I learnt it on Time Team this week - an infirmary was where the old and sick went for simple care. Perhaps that's what the Radcliffe Infirmary was, the old hospital in Jericho pulled down for development a year or so ago. Certainly it's where geratology used to be. Now that it's in the John Radcliffe, everything has changed because this industrial-sized hospital on its hill overlooking Oxford is 'acute'. I'm not sure of all the ins and outs of that, only that it means another set of rules for the staff of Adams Ward to work by which happen to be irrelevant at best, irrational at worst. And that is why they are unhappy.
The wheels grind slowly. After a week or so complaining about Mum's lost glasses, someone asked me the name of the optician yesterday. Who knows - perhaps Mum will get her hair done today, for the first time since admission.
Tomorrow I've been called in to see the Matron. At least they want to know what I have to say.
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Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Soap Aria
Now for something in a lighter vein. . .
Here in this house, we love handmade soap. It is our only weakness. The best is from Marseilles but you can't always get it, so yesterday, passing a likely shop in London, we popped in and spent nearly a fiver on a bar of Tuscan soap. It said on the front that it had been 'saponified and packaged with love and care'. 'Saponified' is, of course, a classy way of saying 'soapified', which made it irresistible. On the back, however, the script got even better.
TUSCAN LAVENDER soap
Absorbed in a bloomy landscape, an alluring soap in its semplicity but with an irresistible charm.
So now I can saponify myself in the shower each morning while dreaming of those bloomy Tuscan landscapes.
Here in this house, we love handmade soap. It is our only weakness. The best is from Marseilles but you can't always get it, so yesterday, passing a likely shop in London, we popped in and spent nearly a fiver on a bar of Tuscan soap. It said on the front that it had been 'saponified and packaged with love and care'. 'Saponified' is, of course, a classy way of saying 'soapified', which made it irresistible. On the back, however, the script got even better.
TUSCAN LAVENDER soap
Absorbed in a bloomy landscape, an alluring soap in its semplicity but with an irresistible charm.
So now I can saponify myself in the shower each morning while dreaming of those bloomy Tuscan landscapes.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
NO WAY TO DIE
[I wrote this to send to a newspaper but then decided not to. I don't want a big fuss, and there's always another side to the story. This just happens to be mine, and this is the right place for it.]
She is locked up and in solitary confinement, half-starved and neglected, left to wet herself. She is ninety-three years old. Where? In the John Radcliffe hospital, Oxford.
My mother was taken in in February because of kidney retention. She had to go – there was no other option, even though we knew what to expect. For, at that age, once you are in hospital it is very difficult to get out again. There has to be a ‘care-package’ in place and, for that to happen, Social Services have to find an agency who can supply carers. Apparently there are staff shortages amongst carers: it is a job which takes a special person. One who can care. One who can wipe the bottom of another. These people are amazing, and they are on the minimum wage. A 20% increase in wages would give them an extra pound an hour. So it’s not difficult to understand why few people can be found to fill the vacancies. Meanwhile, the elderly lie waiting in hospital gridlocking the system.
The Adams Ward at the John Radcliffe opened at the end of 2008 to great fanfares. Here it is: geritology of the future. No longer will the aged be kept in dormitory wards, surrounded by raving lunatics, kleptomaniacs and MRSA bugs. Now they will have dignity and privacy. Now they will have single rooms. The Adams Ward is the future. Our future. Yours and mine.
The main door into the ward locks automatically and you have to ring a bell to enter. This requires someone on the inside to press a button to release the lock. Do they then come to meet you, greet you, show you where your relative is? No. By the time you reach the desk, they have disappeared. Or they are still there, dog-faced and apparently finding your arrival incomprehensible. If you are really persistent, they will begin to speak to you but it seems their smiles were surgically removed when they took the job.
