Reasons to Smoke

This is a handy tip if you are going to relocate to the other side of the world: take up smoking.

                Here are a few things about Fat Shite you may be interested to learn. He was unemployed for 21 years. He filled his evening with PlayStation games and beer consumption. His only friends are his two younger, gullible brothers. His mother has wrapped the apron strings tightly around his gonads. He has a girlfriend – I did mention Sour Puss, didn’t I? – three years his junior and she suffers from a terrible superiority complex. He organised a job from Ireland in Melbourne coaching a soccer team, and it was this team’s head coach who organised the house we would be temporarily staying in. And here’s another news-flash – I pretty much hate his guts. That’s about everything note-worthy there is to report about good old Fat Swine.

My initial impression of said house was tarred by the giant two-metre tall “For Sale” sign that blocked my view. The Boyfriend and I stared at it for a while, our bulging suitcases at our sides, our pockets significantly lighter after paying the gibbering taxi man. There was also a car parked in the drive. We checked the address Fat Shite had provided us with. We were at the right place, anyway. So I had a cigarette.

We waited for an hour and finally Fat Shite and Sour Puss rocked up. They had been shopping – for a can of deodorant. Fat Shite informed us that the car in the drive had been gifted him by the same guy in the soccer club who had organised the limousine escort and the house. He kicked one of the back wheels, declared it embarrassing and shuffled up the steps to let us in. I had a cigarette.

Fat Shite gave us a grand tour. He and Sour Puss had gotten the bigger, better room and i had no qualms with that, of course, as it had been his contacts that had sorted the arrangement and therefore it was his prerogative to call dibs. The house smelled of old people, the wallpaper was outdated and stained, the carpet was a bit squishy underfoot – but it had a roof and we were content enough with that.

After making pleasantries with the other two, The Boyfriend and I retreated to our room. It was a decent size and we even had a wardrobe. So we had a celebratory hug and a giggle, revelling in the realisation that all our planning and dreaming had a chance of coming to fruition now that we were in Australia. I jumped on the bed.

There was a crack and the noise of springs straining. Rubbing my injured face, I pulled back the sheets. “We’ve no mattress,” I intoned, hardly surprised. We surveyed the metal mesh and the bars that made up our bed. After several minutes, I went out for a cigarette.

Fat Shite called that he was heading to Woolworths and whether we would like to go with him. Starving and sore from my face-plant on to the make shift bed, I happily agreed to an outing. Two miles down the road, Woolworths was huge and busy. We gathered up some basics – bread, sugar, wine – and headed back to Fat Shite’s complementary car. And then he did something that cemented my opinion of him forever.

“So can I get ten bucks off you for petrol?”

I had a cigarette.

Touchdown

As an Irish girl just out of college, I’m finding it extremely difficult to adjust to the ways of the dreaded “real world”. My arts degree in English and Philosophy was fun but futile, and all I seemed to have earned from that time spent in third-level education was several embarrassing drunken stories, a long-suffering boyfriend and no prospect of future employment. The latter is due to the current Irish economic climate, might I add, and fully unrelated to the drunken stories.                

 Anyway, we did what every other young unemployed person does in Ireland, and bought our tickets to Australia. We travelled with another couple, Fat Swine and Sour Puss, and left in the first week of February of 2012, amid tearful goodbyes to family and friends.

We were delayed for three hours at our stop-over in Abu Dhabi and I smoked endless cigarette after cigarette in the stifling indoor airport smoking rooms.  Sour Puss was silent and sullen, and as the corresponding girlfriend, I had to attempt in vain to drag some conversation from her, while Fat Swine and The Boyfriend chatted amicably about how shit it was that the plane had been delayed. They were quickly sated when the airline handed us coupons for a free Burger King meal– we are Irish, after all. Finally, we boarded the plane and the first three hours were an absolute hell of turbulence and arm-rest-clutching from yours truly. The Boyfriend snored and farted loudly at my side.

We touched down in Tullamarine and eyed the sniffer dogs warily. I’ve seen enough of Nothing To Declare to scare myself stupid, innocent as I was. We passed through hassle-free and stepped out into the night air. The air was stifling and heavy. Fat Swine had organised a house to live in for the first month through the contacts he’d established applying for jobs at home in Ireland. The Boyfriend and I had booked a hotel and due to the delay, we had paid the two hundred dollars for a mere five hours in the bed. We watched as Fat Swine and Sour Puss were greeted at the Arrivals by a man in a cap and a suit with a name-placard. I smoked an entire Marlboro Light in one inhale as we watched them clamber into a limousine and drive off into the night. The Boyfriend and I hauled our luggage to the bus. We were shuffled to a station seven blocks away from our hotel – seven up-hill blocks. We arrived at the hotel and everyone was Asian and finding our accents impossible to comprehend. The Boyfriend drifted off to sleep within minutes. I looked out the window for a while at the tall buildings. Exhausted, my thoughts drifted back to that last tearful hug with my little sister and I welled up – as a girl does. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket and opened the box of cigarettes to gape, horrified, at its emptiness.

I opened my suitcase to put on my pyjamas.

And realised I’d forgotten to pack any.