Kaff, kaff, kaff

I have discovered - belatedly, perhaps - that it is London itself that makes it almost impossible for me to stop smoking.

As you, my only reader will know - or at least surmise - I recently spent ten days away from the Smoke (irony of ironies). What you won't know is that during that period, my consumption of the dreaded weed fell by about 75%. And not through conscious decision, either. It just did.

And then, on return to London, but before meeting anyone else, or even returning to work, consumption rose automatically to its usual industrial levels, and I only became aware of that a couple of days later when it dawned on me that I was purchasing yet another pack.

Of course, there have been changes here in the office. Our smoking room has migrated. It used to be on the second floor, about 30 seconds slope from my desk. Mow it is on the ground floor, tucked in a corner reachable through a maze of unmarked corridors and tucked, tellingly, behind the Bomb Scanning Room. (Yes, you read that aright. We have a bomb scanning room!).

What makes this fundamentally boring subject potentially interesting is the comparison between the new and old smoking rooms.

You see, we used to have a room (indeed, for a while, two rooms) of reasonable size with comfy if elderly furniture - rescued, we think from the Marsham Street Offices, long since abandoned and now recently razed. On the wall was a large smoke extractor which would, on occasion, make startling yet oddly comforting sparking noises a lot like the consoles on the Seaview (though without the associated pyrotechnics) when Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea's (yar) squiddy of the week rocked the submarine from side to side.

The new room is much smaller. It is also more sparsely furnished. And yet there are two strange steel behemoth-like tables in there which double as smoke extractors and ashtrays (it says so on them).

Now what is worrying about these tables is the design. There is an ashtray at either end embedded in the surface. The centre of each table is taken up with a large electric air filter/recycler. They look odd, they look mean. But the cruncher is the writing next to the air vents which may or may not be in Cyrillic (I don't think it's Greek). These two monstrosities sit in the room humming menacingly and the denizens cower as far from them as possible.

They lack only manacles and straps to complete the illusion of some horrible Soviet- era surplus torture tables.

I am afeared of them.

But I still haven't stopped smoking.

Kaff, kaff, kaff

I have discovered - belatedly, perhaps - that it is London itself that makes it almost impossible for me to stop smoking.

As you, my only reader will know - or at least surmise - I recently spent ten days away from the Smoke (irony of ironies). What you won't know is that during that period, my consumption of the dreaded weed fell by about 75%. And not through conscious decision, either. It just did.

And then, on return to London, but before meeting anyone else, or even returning to work, consumption rose automatically to its usual industrial levels, and I only became aware of that a couple of days later when it dawned on me that I was purchasing yet another pack.

Of course, there have been changes here in the office. Our smoking room has migrated. It used to be on the second floor, about 30 seconds slope from my desk. Mow it is on the ground floor, tucked in a corner reachable through a maze of unmarked corridors and tucked, tellingly, behind the Bomb Scanning Room. (Yes, you read that aright. We have a bomb scanning room!).

What makes this fundamentally boring subject potentially interesting is the comparison between the new and old smoking rooms.

You see, we used to have a room (indeed, for a while, two rooms) of reasonable size with comfy if elderly furniture - rescued, we think from the Marsham Street Offices, long since abandoned and now recently razed. On the wall was a large smoke extractor which would, on occasion, make startling yet oddly comforting sparking noises a lot like the consoles on the Seaview (though without the associated pyrotechnics) when Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea's (yar) squiddy of the week rocked the submarine from side to side.

The new room is much smaller. It is also more sparsely furnished. And yet there are two strange steel behemoth-like tables in there which double as smoke extractors and ashtrays (it says so on them).

Now what is worrying about these tables is the design. There is an ashtray at either end embedded in the surface. The centre of each table is taken up with a large electric air filter/recycler. They look odd, they look mean. But the cruncher is the writing next to the air vents which may or may not be in Cyrillic (I don't think it's Greek). These two monstrosities sit in the room humming menacingly and the denizens cower as far from them as possible.

They lack only manacles and straps to complete the illusion of some horrible Soviet- era surplus torture tables.

I am afeared of them.

But I still haven't stopped smoking.