Cigarettes and Alcohol

I stopped smoking (again) about a year ago and almost immediately discovered that beer (that being the brown stuff so beloved of CAMRA, which I've always drunk) tastes odd, and slightly unpleasant, without the addition of a cigarette to the mix. So unpleasant have I found some previously favoured beers that I left almost an entire pint of Caley 80 in a pub last week, all but untouched.

As it turns out, I've almost started smoking again in earnest (J's fault, not mine - she started again ages ago) and going to the pub last night should therefore have been a positive delight.

Except you can't smoke in Scottish pubs any more. Which is crap, even on a relatively nice night like last night.

Apart from the wind chill factor in permanently gusty Edinburgh, you are also open to being harangued by a man carrying his shoes in his hands and shouting at a phone box, who might well wander over to tell you quite forcefully that eating seaweed counters the carcinogenic properties of nicotine. Although - if very recent experience is anything to go by - he probably won't express himself half as politely as that.

And back inside the pub, the beer still tastes rotten because you can't smoke and drink at the same time. Hence I actually drank bottles of Budweiser last night (and not the proper Bud, according to Scott and Andrew) which was quite vile, but it's lager so at least I expected it to be horrible.

I won't live longer because I'll be smoking less, I'll live longer because the only drink I now like the taste of is water.