Stone Cold.

I’ve never really been a drinker. Food was the drug of choice for my family. Eating – Yiddish Essn – was a hobby.
They say the Italians talk about lunch at breakfast, dinner at lunch and breakfast at dinner.
The Jews are the same. Competing for the best chopper liver. The best chicken soup.
The best Latkes
The best Lokshen pudding
Food is woven into the fabric of my Jewish DNA.
Drinking, however, comes from the old gits side. As part Irish his life is enhanced by a malt whiskey, a sprightly beer and a tangy gin.
I have never known my ‘oosbind stone cold sober. He has always got a smidgen of alcohol in his body.
My dawter drinks with her friends and my friends sip the red and white wine. I don’t like the taste that wine leaves in the mouth, like an old flannelette nightie.
I have been known to drink.
Through out the years of theatrical touring pubs were a safe haven, a meeting place not to mention regular venues for performing our craft.

A Christmas party at my voice over agents when I got so pissed I bought a A Djembe.
“A rope-tuned, skin-covered goblet drum played with bare hands, originally from West Africa. According to the Bambara people in Mali, the name “djembe” comes from the saying “Anke djé, anke bé,” which translates to “everyone gather together in peace”
I went to a drum shop in Covent Garden. The Djembe cost my last studio fee. I Carried the bleeding thing home on the train. Making sure the old git was somewhere other than the bedroom I slipped the mighty drum into the cupboard till Christmas day.
I think he played it once.
It’s in the studio gathering mould.
The dawters God Mother came from a family of publicans. She berated the dawter for not being able to tell the difference a between whiskey ad bandy. The child was six.
Booze has always been the basis for our several gatherings. Crates of this and sparkling boxes of that.
So I’ve not always been stone cold sober. I have imbibed. I have experienced my fare share of hang overs Thank you.

Along side liquor comes cigarettes.
My smoking history dates back to 1967.
Both my parents smoked but I didnt partake until I got to drama school. Everybody smoked. The first time I had dope, from an actress in HAIR, it had no effect on me at all. Pretending to be part of the ‘in crowd’ I declared,
‘How long is heaven going to last.’
What a wanker.

I smoked on and off for twenty years, if I bought a pack I had to finish it. Driving to locations I would stock up on a bar of chocolate, a takeaway coffee and a pack of ‘Marlborough Light.’ Travelling by train meant sitting in the smokers compartment, or on top of a haze filled bus.
When the smoking ban came round in 2004 Ireland was not the same.
The nicotine stained walls in Hughes Bars, Spiddall, became an anachronism. The atmosphere was sterile, the smell of tobacco gave way to smoke free music sessions.
When the ban came to England in 2007. I had already given up.
I started smoking ‘Sobranies’, the luxurious brand that smelt of sophistication and pretention, little boxes that cost more than a days work.
I segued into Gauloises’, the French smoke of choice. The smell of the Gallic fag still fills me with nostalgia for Jean-Paul Belmondo and a Mary Quant five point.
When the grant ran out ‘Sovereign’ was the cheap fag of choice, then ‘Number 6’, both disgusting.
How to hold a cigarette became an acting module; How to inhale? Through the nose? Looping the smoke in the mouth and blowing smoke rings?
I didnt give up until the dawter was born in 1987.
I quit when I was pregnant, but had every intention of starting back on the Roll-ups when she was born.
And so I did.
Rizla papers, has a slip that reads ‘Five Leaves Left’ which Ted Hughes used as inspiration for his ‘Found’ Poetry. He called it ‘Lament to Autumn’

Spreading out the tobacco in a thin line, rolling up the paper, tamping both ends, was a universal ritual. A lighter was necessary as the roll ups died after a couple of puffs.
I have photographs of me and the ‘oosbind lounging on a sofa smoke haloing round our heads.
When the dawter was small my mother had her two dresses made – facsimilies – of the Royal Ballet’s production of ‘Swan Lake ‘ and ‘Carmen.’
The child swanned around, letting her friends wear them. I gritted my teeth as each dress had cost £200 each. My mother was fleeced. ‘Swan Lake’ still hangs in my cupboard. It’s made out of silk and beautiful layers of pink net.
In 1989, I was smoking she was dancing. She pirouetted too close to me and I burnt a perfect round hole in the skirt.
She didn’t mind but I was mortified.
‘Do you wanna make a film about giving up smoking?’ asked a production company.
‘Yes’ I said, so a small crew and I went to Harley street.
Dr. Pederson was a renowned hypnotist. Me and Craig Ferguson attended together. I went in at 4.50.
After 45 minutes of the doc asking me to write my name.- JENNY FEAR – and doing something with kinetic energy, I came out a non smoker.
It didnt work for Craig. Mr. Pederson had told me my will to give up was far greater than the will to continue. I became a total non smoker. Stone cold sober in the tobacco department.
I looked at the burnt hole only last week.
Life back then was sweet.
Dogs and cats and dancing dawters, all overlooked by parents who had two perfectly healthy lungs and two perfectly healthy kidneys.
The cottage is a smoke free zone now, I don’t even allow vaping.
Sometimes I miss the frivolity of a liquorice roll-up inhaled to the soundtrack of Randy Newman’s ‘Short People.
But mostly I can make do sucking on a veggie sausage.
Fucking old age.