The thing about Crete is that an Englishman as young as me having a house there is a rarity. There are very few ways an expat can earn a decent living there. Yeah, there are a few that pursue the dream of owning and running a bar but they’re turned over by the Greeks like landlords here in England. And yes there are occasional successes like a couple I know running some accommodation on the coast. But mostly those that can afford a place have retired, sold a house in England and made the move to live on a pension. Most of them are, therefore, knocking on or well past the door marked ‘60’. The other thing about Crete is that unless you are the kind of person that does stuff, ennui sets in, and that hole is filled with things like drink and cigarettes. Combine these two factors and you’ll understand why people all around you have heart conditions, emphysema, stagger along and gaze in terror at steep slopes while wheezing and coughing. It is, at about this point, that they start thinking about maybe giving up smoking and easing off on the booze.

Over the last couple of years I’ve developed a smoker’s cough and have been using Aerolin inhalers too much. However, I can still swim for half a mile or so every day, still cycle for miles and feel I haven’t quite reached the point of no return. I am, therefore, going to attempt to give up smoking.

Prepare yourselves for some right crabby posts here. And I’ll start with noting that if there hadn’t been so many statist prick ‘health professionals’ telling me how I should live, or the campaign of disinformation on passive smoking, or the constant denormalization of smokers by those attempting a bit of social engineering, I might well have made more attempts to give up over the last few years.