In fact, you'd be better placed telling me what's been going on.
Not that I haven't stolen a few moments to trawl some favourite blogs and comment threads, mind (mostly late with a glass of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc in a country garden containing far too many flying things for my liking). The pick of which has to be this comment from Anna Raccoon's report of the excellent news that a Scottish mental hospital smoking ban has been ruled illegal.
I am not sure that my reaction to cigarette smoke is exactly the same. For example I swim laps daily, which requires controlling your breathing so that you breathe in when your face is out of the water and breathe out when your face is underwater. If someone comes close to the pool and lights up a cigarette, I immediately find that my breath catches or stops, putting me off my stroke or sometimes making me swallow water, even though I have not yet seen that person or identified who is smoking. There are no false positives. I would imagine that the cause of this is irritation caused by invisible particles discharged from the burning cigarette which probably falls through the cooler air above the water and settles on top of the water.So, second-hand smoke can cause drowning now? It's imaginative, I'll give it that.
Normal tabloid guff will be resumed shortly (including perhaps the best e-cig sighting ever!), but for now I'll mostly be ploughing through the seventy-odd e-mails you kindly sent me while I was away ... and wondering what on earth possessed me to spend nearly £20 on Wednesday attempting - and failing - to win a bloody soft toy minion!
