We were among those affected by smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Considering it carried particulates of whatever materials they burnt and thus presented serious health affects, we at Maywrite Towers consider ourselves fortunate to have got away with scratchy throats, runny noses, and a touch of hoarseness.
What was intriguing was the sky turned dirty yellow but caused an eerie pinkish twilight all day, followed by spectacular tomato-coloured sunsets. Having grown up in an industrial city permanently swathed in smoke from satanic mills of all descriptions situated amid rows of terraced housing, I'd expected the same type of murky grey-black veil that hung above those long-ago streets, black stained brick rows much as depicted in a number of Lowry paintings, of which my favourite is https://www.lowry.co.uk/lowry-original-industriallandscape.html
Such brooding skies could not be laid solely at the feet of commercial enterprises, given homes were heated by coal and so many people and their coughing brothers smoked what locals call tabs indoors and out. Some started young. Classmates pinched a cigarette from home and smoked it behind the bike shed in elementary school. It was almost a rite of passage for boys in particular.
This was a time when homes might use a bleezer, a square piece of metal held against the kitchen fireplace to help the coals "catch" by improving the draught. Some, like my lot, used an opened newspaper page for the same purpose. A dangerous custom, given this sort of makeshift bleezer sometimes caught fire and had to be quickly thrown into the grate. Since anything that could be burnt was put in the kitchen fire, tainted smoke added to the dark cloud hanging over the city. No wonder peoples' lungs have been compared to kippers. Older films offer noticeable and to modern eyes shocking evidence of just how polluted the air had become, to the extent sheets hung out to dry were routinely taken in speckled with soot.
Speaking of which, a story often retold at family gatherings involves my niece and nephew. At a young age they were visiting with their mother and went out to play, investigating a long untenanted stable at the top of our back lane. On their return they announced they had been playing with black sand, a fact obvious at a glance given a local sweep stored bags of soot in it.
In England seeing a sweep or shaking their hand has long been considered lucky, as Dick Van Dyke points in Chim Chim Cher-ee. Couples have been known to engage a sweep to attend their wedding in full fig (top hat and neckerchief included), bringing along his brush and rods. He also brings good luck to the nuptial pair by kissing the bride and shaking the groom's hand.
While on the topic of romance, we're all familiar with cinematic interludes of that type involving cigarettes and soulful gazes. Tobacco has long assisted couples to meet. Smoking provides a chance to those -- particularly shy teens -- who wish to strike up a conversation with a stranger. He (or less commonly she) strikes a match and offers to light the other person's gasper, thus effecting the desired introduction in a socially acceptable fashion.
Though I observed such interactions numerous times while still in school I did not experience it directly because I had only a brief fling with Lady Nicotine. I tried a ciggy or two during those painfully awkward years we call the teens, scandalising my younger sister when she saw me puffing away trying to master the fine art of blowing smoke out through my nostrils. I never could master it but since I didn't care for the taste of tobacco and the way the smell of smoke clung to my hair and clothes, I soon abandoned tabs forever. Yet even at that age several girls in my class were already fully paid-up members of the Sisterhood Of The Saffron-Stained Digits. In fact, one already smoked so heavily her fingers felt cold and her fingertips were stained almost to the point of turning brown.
I recently learnt from an impeccable source (which is to say Mr Maywrite) that in grade school he made and painted a clay ashtray he described as being of "a strange shape", putting me in mind of Lovecraftian rooms with walls of singularly peculiar angles of a disturbing nature. There being far fewer smokers than there used to be, it seems fair to deduce making ashtrays would be an unlikely art project for youngsters to undertake nowadays.
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