Archive for the 'Smoking' Category

New Year Resolutions?

Grandad December 31st, 2007

What is special about tomorrow?

Nothing really. It’s just another day. It will be no different from today, except that it will be slightly brighter.

The big significance is that I start writing dud cheques again. I never remember to put in the year correctly.

For some strange reason, it is a time when we are all supposed to make New Year Resolutions. The commercial world are cashing in on this as usual and are pumping out advertisements for slimming clubs and aids for giving up smoking.

One advertisement I saw amused me. It is a patch or something [I wasn't paying that much attention], that helps you give up cigarettes by satisfying your craving for nicotine by giving you therapeutic nicotine. So they replace nicotine with nicotine and you are fine because they have used the word therapeutic? I like it. I’m not going to buy their product, because I’ll continue to smoke my pipe. Only I’ll call it my therapeutic pipe from now on, so I’ll be grand.

I don’t make resolutions because I don’t see the point. I always break them anyway.

Oh, all right then. I’ll make one.

I’ll try to moderate my language a bit in my blogging.

OK?

But if you think I’m going to go on a diet, or take more exercise or give up smoking, you can f*ck off.

Sh*t.

There. You see? I’ve broken my resolution already.

I hope you all have a very happy next 366 days.

I’ve got you under my skin

Grandad December 10th, 2007

Yesterday started off as a good day.

My mood was good, and what was even better, we had finally shifted the worst of the weather over to America.

It was cold, but the sun was shining.  We decided to go down to the village.

Everything changed.

As soon as we arrived in the village, the mood took a downer.  Bing Crosby was singing Christmas melodies very loudly throughout the place.  I hate Bing Crosby.  Well, I don’t hate Bing Crosby himself, as I don’t know him, but I hate his singing.  And that goes for Sanatra and all that lot as well.  The sound of "White Christmas" and all that sh*te really gets under my skin, so I could feel the kill instinct coming to the fore.

I decided to calm myself with a mug of coffee while Herself went shopping.

Sandy and I wandered over to the coffee shop, where there were a few people sitting out, supping their coffee and giving out stink about Crosby.

Then I saw them…..

The best tables nearest the heater has ‘No Smoking’ signs on them.  And this was outside in the open f*cking air!

I complained very loudly to the owner.  She agreed with me, because she likes a smoke or two herself, but said the health inspector had insisted.

Who are these f*cking Nazis? They have driven us outside, and are still complaining.

At this stage, I was spitting venom and was getting near what my psychiatrist calls ‘explosion point’.

I set fire to the ‘no smoking signs’.  In fairness to them, they didn’t make much smoke.

One of the customers complained when I burned the sign on his table.

He made a LOT of smoke.

What I learned from the Budget

Grandad December 6th, 2007

I learned something very interesting yesterday.

I was half listening to Biffo droning on, giving his budget speech. I say ‘half listening’ because if you concentrated, you’d go out of your mind.

The Budget has been thrashed out elsewhere, and I’m not going to go into the ins and out of that. That’s boring.

It was the bit where he talked about tobacco and drink that caught my interest.

First of all, he raised the price of fags by 30c. That didn’t surprise me. He said it was because they were dirty filthy foul things and they were ruining the health of the nation, and we all wanted to make Ireland tobacco free. Or words to that effect. I had one small issue with that. He included me in that ‘all’. I don’t want to make Ireland tobacco free.

He then went on to briefly mention high alcohol drinks, and how he had concerns about them, and that he was going to address that issue in the next budget. So high alcohol drinks have a reprieve for a year.

There is only one conclusion from this. Tobacco poses a much higher risk to health than high alcohol drinks. I never knew that.

So all those nightly street fights in our city centres [and elsewhere] aren’t caused by drink after all. The fact that I get bashed over the head with a wine bottle by some stranger is because he has just smoked eight Benson & Hedges, and has nothing to do with his being out of his gourds on tequila slammers and countless pints of lager? All those kids lying on Accident and Emergency floors on a Saturday night are there because they had a surreptitious drag on a mate’s fag, and has nothing to do with them being fifty times over the limit?

From now on, I’m going to watch the taxi-ranks. If there is a driver who is having a quick smoke while waiting for a fare, I’ll avoid him like the plague. I’ll go for the one who has just downed a bottle of whiskey in one go. Much safer.

From now on, if I see someone approaching me smoking a cigarette, I’ll have my Mace and my Tazer at the ready. In fact, I will try and hang around the stag parties in Temple Bar. Much safer.

It is amazing what you can learn even from a boring old budget speech.

Show me your pipe

Grandad November 27th, 2007

For some reason, a lot of people are asking my advice about pipe smoking.

Am I becoming the iconic pipe smoker?

Anyway, I’m delighted, as I hate cigarettes. They are unhealthy, messy and they smell foul.

Really there is nothing to smoking a pipe.  There are those who will try to build up a mystique around it as if it were some Masonic Rite.  They will list out the amazing amount of equipment you will need like a pipe for each day of the week [and the materials they must be made of], and the reamers and the knives and the cleaning equipment.  They will whisper the rituals of ‘letting pipes breathe between smokes’ and will clean their bowls [nearly put an extra 'e' in there!] with whiskey or honey.

B*ll*x.

All you need is a pipe, some tobacco and something to light it with.

