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Smoking for Jesus — 10 Comments

  1. I recall visiting the GP in the late 70s and on every doctor’s desk, by law, there was a smouldering pipe and a pint mug of tea. Worse still I’m betting that tea contained not only lethal fat-content ‘blue’ milk but S U G A R. Which is no doubt why I , and my peers, will all catch type 2 diabetes …if the lung Cancer, Emphysema, cardiac arrest or galloping acne doesn’t see us all off first.  

  2. There was a time when every doctor I came across smoked like a chimney. At least when they got the chance. Especially the ones in the service. I even recall the days when smoking was allowed in hospitals where docs and nurses would stroll down the hallways with a smoke stuck in their hatch.

    • Indeed, having been the victim of a meeting between an errant lorry and my motorcycle I ended up in hospital in the late seventies.  I distinctly remember the ashtray neatly placed on every bedside locker.  We all smoked in the ward and probably got better quicker as a result.

  3. I can’t help wondering — if smoking is such a sure-fire sentence of death — why the population didn’t plummet when smoking was considered normal?

  4. Harold Wilson was only a beer-drinking pipe-smoker in public – in private places, he was brandy and cigar man, but that didn’t quite chime with the carefully crafted image of the working man’s politician.   Such nuances of perception never bothered Tony Blair, he was a complete twat both in public and private.

  5. (apologies if I have recounted this before….blame old age and a lack of goOOOod drugs).I have a book of old photos of life in the little village in Brother Grimm country (like ‘Deliverance’ but with pixies and trolls) where The Bestes Frau In The Welt comes from. Photos going back to the late 1800s. One of those photos shows the young men (ie teenagers) of the village gathering for a crafty cheroot/cigar smoke after mass of a Sunday. They are ‘hiding’ away, ‘apeing’ their fathers who would gather at the pub (I assume) after church to smoke cheroots,drink and hold intense debates regarding the exact Koine or Aramaic  translation of which ever passage the Father had preached on that day, interpolating their discourse with the thoughts of the great Theologians of yesteryear and Latin quotes of the Church Fathers…..not. The boys are all stood there in their too large suits, washed so many times the cloth was thinner than a politician’s promise, waistcoats and hand-me-down leather shoes (they probably wore clogs during the week), with their wide brim hats (to stop the sky falling on their heads…it was that kind of place…almost ‘Norfolk’ in its bucolic ‘charm’) . Their cigars almost certainly handrolled from tobacco leaves from their fathers’ fields.Of course there was a disapproving caption under the photo decrying that then as now smoking was seen by young people as a sign of being adult.Then one noticed the date on the photo.1913.

  6. “Like a peace pipe” says I.  “Those were the days.” … and hookahs.

  7. I recall visiting my childhood GP – one Doctor Grossart, the waiting room and behind door at the actual consulting room always had the aroma of baccy smokeand floor polish. Once passed the hallowed threshhold there was an ahtray for the good doctor and his visitors (my mum) on the desk who both puffed away throughout his consultation, also the faint whiff of whiskey on his breath. Me and ma were talikng about him years later and she confirmed he used have a quick dram or two between appointments from the bottom desk drawer, happy memories, no wonder their handwriting was so undeciferable!

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