Smoking

I think you could probably visit Vancouver, go home again and at some point wonder to yourself, 'hang on, is Canada a no-smoking country?' Were it not for the fact that Laurence smokes, I so rarely come across it as to be quite taken aback when I do.

For far longer than I've been here or visiting here, public places and places outside public places, have been smoke free, to the extent that as a non-smoker myself, I don't really think about it.

I have been visiting my friend in hospital this week and here's the irony, THAT'S where you come across it. Huddled outside the entrance to the hospital, in wheelchairs and with their drip bags on portable holders, there they are. And these are not the cool people from the smoking room at school, these are the white-faced addicts with thinning hair who place their chairs in front of the pedestrian walkway. I must assume the hospital allow them to congregate there so as to discourage young people from taking it up, and encourage old lags to kick the habit.

Although Canada got same sex marriage the same month and year they got me, it is ten years since the first legal same sex marriage was performed in this country - in Toronto.

I also loved this post on the same blog, Satan is making people criticise Sarah Palin. Yeah, right, you didn't know they were separate beings did ya?