant holder. He was a charismatic presenter. He succumbed to emphysema...at age 79. Nigella Lawson's step-father, no less.[There is a very good interview by Bryan Magee on YouTube during which his cigarette case is again much to the fore] He was married to Dee Wells twice and during their second marriage she had her leg amputated due to a smoking-related illness. I also attended a lecture by Bertrand Russell at the LSE around the same time. He was 93 and a heavy pipe-smoker. He died at 97 of natural causes.
DeleteOddly, Bolt was also married to the same women twice - Sarah Miles. I suspect that it was not his heavy intake of Senior Service that did for him in the end?
There's a tremendous debate between AJ Ayer and Bernard Williams in which the latter coughs and splutters as he tries to cope with Ayer's smoking and think and speak at the same time, see Appearance and Reality.
DeleteThe two of them appeared on the same team at the Cambridge Union in 1974-ish, debating God with Lord Soper and Archbishop Ramsey and no cigarettes allowed. I expected a turkey shoot but Soper played a stolid defensive innings and Ramsey was magnificent, matching Ayer's supercilious ease and making Williams seem ponderous.
Your link took me to something incomprehensible with no sound - maybe this is where it's supposed to go?:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCrEA2nCqw
A.J. Ayer was always very clear, but usually wrong. Bernard Williams may very well have been right, but there was something about his delivery and manner that made it impossible for me to follow what he was saying (as well as my severe intellectual limitations, of course). He was like a parody of a philosopher: ponderous is a good description of his style. The other Cambridge Professor of Philosophy at the time, you'll remember, was Elizabeth Anscombe, a Roman Catholic who wore Mao suits and smoked cheroots. The only time I saw her (I think) was when she and Williams attended a talk by the lateral thinking chap, Edward De Bono, and they only did so in order to walk out ostentatiously after five minutes, which I thought was appallingly rude.
As SDG recently reminded us, there used to be an ITV television programme in the '60s called "Three After Six" on which A.J. Ayer would occasionally appear alongside his long-suffering wife Dee Wells (he was a dirty little devil) and the likes of Benny Green and Alan Brien. They talked a load of Hampstead balls, of course, but now the BBC gives us nothing but gurning morons on the likes of The One Show. Autre temps etc.
Smoking is an issue that puts a lot of self-proclaimed conservatives on their own ass. Shows they're just as anxious to control the property of others as any welfare recipient.
ReplyDeleteI love the cards too...especially those depicting uniforms from the British Empire. I've got a book on the various uniforms from India and it seems to be mostly taken from cigarette cards.
There are some really splendid examples of cigarette cards featuring British Empire uniforms, so you're probably right about the origin of the ones in your book.
DeleteI'm a bit conflicted myself, to be honest. I fought and bitched about every cigarette ban at work as they were introduced, which were all accompanied by the mean-spirited crowing of the usual puritan pleasure-killers - but I'm not sure I'd ever have been able to quit if they hadn't been in place, and I'm not sure I'd support rescinding them now in, for instance, restaurants or trains - but I'm fully behind UKIP's policy of reversing the ban in pubs, which are suffering as a result of it.
Come to think of it, I might have been thinking about cigarette bans because of reading your recent excellent post on "No constitutional right to smoke":
http://lowcotton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/no-constitutional-right-to-smoke.html
If the trains are owned by the public then it's a public concern...on private property I don't see how it can be anybody but the owners decision.
DeleteThere are also some samurai cards too that are really sharp.
Thanks for the link.
"on private property I don't see how it can be anybody but the owners decision."
DeleteBelieve me, here it can be. One of these days - and I predict it won't be far off - parents will be forbidden from smoking in their own homes whether their kids are in residence or not. (Apparently it's already almost impossible for smokers to adopt children.)
Sadly it's the same here...you can't even smoke in private clubs in certain states. The recent ban in New Orleans mentions private clubs specifically. The ban also includes water vapor "smokers."
DeleteDon't know about adoption...though I'm sure it's being done by hook or crook.
There was one notorious case here where a couple were turned down for being UKIP supporters!
DeletePassing Cloud takes me back..a pint of Young's Ordinary in hand,and a fag in the other.As SDG says you have indeed precipitated a crisis;Young's beer does'nt travel well and it's dearly missed.
ReplyDeleteI gave up smoking after a week at Forest Mere which used to be a health spa-just so much as think of lighting up meant a visit from Matron and a sound thrashing.Remember SDG your body is your temple.
I suspect in SDG's case, it may very well have been deconsecrated.
DeleteTo be honest, Southern Man, I can't imagine anybody less likely to be caught smoking a Passing Cloud, despite your past association with Brighton.