Benson and Hedges Gold

1.In a Morrisons mini supermarket, 2026.


Have you got Benson and Hedges Gold?


I don’t think so, I’ll have a look. 


Ok thanks.


No, we don’t, sorry. 


Why does no one have Benson and Hedges Gold? I can only find them in garages for double the price. 


The ones we sell are on the sign on the glass.


Where? Here?


Yes, that’s what we sell. 


I’ve smoked Benson and Hedges for years, they’re the only ones I like.


We only have the ones on the sign.



2.In a caravan park in Ireland, 1990.


Niall smokes Benson and Hedges Gold

I smelled them in the packet

In secret pockets and with peerless pressure

I smelt the smoke on him from sleeping sighs on the bottom bunk

And then Aunt Deidre bought him his Benson and Hedges Gold in a caravan park in Garret’s Town Cork

Because Aunt Deidre smoked and she resented our mum



3.In a garage in Slough, 1995


I bought a packet of Benson and Hedges Gold and snuck one out with me to the garage at the end of the garden. I’d smuggled a lighter back from my aunties pub in Inch, Cork, and lit the cigarette in my fingers away from my mouth. As I burned the end, the smoke intruded into the garage air, but it wasn’t the unclean smell I’d remembered from Niall, an emergent bruised and confused teenager, it was an aroma. I put the cigarette to my lips and and breathed in lightly. I was smoking. Did I like it? I wasn’t sure. I was inhaling guilt and consequences and breathing out shame. I put the cigarette out on the garage wall and threw the body away, walking back to the house high and pungent to spray my fingers with Lynx Africa.


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