How to roll the perfect cigarette

I recently estimated that, in my smoking life so far and at the age of 29, I have rolled 87,600 cigarettes. The calculation went as follows. Roughly 30 a day for the past six years, maybe 15 a day for four years before that. I attempted to make a reduction for eight months I spent in China, where the most beautiful straights could be bought for the equivalent of 40p per pack. But my mathematical faculties are almost as weak as my pulmonary ones, so I decided to balance those Chinese cigarettes with the thousands of rollies I’ve been asked to construct for friends, acquaintances and strangers.

Apart from that brief and illicit fling with Chinese yen, I’ve been a roll-up man from the start. In fact, my relationship with tobacco has proven by far my most enduring and life-enhancing (with apologies and thanks to Milly, Mary, Molly and Mandy). It’s a partnership that has given far more than it has taken, and I’d like to put on record my gratitude to that great man Sir Walter Raleigh.

What does my smoking life consist of? If I was to provide a list: 30 small achievements every day (how many can say that?); an act of defiance in the face of life’s absurdity; a sense of calm – what David Hockney calls a rest from life. It’s also a way of illustrating my cosmopolitanism – did I tell you I can ask for a cigarette in at least four languages (six after a few drinks)? I have a bad cough, too, but we all have our crosses to bear.