Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

It’s now €36 retail for a 50 gram. packet of Golden Virginia Tobacco here, the highest price in the World I reckon having checked around, I believe our government take 80% of that in taxes and duty, they harvested 146 billion euro from tobacco last year alone.

I manage to get about a week out of a packet now, used to get four days so I’ve cut down a fair bit.

Seems the anti-smoking brigade have just about won the battle, however one of their claims I know is a load of baloney, the one that states smoking causes impotency as portrayed on some packets, not true, I’ve smoked all my adult life and so have all my old friends, men do talk about these things in the pub sometimes, it’s never affected me or them in the least, plus I’ve always enjoyed lying back and having a smoke after it.

Look at all the huge families they used to have in the days when the vast majority smoked.

Well I stood me ground and lost, but I’m a good loser and it’s an unhealthy habit anyway, so good luck to them, it’s what comes next that bothers me.

They have already started on the booze banning trail, so I would imagine that when the last nail is hammered into the last smokers coffin it will create a vacuum, then they’ll really open up and go to town on all forms of booze and the devil knows what else that takes their fancy.

I think obesity will be last on the list because the vast majority will be obese by then, seems it’s perfectly acceptable and completely legal to stuff yourself to death with junk to the point where one is incapable of standing never mind walking, or to have to inhale all the poisonous gasses from traffic, but a quiet smoke is now almost a hangable offence, how times have changed since my younger days,
Incidentally, do they still offer you a cigarette before they execute you? or is that now banned on health grounds?

Maybe they might settle on the skinny folks to satisfy their graving for banning something they disagree with, thin will become the new fat “No person under 15 stone served in here”, or perhaps men’s beards, maybe even folks with pointed left elbows, who knows, nothing will be safe from the ban it brigade.
I thank God I won’t be around then, freedom me arse, when minorities become majorities they put the beggar on horseback to shame.

As that Cowboy of old Johnny Mack Brown said to his gal in the film “Stampede”
“We started off with a few cows and a bull and boy have we grown into a mighty herd, and Sally honey, when the herd gets going there ain’t no stopping’ em, and that’s for sure”

You never spoke truer words Johnny, yeeee haaaa! round ‘em up rawhide!

This is my great Uncle Dave as a boy, a very tough lad was young Dave, he used to chew broken bottles, train cocks for fighting, and could spit the eye out of a frog ten paces away, just wondering what he would have thought of the smoking ban.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Which came first, the chicken or the fag?

I've never smoked. My Dad did, but gave up ciggies for pipe and cigars only by the time I was about ten, and then finally gave them up when he was in his late sixties.

I can remember the one and only time I was tempted, but decided in that moment I wasn't going to and that was that.

I remember my Mum trying a fag when I was a kid, but she didn't like it and never touched one again.

After going through our adoption process, we used to attend a support group for parents of adopted kids, and often had a guest speaker.
One of these was a Police Officer from the Drugs Unit in Bristol, and he came to explain the perils of drug use and signs to look out for in our kids.
He had samples of fake drugs to show us what they looked like, and the normal quantities of each one that were normally sold to users.
He also went through the addictive properties of each, telling us that nicotine was more addictive than heroine, and all it took was five cigarettes to become addicted.

He said, knowing what we know now, if tobacco came on the market today, it would be a prohibited substance.

I remember the ciggy adds when I was growing up. I never understood how something burning red hot could be referred to as, "Cool as a mountain stream."
That's the power of advertising for you.

When I first started work, smoking was allowed. Later, smoking indoors was banned, and eventually smoking anywhere on site was banned, although people still did it in secluded places. Well, the site was huge, perhaps fifty acres in total before bits got sold off.

Before it was banned I had a stand-up argument with one of the hourly-paid chaps, a really horrible bloke and a self confessed thief.
I was staff so I could request, but not order instruct, and I was twenty something, less than half his age.
I insisted that he must not smoke in the control room. He said it was allowed.

Well you see, I had done my homework and read the Offices, Shops, Factories, and Railway Premises Act current at the time, because there was a copy of the relevant part posted on the first landing of the building.