I find my mother without assistance. I know her voice, and she is calling for help. ‘Help me someone! Please help me!’ In a matter of days of being transferred to the new ward, she has become a pest and a nuisance. She is treated as if that is her fault and staff, when they finally arrive to my pressing of the buzzer, breeze in with a snappy, ‘What is it now?’ What are they like when I’m not there?
She clutches my hand. ‘Get me out of here. Please get me out! Please! What have I done to deserve this?’
What indeed. Usually you have to face a trial by jury before society treats you this way.
The ward sister is truly shocked when, a week later, I begin to complain. What is there to complain about? Single rooms? But they are wonderful, just what everybody wants, and all new builds will have them.
Now three-quarters of me agrees with this. If I were there, I’d love a room to myself. I could read books, speak on the phone to friends, watch that extortionately expensive TV that hangs like a periscope and perhaps even discover computer gaming. That is, if I were well enough. If you are not well enough, or too old and frail, then all day and every day for at least twelve hours, you are on your own with your own thoughts, and that really is not healthy. The ward sister says, but who wouldn’t want a single room? Who would want to be in a ward shared with raving lunatics, kleptomaniacs and MSRA? I say – why is that the alternative? Why can’t we have these rooms – which are in fact lovely with their ensuite showers and toilets – for two, or three, even four? No, she says, everyone wants their privacy and dignity. In an institution that cannot hear what anyone says, I find myself bursting into tears, because I do not want to die like this, and I do not want my mother to die like this.
On my mother’s medical notes, it says she is incontinent. Three times on my almost daily visits I’ve found the buzzer left out of reach. No one along the corridor can hear her frail calls from inside her room. And I’ve been there, used the buzzer myself, and waited 20 minutes for it to be answered. Incontinent? No, she is not. Neither is she suffering ‘macular degeneration’ as the notes state. She was already half-blind when she arrived and had been for many years. But her glasses are lost, switched with someone else’s, and now she can’t see out of the window, the only distraction she has in a long day, apart from flying visits from people with injections, commodes or inedible food.
Sybil was one of the most popular people this planet has known. Non-judgemental, forgiving, she befriended everyone and anybody. She has a smile which wins friends (even amongst raving lunatics and kleptomaniacs). She becomes radiant when meeting anyone whether for the first or the millionth time. In her prime, while still at work, she would receive around one hundred cards on her birthday. She’s outlived her family and most of her friends. Of those that survive, only one has been to see her in the hospital. Hospitals have dreadful reputations and are best avoided by the well. We all say it. So Sybil – the wonderful mother, the much-loved aunt and friend to so many – lies abandoned and shrivelling in misery. Abject misery. Misery of the kind to break hardened criminals.
‘What have I done to deserve this?’ she whimpers, clutching my hand.
‘Nothing, Mum, absolutely nothing.’
The human being is a social animal. We live in herds. A few of us seek solitude to commune with nature or God, but for most, we live in groups – families, communities, societies. Something happens to us when we are in company: there is some subtle, molecular exchange between us. In some curious way, we nourish each other just by our presence. Once, when I lived and worked alone in Hackney, I discovered that all I had to do to avoid depression was to go out each day and walk the high street. I didn’t have to speak to anyone to feel better: I just had to walk amongst them. Depression descends quickly on the isolated. For my mother, in her new accommodation, they’ve upped the dosage of her happy pill but it's not working.
Anyone who, like me, grew up in the 1950s will remember Pete Seager’s song, Little Boxes. We all thought it was a protest against the domestic estates being built at the time. As it turns out, it was a prophecy. As we have lived, so shall we die, in little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. And do you know, everyone in the ‘business’ thinks it’s a jolly good thing, even Age Concern.
If we must have this system, let us at least recognise its shortcomings and do our best to ameliorate them. Visitors should be welcomed and encouraged. Do doors have to be locked? Do visiting times really have to be restricted to late afternoons? And couldn’t staff be sent to Asda training centres to learn how to smile, say hello and ask simple questions, such as ‘how are you today?’ or ‘can I help?’ They may find that such small, effortless exchanges are all it takes to make themselves – as well as their patients and visitors – happy.
