Wednesday, 15th February, 2006

Consumption

wine

I am not, to be honest, feeling particularly good today. In fact, you might say that I'm feeling just a tad hungover...

As I mentioned (a day or two ago) M's ceiling had collapsed, and so instead of staying with her like I normally do, I spent the evening at C's house. C is one of those people who know a lot more about wine than me (ie. most people), and so the evening kinda went like this:

...followed by:

...followed by:

...followed by:

They were very very nice. But I'm paying for it today

Popping Out For Some Fresh Air

smoking rant

When I tell people what I do for a living — or at least, my job title — it's always met with puzzled faces, followed by the question "Yes, but what do you do?".

One of the things I seem to do the most, I guess, is answer lots and lots of questions — usually about technical things. But d'ya wanna know the single most asked question I got, er, asked today?

Of course you do

(It wasn't "How many bottles?!" BTW — that was the second most asked question)

The thing I was most asked, today, by students and colleagues alike, was:

"So what do you think of this smoking ban then?"

I am, I guess, quite a heavy smoker. I go through just over twenty a day at the moment (that's a lot, isn't it? ), so I guess I was a pretty good person to ask about this here "Ban smoking in closed public spaces" thing that seems to be an inevitability.

Truth is, I suppose, it's been an inevitability since Ireland did it.

I mean, obviously I'm a bit narked by it. I'm narked by not being able to smoke in my office, or on trains, or on planes, or in cinemas — and adding pubs to that list seems (a) a bit excessive, and (b) a slap in the face.

Drinking and smoking, IMHO, are two things that just go together perfectly. And it's not like smoking is the Unhealthy Bad Boy™ in the middle of some kind of pub-based health bonanza ... "Oh, I look after my body" says the beer-gutted bloke, knocking back his twelfth pint of lager...

But do I care about it?

Nah. Not really.

If I was trying to argue against having smoke-free environments, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on. As much as it inconveniences me to have to nip outside every time I want to look cool (), I'm not about to start waving placards in the faces of the Health Brigade.

And it's not like I could organise some sort of mass-protest, in particular a march now is it?

"Let's all march to Parliament!"

[ten steps later]

"Hold on, can we stop for a fag-break?"

...or maybe some shouty chanting...

"Whaddowewant?!"

"Freedom to *splutter* *cough* *wheeze* smo*cough cough cough*ke!"

So yeah, I don't really care. I'm already used to the idea having spent some time in New York (where lots of interesting conversations happened just because we were stood outside bars smoking), and the pub we're always in in Leeds doesn't let you smoke at the bar (and as much as I try to drag my colleagues over to sit at a table, they refuse).

I don't think it'll have any effect though, on the number of people who smoke. I'll probably be proved wrong about this, but what the hell.

And I think that the outside of bars, are going to become the New Bikesheds™

...

But whatever, I was thinking earlier that this is the latest in a series of things that is a lot more important. It's the latest attempt to sanitise the country, by a well-meaning set of busybodies who I really think should keep their noses out of everyone else's business.

I don't mean the Government, I mean the vast swathes of middle-class bores that seem to think that they know how the rest of the country should live their lives, and feel it's their God-given right to interfere.

I don't, I must just quickly point out, think that the country should strive towards some kind of American libertarian ghastliness, where the emphasis is all about keeping legislation out of the way of evil trade nastiness — I am, after all, a quite the Socialist at heart.

I just think that life is having the eccentricity ironed out of it.

Everything is labled, clean, and boring. There's no such thing as risk any more. Everything is being dulled-down to a sense of bland. All around us, all the sharp corners of life are being sanded down — and to be honest, I think that's a really dangerous thing.

Take hygene as an example. Now, I know I'm not the cleanest person in the world, but I have my standards

But I watch with utter despair adverts like Detol's "kills 99.9% of bacteria".

Two things spring to mind: (1) How in God's name do you know that it kills 99.9% of bacteria? Have you counted them all? Have you actually ran some tests, or are you just using "99.9%" as shorthand for "a lot"; (2) Some bacteria are good for us

Fact

There was something I was watching a little while back — it was probably Horizon or something — that was looking into asthma in kids. It studied a group of children in Sweden, and came to the conclusion that the kids who lived in nice, middle-class homes, were the ones most likely to have asthma, because their homes were so clean.

Every single posibility of infection had been cleansed from their houses, and as a result none of them had anything resembling an immune system.

Now, it's not like I eat poo or anything (do people do that? I bet there's some weird kinky fetish...), but I'm surrounded by cat hair for a start, and I don't always wipe down surfaces before I chop meat on them.

But I hardly ever get ill. In fact, the only times I've felt ill over the past year are all alcohol-related.

...

Anyway, this is more of a rant than an argument

I just feel, sometimes, that I'd rather live in a country where not everything was protected and bubble-wrapped. Some things need to be protected, obviously. As civilised human beings we have things called "The NHS" and "The Welfare State" that protect the sick from the lurgy, and the vulnerable from the greedy.

But I still want a bit of danger in my life. And there are some choices I want to be able to make for myself without having a patronising sod from a semi-detached Lego-house in Swindon tutting at me.

Obviously, smoking isn't one of those choices — because it affects other people as well. But, to delve for a moment into the murky world of logical fallacies, "Slippery Slope people", that's what I think.

...

Right. Time for a fag-break.

since when did you start drinking white

And which of those do you think was white? White wine is Satan's piss. It's only good for adding a vague flavour to seafood, and anyone who drinks it for pleasure is a great big poof

or we can control the group

Claudia, I somehow feel that if we were contorlling the group, life would be more interesting

I Love This Man

csi

Jo, Jeff who?

He's so serious and yet can't be taken seriously at all

And that is precisely why I love him.

Just where is Swindon anyway?

South England... .kmz

Jeff at my wedding

Ah, yes. Um. It's too early to tell that story isn't it?