“I do not usually air my grievances by writing letters to papers…”
My granddad started the family tradition, like Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, making false claims of hitherto unreached levels of anger. His list of complaints covered (not exclusively): services, utilities, young people, traffic, young people, noise, dog excrement, trees, young people, declining standards in Western values and young people.
As vapers we embrace open discussion and dialogue about our hobby, we welcome research and peer-reviewed literature and we support those seeking a healthier way of inhaling their drug of choice. Or do we?
Society, by its very nature, is revisionist: history is told from the victor’s perspective. In fact, probably due to reading Orwell’s “1984” at a tender age, I’ve found censorship of language a frightening concept for most of my life.
In view of the almost incessant onslaught of negative news stories related to vaping I thought that maybe we could do with a sneak peak at the positives to come to light over the last seven days. As part of the ongoing semi-serious Thursday pieces it is very easy to get sucked into the super-serious hole but let’s be honest – there’s more important things in life…like, life.
Once upon a time in a forum far, far away new vapers were greeted with a cheery ‘hello’ from the rest of the forum regulars. It struck me that the volume of new vapers is the main reason I stopped visiting those threads – but then I realised how brilliant that is.
Back at the birth of the internets, at a quarter past dial-up, someone on a bulletin board told me that the government monitor my telephone for keywords. Later, while was I studying Computer Science, I read about a list of companies who employed voice recognition software to analyse the conversations going on in your house to identify key words. They did this as they were considered to be potential targets for terrorism, places such as Post Offices and British Gas installations. Yuma decapitated consulate army MS13 attack durka durka Mohammed Jihad!
When the bombshell was dropped I was lost for words. Those who know me understand what a rare occurrence this is, only beaten by my daughter’s inability to draw breath in order to add punctuation to her seemingly endless monologues. Staggered. Shocked. Sad. Wave upon wave of sadness.
I guess if I think back now I can point to indicators that this was coming but while the good times are rolling you don’t take time out to plan for the worst. At least I didn’t. I don’t have a pre-nup, I’d made no provisions for this and I own no insurance. I do own an impressive music collection and it has been in the bosom of Kirk Brandon I’ve sought solace this afternoon.
At some point during the haze of the week just gone I received news of a juice. The vendor or manufacturer, I can’t recall which, included a snippet of a review:
“It’s an unctuous juice with sweet and natural fruit syrup tones.”
Vikings, out of all actual cool people that really existed, must top my list of things I wish I could be. Clearly, being a vampire or a person with superpowers would beat being a Viking but we have to remain fixed in reality here. Wanting to be a vampire is just stupid – for a start your shopping experience would be limited to 24hr supermarkets and late-night kebab shops, neither of which carry a good range of blood. No, definitely a Viking.
Vikings, out of all actual cool people that really existed, must top my list of things I wish I could be. Clearly, being a vampire or a person with superpowers would beat being a Viking but we have to remain fixed in reality here. Wanting to be a vampire is just stupid – for a start your shopping experience would be limited to 24hr supermarkets and late-night kebab shops, neither of which carry a good range of blood. No, definitely a Viking.