Sybil, Christmas 2008, at home where she lives with her daughter and son-in-law.
She is locked up and in solitary confinement, half-starved and neglected, left to wet herself. She is ninety-three years old. Where? In the John Radcliffe hospital, Oxford.
My mother was taken in in February because of kidney retention. She had to go – there was no other option, even though we knew what to expect. For, at that age, once you are in hospital it is very difficult to get out again. There has to be a ‘care-package’ in place and, for that to happen, Social Services have to find an agency who can supply carers. Apparently there are staff shortages amongst carers: it is a job which takes a special person. One who can care. One who can wipe the bottom of another. These people are amazing, and they are on the minimum wage. A 20% increase in wages would give them an extra pound an hour. So it’s not difficult to understand why few people can be found to fill the vacancies. Meanwhile, the elderly lie waiting in hospital gridlocking the system.
The Adams Ward at the John Radcliffe opened at the end of 2008 to great fanfares. Here it is: geritology of the future. No longer will the aged be kept in dormitory wards, surrounded by raving lunatics, kleptomaniacs and MRSA bugs. Now they will have dignity and privacy. Now they will have single rooms. The Adams Ward is the future. Our future. Yours and mine.
The main door into the ward locks automatically and you have to ring a bell to enter. This requires someone on the inside to press a button to release the lock. Do they then come to meet you, greet you, show you where your relative is? No. By the time you reach the desk, they have disappeared. Or they are still there, dog-faced and apparently finding your arrival incomprehensible. If you are really persistent, they will begin to speak to you but it seems their smiles were surgically removed when they took the job.
I find my mother without assistance. I know her voice, and she is calling for help. ‘Help me someone! Please help me!’ In a matter of days of being transferred to the new ward, she has become a pest and a nuisance. She is treated as if that is her fault and staff, when they finally arrive to my pressing of the buzzer, breeze in with a snappy, ‘What is it now?’ What are they like when I’m not there?
She clutches my hand. ‘Get me out of here. Please get me out! Please! What have I done to deserve this?’
What indeed. Usually you have to face a trial by jury before society treats you this way.
The ward sister is truly shocked when, a week later, I begin to complain. What is there to complain about? Single rooms? But they are wonderful, just what everybody wants, and all new builds will have them.
Now three-quarters of me agrees with this. If I were there, I’d love a room to myself. I could read books, speak on the phone to friends, watch that extortionately expensive TV that hangs like a periscope and perhaps even discover computer gaming. That is, if I were well enough. If you are not well enough, or too old and frail, then all day and every day for at least twelve hours, you are on your own with your own thoughts, and that really is not healthy. The ward sister says, but who wouldn’t want a single room? Who would want to be in a ward shared with raving lunatics, kleptomaniacs and MSRA? I say – why is that the alternative? Why can’t we have these rooms – which are in fact lovely with their ensuite showers and toilets – for two, or three, even four? No, she says, everyone wants their privacy and dignity. In an institution that cannot hear what anyone says, I find myself bursting into tears, because I do not want to die like this, and I do not want my mother to die like this.
On my mother’s medical notes, it says she is incontinent. Three times on my almost daily visits I’ve found the buzzer left out of reach. No one along the corridor can hear her frail calls from inside her room. And I’ve been there, used the buzzer myself, and waited 20 minutes for it to be answered. Incontinent? No, she is not. Neither is she suffering ‘macular degeneration’ as the notes state. She was already half-blind when she arrived and had been for many years. But her glasses are lost, switched with someone else’s, and now she can’t see out of the window, the only distraction she has in a long day, apart from flying visits from people with injections, commodes or inedible food.
