Lums,
I stopped smoking about a year ago, I turned to the vapours to do that and its worked, I've successfully replaced my nicotine delivery vehicle with a much less harmful one, though there is some ongoing debate about how much less harmful.
That debate seems to be kept going by the tobacco and drugs firms who stand to lose business from those no longer buying their death sticks or supporting their expensive nicotine rackets. Big tobacco shouldn't get worried just yet though, its hard to believe but cigarette smoking is still on the up, one in 3 smokers in the world are Chinese and they love it.
Also, there are people who disapprove, non-smokers normally, not happy that their measured and wise decision not to smoke has been undermined somehow and of course its one less opportunity to just be super smug and superior about choices made and risks avoided. They see us cheerfully puffing away like the Vital Spark with no apparent deadly consequences and think we are cheating at something. So they will grasp any of the flaky studies by obscure research bodies that indicate vaping is even worse for you than smoking, there will be horrible repercussions, diseases with names such as popcorn lung and the children, think of the children, these vaping things are just a bridge to hard core Woodbines. They'll say sniffily, " but your not really kicking the habit, are you" so what? Its not the habit that does any harm. I just think its like getting snooty at a recovering alcoholic because of all the coffee they drink, The Reeking Lum says, Gie me peace!
Thats not to say being a member of the vaping community does not have its challenges, you are often forced out into the smoking pens for a puff, which is like asking that same recovering alky to drink his coffee only in a pub and there is the vaping shops, the place you go to replenish your fluids.
My own personal dealer...I mean supplier...er...storekeeper, works out of a little single fronted shop in a street where I think the rent is probably reasonable, if you get my drift. Its tiny, but he has a large, old and battered chesterfield sofa in there where patrons can sit and relax and vape away the hours if they wish, chatting slackly about rigs and tanks and voltages and all the things that pass for hot topics in this particular sub-culture.
That means when you go in, its taken on the feel of a back street opium den, full of a thick sweet smelling fug and typically populated by a variety of characters.
You'll have your lounging dandy students who fancy themselves as Oscar Wilde incarnate, or dangerous looking trunks of men that may have just stepped off an oiler from Murmansk or that uniquely Glaswegian creature, growth stunted by his mothers habits, 8 stone wet, the build of an empty track-suit and dressed head to toe in grey marl.
These fellas, very rarely women, and I will be in there choosing their poison, and this is when it gets weird. My particular shopkeeper mixes his own and so gets to give them names as well, so I'll find myself asking for 30mls of unicorn blood, or "give me another bottle of Enter the Dragon", and "do you have any Mothers Milk left?" Actually, I don't, I normally say, " can I get a wee bottle of that dark purpley one" "What" the shopkeeper will say, "Witches Tit?" He should just wear a starry robe and a wizards pointy hat to complete the fantasy and be done with it. Its better than smoking though, all you get from that is the joy of parting with a £10 every day, stinking clothes, yellow fingers, complaining teeth and gums, disappointed kids and the promise of an early breathless demise.
Lang may yer lum vape.
That debate seems to be kept going by the tobacco and drugs firms who stand to lose business from those no longer buying their death sticks or supporting their expensive nicotine rackets. Big tobacco shouldn't get worried just yet though, its hard to believe but cigarette smoking is still on the up, one in 3 smokers in the world are Chinese and they love it.
Also, there are people who disapprove, non-smokers normally, not happy that their measured and wise decision not to smoke has been undermined somehow and of course its one less opportunity to just be super smug and superior about choices made and risks avoided. They see us cheerfully puffing away like the Vital Spark with no apparent deadly consequences and think we are cheating at something. So they will grasp any of the flaky studies by obscure research bodies that indicate vaping is even worse for you than smoking, there will be horrible repercussions, diseases with names such as popcorn lung and the children, think of the children, these vaping things are just a bridge to hard core Woodbines. They'll say sniffily, " but your not really kicking the habit, are you" so what? Its not the habit that does any harm. I just think its like getting snooty at a recovering alcoholic because of all the coffee they drink, The Reeking Lum says, Gie me peace!
Thats not to say being a member of the vaping community does not have its challenges, you are often forced out into the smoking pens for a puff, which is like asking that same recovering alky to drink his coffee only in a pub and there is the vaping shops, the place you go to replenish your fluids.
My own personal dealer...I mean supplier...er...storekeeper, works out of a little single fronted shop in a street where I think the rent is probably reasonable, if you get my drift. Its tiny, but he has a large, old and battered chesterfield sofa in there where patrons can sit and relax and vape away the hours if they wish, chatting slackly about rigs and tanks and voltages and all the things that pass for hot topics in this particular sub-culture.
That means when you go in, its taken on the feel of a back street opium den, full of a thick sweet smelling fug and typically populated by a variety of characters.
 |
| Oooft, this Witches Tit is fresh. |
These fellas, very rarely women, and I will be in there choosing their poison, and this is when it gets weird. My particular shopkeeper mixes his own and so gets to give them names as well, so I'll find myself asking for 30mls of unicorn blood, or "give me another bottle of Enter the Dragon", and "do you have any Mothers Milk left?" Actually, I don't, I normally say, " can I get a wee bottle of that dark purpley one" "What" the shopkeeper will say, "Witches Tit?" He should just wear a starry robe and a wizards pointy hat to complete the fantasy and be done with it. Its better than smoking though, all you get from that is the joy of parting with a £10 every day, stinking clothes, yellow fingers, complaining teeth and gums, disappointed kids and the promise of an early breathless demise.
Lang may yer lum vape.
No comments:
Post a Comment