smokingboot

Well, it's been strange.

We had a fab friend to stay, met other mates, had a great time. But this time I suffered from a peculiar problem.

Friend smokes. Not in the house - he's an excellent guest - and in any case I grew up in the house of a chain smoker, our lace curtains heavy with nicotine stains, to the despair of my mother who was constantly taking them down to wash them. This cured me of ever wanting to smoke, but it also taught me to treat cigarettes as an incidental, a minor issue not to quibble about. I visit friends who smoke, I have gone to bars full of smokers etc, it's never been a big deal. The nearest I came to actual discomfort was going to my father's house after his death. There sat his second wife and some others I didn't know puffing away relentlessly. His coffin was in the front room, ironically the only part of the house not veiled in tobacco smoke. I remember the autopsy report for my father; COPD, suspected malignancy in the lungs, and yet there were the mourners like a tribute act, ciggie after ciggie after ciggie.

Anyhow, this is a far cry from our friend, who is considerate. But for some reason this weekend I had a major problem with even the most delicate whiff of cigarette scent. I felt sick all the time, like Poor Donkey Body was staging a full-on rebellion. We all still had a great time but it felt like I was developing some kind of sensitivity. My head hammered for days after, and the nausea is only just going.
Then I learned President Trump had mistaken himself for Jesus or a doctor. Time to face the possibility that maybe my symptoms had nothing to do with nicotine sensitivity; maybe I just banged my head and woke up in a parallel timeline.