wishful thinking

Early smoking days are a memory ringed with the golden penumbra of nostalgia but, even with that distorting illumination, certain parts of the memory retain a vestige of fact. The BOF remembers his first encounter with a budget price-hike on cigarettes, or at least thinks he does.

They went up to 6/7 (that's six shillings and sevenpence or just over 32.5p).

Having just paid £6.30 for a packet (and the brand is almost the same - Chesterfield then, in the beautiful plain maroon, red, and white packet, Marlboro now) a simple calculation reveals that the price of a single cigarette now is almost the same as that for a whole packet then.

Perhaps this is the moment to stop...