Twenty-something

By Paul L'Estrange

'Filled with humour, emotion and gratuitous sex...'

'A refreshingly honest insight into the mind of a young man.'

'...what travelling for the twenty-somethings is really like!'

'Engaging, funny and risqué...'

'Funny, entertaining, filthy...'

'...travelling, with kinky parts thrown in too!'

Warning – Contains adult content.
The reader should be advised this book contains adult content of a sexual nature.

Eight months. Six countries. Two continents. One book.

Every year hundreds of thousands of twenty-somethings fill a backpack, jump on a flight and arrive in far away destinations all over the world away from friends and family and in search of adventure, excitement and self-exploration.

Paul is one of these twenty-somethings, a first time backpacker and OCD sufferer, who after the death of his father and the breakup with his girlfriend has never felt more lost, or more free. Cue a one way ticket to Thailand with very little plan in search of his own adventure, self-exploration, and as a newly single young man, girls are never far from his mind.

Twenty-something is a totally honest and uninhibited memoir that tells of life on the backpacking trail, a life where paths once crossed are often quickly uncrossed and a life where falling in and out of love is as common as the changing tides.

As well as being 'funny, entertaining, filthy...', Twenty-something is packed full of tips for life on the road, from how to survive an angry pack of stray dogs to making new friends, meeting women, dealing with the fear of jumping from great heights and all the nitty-gritty in between.

Twenty-something is essential reading for the would be backpacker and a tale that is sure to reignite the experiences of backpacking through Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand for the most hardened globetrotters among us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul L'Estrange
• Release date: Dec 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310615573

Paul L'Estrange

Paul L’Estrange graduated with an MA in Broadcast Journalism from University College Falmouth after graduating with a BA (Hons) in Integrated Promotional Media from Southampton Solent University. He has worked in Media, TV Production and Public Relations and made an attempt at life as a professional poker player. He now spends his time between London and Surrey and is actively plotting an escape to his next overseas adventure.

Book preview

Chapter one

‘I like you Alice.’

Alice turned to me and looked at my face for a second.

‘I like you too,’ she said smiling.

When Sofie caught up, I put my arms over both their shoulders and we made off.

I was happy to be in Vang Vieng, Laos, with two nineteen year old Swedish girls I’d first met at a refreshments stop by the Mekong River. I had introduced myself confidently with a cheeky smile and I learnt their names were Alice and Sofie.

     Alice was gorgeous, tall and slender with strawberry blonde hair, bright blue eyes and blushing cheeks —which I wasn't sure was the sun, her natural colour or because of my presence. I immediately took a liking to her. Sofie was pretty, she had a kind smile, thick wavy blonde hair, a curvy figure and a great bust. The three of us were now headed back to their hotel.

Alice fiddled with the lock and the door swung open to reveal a good room by backpacking standards. To the left there were two single beds separated by about a metre, the floors tiled, clean white walls with a dark wooden trimming and standard hotel room furniture. Their clothing was sprawled out of their luggage covering the beds, a hair dryer was on the floor, all the kinds of things you would normally associate with a couple of girls staying in a hotel room.

Alice lay down on her bed and Sofie was in the bathroom. I sat beside Alice and took this opportunity moving in for a kiss. My chest felt light as she kissed me back, and her kiss confirmed her earlier words. This was the tall and slender bright blue eyed girl with blushing cheeks I had first set eyes on just days earlier and now our lips were touching.

Sofie returned from the bathroom so we stopped kissing and acted innocently as if nothing had just happened. Alice and I headed for the shower to wash the remaining clay off our bodies. We’d been drinking on a riverbank just outside town, since eleven a.m. in the Lao heat. For sure we were drunk. Every young backpacker was drunk in this town. By now it was late afternoon and the temperature had dropped. Here in the shower we kissed some more me running my hands firmly over her back and pulling her hips towards me. Alice was just in a bikini and I was just in my board shorts. I really wanted her.