I quoted the relevant paragraphs that basically said, though shall not smoke or produce sparks or naked flames in the vicinity of (distances given) fuel storage (gas, flammable liquids, fuel oil, etcetera) or pipework, or buildings where said flammable stuff is used.
I then poined out that one of the control rooms was adjacent to a fuel farm, and both control rooms had kerosene fuel pipes of about 100mm bore running under and through them up to the point where they were connected to the engine under test.

One of the Inspectors, whom everyone liked and got on with went down to read the Act framed on the stairway wall.
When he came back he just said, "He's right, and it's a criminal offence if you do it."

That was that. No more smoking in control rooms, at least not whilst I was there.

Many years later I was on another test bed with a similar layout when a fuel pipe broke resulting in a rather scary fire. We had to evacuate across a flat roof as the fire went under us, and then down a metal escape ladder bolted to the side of the building.
Oh how we laughed all the way to the launderette.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

In my neck of the woods, nicotine was not addictive, if you wanted peace and quiet or, wanted to join a gang you smoked, nothing more, nothing less, that is where the psychological addiction starts, it was easy to go cold turkey, once all the other turkeys had buggered off.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

That’s exactly how it was with me too Spitty, only this turkey didn’t get away, I was hooked and they’ve been plucking me clean ever since.



Good read Fruity.

I remember that ad “Cool as a mountain stream” I think that referred to those horrible menthol smokes, minty flavoured things, the minty stuff was contained in the filter. They have banned the sale of them here, they say they are too easy to smoke, could have fooled me, I could never smoke them.

Good on ya sorting out a dangerous situation, there were certain places I would never smoke in even before the ban, offices, other peoples homes, hospital corridors, in front of my grandkids, and many more.
I have never smoked in bed to be honest, tried it once but the smoke didn’t go down well in the horizontal position so feck that for a game of soldiers.

There was a fella I used to have a pint with in the local, he was a council road sweeper and his beef was not so much about all the cigarette butts as the chewing gum on the pavements, a devil to remove he used to say to me.

I see that theres a special machine for doing that job now.

I’m not moaning, but doesn’t this huge thing bring to mind that old saying “Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut” I mean the new Mars rocket is more compact than that thing.

Jaysus all that for a bit of chewing gum!

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Note the wording on the chewing gum machine.

DEEP CLEANING

& GUM REMOVAL

IN PROGRESS.

I knew a dentist who did gum removals, fortunately he was struck off the register very sharply.


The wife has found an novel way to beat the lockdown travel ban, so she’s now on her way across the Irish Sea to visit her Sister in London. bon voyage my dear, and watch out for the Seagulls.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Bonkers is going on, will report back, in the fullness of time.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Is she a fan of drones then?

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

There was once Gum in here, but was removed, nipped in the Bud.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

I remember when chewing gum was popular, but the results were disgusting. It was the devil of a job to get rid of it if you stepped in it, and it was most unpleasant to find it stuck under a cinema or cafe seat.


Walking down the road into the village shops, as I once did pre-covid, I would have to negotiate the fag-ends scattered around the pub door where smokers had somehow managed to miss the four purpose built containers, then navigate round the chewing gum spattered pavement outside the a small convenience shop that also sold sweets. The nearer I got to the door, the harder it was to avoid stepping on the stuff, then it gradually trailed off again until it became replaced with polystyrene containers and wrappers from the local chippy.

When I was in junior school, not dropping litter was instilled into us kids as the right thing to do. The headmaster even sent three of us to pick up litter in the short road leading to the school gates one day.

In some nations and societies it is considered shameful to drop litter. I was chatting to a stall holder at a flea market in Ohio, USA, and mentioned that my Lovely Cousin and I would be off to Michigan to a town of Germanic origin called Frankenmuth. The chap on the next stall said he knew it, that it was a lovely place, and we wouldn't find any litter there. If someone from any part of the town saw some, they would pick it up and bin it, even if it wasn't in their street.
He was right. It was a lovely town, and it was spotless.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

My dog loves getting chewing gum off the street. Its the most disgusting thing to try and remove it from her teeth (not that she lets me). Its even worse now with potential covid gum getting spat out. I'm threatening to take her out with her muzzle on so she can't try and scrape it off the ground.