First Light

Dawn lights up the field in fits and starts, as though the sun were juddering in it's path. White frost sparkles on the hedgerow twigs and crackles on the grass, white smoke swirls with every outward breath; white, light, the bitter end of night.

I used to light up straight from sleep, before consciousness had even finished turning round from looking in to looking out. My first inward breath each day followed closely on a rasping click and soft sputter. After thirteen years of giving up, I've still not given up remembering. The feel. The smell. The need to fondle and caress each slender tube. The need to have the company of other smokers. We knew the risks and shared them with each other. I shall not forget.

And now I have instead the sputtering noise of coffee in the pot to brush away night's last faint whispers. Who was that you spoke with in a dim forbidding place, who you knew to be your brother even though he had another face? What was it that you both flew from in a terror on the stairs, wings weakly struggling in a slimy syrup as you strained towards the light? Slip away silently, with the steam from the coffee and the smoke from the toast.

I bake my own bread, in a small machine. It produces beautiful crumbly dry-textured wholemeal loaves that will not slice to less than a little finger's thickness, and toast each slice beneath a gas grill until the dark brown patches almost turn to black. The night still tries to cling to life. Spread them with olive margerine, smear them with Marmite, crunch them noisily and savour the mingling of the tastes.

I no longer travel the world as much as I would like. Instead, I have to make it come to me, buying Canadian organic flour from Waitrose and American rye from Somerfields, and Malted brown from closer to home. I used to be similarly adventurous with my cigarettes, one week Camels, one week Gauloise, and most often those long liqourice-paper covered More. Well, if you know you are going to die, why not do it with some taste and style?

And if you have the choice, would you die silently in the comforting darkness of the night, or noisily in the turbulent colours of the day?