When Sofie came in she was less naked wearing a t-shirt over her bikini. We pulled away from each other again at Sofie’s arrival pretending we weren't kissing. Someone reached for the tap trying to get the shower hot. The flow lacked force and was only spraying down a narrow stream and it was difficult for the three of us to all be covered at the same time. We had to move in tight together to all benefit from the warmth, and we ended up sitting on the hard tiled wet room floor.

I’m not sure any of us quite knew where this was all leading. There was definitely a tension but it wasn’t awkward, the three of us seemed comfortable together. We were all semi-naked pushed up tight together. Was anyone going to make the first move? Surely it would be wrong to carry on kissing Alice in front of Sofie...

Together we slipped over each other swapping positions, taking it in turns to most benefit from the hot spray.

 ‘Let's get some beers,’ said Sofie.

Alice and I agreed that would be a good idea and Sofie left for the bar.

Really, how awesome is this! I was in the shower with two sexy Swedish girls and one goes out for beer.

As soon as Sofie left, Alice and I started kissing again. I rubbed her body and breasts pulling her bikini top to one side, kissed and sucked her erect nipples before sliding my hand down the front of her swimwear, rubbing her and feeling she was wet. I entered her and she pushed her hips forwards and tilted her head back with a high pitch moan. Touching Alice felt good. We heard Sofie returning so I quickly pulled away again. She came into the shower with four, one litre bottles of beer and a bottle opener. Can life actually get any better? I was numbed by alcohol but the effects were beginning to wear off. Everything was a little hazy and almost didn’t feel real in this in between phase. We whipped the bottle tops off and had a few swigs sharing the shower flow when Sofie was the first to break the tension.

 ‘Let's do something crazy!’ she said.

Assuming those words could only mean one thing and feeling that now it was okay, I started kissing Alice again. She looked to me coyly as I undid her bikini top.

 ‘I don't want to be the first one.’

I took it upon myself to take the lead and slid my board shorts down my thighs. Alice took hold of my hard...

Trust me it got crazy! I couldn’t believe my luck, and we’ll get to that soon. But my adventure didn’t begin here. It began in Thailand.

Chapter two

I experienced firsthand that Indians like to push. These ones did anyway. Now I know it’s not in their culture to queue, but surely common sense, common courtesy and natural altruism would have allowed one of the thirty strong group to let me board the fucking connecting flight from Bangkok to Phuket.

Ten hours ago I left London, and now here I was with what I thought looked like a cricket team. I didn’t see any evidence of sporting equipment, but I couldn’t see why else they would be in such a large group.  They just kept pushing past as I stood patiently by the desk with my passport and boarding pass at the ready.  It was as if they were worried they might not be seated together like children going on a field trip and clambering onto a school bus.

Eventually I lost patience. I stretched my arm out to stop the mad rush almost clotheslining one poor Indian fella. My arm made contact with his chest but the momentum of his legs kept going, and I pointed out that there was in fact a queue. The Thai Airlines woman at the desk looked on disapprovingly as I started to board the plane.

Maybe I just made my first cultural fuck up after only just arriving in the country. You see I read that the Thai people don't like overt frustration, displays of anger or raised voices. They see it as an embarrassment and a sign of weakness of a person unable to control their emotions.

Peering out the window as we made our decent into Phuket was emotional for me. As a child I used to spin a globe on its axis when I visited my father on the weekends. It lit up with a bulb inside standing in the front room, and he would show me all the places he had been to. I always dreamt about seeing the world for myself one day. As I looked out of the plane window, I saw the rocks jutting steeply out of the sea covered in thick green vegetation. I had seen these on the television and in the movies, but now I was seeing them with my very own eyes. The reality set in that I was actually doing this. I was in a foreign land on the other side of the world beginning my adventure alone and about to leave the safety of the airport.

I’d pre-booked a taxi whilst back home in England. I was to spend the first month in the country training in martial arts, and the office at the muay thai camp I was headed for had arranged the lift. The next few weeks would be spent training, but after that where I would go was anyone’s guess. I had no plan; I was nervous, and it was exciting.