The only tricky thing about smoking a pipe is the start.  It is an art of experience. 

So how do you go about it?

My advice would be to get a relatively cheap pipe to start with.  There is no point in lashing out a fortune on something that’s going to end up at the back of a drawer.  If you like it, you can move on to something more expensive.

Then there is the tobacco.  Again there is a lot of crap about this.  It is down to personal taste.  There are ’standard’ tobaccos, aromatic tobaccos and flavoured tobaccos, and all sorts of variations in between.  I would recommend starting with something standard and mild.

For a long time, I smoked Benson & Hedges Mellow Virginia which is a fairly mild one.  Nowadays, I tend to smoke Condor, for two reasons - I like it, and most shops sell it.

Lighting your first pipe is the trickiest bit.  The chances are you will have packed the tobacco too tight or too loose [this is where experience comes in].  Too tight, and you can’t draw on it properly; too loose and it just goes out.

Try not to inhale.  This is difficult if you are a cigarette smoker, but you’ll soon get out of the habit.

There are loads of advantages to pipe smoking.  It is more relaxing, for some reason.  You will be more socially acceptable. It is cheaper.  It is cleaner [you're not dropping ash everywhere, and there are no butts to litter the ground]. 

There are some disadvantages.  You have to carry a pipe, tobacco and a lighter or matches instead of just a pack of fags.  It is also more difficult to bum a smoke!  you have to clean the pipe regularly [but, in fact that is part of the pleasure and ritual].

I now smoke one of Elie’s pipes.  It’s a great yoke.  The smoke has to travel three times the length of the stem and then through a paper filter so it cools the smoke beautifully and takes the majority of the sh*t out.

Cooling_system

So, go on.

Give it a try.

I’ve been tagged again

Grandad November 11th, 2007

Our K8 has come up with a new meme.

And, bless her little cotton socks, she has passed it on to me.

She wants me to write a post that uses every tag. It’s all very well for her - she only has a few. I have loads. The cow!

Now I may be getting old but I find these difficult. I had a hard days blogging yesterday, as I had a good rant on a podcast to America. That was after I did my post on Cully and Sully.

So today I went for a ramble around the garden, trying to think of a topic. No go. There was no inspiration around the house either, and I’m damned if I’m going around the village or around the town for something so trivial.

Back in the 70’s life was a lot simpler. There were no computers or Internet, or even television so there were no memes. I had no irritating daughter in the family either. We found our pleasures in simple things. I remember learning to drive so we could go on holidays touring in the West, with no worries about flying and Global Warming. We had such simple sports as children in times past, like watching spiders spin their webs, and the designs they’d make. We’d go for rambles through the woods and have picnics of tea and spam sandwiches. We were a lot healthier for it.

Nowadays, work is the new religion and people have lost the use of their imagination. People only get worked up over celebrities and smoking out corrupt politicians. They panic over property prices and have lost sight of the soul of life.

No.

I can’t think of anything.

I elect not to do it.

I’m going to file this under Uncatagorised.

Maybe Sixty should have a bash at this?

Or how about Kirk at Just Thinkin’? I haven’t tagged him before.

And it’s a while since I annoyed Grannymar!!

tag-award

F*cking memes….

Smoking is good for you

Grandad October 19th, 2007

Whenever there is a survey about health, they invariably ask if you smoke.

They then ask how many cigarettes a day.

But they never mention a pipe. And I often wondered how pipe smoking equated to cigarette smoking. I meant to ask the Doctor. And then it struck me - why not look it up on the Interweb?

So I did.

And what I found surprised even me.

Apparently, a pipe-smoker who smokes up to four bowlfuls of tobacco a day can have a longer life expectancy than someone who doesn’t smoke at all.

Several reports have shown this. Including one by our friend the Surgeon General of the United States.

Of course the Anti Smoking Nazis would have us believe that even thinking about tobacco is enough to bring on a brain tumour, so the idea of smoking prolonging life is pure heresy.

So how can the pipe be healthy, if tobacco is so evil? Simple.

The key to the whole issue lies in stress.

When calculating a persons expected lifespan, there are many factors to consider - heredity, lifestyle, general health and mental well-being.

Of these, mental well-being is considered to be one of the greatest factors. Being happy and relaxed in you life is enough to add years onto your life expectancy. Relaxation is the key. Stress is the killer.

To me, every aspect of cigarette smoking screams of stress - frantically jamming the fag in the mouth; the rapid dragging on it and the final stabbing of the cigarette in the ashtray. Pipe smoking is a ritual. By its nature, it’s a relaxing process - the careful packing of the tobacco into the pipe; the ritual of lighting it [a quick stab of a lighter isn't good enough here], and then sitting back and enjoying it. I even find the process of cleaning a pipe relaxing. People even say that the sight of another person smoking a pipe is relaxing.

People accuse me of inventing the stuff I write about. I’m very hurt by that, but I’ll let it pass.

I will quote from the Surgeon General of the United States in his report on the dangers of tobacco.

Specifically, this report confirmed what had been suspected for quite some time, that cigarette smoking could be dangerous. However, the conclusion drawn from several studies about pipe smokers was that they tended to live longer than the general population!

So. Throw away those damned cigarettes. They stink, and they are dangerous.

Put it in your pipe and smoke it.

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