Member-only story
A Genuine Free Lunch
Caught sneaking in for school dinners
During my adolescence I took up smoking in a big way. I tried all of the popular brands of the day, such as Player’s No 6 (and No 10), Kensitas Club, Albany, Cadets and, in times of hardship, a life saving 5 Park Drive. A nicotine craving was a difficult pet to feed on the wages of a schoolboy, i.e., nil, but I did have recourse to a daily fix.
Dinner money back then was 12p per day, exactly the same price as 10 Embassy Regal. Having just filled up on sugar puffs and toast, my need for tobacco was greater than that of food as I walked to school and so, most days, I would spend my dinner money on the wherewithal for developing a smoker’s cough, rather than developing my physical self with wholesome food.
Hunger Drives Me to an Extreme Act
Of course I felt, the repercussions of this rather sharply when the bell rang for lunch. Having had nothing but four cigarettes since breakfast, I was always ravenously hungry by lunchtime, and I went through the daily penance of regretting buying the cigarettes. The smell of food that wafted from the dining hall was almost unbearable, and I cursed my habit. But, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention, so one day I devised a plan to get myself what was said not to exist: a free lunch.
