Friday 30 August 2013

The Rovers Return

Just a quick note to say that the Puddlecote Midlands jaunt is now over and that there will be no selection of links tomorrow morning. After a week of being dragged round theme parks, safari parks, souvenir shops, overpriced eateries and chocolate factories as a walking wallet, with the reward being to drive three sleeping bodies back from each destination (not to mention the three hour return trip with only a Killers CD for company), I have no intention of emerging from my much-missed duvet before midday.

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!


7 comments:

Rursus said...

If Mr. Mason swims daily... He should be more concerned about the chlorine in the water.

Junican said...

OT.
More ecig sightings INSIDE!!
In my local, persons are becoming more and more adventurous. Tonight, with only a few people present, I say at least six people using ecigs fairly blatantly.
Are vapers gaining courage?
I doubt it, actually. But I do not see the problem - they are not viewed as disgusting, filthy, stinking. But if they do not buck their ideas up and get together, it will not be long ...............

Dick_Puddlecote said...

The sighting referred to in the above post was just that, a strikingly blatant indoor vaper - seemingly with full permission of the landlord/manager

John Gray said...

Oh dear, with Mason we have another Lilac Hamster. For anyone familiar with Scottish discussion threads, Lilac Hamster would have an asthmatic episode of extreme proportions if she even passed a smoker on the street. Oddly, Lilac did not suffer ill result from inhaling traffic fumes.


These types of claims, when juxtaposed with vehicle emissions, just don't stand up when you consider that, in terms of ETS, once you remove the exhalation of ordinary air and water, the biggest parts to those emissions consist of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. By coincidence, the same substances are also the largest emitted by the combustion of road fuels - except that in the case of the latter, the difference in quantity far, far outstrips anything ever emitted by a cigarette.


A glib response by an antismoker to this type of statement is on the lines of: "yes, but no-one sucks an exhaust pipe!" The appropriate response to that, of course, is: "you don't have to chum. The difference in quantity between those said chemicals emitted from cars more than makes up for not sucking an exhaust pipe!"


There is some good stuff in Michael McFadden's book "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains," on the psychosomatic nature of many claims by asthmatics that they are severely adversely affected by tobacco smoke.
For example, many tests were undertaken where asthmatics were placed in a room free of ETS and their behaviour was normal. Then, they were informed that tobacco smoke was to be introduced to the situation and within minutes many of them experienced severe asthma attacks. The only problem for them, was that in fact, no tobacco smoke was introduced at all but simply warmed air.

SadButMadLad said...

And the ozone if the pool is being monitored properly. And if it is not, then all the bugs etc from all the other swimmers.

Mr Mason dismisses the other's commentators' anxiety as nothing like his own "real" problem but then shoots himself in the foot by attempting to describe why he suffers, putting it down to "invisible cigarette particles in cooler air above the water". There is no such thing, the air above the water will be warmer unless he is swimming in an ice pool. So Mr Mason is suffering a totally psychosomatic illness.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Keep looking in, the nutter is going on about thirdhand smoke now. Seriously!

John Gray said...

I think I've hammered the Berkshire Hunt enough for now. Any chance of a bit of support?