I was thinking about nostalgia today – you know the things ain’t what the used to be feeling. Well, I’m not really someone who dwells in the past, or so I think. I like the present, my day today, and I’m quite keen on the future too. I’ve found recently that more than a few of my friends talk about the past much more than they used to do in the old days – you know when pubs were real pubs, when cigarettes were supposed to be good for you, and no one wore seatbelts in cars. Well, I don’t drink as much alcohol as I did in my so-called good old days; I gave up smoking decades ago, and I used to have nightmares of being thrown forward through shattering windscreens. I regret some things about the present – Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, obviously….also the last ten years, at least, of British politics…. climate change is really happening as opposed to being a fear of the distant future as it was once for my generation. The good old days were full of anxieties, the present is too, chaps. I had many nightmares in my youth – not just crashing through windscreens – nuclear war, murderers climbing through my bedroom window in the middle of the night; when I was very little I was also frightened of ghosts. Then there was the real nightmares of school playgrounds, compulsory rugby, and, maybe worst of all, teenage parties. So, I’m ok with the here and now – we can at least have a go at changing things.

I can still enjoy looking at old photographs, reading history books, walking in bluebell woods in April and May, summer trips to the seaside, but also going to the cinema most weeks over the last year and seeing so many great films. If I get a little nostalgic at times, it is for the lost pleasures of the iPod (why can’t they come back?), my Chicago 88 converse trainers (they pinch my toes these days), and, I suppose, if I regret something, it is the careless and ignorant freedom of lighting a cigarette.

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I found this photograph last week when sorting through some documents at my mother’s place. I had never seen it before but it instantly conjured up another age. My age when I was, well, young. Later that month, I would be going off to university but this was a moment of relaxation at a family party, my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, in the old family home, probably the last one before I went off to seek my fortune in the big bad world.

Here I am with some members of my father’s “first” family, the step relations from his first marriage. Joe, a clever and very funny barrister is now long dead. He was also a talented amateur film-maker responsible for the only filmed footage of my childhood. Jean, his daughter is on my left. She once spoke of becoming a nun but, sadly, sank under the weight of mental disturbance and died alone shutting herself away from the world in a house with an over-grown garden. She was one of my favourite childhood relations and at her family home, I learnt how to do The Times crossword. To my right is Christine who lived next-door. She would later join the army and become a rather successful officer, looking very smart in her uniform, before making a good military marriage. We lost touch. I carried on growing my hair and started a new life which still seems like the adventure it was.  I would never sit in that group of four again.

I wondered for a moment what had brought the four of us together in that thoughtful circle but then saw the clue in the foreground. We are sitting there like the group of nicotine addicts that we were, worshippers at the Peter Stuyvesant shrine. I gave up smoking a long time ago but I remember with affection all those smokers’ gatherings from my youth. It united groups of people who seldom sat down together apart from at moments such as this. No wonder Native Americans put such store in smoking the pipe of peace. I don’t know what we were saying all those years ago but I like this frozen moment of relaxed concentration, forgotten but preserved so unexpectedly.

I walked past the old family house a couple of years ago and even though it now looks a bit down-at-heel, I’m glad that it still stands keeping a bit of me and my memories somewhere in its brickwork.

Don’t let my cigarette nostalgia mislead you. Smoking, I feel obliged to say, is definitely bad for your health. Shame. My father died of lung cancer in that house.

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I was at a dinner party the other night where there was a secret cigarette smoker. It gave the evening, otherwise fastidiously politically correct, a frisson that only an ex-smoker can appreciate. It made me nostalgic for the old days when cigarettes were good for you and made you attractive to anyone – all you had to do was blow smoke in their face. Easy.

You could always light your pipe too if you wanted to turn someone on with your Klompen Kloggen.

I remember too those fights for the last cigarette in the pack. I’d have kicked the hell out of Santa if I fancied his festive Tareyton filter.

Smoking, somehow, made you feel stylish and sophisticated.

Is was great too as an ice-breaker when you met someone you wanted to impress.

Let’s face it, people knew just where you were coming from and where you wanted to go when you lit up a cigarette.

 It was so egalitarian too – butch cowboys did it and so did those women formerly known as babes.

You felt safe with a cigarette knowing that only cool guys smoked and that it was recommended by less cool people you could always trust. It’s a great idea for Christmas presents too.

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