The Thing In The Attic

A rule I follow: your house your rules, my house my rules, but the moment any need to be enforced, it's time for everyone to go home. If I walk into a smokers household, I put up and shut up. I recall meeting mates in a smokers pub in Antwerp, which was the only time I thought my lungs might actually collapse if I didn't get out in five minutes. Mates who visit me at home smoke outside the back or front of my house, and there's no remaining nastiness. So it was an absolute headsmacker to be greated by the thick fug of cigarette smoke surrounding the two men who were here to check out the solar panels. I knew exactly what they must have been doing; they'd been smoking in their van, small space, closed windows. It's just awful! I don't resent it - after all, that's one hell of an addiction - but it sends me reeling, just for a second. Warm cigar smoke is not quite the same for some reason, even though all the windows must be opened the day after. But these gentlemen* took their reek with them into the attic, and I have no way of airing that space.

I am at a loss. Maybe a diffuser will do, but it will need to be very pungent. Of course I could try to cover the whole thing up with Frederic Malle's hideous concoction, 'The Moon'. After all it is meant to be Like smoking a nargile on the flat roof under the stars: oud, frankincense, rose and red berries floating into the night. A declaration to a loved one...hmm, whatever. Anyway I have no other use for it. Maybe its horrible smoke could drown out the cigarettes' horrible smoke... or I could be combining two horrors to create an entirely unbreathable atmosphere. Very nasty.

*Not used ironically, apart from the above - of which I suspect they were unaware - they were very helpful and courteous.