Take off

We cough and crank and wheeze and splutter and suddenly spark into life, irregular at first before settling down to a steady rhythm of intake and exhaust. Startled birds leap into the air as if to dare us to chase them, then scatter as we do, racing across the field to brush the frosty dew from the tops of the hedge. We are up, we are alive, we are climbing towards the sun and the great unknown.

".. and you may find yourself in another part of the world,"
" and you may say to yourself"
" 'Well, how did I get here'?"
" Into the blue again..."

I start each day as an adventure, coughing myself awake as I shuffle round the room to get out the ash and get in the fuel. I might not have given up smoking early enough. It would hardly be fair if I could smoke sixty a day for two-thirds of my life, then stop and get away with it while more moderate smokers on their ten or fifteen should have to suffer the agonies of self-inflicted illness. I have been marked as guilty, even though I claim to be an innocent.

A strong-willed person in my position might decide to stick their two soon-to-be-yellow fingers up at fate and renew their habit, but I am too weak-willed to give up giving up. That hacking early morning cough could just be residual damp air that has settled in my lungs overnight, or traces of the fine grey ash from the boiler that clings to all the cobwebs until it gets too heavy for their delicate support and floats gently down to earth again. When I become rich and get oil or gas central heating installed, I might never cough and choke again.

My partner has never smoked in her life, and now dare not even if she wished, for she became asthmatic after working somewhere along the Tyneside in the messy smog of industry. She cannot understand the strange attraction of the weed, but in her own way she can empathise with the secret fascination with death. Her wheezing fits can bring her to the edge of consciousness. I feel sorry for her though, not because of her illness and suffering, but because she has not had the previous pleasure of the smoke that makes the eventual punishment so perversely appropriate.

High up in the bright untainted sky the sun has cleared the clouds and spreads for us a brilliant blanket. There are no other specks within our field of vision, only we are here to take the gift of warmth and stop it going to waste. Far below the circling birds are waiting for their chance to share the day, and further still the tousled ground is still sprawled comatose in sleep. By some strange code of honour they don't like killing in the dark.