Proceeding past the touts who overcharge naive tourists, I found my lift. Rushing through the Phuket streets, I noticed a woman riding a scooter with two children precariously balancing in the bikes foot well. The traffic was fast and bustling, and none of them where wearing helmets. That kind of thing on the roads in Thailand is a familiar sight. Although everything looks like chaos at first, once you have been around a while you realise that it all seems works pretty well. Everyone gives each other space on the road and lets the other drivers know of their presence by beeping their horn. If you overtake in Thailand you sound your horn to alert the other drivers and they will give you room to pass. In contrast, if you try to overtake in England, the chances are the car you are passing will accelerate to make it more difficult for you and give you the finger whilst you’re doing it.

I was staying a five minute walk from the muay thai camp at the end of a small tarmac side road. Here stood a long bungalow with about eight or nine rooms that opened out onto a porch. Nights would be spent here smoking and chatting to the other guests who were training in muay thai. To one side was a rubber tree plantation where the workers would roam around at night collecting the tree sap. Opposite was where Bo the Chinese landlady slept in another smaller bungalow with her mad aggressive dog. Next to her bungalow was an outdoor mini bar and restaurant, and here Bo would cook us up grub.

My room had a large double bed, fridge, television, en suite bathroom and was pretty comfortable. This was to be my home for the duration of training, settling in and acclimatising to my new surroundings in Thailand.

Danny was the first guy I met. He lived in Sweden but had Iranian blood, and with him were his two brothers, his sister and father. He was quick to point out that he was a Christian not a Muslim; I guess he thought us Brits cared. That evening I rode with him apprehensively to the 7-Eleven convenience store on the back of his scooter, under darkness and with no helmet. Before I left for Thailand I said to myself I wouldn’t ride a scooter as notoriously they are the cause of many accidents among backpackers. Yet here I was riding on the back of one on my very first night there. We rushed along a quiet lane made noisy by the humming engine and cut through the thick humid air; I could feel it brushing past my face, and we pulled out into the fast moving traffic of the bustling freeway. It was a thrill.  

Over the next few days Danny showed me the ropes of living in Thailand. He took me to the Sunday Night Market where I watched him haggle with the traders over pennies. It was bright and busy, selling fruit, squid, insects and all other sorts of food, knock off clothing, pirate movies, knifes, stun guns, you could even buy animals. Amongst the hustle and bustle beggars were trying to make a living, real beggars, some with deformed limbs looking grotesque. They lay face down on the ground with their head up and with their sometimes deformed hands stretched out holding a paper cup. It was the first time I had ever seen beggars like this, and it made me feel pretty uncomfortable. I thought the usual —how life must be so terrible for them compared to how lucky we are in the west— but I also felt a sense of disgust at the total lack of pride. Perhaps it’s easy for me to say, I couldn’t possibly imagine what their situation is like, and maybe all pride goes out the window when you are desperate. Danny suggested that maybe they were just skilled at their craft and perhaps made more money than the street vendors.

Maybe he’d become naturally suspicious because of his line of work. Back home in Sweden he worked as a security guard in a retail store, whilst his brothers worked as bouncers in night clubs. They all had the thick build you would expect from men working in security, but they weren’t intimidating. In fact, they were all very welcoming and friendly. Annually they would escape the notoriously bitter Swedish winter to migrate south to the warmer climate. The brothers came with good intentions to train, whilst their jolly father and strong sister would relax with some of Bo's home cooked food or head down the road to the massage parlour. I was grateful for the introduction Danny had given me to Thailand. It made feel more comfortable in my new surroundings.

Phil from England was in the next room from mine, and he was a few years older than me like the Swedish/Iranian brothers. He stood out for being a typical lad, was cocky, witty, loud and a general nuisance. He’d blow up fireworks he’d bought from the Sunday Night Market in the middle of the night and scare the shit out of everyone within a mile radius. Phil was a wild one and didn’t seem to regard anyone else much, but he did have bags of character. Once you got to know him a little though, another side of him shone through. He seemed like he’d have your back, the kind of guy you could count on in a crisis and underneath all the bullshit a decent lad.

