Roll on July 1st when the smoking ban begins in public places in England and I no longer have to leave a pub stinking like an ashtray.

I absolutely hate smoking, it has too many connections to bad events in my life. As a result I'm acutely aware of a few junctions in my life where the decision I made was either directly because of, or heavily influenced by smoking (relationships I've avoided or finished, friends I've seen less of and lost contact with, etc.)

Sure I tolerate it most of the time, but as a non smoker I do find it offensive even having to follow somebody down the street breathing in their smoke (I wish it was also banned from public places outdoors too, but I doubt it is).

You may be thinking "It's up to the individual if they want to smoke" and I couldn't agree more. The last thing I want to do is enforce my view on everyone else, but by being close to me smoking you are not only forcing your "habit" on me, but also damaging my health at the same time.

Equally I could turn down a relationship with the most perfect girl in the world all because she's a smoker. The obvious point to this is that she wasn't really that perfect was she?

Which brings me onto another point: being with a smoker is nasty. You stink. Don't think we can't tell when you're secretly smoking either. It may take a while for us to be sure and make certain we're reading you right (rather than, for example, finding out you're drinking far too much cheap coffee at work), but eventually when the time is right the relationship is doomed. Is that too harsh? No. It's a hundred times easier than watching somebody you care about die slowly and in agony.

Naturally the new laws will be ignored by the retarded few, but hopefully public pressure will win out fairly quickly.

Now if only I had a gun to shoot people driving on mobile phones...

I spent this weekend on Keith's stag do (Emma's Twin's Fiance) in Romford.

I've not been to Romford since I was probably about 4 or so, therefore I don't remember a thing about the place. But we had a nice couple of pints, a decent curry, and a laugh at the Romford Dog Track.

All in all it's made a good weekend away, but I'm feeling absolutely rubbish at the moment.

I'd love to show you a couple of photos, but this being a stag do such things are against the law.

Needless to say we didn't tie him naked to a lamppost, or send him to Scotland asleep on a train.

Actually, I'm happy to say I've never actually known anybody have that done to them.

A strip club would have been nice though ;-)

I don't know if it's the effect of being back at work and finding myself with precious little more than a couple of hours to relax every night, the fact I'm getting older, or the fact that I've come to realise a few things that I really should have faced up to sooner, but something's got to give over the next couple of months...

Jesus, that sounds almost like a bad horoscope doesn't it.

Well I'm not going to comment on the job at the moment, suffice to say it's not what I expected it to be (or indeed what I believed I was supposed to be doing), but we'll have to see how things turn out. One thing I have noticed that I was very aware of in UBS is the way an established team almost expect you to learn things via osmosis, like "Why didn't you run a into b environment so c could be done? Er... probably because I thought I'd done a, wasn't aware there was a b and also never knew c existed, let alone was a requirement!

WTF?! At least tell me so I stand a bit of a chance.

And don't tell my you've covered other stuff when that's not the case!

Oh well, I guess it's just a manifestation of the existing team being so at home with the set-up that they can't consider a newbie isn't also up to speed. That I can understand.

Just don't complain when I do need to be taken through stuff a second time. If you're going to (inevitably) skim over stuff or go through it rapidly, then of course I'm going to need clarification.

*Sigh*

....work has been really busy and I'm not getting any time to myself at the weekends right now.

But I have added loads of new photos at http://imorital.net/photo

I promise proper updates soon(ish)!