Sybil was one of the most popular people this planet has known. Non-judgemental, forgiving, she befriended everyone and anybody. She has a smile which wins friends (even amongst raving lunatics and kleptomaniacs). She becomes radiant when meeting anyone whether for the first or the millionth time. In her prime, while still at work, she would receive around one hundred cards on her birthday. She’s outlived her family and most of her friends. Of those that survive, only one has been to see her in the hospital. Hospitals have dreadful reputations and are best avoided by the well. We all say it. So Sybil – the wonderful mother, the much-loved aunt and friend to so many – lies abandoned and shrivelling in misery. Abject misery. Misery of the kind to break hardened criminals.
‘What have I done to deserve this?’ she whimpers, clutching my hand.
‘Nothing, Mum, absolutely nothing.’
The human being is a social animal. We live in herds. A few of us seek solitude to commune with nature or God, but for most, we live in groups – families, communities, societies. Something happens to us when we are in company: there is some subtle, molecular exchange between us. In some curious way, we nourish each other just by our presence. Once, when I lived and worked alone in Hackney, I discovered that all I had to do to avoid depression was to go out each day and walk the high street. I didn’t have to speak to anyone to feel better: I just had to walk amongst them. Depression descends quickly on the isolated. For my mother, in her new accommodation, they’ve upped the dosage of her happy pill but it's not working.
Anyone who, like me, grew up in the 1950s will remember Pete Seager’s song, Little Boxes. We all thought it was a protest against the domestic estates being built at the time. As it turns out, it was a prophecy. As we have lived, so shall we die, in little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. And do you know, everyone in the ‘business’ thinks it’s a jolly good thing, even Age Concern.
If we must have this system, let us at least recognise its shortcomings and do our best to ameliorate them. Visitors should be welcomed and encouraged. Do doors have to be locked? Do visiting times really have to be restricted to late afternoons? And couldn’t staff be sent to Asda training centres to learn how to smile, say hello and ask simple questions, such as ‘how are you today?’ or ‘can I help?’ They may find that such small, effortless exchanges are all it takes to make themselves – as well as their patients and visitors – happy.
Sybil, Christmas 2008, at home where she lives with her daughter and son-in-law.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Some days the sun shines
There is a bar in Summertown called Joe's and today we tried it for lunch. David had tagliatelle and I had Caesar salad, and both were so good we were almost weepy with gratitude. We topped the meal off with chocolate pot, creme brulee and two coffees. The cappucinos were frothy right down to the bottom of the cup and tasted most marvellously of coffee - not an experience to be had in either the local Costas or Starbucks, where the coffee tastes like tainted hot water with a scum of froth on top. On the way back, we were approached by a willowy blonde bearing a tray of taster cups outside Starbucks. What? Starbucks touting for trade? 'Yuk! No thanks!' I said. 'I know what that tastes like.' 'Try Joe's,' David told her. 'The coffee is great there!' A beautiful blonde speechless and nonplussed, a corporation witheringly, publicly and loudly dismissed? Oh, God, it felt good! So good! And the sun is shining today.
Friday, 6 February 2009
Advice for Young Writers
I teach creative writing to American students studying at Oxford University. Among this year's students is one who is a star. She writes so brilliantly that, after reading her latest offering, all I can do is sigh with pleasure - and not a little envy. For some time I've been encouraging her to submit work to publishers but she procrastinates. Today I found out why: she is scared of her own future.
In college vacations she has worked for literary agents and publishers, so she knows the business from the inside and is painfully aware that these days the usual trajectory for a successful novelist is to begin incandescently and then peter out in a shower of sparks. Gone are the days when an aspiring novelist's career was nurtured by editor and publisher. My student knows the game and knows she doesn't want to play it.
God help us - what do I advise her? Any ideas? Publish under a pseudonym until she feels she is at her prime and then burst upon an unsuspecting world fully-formed? It's one way, but I'd be grateful for any serious ideas. It really is a problem for the twenty-somethings with real talent.