I thought Danny, who had shown me the ropes, fancied himself as a bit of a ladies man. In my mind at least, he looked a lot like Ross Geller from the Friends television show just a thicker bodied version from all his time spent at the gym. He ended up with a Thai girl who worked in a bar with the playboy bunny logo on the façade. He was slightly offended when I suggested she might be a prostitute. She never charged him apparently, but it’s a known fact a lot of the bar girls in Thailand, especially Phuket, are prostitutes.

When I wasn’t hanging out with these guys, I was training.  

At seven thirty in the morning and twenty five degrees Celsius, the wakeup call from caged cockerels rang through the air, but I was already awake and running on my first day of training. You could hear patter of training shoes on the warming tarmac and the aggressive barking from an unleashed guard dog as we passed. The instructor shadowed us on a noisy motorbike smoking a cigarette and waving a stick.

‘Faster, faster,’ he yelled at us in his funny Thai accent as we set off on our run.

The bike was complete with a side cart I presume to carry any casualties which was reassuring as I had no idea how far he would make us run. I knew it was going to be a tough day, and I hoped my few weeks spent preparing in the gym back in England would get me through. Thankfully it was only three kilometres, but that was more than enough to douse me in a glimmering layer of sweat, and we had a three hour training session ahead of us.

The first time I ever stepped into a boxing ring was on the first day of training. It sat in the corner of the open planned gym. There were no walls just a simple roof suspended on thick wooden trunks. This allowed us to look out into the surrounding rubber tree plantation, the tarmac road at the entrance and the bungalows to one side where fighters lived. Further running, side stepping, and a variety of stretches were now required of us inside the ring preparing our bodies for the punishment to come.

After practising a few techniques the pace increased to three, three-minute rounds of sparring, dodging blows, counter attacking and taking a few hits to the head —returning the favour wherever possible.

‘Ten push-ups!’ shrills the instructor in his funny Thai accent, and this phrase would be one I soon came to affectionately hate.

After each round, ‘Ten push-ups!’ and when the collective nine minutes of fighting are up, ‘Ten push-ups!’

 Following on from trying to duck and dive the opponents blows, we pair up with an instructor who is holding hard worn leather pads. Some had the inner filling jutting out through tears caused by a life time of punishment. For a further three, three-minute rounds we are encouraged to batter the leather as hard as we can possibly muster.

Occasionally the trainer would instruct me to block a blow from the right and then deceive me with a kick from the left. When that wasn’t enough amusement, he would then trip me up throwing me to the mat and burst out in outrageous laughter. Undeterred, I would jump back onto my feet with a sadistic grin and smile across my face and strike the leather even harder than before.

‘Ten push-ups!’ in between each round and after another nine minutes and thirty press-ups later, we are blessed with a sixty second break.

Now it was the large heavy punch bags turn to get battered. They swung from their thick clunking chains that were attached to a solid metal frame cemented into the ground. Like the pads these were covered with hard worn leather, and after another three, three-minute rounds of pounding, with ten press-ups between each, we arrive at the next phase.

On the heavy bags again, we took turns with two hundred continuous kicks, punches, knees, or any other strike of the instructors choosing, whilst another student held the bag steady. The session continues with one hundred press-ups and two hundred sit-ups before we finally get to lie down.

There were about five instructors in total for the group, and they are all happily grinning whilst picking up five kilogram medicine balls. During the climax of a three or so hour session, we all lay down in a circle upon the sweat soaked mats with our feet pointing inwards towards the centre. The teachers would then step over us griping the medicine ball in two hands and bounce it fifty times in quick repetition off our abs. Trying to tense and breath in time with the blows seemed to create the most peculiar noises from the students.

