RM colum March 22 - Smokin...

RM column - March 22nd - Smokin...

JUST a few weeks ago I wrote about psychic moments in our house and there have been even more but none so mad as one I am about to tell you.

Over the weekend I took the dog out for a walk out to the shops. About three or four streets away from our house I was walking along and looking down I saw a box of matches and a well-smoked cigarette butt sitting neatly beside it and I knew it was the Young Wan; there was no question about it at all in my mind.

Earlier that day when doing the laundry I had discovered an empty wrapper from a cigarette box and up until that moment of looking at discarded rubbish on the street (being a litter bug is another crime to add to all this but probably one for another day) I had wanted to just wait and see if more evidence presented itself.

And walking along the street I found it.

I was pretty dumbstruck walking onto the shop. Seriously was it not mad to pinpoint rubbish and know it was herself? But I just knew.

So whether rightly or wrongly I went home, went straight to the Young Wan and told her what I found, how she was not to tell me it wasn't her - I knew it was, and how because it was Nanny's last night with us before travelling home I was not going to push it. She was being given a by-ball and the best thing she could do was to stop it, to take the get-out clause I was throwing her.
I told her I was deciding to pretend that I didn't find what I had otherwise Nanny's last night would feature shouting and yelling, the gnashing of teeth and a generally yeuck atmosphere that I could just do without.

Unfortunately teenagers sometimes fail to see the bigger picture. However she did listen and didn't even try to say it wasn't here but her eyes were the size of saucers when I told her.

And did she learn, not in the bloody slightest.

The next day after leaving Nanny to the airport, we headed back to the house before heading into town to buy her the new phone she has saved up for through babysitting. Sitting on the bus chatting away I noticed something gold and shiny shoved into one of her pockets and I reached over and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

Before she knew it, the Young Wan was dispensed back onto a bus home. I was absolutely livid.
And it didn't stop there, oh God no there were more incidents.

Sometimes and I really don't understand the smartness of this move at all, but like a rat backed into a corner, she feels like she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and on she continues putting the two fingers up to me.

So we have had a week of the constantly updated grounded calendar, the confiscation of personal items, shouting and a-roarin and some talking. Peace would appear to have been restored and compromises have been made.

I am not stupid enough to think that she will stop trying to smoke, far from it. But what else can I do, I have spoken to local shops which is something I just didn't want to do and well all we can do is wait and see. I will write again about the responsibility of shops and those friggers who think it is okay to go into a shop and buy alcohol and cigarettes for young people, but that is a whole rant in itself.