London for ever - 29

Michelle was a Parisian girl. The two had met in London and had always been together. Her charm was not the ordinary allurement that usually circles  on long-limbed French girls, a bit diaphanous, with the features of their faces eternally ingenuous and gentle.

 It derived instead from her rather cheerful and carefree air, symptomatic of those who can live day by day, with no particular moods linked to sentimental events, work issues, or perhaps existential complications. Much more than her  attitude of disenchanted non-chalance, if not of deliberately informal and countercurrent behavior, it was astonishing the  contrast with the almost serious and formal behavior that Giampiero was going through even more than the hated bourgeois he declared to be still in fight with.

Michelle, on the other hand, was a painter and earned her living by selling her paintings and making portraits in Portobello and the other large London-based large markets; Her attendance allowed Giampiero not to lose all contact with a certain kind of culture and alternative minds, to which, though not in the depths of his being, he had been tied.

– “Whoever does not die,  comes alive, soon or later!” Giampiero said to the phone, returning my greeting, “What have you done all this time?”

– “I found a pub that resembles an amphitheater!” I said laughing- “and tonight performs a Rock band with square balls. What do you say?”

– “I say we were thinking about going down the corner to have a drink; But the idea of ​​a bit of good music would be even better. But where are you? “He asked then translating from English, as he sometimes did speaking Italian.

– “I’m here in Paddington Station, in a newspaper store”.

-” I get it. From Notting Hill is a step away. Wait for me to come. Maybe even with Michelle and a Parish friend who comes to visit us. I’ll see you right away!”

29. to be continued…

To stop smoking

I smoked for many years. Too many. I still wore shorts trousers and was already rolling  my  first cigarettes, sometimes with tobacco collected in the street from the endcigarettes: it was stuff that could kill a horse.
When I was a kid, my movie and TV idols  were all heavy smokers. Even my father and my elder brothers were smokers. So I started to smoke, too: the cigarette made me feel taller, more mature, more importantly, bigger.

My first pocket money is literally ended up on smoke.

In those days you were unaware of the serious harm of smoking that, not infrequently, leads to death.

Later, in London, I also met other methods and other substances to smoke. I never really went on search of it, but it happened by chance.

Hindsight I think I would avoid even that kind of smoke: it distorts reality, creating emotions, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, but a man has within himself everything, without having to resort to external substances.

I also speak of alcoholic substances, which are  dangerous too, especially if perceived  as an aid to overcome difficult situations or to find a pleasure. I do not make an ideological issue of it, or worse, a fundamentalist crusade, indeed. But I want to say that smoke is dangerous and it's to avoid.

There are now so many methods to help people to stop smoking.
 I stopped by force of will, without manuals and without method. But that depends on my training, from my way of being: I always had to do everything myself (well, almost everything, in fact).
 I do not make a boast on it, and indeed I regret writing it.  If I could  go back, I probably would open more to others, confessing my weaknesses, asking for help, without lock myself  into my pride, in my shyness, in my fears;  but every man is forged in the environment  which he lives in and while he's in  the waves of life, he looks  for a way to survive without too much rationalism, in an instinctive way.

 I am the sixth of eleven children: I found myself in the middle, between older brothers who had to think about themselves and younger siblings whom I have tried to give protection and good example. My parents have been  two great persons ( mother is still alive; father has  left too long ago),  being an example and a reference point, without being oppressive and intrusive (but how could they have been it, even if they wanted?) and they have always left  us free to choose.

Never the less, I personally testify that  the fight against smoking might need  an external help. No more people  should die any more for active smoking, and even less for passive smoking.
Help is needed because the battle against smoking is really difficult to fight.

 For two years, after stop smoking,  I dreamed of smoking and woke up sweating in the middle of the night, regretting my stupidity to have started smoking again, and when I discovered that he had just been a dream, I fell asleep again, happy not to have fall back in the coils of the terrible vice.
Never mind if I'm, after having stopped smoking,  fattened twenty pounds (I was an anchovy, when I smoked, I am now a salmon, although not smoked), but it is better this way!  
And furthermore I know people who have quit smoking without even fatter than a pound.

