Smoke gets in your eyes...

And in your lungs and throat and ... News that another of my dad's friends has cancer. A smoker and drinker. The numbers of them is creeping up.

There was a heavy smoking woman who worked for him. Smoking was allowed in offices then. So presumably more got smoked. There was a friend and colleague more recently, a smoker, but not sure if a heavy smoker. Given six months to live and slowly, or maybe six months is actually rapidly, came to death with a remarkable acceptance and composure. There was a close friend from America.

The common aspect of it is that death by lung cancer is painful. And takes you early. The latest one isn't lung cancer, its in the throat.

Somehow its hard not to link smoking and cancer. Obviously when people are young and start smoking they are at an age when death is an abstract thing. The simple pleasures seen as naughty grown-up vices. And yet they are storing up trouble for their late-middle age. My parents' generation are becoming the proof of it.

Personally I'm looking forward to the ban on smoking in public places.