Smoke gets up their noses.

There is a song corruption to be done there but I am otherwise occupied at the moment.

This post, I should mention, is brought to you by Lidl’s Abrachan which I have bought as a change from Glen Orchy. It’s a tad more costly and not all that much different but it’s a malt blend and it is actually pretty good. The price is now £17.99, down from the starting price and the difference is small enough to say ‘oh sod it’. Still cheaper and far better than most grain blends.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, nothing, as usual. Right. Harrrumph. Pretend to be sober, like you do at work.

Tomorrow I must talk to the bank people. They hate me. I run my finances very close to the wire these days. Sometimes into single figures but just not quite into the red where they can charge me. It’s almost like I’m taunting them. The balance goes down and down and down and almost to zero then bang – payday.

There is a slight bit of deliberate malice involved, if I’m honest. It is, let’s face it. funny to take your bank balance into single figures the day before payday. Just to give them hope.

Connected with this is the quarterly gamble. This has gone on for about eight years now. Every quarter, I get a bill for lab rent and a cheque from a company that hasn’t sent me any work for a while but who want to keep my lab open and me available. It’s not costing them much. To them it’s petty cash. To me it’s heat or eat.

The cheque more than covers the lab rent, it leaves me with some single-malt money for a while. The gamble is, every time, which will come in first – the cheque or the bill? Every time so far it has been the cheque.

This time it’s the bill. The cheque will be late. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

However, I get the next payday on the same day as the lab rent vanishes. The rent will clean me out but the cheque will bring my account back from the grave. If it arrives in time. What I have to get the Bank of Hating the Almost-But-Not-Quite-Entirely-Skint to agree to is to let me have a temporary overdraft just in case. I’d only need it for a week.

They might well jump at the chance. I can picture the manager saying ‘Gotcha. Finally, ya dodgy wee shite, we gotcha’. We shall see.

Enough about money. It’s not an important thing, especially if you don’t have any. I hear the value of money is in sharp decline and thank all the gods that I don’t have very much of it. What I have instead is an N gauge Minitrix Sir Nigel Gresley in absolutely perfect condition, and which has left stock market percentage gains looking like pocket money. Other old railway stuff has turned into a better investment than anything the FTSE can muster.

But back to the point, if there ever was one.

Frank Davis tells us of new research that says nicotine is not addictive. No, it isn’t. If it was an addiction then patches and gum would work. Their success rate is below placebo success rates. They do not work and are not meant to. They make more money by repetitive failure than they ever could by success. I mentioned this a while back in my most-spammed post ever.

The antismokers are terrified that we will all realise we are not addicted to nicotine. Nicotine is not addictive at all. Nobody has ever sunk into madness or died as a result of nicotine withdrawal.  They just get a bit grumpy and that’s the ones who believe they are addicted, The people I know who stopped smoking and stayed stopped just… stopped. They decided not to do it any more. No slow disassociation, no gradual decline just  ‘Nah, done enough’. No withdrawal symptoms at all. I know people who tried patches and gum. Not one succeeded in stopping smoking. Not one.

Why does it even matter to the Righteous? Consider gay marriage. I am neither gay nor religious and while I accept that the subject might well be a touchy one for some, to me it is of no relevance. I will not campaign either way because I just don’t care. Abortion, the death penalty, and more, have no direct effect on me, I have to raise £600 in a week, that’s my priority today. Not whether Chantelle produces more human flotsam or another filling for Sweeney’s Pie Shop. I don’t care. It is none of my business what other people choose to do with their lives as long as their life choices do not involve controlling mine,

I like to smoke. Is it good for me? I don’t care. I like it. It’s something I do when relaxing. I do not smoke when making tiny models or writing, I smoke in between those times. It harms nobody at all. I currently have a pipe full of cube, a delightfully aromatic blend and have heard no sirens yet. The neighbours are still alive, unfortunately. They have not died of imaginary terrors. Must try harder.

VGIF talks of the iron fist of the cat-herders. I say, let them try. In the olden days we had a saying, ‘give them enough rope and they’ll hang themselves’. It is forgotten now but it will still work.

The antis just need a bit more rope. Just another few inches.