How 50s thinking went up in a puff of smoke

I can just about recall the ration book. Deep down in the recesses of my recollection I have these vague memories of standing with my mother in the village shop as everything was measured out to the millionth of an ounce. Or so it appeared.

All that seems such a long time ago. Well, I was only four when the Second World War finally ended in 1953. However, I do just about remember the general relief felt by the populace as abundance slowly but surely made a comeback to the kitchens, hearths and tables of Britain.

But it was the sweets. Yes, yes, sweets galore... there for the taking. Pear drops at a tanner a quarter, eucalyptus tablets ninepence. Penny chews, halfpenny chews, farthing chews.

Yes, farthings - it hardly seems possible, does it?

Those floodgates certainly opened in 1953 and, quite suddenly, all manner of sugary concoctions poured down a million confection-starved throats. No more was it a square of chocolate to last a whole day.

You could pig-out on a whole bar if the pocket money stretched far enough.

I should, of course, concede that my experiences of rationing must by definition be limited. Someone who enjoyed a 50s childhood would have nothing like the memories of a person who had lived through the really dark days of the 1940s.

Gazing at a newspaper photograph taken 50 years ago seemed to confirm the joys of liberation that were expressed by a relieved nation, ecstatic that the miseries of culinary deprivation were at last over.

The picture was of a shop being besieged by adults and children, eager to spend to the limit of their money rather than to the dictates of this tyrannical crimson booklet. There were smiles everywhere, the scene graphically captured in the way that only monochrome can do.

And there was another thing about this second in time captured on film all those years ago. The cigarette advertisements. Loads of them.

Wills' Wild Woodbines, Players' Navy Cut, Capstan Full Strength. Black Cat, Senior Service. Craven "A"... they won't hurt your throat. It's amazing what a difference half a century makes.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Virginia tobacco was a staple food, judging by the sheer profusion of brands available in 1953. Fifty years on and the smoker is now banished to the very edge of society.

The thing is, you see, that I find it interesting to compare the ultra-sensitivity of attitudes towards smoking these days with the complete laissez faire of only a short time ago.

Up and until the early 1970s, the vast majority of people smoked. Indeed, it was considered strange if you didn't indulge.

If Humphrey Bogart had provided the role model for the wartime generation, then my icons were definitely the pop groups of the 1960s. The Beatles were continuously puffing away, if the photographs and film footage are anything to go by, and as for the Rolling Stones - well, they turned smoking into an art form.

In publicity shot after shot, they scowled and drew on fags, white parchment faces that appeared to have been reared on a diet of Embassy and white sliced bread.

Oh, how I coveted that look. I would have given my entire tab-collar shirt collection for a visage of delinquency and debauchery as sported by the renegades of rock 'n' roll. Sadly, it was not to be.

For although I spent every waking hour sucking in my cheeks, a chubby chops I was destined to remain. But I could still take a drag of a fag - and this was almost as good.

Walking up Bath Road every day, I often chance upon the crumpled cigarette packet, tossed - as is the case with all packaging it seems - straight on to the pavement. Some times, I pause to read the warnings that appear in every larger type, surrounded with borders of finest funereal black.

Smoking kills, says one, quite soberly. Smoking reduces sperm count and damages fertility, screams another, labouring the point. Smoking causes heart disease and strokes, soothes another.

The admonishments become ever louder, the typography darker and starker on a white background. Smoking shrivels your brains, says another.

Sorry. I made that one up.

But you see what I mean. Yet people still smoke in considerable numbers despite all this doom, gloom and dire threats of bodily armageddon. Strange, isn't it?

Actually, it's remarkable how perceptions have changed. I remember visiting the doctor as a child and, upon entering his consulting room, could hardly see him for the fug. He'd turn around on his swivel chair, stubbing out a Gold Flake into an ashtray that was piled to the ceiling with dog ends.

"So what seems to be the trouble, young feller-me-lad?" he'd boom, ash flying all over the place. And then I'd tell him to the best of my ability.

"Right. I'll write you a prescription for 60 Woodbines, to be taken daily until the symptoms cease. That should cure your silly old chicken pox."

Thank you, sir. I fumble my way through the blue haze, searching for the door knob.

This is not quite so far-fetched as it sounds. I can recall an advertisement for Camel cigarettes portraying a doctor relaxing after his day's work, happily pulling on a gasper as if his life depended on it.

And within living memory, cigarettes were prescribed as an expectorant for tuberculosis patients. Just imagine - fags on the NHS!

But there again, I can afford to wax lyrically about the weed. I gave up smoking more than 10 years ago, thanks to nicotine patches.

The first one had no effect whatsoever until mid-afternoon of Day One. Then, just as I was picking up the children from Cherry Orchard School, the wretched device kicked in, releasing about 20 cigarettes' worth into my bloodstream all at once.

With a green, sweating face, slurred speech and pounding heart, I must have cut a strange figure as I waited with the other mums and dads, manfully trying to engage in a meaningful conversation.

But I had to give up. My lungs, weakened by two consecutive bouts of flu, were craving for relief from tobacco. It was time to quit.

Mind you, I do my best to refrain from being too self-righteous. To our cost, smoking has been used by busybodies, know-bests and the terminally officious as a power trip to impose their do-goodery on others.

Despite being a reformed smoker, I still have enormous amounts of sympathy for weaker souls. And that is why I don't like the discrimination, persecution and various demeaning conditions imposed on the smoker.

Once it was race. Then age. Now it's the tobacco addict, prey to the legions of meddlers whose only desire is to make as many people as possible as miserable as possible.

All right, it's a killer and costs the National Health Service millions of pounds every year. Yes. And so do road traffic accidents.

Few would want cars to carry Government health warnings in bold type printed on the door and wings, saying things like "Car drivers kill the equivalent number of people every year as die in a major war."

But it will never happen. The Government may not give a fig about offending the tobacco industry, but would certainly never dream of rubbing up the motor trade the wrong way.

Now. Where were we? Ah yes, the end of rationing 50 years ago. Happy daze.