"Don't You See Some Sights, When You Haven't Got Your Gun?"

Now that's a different story. I wouldn't expect an invalid or someone permanently in a wheelchair to be fashion conscious ... although I was in a wheelchair for 20 months and still matched my footgear to my clothes, glitter sandals and all!

 

50 Shades of Grey?

 

Smoking is so addictive.

My father was a smoker and contracted lung cancer. He had a lung and a bit removed in 1957, when the survival rate for this sort of operation, was 50%. He survived and lived until his mid seventies.
The operation stopped him smoking but not my mother. She carried on smoking until she was 60. Had a lung removed then stopped smoking.

My mother-in-law was a smoker, a 200 a week-end habit.

She was admitted to hospital with almost total lung failure in her sixties. Whilst she was semi comotosed, my sister-in-law witnessed her mother reaching out from her hospital bed trying to find her cigarettes which would have been on the little table next to her chair at home.

Neither I nor my wife have ever smoked. Our eldest child smokes, the middle one has never smoked and the youngest is an occasional smoker.

 

Try being in a car with a chain smoker. When I first agreed to the arrangement I had thought the person was a casual smoker. And then just to kick it up a notch, none of their windows opened!

I didn't know if I was going to get killed by the constant cigarette rolling whilst he was driving on the highway using his knee to steer or if I was going to have to hurl in my purse because the cloud in there was making me ill. Luckily neither happened and I managed to fake being okay.

One think that I find really obnoxious is the smell that comes from my neighbour's clothes dryer vent. I think they use those "added scents" to make your clothes smell for a year!

 

Many years ago the company I worked for had an estimator who smoked capstan cigs.
Well no one could put up with it, so they gave him his own little shed to work in out in the yard.

I presume he's dead now, but the shed was a nice shade of brown inside, he could have made a bit on the side smoking kippers, but I dont think he realised how bad it was.

I assume the shed was dismantled after he went, and put in to toxic landfill.

 

Smoking has to be the hardest drug to break free from. It seems, even today despite all the health warnings etc. It is perhaps taken as a natural habit.
I used to smoke, ready made, roll-ups and a pipe. Often I'd smoke a herbal mixture. As a traffic cop on late turn duty. I'd ride my motor bike in the dark, puffing away. I had a metal cover for the pipe that kept the contents from spilling out.

In time Val & I pledged to give the habit up. Val managed it. Me I found it so hard. Walking the dogs, I owned up that I had been smoking. Although we were married for 49 yrs without a row, this episode was a blow. Perhaps my confession may have been easier had I'd admitted to having been unfaithful. For a while it was. 'Do you want an ashtray with your dinner' etc etc. Even so, we would often, having enjoyed a meal, reach for the faggies realising that was the past. Thankfully I was laid low for three months and the desire faded. Now when I see youngsters having a puff. I honestly say a silent prayer. Please GOD. NO don't let them go down that road.

Footware. Leaving the police service. I entered the GLC parks dept. Due to HM Gov, the GLC was disbanded and the parks became part of the local council. I left and was asked by the MOD to join their services. I became head of horticulture for the local military hospital. Sodiers from the local barracks would attend the hospital. Problem. Foot problems. So many had been wearing, day in, day out trainers. Now came a conflict. The feet of so many could not adapt to wearing boots. An army marches on it's feet and it's stomach. Problems!

 

A neighbour used to smoke cigars. His wife often came over for a chat and a coffee with myself and my wife when he was away on business. You could smell it on her clothes as soon as she walked in the door.

No one is allowed to smoke in our house.

I can't find it now but one evening I was in the garden thirty-odd years ago taking photos of my fish in our koi pool. It started to rain so I decided to go back indoors. As I looked up I could see a figure standing on the flat roof of our lounge extension. It was a girlfriend of our then eighteen year-old daughter. She'd stepped out of the bedroom window. She was holding an umbrella whilst she enjoyed smoking a cigarette.

Her name was Alison, but jokingly we started calling her "cigarette-Ash Lil." This quickly got shortened to "Lil." She'd answer to it. We were always trying to get her to kick the habit.
Her mother didn't know she smoked as she didn't in their house, as they were non-smokers. Her mother asked us once why we called her "Lil." I said it's just a nick-name.

 

This house has been smoke free since we moved here in 2001 and our Bucks house was smoke free since 1986 when I got cancer. Previously t'other half smoked up to 80 a day (yes eighty) but quit cold turnkey in 1977 a week before we moved to the UK and I smoked about 10 a day till 1986. I never smoked at work, just socially. I don't like being around smokers now, t'other half doesn't mind. None of our friends smoke.