The thermometer reads about thirty degrees by now, and I could fill a bucket if I rang out my vest top. After warming down and stretching the morning session comes to an end, but for the committed there is an equally tough afternoon session as well. It’s a tough sport and if you plan on fighting competitively, you have to be conditioned and fit. I had no plans to fight competitively, so on most days one session was enough.

As time went on, I started hanging out with a guy who happened to live in the same town as me back home. His name was Matt, wore a football shirt most days and seemed to seek out my company. Another guy was Fred, a cage-fighter, and it turned out we went to the same university and knew some of the same people. Fred worked the doors back home, seemed to be a nice guy and didn’t come across as threatening. He was a bit grumpy though and moaned a lot. Fred was serious about training and had had a few semi-pro cage-fights back in the UK.

 Over the next few weeks, I’d wake up about six thirty a.m. every morning and have a pot noodle for breakfast bought from the 7-Eleven. It only required boiling water, and I had a kettle in my room, so it was an easy fix. I would then hit it hard training for three hours or so. After training, I would come back to the bungalow area and hangout with these guys on the porch or in Bo’s outside restaurant. That was my life for a several weeks, but occasionally we’d hit the booze and head west of the island for some relief to the party town Patong.

We’d pay Bo the Chinese landlady for a lift, and she would get her brother to drive us up there in the back of their pick-up truck. It was awesome flying through the streets of Phuket drinking with the boys in the back of the pick-up and attracting all of the attention from the Thai bar girls as we passed. We would listen to the shit fly between Phil the delinquent and another English guy Carl. He bared a slight resemblance to Will Smith but with a London accent. With their massive egos, they were always competing for top boy status. It was amusing to watch.

Once on the strip in Patong, the bar girls would literally scream at you, grab at you and try to drag you into the bars. Phil called it the David Beckham effect. He took us to a strip club where the prostitutes would beat the farang with foam batons which was quite fun. I say it was a strip club but really it was more of a brothel. Young girls were standing on a raised central stage in their underwear and didn’t do much dancing. They just swayed slowly from side to side or half-heartedly grinded against one of the dancing poles. They looked drugged up on something. Each had a number attached to their underwear on a circular disk. The idea was that you would pick a number then disappear up a staircase with the girl. I couldn’t tell you what happened up there as I never went, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out.

Later, we found ourselves in a club. I had just finished taking a pee and was at the sink washing my hands when I was accosted by the two young male toilet attendants. They grabbed me, forced my head to either side cracking my neck, pulled at my ears cracking them somehow too and lifted me up cracking my back. One of them then reached his arm around the front of my body and simulated wanking me off in front of my jeans.

‘I do you for free, I do you free!’ he said whilst pointing in the direction of the toilet cubicle.

‘No thank you!’ I said with a smile.

I wasn’t intimidated; I could tell they meant no harm. I was just a little shocked that’s all. The unusual massage actually felt pretty good though, so I gave them a tip.

Another thing worth mentioning about Patong was a scam this Aussie guy, who was training at the camp, got into. He was offered some weed on the strip and as soon as he bought it, he found himself in the company of two police officers. He was ordered to pay ten thousand baht or be arrested. It was an easy decision to make and they accompanied him to the cash machine. I’m sure the corrupt police do quite well with this little scam.

The training didn’t rush by as you might expect. We were usually finished by lunchtime and therefore had the rest of the day to relax. We might take trips to a local shopping mall, the beach, or do some touristy stuff like fire guns and ride on the back of elephants. My fitness was improving rapidly, and by the end of it I was probably the fittest I’d ever been in my life. With every running step, press-up, sit-up, every punch, every kick and every drip of sweat, I was cleansing my soul from the angst caused by my father’s death and finally beginning to get over my breakup from Kate my ex-girlfriend.

Several weeks of those gruelling training sessions five days a week made me feel good. I don’t want to sound like a new age hippy, but it’s true to say I had this feeling of mind and body at one together. I can only describe it as a confidence of body through fitness, and my mind no longer felt like a separate entity to my body. There was this new feeling of wholeness or completeness. By now though, I was eager to escape the testosterone fuelled environment of the gym and cast my eyes further afield, as any fit young man would, in the search of excitement and girls.

