it is widely recognised that each and every one of us, look you see, harbours a dream of one day waking up and finding themselves in the apocalyptic adventure wastelands of Mad Max 2. well, not quite, for if you are American you for some reason know this as The Road Warrior. not a bad title, just the wrong one. perhaps this shall come to be, either via some splendid yet as limited as it can be nuclear skirmish with the Russians, perhaps, or by some unforeseen complexities with the spectacular success thus far that is Brexit.
the problem with this, and maybe i state the obvious here, is that everyone has visions of being the same person. many of course assume they will be Max. others would fancy themselves as Wez, or the Great Humungus, or even the Feral Kid or the Gyro Captain. alas, sadly, we cannot all be them. a few of us - the majority, perhaps - will be them what get symbolically crucified by the Great Humungus, or twatted off of the razor boomerang of the Feral Kid, or indeed bummed off of Wez. no, it will not all be the great utopia which the film tacitly promised.
one of the biggest challenges to some of us - me, certainly - in this brave and bold new world shall be how to obtain cigarettes. you would have to guess that every is going to be far too busy avoiding getting knacked or bummed to work in factories, and so the production of fags will inevitably cease. fear not for me, dear reader. for opportunity allowed me to get some practice in for how i will cope.
should the above strike you as looking like a rather battered pack of fags, resplendent in lame plain packaging, some sort of warning and the all important "Excessive UK Duty Paid" stamp, well good, for that is precisely what this is. during my travels i spotted it laid on the road somewhere, or if you want to be specific in a car park.
it is quite often that i see discarded fag packets on my travels, just as i see all sorts of rubbish and waste. no matter how much effort many of us put in to keep the country tidy we, apparently, have aspects of our society that believe litter is their right. yes, indeed, twats they are. this is, however, the first time i have noticed a quite nearly full, if somewhat squashed and worse for wear, packet being discarded.
oh, absolutely i picked them up. the cost of fags here in England, indeed the wider UK (although it would be no shock to learn that we subsidise much cheaper ones in Scotland), is unfair and astronomical. despite being a posh twat the former chancellor, Osborne something, at least kept the tax low(ish) and left plenty of loopholes allowing fag makers to sell them cheap. not so the incumbent, and hopefully soon to be gone chancellor. he taxes fags with gay abandon, presumably to make himself feel better about the ill-fitting and generally misguided suits he insists on wearing.
quite flattened, or more appropriately crushed, as you can see above. the evidence suggested that this packet of fags had been driven over, at least the once. what is of interest here, however, is that there were 19 of the standard 20 in the packet. this makes me suspect that they were deliberately discarded rather than accidentally dropped. it is, alas, the case that these fags are them horrible "crush ball" ones, the ones what start off as reasonably normal fags but needlessly transform into terrible menthol ones when you squeeze the mint ball in the filter. something of a paradox, or whatever the right posh and clever word is, then, for at once they are the worst fags in the world for they are menthol, and yet still the best, for they were "free".
am i looking forward to the wonders of the world of Mad Max 2 coming to be, something that would presumably see me have to obtain all future fags this way? partially. you would think that avoiding the Wez and Great Humungus type figures would be a priority, and stuff like food and water looks difficult to obtain. but, then again, these scavenged fags are free, so that's a win.
our friends in America are, of course, ahead of the game here. under the English way of doing things, as and when we see something of interest by the side of the road - a slain sheep, for example, or cash - we are expected to pretend we did not notice and just carry on as if nothing had happened. not so for our Yankee chums, who will pull over, make some smart "whooping" noises, wave their splendid cowboy hats in the air, and then strap that dead beast of the field to their car, driving home with it in triumph, firing off shotguns in celebration of their result. i would suggest that those who mock this are simply jealous of it.
do please take time to heed the warning presented on this packet above, even in the battered state of it i presume it remains valid. also valid is the proud declaration of how much tax one usually gets nailed with on these.
was i not concerned that someone had deliberately left these fags behind, which is to say that maybe someone, an anti-smoker of quasi vegan outlook, had tampered or somehow interfered with them? partially, yes, i suppose. but then you have to remember that some of the warnings claim that no less than 70 suspiciously unidentified chemicals are added anyway. what is it that someone could add which would make it worse, exactly?
how are, or were, they to smoke? the best of times, the worst of times. again, free, or scavenged, so great. but they are them menthol "crushball" ones. i have probably smoked worse, but seldom is it i have had the satisfaction of cheaper.
every now and then one hears, in celebratory terms, of someone getting bust on a plane, trying to smuggle drugs. whereas the authorities triumph this, everyone knows that really all they did was collar the obvious stooge put there to get caught. on that same flight you can guarantee four, five or more others had substantially more drugs, and they just sailed through thanks to the obvious distraction. this must be true of "illegal" cigarettes here in the UK. knowing the efficiency of certain bodies, whenever there is a report of "thousands" of tax free, sensibly priced fags being seized, you just know that means there are many millions of them which are not. yes, ideally, i would indeed appreciate doing business with some of these entrepreneurs.
am i hopeful of further finds such as this? kind of, i suppose. it is realistically unlikely that i will ever find a pack of, say, my beloved Marlboro Red discarded in such a way. one never knows, though, perhaps i shall get lucky.
well, anyway, we are done here. i would say "if you are reading this as the world has gone all Mad Max 2", but that would be pointless, for the internet is probably one of the first things to just stop working in those circumstances.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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