As a thirteen year old at school, I feared most to be called in front of the class and give an explanation on the advantages of the Treaty of Utrecht. I wasn’t the only boy to fear those impromptu frontages. They were the times when swollen acorns featured prominently and not just in class rooms. Those ‘impromptu swellings’ seemed to have a life of its own at that time. Thoughts about those pubescent and glowing roseate girls’ thighs in their school shorts were the bane of any school boy’s attempt at Treaties of all countries, especially in front of the class.

They were the times of my first fag. It was so simple and so desirable, to be like dad and older friends, to smoke tobacco and be seen as growing up, even if not yet grown-up. The oak’s acorn was the smoking implement par excellence at those post war times in The Hague. The mature acorn was hollowed out and pierced about 5 ml from the bottom allowing a grass straw to be inserted. This was my first smoking tool and even though those first draws made me reel and almost sick, I loved the sick. What a heaven had opened up.

I had a few mates in cahoots with those acorn pipes and somehow cents were put together and tobacco was bought. We used to hide in ‘portieks’, they were a kind of alcove or vestibule that most city streets had before entering individual apartments or flats. The joy of those first illicit smokes, hidden from view, carried me for years and even now I have no regrets.

Sure, the acorn smokes and those roseate coloured thighs turned into a hiatus in my education, but so did my parents’ decision to leave my city and country. I suppose at that time, smoking and thinking, dreaming about girls had priority over anything else, especially that dreary circa 1700 Treaty with those fucking Spaniards.

I gave up smoking in my early fifties only on the promise of starting again when turning sixty. I am (wait for it, on the cusp, ha, ha, of seventy) and haven’t done so yet.

Ah, those acorn pipes. Those first sickening tobacco draw backs. Those swollen impromptu boners in classroom frontages with Mr Kohler.