But first I’ll tell you how I came to be in Thailand to begin with.

Chapter three

I’m just going to tell it straight.

Christmas ‘08 wasn’t a particularly happy one. My father died in hospital the day before Christmas Eve. On Boxing Day, I went round my girlfriend’s family home for the evening. A selection of cheeses and cold meats were spread out on the dining room table. She got completely wasted and was acting like a badly behaved child. Under the circumstances I expected a bit of consideration.

Her father watched how she picked up a slice of carved ham with her bare hands took a bite out of it then dumped it straight on my plate. I was eating, and her plate was right in front of her.

‘I don’t know why you put up with this,’ he said to me, and he was right.

When Kate and I caught a moment alone in the kitchen, she was acting as if she hadn’t been behaving like a drunken twat all evening. She tried to put her arms around me slurring in her speech whilst finding it difficult to stand up straight and telling me how sexy I looked. On pretence of going out the front door for a cigarette, I got into my car and drove away. Perhaps she didn’t even notice I was gone. It was at least an hour or so before she tried to get in contact.

The following morning we ended our two year relationship via text message. At first I wasn’t interested in seeing her when she tried to invite me over, but later that changed, and despite my best efforts we have only seen each other once since. A couple of weeks later I was uncontrollably sad and cried and cried and cried which was out of character for me. I can’t remember the last time I cried or ever remember feeling that way before.

My father’s death I’m sure was a part of my sadness. He was eighty-four years old when he died, quite old to be my father considering I was only twenty-two. My whole life I knew he would die whilst I was young, so it wasn’t a complete shock. He was a fascinating character, quick witted, quick tempered, married four times and father of eleven children. He was sharp journalist and had held several editorial positions, a wealthy public relations and advertising man who ran his own business in South Africa, co-author of a PR text book, an RAF pilot during the Second World War and a Barnardo’s boy in London during his 1930’s childhood. He had smoked and drank like a trooper but was somehow in fine health up until the last two years when his age began to show for the first time. A combination of pneumonia and a botched operation at the hospital ultimately led to his demise. But what was there to be sad about? He had lived several lives full of adventure and died quite quickly.

I met Kate in the final year of my undergraduate degree in Southampton and fell in love with her. Later she moved to Falmouth with me where we lived together whilst I was studying for a master’s degree. She was tall and attractive with long blonde hair, quite athletic and studying for a sports degree when we met, but she wasn’t a member of one of those rowdy varsity sports teams. We recognised each other from mutual friends during the Wednesday night student piss up at Icon/Diva nightclub, and we kind of just approached each other and kissed, as simple as that. It wasn’t like a full on snog but our lips touched and it felt good. That same evening I went back to her house, and although we didn’t have sex we didn’t take things slow either.

We both liked to get pretty drunk which resulted in a lot of arguing, and we were always jealous checking up on each other as we were both wild flirts. The relationship began to deteriorate when we were living with each other in Falmouth. I think she missed all her friends from home. I did my best to introduce her to the girls on my course, but I think she just felt like they were my friends not hers. I was probably a nightmare to live with having pretty bad obsessive compulsive disorder, and I was in no way a perfect boyfriend.

So yeah, I’ve got OCD. It’s a real bitch!

I guess this type of madness can be defined by suffering unreasonable obsessions which are relieved by compulsive behaviour. The obsession might be germs, and the compulsion might be to wash your hands one hundred times a day taking up a lot of time and leaving your flesh raw.

The main obsession isn’t germs for me it’s something very different, and when the madness is at its worst life can become difficult.

