Yesterday at work I took part in an e-mail quiz, charmingly entitled, 'The Sleaze Test.'. The quiz was supposed to determine if I had enjoyed a misspent youth, or whether I had been a nice, respectable girl. The questions asked about sexual proclivities, drug and alcohol consumption and any minor perversions such as sleeping with a relative or necrophilia.

When my score was added up I was unsurprised to discover that at 64 points I had been declared normal, if a trifle dull. My friends both achieved very respectable scores of 146 and 144, which put them in the category of 'social menace'. But the best score was recorded by our demure librarian, who managed a whopping 167 points, making her a 'danger to society'. Librarians are a curious bunch.

Anyhow, my reason for mentioning this tawdry little test is that none of the questions alluded to the biggest social disgrace I have ever committed. Until now I have kept it a secret, afraid that if the truth were ever to get out then I would be shunned by polite society and made a social leper. I searched and searched for the question that would unburden me of my guilty little secret, but it was nowhere to be seen. So now, for the first time, I will come clean. I will tell the truth about an act that was both shameful and bizarre, but which gave me so much satisfaction.

Before I tell you, you could try to guess. Was I a teenage crack whore? Did I get horribly dunk one night and end up in the lap of a lecherous mini-cab driver? No, it's pointless, you'll never guess, never in a million years, so I'm just going to have to tell you.

I used to smoke a pipe. There, I've said it, and I can't take it back. I know you're all repulsed at the thought of it, but if you'll allow me to explain, then perhaps you'll find it in your hearts to forgive me.

I think my horrid perversion stems from my junior school. We used to keep our crayons in pipe tobacco tins, supplied by the school. I liked crayoning, but what I liked much more was to lean forward and surreptitiously sniff the tobacco tin. I did it whenever I could; the tin smelled sweet and nutty and if I took a long-enough drag on the shiny silver lining it made my head go funny. When the classroom monitor came around to take away the tins I had to fight the urge to cling onto the box of delights, and scream, 'One more hit. Just let me have one more hit.'

Since then I have always loved the smell of pipe tobacco. I detest cigarette smoke, but when I get even the faintest whiff of a curling, swirling plume emitting from a mahogany-coloured sweet briar bowl, cupped lovingly in the hand of some crusty old codger, I am instantly transported back to the land of tiny chairs and head lice; back to the dusty chalk on the wooden board-wiper, and the kind, sing-song voice of my teacher, Mrs. Slipper. It was an innocent pleasure to me, not a vice, and therefore I think there was a good justification in taking my habit one stage further.

I was 19 at the time and had been dispatched on a filming job with a genial cameraman called Mike. Mike and I were being employed to film an aerial journey down the river Wye. Mike got to travel in a hot air balloon, and I had the rather less glamorous job of driving the camera car. It was a lovely few days; Mike was excellent company, and also happened to be a pipe smoker, which made his presence most welcome. One day we found ourselves in a tobacco shop in Shrewsbury, Mike needed some more pipe tobacco but I just wanted to stand and sniff the merchandise.

Suddenly, my eye was drawn to a tiny pipe, lying alongside the delicate churchwardens and intricately-carved Mershams. I think it was a ladies pipe - it could have been a Fisher-Price pipe for all I cared, the thing was calling to me and I had to have it. I asked Mike if he though it was odd for me to be buying a pipe, and he just shrugged and said I should give it a try. So I did. I bought a few ounces of cherry tobacco and walked from the shop with my ladypipe hidden in my pocket. I was frightened of alarming the locals. I knew that to be seen with such a device would immediately put me in the category of butch lesbian/bohemian artistic weirdo/lunatic. I didn't want men to think of me as a flake, I wanted to be ready-rubbed, feminine and alluring, and therefore it was imperative that my pipe remained a secret.

When I was at secondary school I knew a boy who used to smuggle his granddad's pipe onto the school bus and have a crafty smoke. He was too young to get hold of any Golden Virginia, and so he improvised with sage and onion stuffing mix. It didn't smell very nice and I doubt whether it did him much good, but he seemed to like it.

I wanted my first smoke of a pipe to be a sublime experience, and so the correct preparation was essential. Mike and I had finished filming for the day; we had a flask of tea and nowhere in particular to go until suppertime. We parked the VW Caravelle in a lay-by down a tiny country lane, threw back the centre door and prepared our pipes. Even as I write this I can feel my face reddening at the thought of it, but I cannot deny the pleasure it gave me. I could only get a small pinch of tobacco into my ladypipe, it was moist, had the colour of burnished cherry wood, and when I pushed it down into the bowl of my pipe it was softly-yielding between my fingers, like a pinch of the sweet coconut tobacco that I used to have as a child. I watched Mike light up his pipe, and tried to copy his slow, deliberate draw and soft tamping technique. As the contents of my bowl began to glow red I took in the first cheekful of cool cherry smoke and blew it out of the side of my mouth before it had a chance to get down into my lungs. How ridiculous I must have looked, but Mike didn't mock me because he was an accepting man and I think he quite liked the thought of sharing a smoke with me. And so we sat, in the late-afternoon sun, cameraman and camera assistant, drinking our tea, puffing on our pipes and putting the world to rights - until a car drove past and I had to duck down for fear of being spotted by a passing motorist and dobbed-in for sucking on something I shouldn't in a public place.

It was a golden time in my life, a time when my whole future lay stretched out before me and anything seemed possible. I have never smoked a pipe since that week in Shropshire, and I don't intend to do so ever again. I'm not about to get an eyebrow piercing and a neck tattoo and appear on an episode of 'Tricia', entitled, 'My secret pipe shame, and how rough shag ruined my life.' Believe me when I say that I'm not going to start striding around in stout shoes, dressing in tweed and calling myself Clive; it was my only teenage vice, I've never taken drugs of any kind and I think I deserve to have just one perverse secret with which to shock my friends and embarrass my daughters. But having said all that, if I do ever find myself down a tiny cobbled street in the half-timbered recesses of Shrewsbury, I may well pay a visit to that quaint little tobacco shop, buy a few ounces of cherry tobacco, put it in a tin, and give myself one last hit of rough shag for old-times sake.


© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.