Stoptober

[mark costello 1Participant @markcostello1]

Not making fun of tobacco addiction, but food is right up there with the rest.

[HacksawParticipant @hacksaw]

I picked totally the wrong time to stop! My Dad has just died of lung cancer – (not the reason i stopped though !) .A lifelong smoker- stub it out halfway down, save other half for late, type… tight git ! And not short of a bob or two so i don't know why he did that. Not a comfortable way to go . Personally ,I would have downed the bottle of morphine and had done with it at the end . So it's a stressful time , i could do with a fag , but like the above poster , i ran out of fags one evening (2nd oct ,) i couldn't be arsed to go up the garage to buy some , dug the vape thing out and sucked on that.. Then i realised it was stoptober and thought I'd carry on and see how long i could go without .. And the end of the month is here ! I'm probably doing more nicotine with the vape , but heyho I can truthfully say i haven't had a fag and can just buy weaker and weaker juice in future .

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Thank you Mike, I was fully expecting to get, 'Flak' from my posting. I have to say I am not a blood thirsty killer but only took what I could use or eat. I had friends whose idea of a good day was to shoot 30 Ducks but then did not eat them as gutting and plucking was too much effort until I showed them how to extract only the breast meat. Same with Guinea fowl, I never plucked them but skinned them and then washed and bagged them for the freezer. Trout, I always gutted immediately and washed as the stomach contents not only told me what they were after but the contents fouled the flesh.

On a cattle ranch in Kenya they did an arial count and found 30000 Impala. which out numbered the cattle 10 to 1, needless to say they wanted to do something but the cost of shooting an individual Impala was about £1.00 but that night 2 more Impala were born. See the problem. They brought Lions in and protected the cattle , it was cheaper.

In the UK at this time people are tolerating Foxes and feeding them in their gardens, but the Fox roams a large area taking chickens and tortoise and hutch rabbits. They have entered houses and injured babies and it will not be long until one is taken. Urban Foxes are NOT Rural Foxes and therefore cannot be transplanted into rural areas as they will starve (No Dustbins) I see Foxes with scabies and maimed legs and snouts scarred by getting them stuck in tins while scavenging. Only one answer there.I have known people bitten by a Fox and septaceimia is the norm from that. Dont get anywhere near an injured Fox.

Clive

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

> They brought Lions in and protected the cattle , it was cheaper.

And there's the rub.

If you have a small number of big predators, they hold large territories and keep down other predators and help keep everything in balance.

If we had wolves in the UK, foxes would be less of a pest at the price of a few sheep and the odd drunk

Neil

[MikeParticipant @mike89748]

We seem to have got a long way from giving up the dreaded weed, but I must again endorse what Clive has written. Not far from here we had a dimwit dog catcher who caught up urban foxes and transported them out into the countryside for release. A farmer friend of mine shot several to put them out of their misery. They were starving and nothing but skin and bone because they had no hunting skills. Otherwise they weren't bothering my friend, who is an arable farmer. I have shot and fished for all of my adult life, but, like the majority of country sportsmen, I have never taken more than I could eat, and even then only when there was a harvestable surplus. I just get fed up with the pronouncements of armchair conservationists.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Mike on 02/11/2016 16:59:20:

We seem to have got a long way from giving up the dreaded weed, but I must again endorse what Clive has written. Not far from here we had a dimwit dog catcher who caught up urban foxes and transported them out into the countryside for release. A farmer friend of mine shot several to put them out of their misery. They were starving and nothing but skin and bone because they had no hunting skills. Otherwise they weren't bothering my friend, who is an arable farmer. I have shot and fished for all of my adult life, but, like the majority of country sportsmen, I have never taken more than I could eat, and even then only when there was a harvestable surplus. I just get fed up with the pronouncements of armchair conservationists.

Don't worry, there are plenty more foxes in urban areas than the countryside.

Neil

(practical conservationist, not an armchair one, if over thirty year's professional experience counts…)

[JAParticipant @ja]

I have not shot anything for over twenty years and now could be what Mike calls an armchair conservationist.

However man has been very successful at getting rid of animals etc that he does not like such as wolves, bears and the smallpox virus. I strongly believe that since he is now the only really top level predator left in places on Earth he is responsible for managing the balance of all living creatures etc. That includes not too many foxes and badgers and perhaps a few more wolves.

JA

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Ive never seen a Fox or a badger smoke but have seen a Chipanzee smoke! Woman had one she would carry around on her hip and it smoked fags quite elegantly, would even take fags off people who went by. Never did know the end of that one.