I had —and still have to a lesser degree— an overwhelming fear of asbestos. It’s a building material that was banned around 1998 from use in this country. When broken up it breaks into tiny particles that can be breathed in and get caught in the lining of your lungs. This can lead to cancer and many people who have worked with the material have died as a result. It can take as many as thirty years after the exposure of asbestos for the cancer to develop and kill. I had an overwhelming fear of being exposed to this material and it affected my life daily, hourly and sometimes every minute. The material is mined from the ground and was known as the magic mineral because of its high heat resistance and other useful properties. It was used everywhere in roofing, walls, floor tiles, ironing boards, cars, car breaks, boats, kettles, ceilings, electrical appliances, pipe linings, paint and a great many more things. Although it’s now banned, it can still be found everywhere today. My grandmother’s partner who was a bit like a grandfather to me died from it, so perhaps that’s where I developed this fear.

When my madness was particularly bad, I used to follow these routines to avoid exposure.

In Southampton studying for my undergrad my alarm went off at eight in the morning on some days because of my nine o’clock lecture. Getting out of bed and walking into the bathroom, five minutes was spent washing my hands to make sure any asbestos dust is free from them. I would always have to scrub my hands together twenty times and in sets of twenty until I was satisfied. If the sets start nearing say thirteen sets of twenty, I would then have to power through to twenty sets of twenty clearing the unlucky number by a distance. It all adds up to be a lot of hand washing, and then I would attempt turn the tap off with my elbow so as not to contaminate my hands again.

Going back into my bedroom, I would roll my morning cigarette but not before pulling out the first five or so papers making sure I get one free of any possible dust. I would remove the papers carefully from the cardboard packet to try not to touch the outer packaging which would contaminate the paper. It’s the same with the tobacco, pulling it out carefully avoiding the outside packaging as much as possible. Squeezing the first few filtered tip ends out of the plastic tube is for the same purpose, to get to the clean ones in the middle.

Now I can roll the cigarette but I can’t smoke it yet. First I place it between my fingers and shake it twenty times or so to rid it of any dust and blow the filtered end several times for the same purpose. Placing the cigarette in my mouth I pick up the lighter. I hold the lighter upside down to shake it free of any dust and light the flame away from my face before bringing it towards the cigarette with careful precision. I only use the very tip of the flame to maximise the distance from the lighter and the cigarette as contamination at this point might mean a repeat of the entire process.

After all, the lighter might be dusty and I don’t want to breathe it in or get any dust on my cigarette then breathe that in. Finally the cigarette is lit but I can’t smoke it properly yet. I have to not inhale the first twenty or so puffs into my lungs to make sure I bypass any dust that may have bypassed all my other careful procedures. Flicking the ash and shaking the cigarette some more, I then proceed to blow forcefully out to clear my mouth and lungs of any dust that may have crept in.

It’s now at this blissful moment I can take the first proper puff of my cigarette. But now there is only a couple of puffs of it left as much of the tobacco has burnt away. If I smoke the cigarette too close to the end I worry I might have burnt some of the filter and inhaled the fumes. Feeling that this probably isn’t good, I set about forcefully blowing the air out of my lungs to clear away any possible toxic fumes. On occasions I would only get to have two proper puffs of a cigarette before it’s burnt too low. I know it’s ironic, considering smoking itself can cause cancer, the thing I am trying to avoid by practicing these routines but that doesn’t change anything.

I have a lecture to get to so I step into my jeans and pull them up about halfway up my legs and proceed to shake them vigorously in sets of twenty counting in my head just in case they have any dust on them.

Now my jeans are on I may decide to wash my hands again before chucking on a t-shirt as they have no doubt been contaminated by now. Shaking my t-shirt as with the jeans and same goes for any other clothes I might be wearing. The next phase is footwear, and when it comes to shoes and socks I will always wash my hands after as shoes no doubt have gathered plenty of dust from the street and my feet from the floor.

When it comes to hair styling, my hands are going near my face so they have got to be washed first. The hair product makes my hands sticky and sticky hands are potential dust magnets so have to be washed again as well afterwards.

Getting out of the house is always a hassle because I’ve got the front door to contend with. My ‘careless’ housemates would have no doubt contaminated the handle so I have to