Smoking Death is coming... in a while.

I always thought some sayings were just silly. Such as 'it's too cold to snow'. I's twenty below in Antarctica and there's snow over the entire continent. It can be too dry but not too cold.

Anyway, now I find I'm too tired to sleep and am attempting to remedy this with red wine (whisky doesn't make me sleepy. Wine usually does). A ridiculous situation, and one which makes me wonder if it can be too cold to snow after all.

Anyway, I see others have taken up the story of the smoking chimp who died. I liked this quote from his keeper -

Ms Khedama said she did not know whether the ape's bad smoking habit contributed to his demise and that post mortem to determine the exact cause of death would take place soon.

If smoking contributed to his demise then it means that Smoking Death arrives ten years later than Non-Smoking Death. I wonder if there are two scythe wielders, one standard scythe and one with a lighter in the end?

That would mean I'm lined up to meet Smoking Death one day but he's going to have to stop for a wheeze now and then, get close to my house and realise he's left his tobacco at home so he'll have to go back, hang around outside smoking rather than coming to get me inside, he can't get me on trains or buses or planes because he can't smoke in them and if I enter the grounds of the NHS I can claim sanctuary. Smoking Death has been banned. There's a really funny and dark story in there if I can just get through these samples (and get paid).

Smoking Death might try to sound all serious but offer him a cigarette and he'll chill, and probably forget what it was he wanted to be all serious about.

Non-Smoking Death is sprightly and fast. There's no escaping him. He can't be distracted with a bit of leaf and paper. He'll swing that scythe with precision, he won't be hit with a fit of coughing mid-stroke. You can easily tell Smoking Death from his brother. He has yellow ribs and he's a lot bigger and cleverer.

I think I'll take my chances with Smoking Death, thanks.

We are to be denied the longevity associated with Smoking Death if a certain empty suit has his way. I think he might find his opinions are becoming gradually less relevant, if the winner of the Telegraph photography competition is any indicator. It's not long ago that a picture like that would have been disqualified because there was smoke in it. Now it wins. The Dreadful Arnott's face will be cycling through tartans even now.

And then there's this guy, an anonymous cigar-chomper who has upstaged what is possibly the best golfing photo ever taken. He's the one regarded as the most interesting person in the shot. And he's the only one smoking. Poor Dreadful Arnott, her face will have moved out of the visible light spectrum at that. Which is a good thing, for the rest of us.

From commenter Carl Spackler on the listomania link -

Brilliant.

Hang on to your chemical-filled air polluting fresheners, antismokers. We're coming back and Smoking Death is finding it hard to keep up.

Non-Smoking Death is, of course, much faster but then he doesn't like us. He likes you.

Aren't you lucky?