A fine cigar was never a cigarette

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Created on Monday, 17 March 2014 15:30

Written by James Leavey

by James Leavey

The other day I went on a pub crawl in Dublin, starting with what is reputed to be the city's oldest alcoholic's watering hole, The Brazen Head, on Bridge Street just south of the Liffey. James Joyce used to be a regular here, in those glorious hazy days when you could still enjoy the freedom of a quiet smoke, indoors, in public, and among like-minded friends, with your pint of Guinness.

Wiping the tears from my eyes with my shamrock embossed green handkerchief, I shuffled on to The Palace in Temple Bar, long popular with the wheezing hacks from the Irish Times.

Eventually I landed in O'Neill's, a fine traditional pub on Suffolk Street, just a full cigarette pack's throw from Trinity College. Why a pack of cigarettes, I hear you ask? Because I wouldn't waste a box of fine cigars.

For, let's face it, the former nicotine vehicle is a cheap nicotine fix, usually comprised of shredded so-so tobacco to which various chemicals have been added to ensure it burns fast. With a few reasonably produced exceptions, most cigarettes are the equivalent of a cheap lager, or hooch stirred in a bathtub.

Whereas cigars, especially premium Havanas, are an unadulterated long filler joy, made from properly aged tobacco hand-rolled by experts, and lovingly tended all along their route from leaf to humidor.

And one of the best places in all of Ireland to lay your hands on some fine Cuban sticks is The Decent Cigar Emporium. But then you knew this already, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this.

Anyway, let's get back to O'Neill's, which is still the haunt of Dublin's students although they no longer kick-start their young brains with hot tobacco, not even a cigarette, never mind a fine Havana. Mind you, they can rarely afford the luxury of a premium cigar, except on the occasion of passing out of college. If they're simply passing out, like me after an evening on the hooch, they're probably drunk enough to try to smoke a cigarette. Personally, I haven't been that plastered for many a decade.

So there I was, leaning on this Dublin haunt's bar saddened by the absence of exhaled tobacco, until, cheesed off to the very limit, I suddenly exploded in indignation: 'Those anti-smoking legislators who want to not only introduce plain packaging for packs of cigarettes but extend that discourtesy to, God Help Us All, cigars, are fecking ass-holes'

The bar went quiet, and the man who had been a quiet companion while leaning on the bar to my left, looked up, and muttered, 'I object to your describing anti-smoking legislators who want cigars to be sold in plain packaging as ass-holes'

I took a sip of the black liquid, and said, 'Why? Are you an an anti-smoking legislator?'

'No,' said the man to my left. 'I'm an ass-hole.'