comments on embassy fags

hello there

my intention is not, nor ever has been, to spend so much time writing of fags. nor was it to take up quite the area of the internet that i have with such, look you see. if the UK had a more sensible approach to pricing of them, or (possibly even better) i could establish a good, strong working relationship with someone that sells the (ahem) independently imported and cheaper ones, then, i could just cease speaking of them, for they would be commonplace. 

so, my latest efforts to find the cheapest fags possible has led me to a door that i never thought i would approach, let alone knock on, go through and stay. but, here we are. a glance at an oblique, despite how it should be freely available, price guide one shop had for fags showed that there was, by the standards of today, a relatively cheap pack one could purchase. these so happen to be (takes a breath) embassy gold signature. or possibly embassy signature gold, depending on how one is supposed to read it. 

caution had to be deployed when approaching these. i am not sure, or am uncertain, that "stigma" is the right word, but there are certain connotations to embassy fags. guilt by implication, damnation by association, that sort of thing. most prominently, of course, it is so that embassy fags are closely, yet not indelibly, associated with that particular luminary of the Manchester scene, Bernard Manning. also, and let an honest, grown up conversation happen here, it is so that embassy fags were very much the hallmark of bent coppers in the seventies. was i quite sure that this was a path on which to walk. 

yes, very much so, when i saw the price. a single packet, at time of writing, is of the cheapest available right now, and that is still an eye watering, ludicrous £9.00 a pack. one can reduce this slightly by purchasing a bulk pack of 5 (five) off Tesco, where each pack works out at £8.95. but not Morrisons, who are being right tw@ts, and they charge more for the five (5) pack that how five separate packs comes out at. go figure. indeed, i hear you, not smoking would be even better on fiscal (or financial) terms, but not. it wouldn't make the slightest f*****g difference, health, etc, i am going to f******g die, everything ends, everyone dies, it all goes away. so, no. 

going for low priced (legally available) fags in the UK comes with risks. here i refer you to the exploration of carlton fags, which yes were cheap but also felt laced with the sense of an immediate heart attack on conventional consumption. bravely leaving aside the tacit statement of being an embassy smoker, was i really ready to risk cheaper for an even more insane experience? of course. 

as it turns out, or actually, these are rather good. jolly nice, as point of fact. embassy signature gold, which would seem to be the right way of saying them, are damned fine fags. quite the blessing that they come in at a (highly contextual) good price. really, a lovely, smooth smoke what is enjoyable, should you be a smoker, and doesn't leave you feeling like you are about to have an incidental heart attack, or be expected to perform sexual favours for a salty sea dog so as to access them. what a result. 

how am i reconciling, or addressing, the connotations of being an "embassy" man? by not doing so, really, as such probably only happens in my head. if we, kindly, leave aside any chance whatsoever of me casting or projecting a quasi Bernard Manning or contemporaries idiom, me smoking embassy fags leaves me open to suggestions that i would very much like to be a bent copper out of or off of the seventies. which isn't, in fairness, completely untrue. 

back in the seventies, then, and at least in the UK, if you had done a naughty (within reason), and the copper questioning you pulled out a pack of embassy, you knew you were pretty much ok, for that was the sign that yes, they were "open" to you buying a ticket, or two, at a fluctuating rate, for "the secret policeman's ball", a quiet, hush hush fundraiser for the coppers benevolent fund. only you were assisting the constabulary quite directly. it sounds like a wonderful arrangement, but alas there was a massive drawback on it. so as to qualify for such preferential treatment, you had to be of a British accent and be white. don't really like the sound of that. i would like to think if one was going to be a bent copper, then they should go full tilt, and not be prejudicial about it. everyone ultimately has a price, yet so few of us admit it to be so of us. 

others of Manchester probably smoked embassy too, by the way. if we consider the classic, archetypal Mancunians, then there can be little doubt that a 12, or perhaps 13, year old Liam Gallagher could have been found smoking embassy, or regal, when he should have been at school. paradoxically, or alternatively, no doubt even at such an age Noel (of same family) even then harboured ambitions of London (innit) life, so he was probably on the silk cut, or bensons gold. 

i would agree with any observation any of you may have made about the rather convoluted name for these fags. embassy is a given, of course, of branding law, but the rest? really? does it have to be signature gold? i mean, for this to make sense, it would have to be so that either they did a "signature" pack which was not gold, or a gold pack which were not "signature". no, i have never asked at a shop, because usually behind me at the fag counter are people with scowls, waiting to buy scratchcards or to seek refund for ill-fitting garments purchased in haste. but, a rose by any other name, etc. 

for the foreseeable future, then, which is here, i shall be an "embassy man", for better or worse. they are a most agreeable form of cigarette. yes, there exists better ones, but these are serviceable and do the job whilst being the cheapest. nice one. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!