Wednesday Rant 1 - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

It had to happen eventually. Although I swore I’d try never to lapse into British stereotypical behaviour I cannot resist today. So with apologies for language…

…it’s f#cking June 1st, for f#cks sake, and it’s been fu#cking pissing it down since four f#cking thirty this morning when it gets light here in Scotland (I’m loathed to say the sun comes up) and the f#cking birds start their f#cking annoying little songs in the manner of those f#cking crazy f#cking frog ringtone commercials on television. AND it’s f#cking cold to boot.

Aaahhh, that’s better.

As the kids would no doubt say, the weather is ‘total pure mental man’ at the moment. I was playing golf on Monday in beautiful Perthshire and the sun was beating down when I drove off the first tee (with my driver NOT in a buggy). As I approached the fourth green, the first drops of what I thought was rain started to fall and two minutes later the green was completely covered in a blanket of white hailstones. (Stupidly, I continued to play and ended up three putting from twelve feet but that’s a whole other story.)

I’m telling you, it was like a scene from “The Day After Tomorrow” and someday soon we’ll all be treking to Africa to find habitable places to reside… which is kind of ironic given the whole Live 8/Bob Geldof/Africa’s up shit creek vibe that’s currently going on; more of which tomorrow.

Anyway, the weather is not actually what I wanted to rant about. What I really wanted to get off my chest (like a useless lung, ironically enough) was a rant about smoking and smokers; specifically ex-smokers who try and find someone else to blame for any health problems they incur.

Yesterday in Edinburgh at the end of a twelve year “landmark” case, a judge ruled against the widow of a 60-a-day deceased smoker who was trying to sue Imperial Tobacco. Before he died in 1993 Alfred McTear claimed that

1. When he started smoking in 1964 there were no health warnings on cigarettes.
2. Smoking was portrayed as glamorous in advertisements.
3. By the time health warnings were introduced in 1971 it was too late because he was addicted.

Incredibly, in some archive film shot not long before he died Mr McTear claimed that “the tobacco companies have effectively murdered me.”

Give me a f#cking break. Even if you believe that the big evil tobacco companies are upping the nicotine levels to make cigarettes more addictive they are not, repeat NOT, trawling the streets in their thousands forcing cigarettes into the mouths of men, women and children.

And how the hell do you smoke 60 cigarettes a day? I have WAY too much time on my hands at the moment, not confined by the walls of a non-smoking workplace, and I would seriously struggle to smoke more than a pack of 20 a day. I’m not proud of the fact but it’s MY choice to be a smoker and I won’t blame another living entity, human or corporate, if I get sick.

One of my favourite little quotes that I used to use in a training course a few years back read something like

“You Are Where You Are Today Because Of The Choices You Make”.

I totally believe that statement and will argue the toss with anyone who wishes to debate it… which is really saying something for me because generally I’ll avoid an argument at all costs but don’t get me started on the lack of accountability in modern society… you wouldn’t like me when I get started on the lack of accountability in modern society... I tend to turn a hulking green colour, lose the ability to speak English and my clothes rip and fall off independently… all except my trousers which, curiously, only seem to shorten despite the fact that my waist almost doubles in size.

Which reminds me, I wonder if I should sue McDonald’s for being too fat? Just kidding, I meant Pizza Hut.