Significantly, fags cause Arrithimya and hardening of the arteries and if you look closely at a smokers face you will see that is covered in small/fine red blood vessels. maybe all gasping for oxygen? I have seen a lung cut open of a heavy smoker, It was black! Students walked out to have a fag, In service as a boy the smokers would go to the Naafi and buy a pack of 5 Woodbines for 9 old pence and cut each into 3 equal parts and then sell them with a pin for 3 old pence. Making a profit of 36 old pence. The lads would smoke to the last bit of ash and burn their lips. I might add that of the 150 lads i joined with some 20 or so remain alive and the rest- lung cancer-bladder cancer- stomach cancers etc. They do shorten a useful life, I would rather burn gunpowder than baccy as I would certainly enjoy it more. Forgot to say i do not smoke ever.

Clive

[Enough!Participant @enough]

Posted by JA on 02/11/2016 17:26:55:

However man has been very successful at getting rid of animals etc that he does not like

… or sometimes not so successful. Like the chap who drove far away from home to the middle of a forest to get rid of his cat. He let the animal out of his car and drove off.

Some time later his phone rang. It was his wife: "Cat's back" she said.

"Good" he said "put her on. I got lost and I need directions".

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Posted by bricky on 02/11/2016 06:57:02:

I am 70 and when at school it was so easy to smoke.The headmaster used to send me to the local shop for his fags .Us lads would pool our money and I would buy us 4 Domino fags in a paper sleve folded over and taped down with a domino on the front,dose anyone remember them.I stopped smoking at 21 when taking up swimming after a 6 year break I could not swim across the pool without struggling for breath.I stopped immediatly and have never touched one since.

Frank

Yes I remember Domino used to bunk over the school fence to buy them at the little shop next to my school

XD 351 I smoked until 28th Dec 2005 when I had a massive heart attack it was 3 days before I was back in the land of the living and didn't even think of having a fag at the time and have never bothered since but when I came out of the hospital for a couple of weeks I stil picked up my fags and lighter as I left the house

H

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Clive Hartland on 02/11/2016 09:53:03:

…

A Rural living person sees the damage done by Feral animals and wild animals.

…

Clive

I suppose it must depend on where you live. There's not much to see round my village – farming has made my bit of rural England into something of a desert so far as wildlife is concerned.

My suburban mum sees far more nature than I do. I put it down to available habitat and the absence of sprays, poison and shotguns.

Dave

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

Plenty of wildlife round my way, most days foxes, badgers, pheasants and pigeons line the side of the roads, muntjacs are also fair game for the car. Crows and magpies like to play chicken and usually survive. I hit a crow on the bike one day on the way to work, first job of the day was wiping crow giblets off my gloves and leather jacket, they don't smell too good. Used to be lots of flat hedgehogs but they seem rare now.

Mike

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

For Dave, yes, you are right. Farmers have changed animal habitat so much it all had to move, so to the houses where people put food out for them. Rats will survive anywhere, as will mice etc. Birds are not so lucky as the hedgerows disappeared and so did habitat. magpies survive now around the houses, feeding on anything they find in the gardens and are also destructive pulling out under eaves weather protection materiel.

One thing that has always puzzled me is the fact that Mediterranean shooters kill small birds for the tongue only, mainly Skylarks ? Local Greeks I know shoot Starlings and barbecue them, yes, I know they are now a protected specie and the Greeks also know.

Farming policies are changing because of pollinating insects and now a lot of farmers leave a 20 meter strip on the edge of a field for wild flowers etc. With bee keeping there is problem with what is called, 'Monoculture' this causes problems with bees immune systems as they need, 'Multifloral' nectar to defend their immune systems. This was the cause of the CCD outbreak in the USA.

Clive

[JAParticipant @ja]

The local magpies are beginning to learn how to use my bird feeders.

You could ask what this has to do with stopping smoking.

JA

Edited By JA on 03/11/2016 09:04:31

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Posted by JA on 03/11/2016 09:03:50:

The local magpies are beginning to learn how to use my bird feeders.

You could ask what this has to do with stopping smoking.

JA

Edited By JA on 03/11/2016 09:04:31

You shouldn't be too concerned, this is just what conversation topics tend to do, move around and such

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

I suppose this has rolled over to stoptember recently?

Michael W

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Research from a New mexico center confirms that a 20 a day smoker racks up 150 gene mutations in each lung a year. Also in the larynx and bladder and stomach and other organs and in time one of these changes will link up and become the main cancer you get.

Further to this, some years back I read of research by Canadian scientists that the changes are carried through to your children and Grand children! So if your Grand Father smoked you are getting all the changes that he had as they are carried over the years.

Clive

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