Ex-Smoker's Foot

Smoking is not exactly compulsory in the Arab world, but it is strongly encouraged. Pretty well everywhere actually. Whether eating, shopping or visiting friends, smoking tends to oil the wheels of social and other occasions. The only exception is the cinema where I suppose it would pose too much of a fire hazard.

My local pharmacy has an ash-tray on the counter, in case you need something to do while having a prescription filled. A heart doctor of my acquaintance (cardiologist for the technically minded) not only smokes himself but has a large ash-tray on the patient’s side of the desk in his consulting rooms; not all that unreasonable, I suppose, as presumably being told there was something a bit wrong with number one pump would probably trigger the need for a fag! Go into some houses, and there’ll be a large bowl with many different brands of cigarettes and you’ll be encouraged to help yourself.

A packet of cigarettes costs about eighty pence so smoking is both cheap and culturally acceptable.

Downright perverse then it was that I became an ex-smoker, for the second time in my life, about four years ago. Congratulations abounded, British smoking friends drooled over the savings, calculated at UK prices of course. People told me how much better I’d feel – eventually – and how good it would be for my health.

What no-one really warns you about are the down-sides of becoming an ex-smoker, the most obvious of which being that unwanted extra pounds appear. By my calculations, given that we are ninety per cent water, said pounds arrive at the rate of about an extra digestive biscuit and an extra mug of tea per month – yes one of each a month – and I defy anyone to be that accurate about diet. And those extra pounds have an effect on waist-line and collar size, so all the financial savings have gone on shirts, trousers, belts and tailors’ bills, not to mention a bigger gym subscription.

Gym sub.? Well, the received wisdom is that the counter to increased weight is increased exercise to burn off the calories, so off I trot to the gym club more often than at any time since school days, and there it was compulsory.

I am not a natural athlete, galling then that I am plagued with athlete’s foot, seeming only to have to drive past a swimming pool to be re-afflicted. Perhaps in a former life I was one of those trees that sport wonderfully yellow fungus sprinting up the trunk, or maybe my remains are destined to fertilize mushrooms when I quit this one, for certainly fungi (for that is what athlete’s foot is, a fungus) seem to like me, and regularly followed me home from the gym. Hence the title of this little piece.

Down the years I have tried powders, creams, going barefoot and using a hair-dryer on my toes. I have been to Dr. Scholl’s, pharmacies, skin specialists and a hypnotist. Finally a friend gave me a tip that I am now going to share with you – Head and Shoulders shampoo. “What?!”, I hear you say, “a shampoo!” Well, yes, at the first sign of the nasties, I just rub the stuff in neat a couple of times a day and wow, my feet become magically unathletic again, and so return to matching the rest of me.

For those smokers who are thinking of quitting but worry about the adverse consequences, here’s my piece of advice, stock up on Head & Shoulders shampoo, you’re feet are probably going to need it.