we are living in unprecedented, unusual and generally miserable times, look you see. to qualify that, yes, to be sure, i mean that with reference most specifically to those of us within a dying breed, or if you like smokers. many are the trials and tribulations that we face, with ever increasing pressure on us for some reason to stop, or to be made to feel as though we are doing something wrong.
of the many ridiculous challenges faced it would be fair to say that the most overt is the needless interference with packaging. beautiful styles and colours for cigarette packets have forcefully been removed, with bland, all the same stuff across all brands. this is something which has not gone as well as those who instigated it had presumably hoped, but that is not really the point here. closely related, mind.
a particularly pleasing aspect of being a smoker is, or perhaps partially was, the splendid variation in designs and patterns on cigarette lighters. different styles have all gone now, with lighters being presented in plain, bland colours. at least this has been the case down at the leading provider of fag lighters, namely Poundland.
it was with some merriment and delight, then, that i found a shop still prepared to sell the more rather attractive and interesting style of lighter. a place called B & M had these proudly on display, and i had no hesitation in purchasing them. they just make the fine art of smoking a bit more pleasure delivering and decidedly aesthetically pleasing.
this post isn't particularly interesting, is it? well, i would say that of all my posts, with an interesting dichotomy being the less of interest i find something then the more some of you out there would appear to like it. let me press on then, on the off chance that such is true here.
removing intricately pattered lighters has probably been another psychological attempt to encourage people to either quit or cut down considerably on smoking decisions. i am not sure why they do this. as explored recently, one thing they have done is made heroin cheaper than cigarettes, and i remain unconvinced that heroin is any better than fags.
yeah, go on then, another look at the bland, "warning" dominated packaging we have to endure on cigarettes now, and have done for some 2 or maybe 3 years. the above is the most ridiculous of these, featuring as it does a child smoking, with the child very blatantly and badly manipulated or "photoshopped" so that it looks like incumbent USSR Tzar Vladimir Putin.
there are of course even more baffling elements to all these warning pictures which are being used. for a start, and i am still unsure as to how the media has not picked up on this one, everyone featured on the warning pictures are white, or if you like caucasian. do they not wish to warn anyone of other ethnic origins? of those people who do feature, few, if any, of them seem to have suffered any of their ills because of cigarettes. rather infamously, the chap who is shown to have apparently lost a leg due to his love of smoking has since come forward, saying he has never ever tasted the tobacco in his life.
yes, but anyway, smoking is bad, etc. although we are here for entirely different reasons, so let us refocus and admire the six colourful lighters what i was able to get for the rather reasonable sum of £1.29. which, i believe you will find, comes out at a most agreeable 21.5p each, although of course the half penny is a measurement of money we opted to let go of in the 80s.
which of these shall i be using first? i have not determined this. common sense suggests, for an orderly life, i either simply go from left to right or vice versa (which is to say right to left), but i don't know so much. the middle four look the most exciting, don't they? or perhaps that is just me.
anyway, i suppose that's all of that really. i guess this is just me being glad that someone still cares enough for smokers to design and manufacture lighters of attractive interest.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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