Also available in Italian language at the link:  http://albixpoeti.blog.tiscali.it/?doing_wp_cron

40 a day and he's just two

It seems unbelievable but the boy shown while smoking in the picture is only two and has a tremendous habit: he smokes 40 cigarettes a day.
His name is Ardi Rizal, comes from Indonesia and is only two year old.
His mother has tried to convince him to stop but eventually he screams desperately and starts banging his head on the wall until he gets what he wants: 40 cigarettes of a special blend of tobacco which costs his family more than £ 3 a day.
Smoke's consummers, between teenagers are strongly increasing in Indonesia, the third tobacco consummer in the world.
Read more on DM on line:

Too unfit to run: Two-year-old who smokes 40 cigarettes a day puffs away on a toy truck

By Mail Foreign Service

Taking a deep drag on his cigarette while resting on the steering wheel of his truck, he looks like a parody of a middle-aged lorry driver.

But the image covers up a much more disturbing truth: At just the tender age of two, Ardi Rizal's health has been so ruined by his 40-a-day habit that he now struggles to move by himself.

The four-stone Indonesia toddler is certainly far too unfit to run around with other children - and his condition is set to rapidly deteriorate.

But, despite local officials' offer to buy the Rizal family a new car if the boy quits, his parents feel unable to stop him because he throws massive tantrums if they don't indulge him.

His mother, Diana, 26, wept: 'He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.'

Ardi will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents £3.78 a day in Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia's South Sumatra province.

But in spite of this, his fishmonger father Mohammed, 30, said: 'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.'

Ardi's youth is the extreme of a disturbing trend. Data from the Central Statistics Agency showed 25 per cent of Indonesian children aged three to 15 have tried cigarettes, with 3.2 per cent of those active smokers.

The percentage of five to nine year olds lighting up increased from 0.4 per cent in 2001 to 2.8 per cent in 2004, the agency reported.

A video of a four-year-old Indonesian boy blowing smoke rings appeared briefly on YouTube in March, prompting outrage before it was removed from the site.

Child advocates are speaking out about the health damage to children from second-hand smoke, and the growing pressure on them to smoke in a country where one-third of the population uses tobacco and single cigarettes can be bought for a few cents.

Seto Mulyadi, chairman of Indonesia's child protection commission, blames the increase on aggressive advertising and parents who are smokers.

'A law to protect children and passive smokers should be introduced immediately in this country,' he said.

A health law passed in 2009 formally recognizes that smoking is addictive, and an anti-smoking coalition is pushing for tighter restrictions on smoking in public places, advertising bans and bigger health warnings on cigarette packages.

But a bill on tobacco control has been stalled because of opposition from the tobacco industry.

The bill would ban cigarette advertising and sponsorship, prohibit smoking in public, and add graphic images to packaging.

Benny Wahyudi, a senior official at the Industry Ministry, said the government had initiated a plan to try to limit the number of smokers, including dropping production to 240 billion cigarettes this year, from 245 billion in 2009.

'The government is aware of the impact of smoking on health and has taken efforts, including lowering cigarette production, increasing its tax and limiting smoking areas,' he said.

Mr Mulyadi said a ban on advertising is key to putting the brakes on child and teen smoking.

'If cigarette advertising is not banned, there will be more kids whose lives are threatened because of smoking,' he said.

Ubiquitous advertising hit a bump last month when a cigarette company was forced to withdraw its sponsorship of pop star Kelly Clarkson's concert following protests from fans and anti-tobacco groups.

However, imposing a non-smoking message will be difficult in Indonesia, the world's third-largest tobacco consumer.

Tubagus Haryo Karbyanto, a member of the National Commission of Tobacco Control, said Indonesia must also address the social conditions that lead to smoking, such as family influence and peer pressure.

'The promotion of health has to be integrated down to the smallest units in our society, from public health centres and local health care centres to the family,' he was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Globe on Friday.

Health Minister Endang Sedyaningsih conceded turning young people off smoking will be difficult in a country where it is perceived as positive because cigarette companies sponsor everything from scholarships to sporting events.

'This is the challenge we face in protecting youth from the dangers of smoking,' she said in a statement on the ministry's website.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1281538/Smoking-year-old-Ardi-Rizal-40-cigarettes-day.html#ixzz0p6YVoUKc