Alice & Allen

Alice and I have just been to a show for the over 50s in the RDS where we were like locusts in a field of wheat searching out free samples, goodies, key rings (like we need ten each), make overs, juices and a lovely tub of ice cream that will only serve to add to an already expanded waist line. We stood in line and watched the inevitable demonstrations: a floor mop that will do everything except mop the floor while you’re out; headphones to listen to the radio while you’re in the garden admiring your petunias; electronic salt and pepper grinders with grades going from fine to coarse; a spikey mat - the modern day equivalent of the bed of nails – on which to torture yourself while reinvigorating your pressure points; face creams and various beauty products made from seaweed and other life giving products (I treated myself to some much to Alice’s disgust) and a powder that, with a few judicious strokes, will make you look as if you’ve spent hours in front of the mirror (and I bought some of this as well; Alice said the suppliers would be laughing all the way to the bank. On the way home she moaned that she hadn’t bought some 'cause she thought it looked damn good on me).

Then it was on to the health testing. Cholesterol: we were both grand, slightly up, slightly down, no big deal. Blood Pressure: Alice was told to get herself checked out by her GP while I grinned at her, knowing that the sphygmomanometer gave me a favourable reading. I didn’t bother taking the eye test as my myopic peepers are something I have learned to live with; Alice, on the other hand, has 20/20 vision, a fact confirmed by the dishy young gentleman on duty at this counter. Then it was off to have our lungs tested for possibility of COPD. If you think I am smug, now is the time to turn away. I gave up smoking eleven years ago, not without a struggle, precisely because I couldn’t bear the thought of becoming ill in my old age; Alice didn’t. My reading was perfectly normal while my dearest friend was told she had the lung capacity of an 83 year old. Dear oh dear!

I can see that I’m going to have to buy her Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking. This is a book that allows one to smoke as you read after which thousands and thousands of people have been able to stub out their last fag and look forward to a brighter future without this particular addiction. Carr was a heavy smoker himself; he smoked for over 33 years, and managed to puff an amazing 100 cigarettes every single day. When he finally kicked his addiction, at the age of 48, Carr realised that it is the fear of "giving up" that causes smokers to continue smoking. Smokers then perpetuate the illusion of genuine enjoyment as a reasoned justification of the absurdity of smoking in the face of overwhelming medical and scientific evidence of its dangers. Remember that, just in case it didn’t sink in first time round: There is overwhelming medical and scientific evidence of the dangers of smoking on your health.

When Carr died of lung cancer at the age of 76 many people implied that he was a charlatan. I mean, how could this man go around helping addicts to give up when it killed him in the end? I noticed smokers light up with greater satisfaction as if this man had fooled everyone by not living to 107 and dying of something more mundane, like influenza or utter boredom.

Alice and I are great friends. We go way back, so far back that she blames me for her having taken up smoking in the first place; perhaps she is right. I hope, that one day, she will blame me for having made her give up her killing habit. After all, I will need her good company when I’m stuck with a zimmer frame to toddle round looking for bargains, and free key rings, and tubs of delicious ice cream.