In college vacations she has worked for literary agents and publishers, so she knows the business from the inside and is painfully aware that these days the usual trajectory for a successful novelist is to begin incandescently and then peter out in a shower of sparks. Gone are the days when an aspiring novelist's career was nurtured by editor and publisher. My student knows the game and knows she doesn't want to play it.
God help us - what do I advise her? Any ideas? Publish under a pseudonym until she feels she is at her prime and then burst upon an unsuspecting world fully-formed? It's one way, but I'd be grateful for any serious ideas. It really is a problem for the twenty-somethings with real talent.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
BT Compensation
Back in the blizzard of IT failure that afflicted us September to November last year, we had a week without the phone working. At first BT denied the fault was theirs. When the fault was at last tackled and fixed, they admitted it had been caused by the engineer installing broadband a couple of years previously.
I had a look at their website regarding compensation. Not only had we suffered the consequences of a week without the phone, but it had cost us a great deal using a mobile to call their 'free' helpline. The BT website was difficult to navigate but it seemed that compensation would be offered on a sliding scale and comes in the form of line rental rebates. When I googled the subject, however, I heard the howls of the disaffected: it was obviously going to be a great test of patience to pursue the matter. But I pursued it.
Here follows a list of what happened next but remember that weeks if not months passed between each stage.
1. I filled in the form on line to register the complaint.
2. BT phoned (Indian call centre) and offered compensation of £11.65. I rejected this as derisory and asked for the matter to be referred to a manager.
3. Another call from India - back to square one.
4. A letter from English address, saying 'we are happy you've agreed to 50p as compensation.'
5. I wrote to that person at that address.
6. A month later I get a call from someone trained to RSC standards of acting who absolutely seduced my ears with her apologies on behalf of BT. Compensation offered - £40. Accepted.
I was on the very point of following my New Year resolution ('Seek Alternatives') but now I shall stay with BT a little longer.
If you got here by googling 'BT Compensation' you want the address, don't you? Here it is:
Jillian G Lewis
Customer Service Director
BT plc
Correspondence Centre
Durham
DH98 1BT
Good luck! Don't let the bastards grind you down. . .
I had a look at their website regarding compensation. Not only had we suffered the consequences of a week without the phone, but it had cost us a great deal using a mobile to call their 'free' helpline. The BT website was difficult to navigate but it seemed that compensation would be offered on a sliding scale and comes in the form of line rental rebates. When I googled the subject, however, I heard the howls of the disaffected: it was obviously going to be a great test of patience to pursue the matter. But I pursued it.
Here follows a list of what happened next but remember that weeks if not months passed between each stage.
1. I filled in the form on line to register the complaint.
2. BT phoned (Indian call centre) and offered compensation of £11.65. I rejected this as derisory and asked for the matter to be referred to a manager.
3. Another call from India - back to square one.
4. A letter from English address, saying 'we are happy you've agreed to 50p as compensation.'
5. I wrote to that person at that address.
6. A month later I get a call from someone trained to RSC standards of acting who absolutely seduced my ears with her apologies on behalf of BT. Compensation offered - £40. Accepted.
I was on the very point of following my New Year resolution ('Seek Alternatives') but now I shall stay with BT a little longer.
If you got here by googling 'BT Compensation' you want the address, don't you? Here it is:
Jillian G Lewis
Customer Service Director
BT plc
Correspondence Centre
Durham
DH98 1BT
Good luck! Don't let the bastards grind you down. . .
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Last Night I had a Dream
My philosophical friends look down on dreams as the products of idle minds. My psychological friends keep records of them and try and plumb their symbolism. I stand somewhere in between, or I did until the dreams stopped a couple of months ago. Now I know how important they are: they are the movement of the psyche as it breathes.
One of my students last term sat in my study coughing and spluttering. I suppose in retrospect I should applaud his strength of will in getting to his tutorial at all. At the time I thought, Oh no. . . and, sure enough, I was coughing a couple of days later. That was November. Here, in mid-January, I am still coughing. In that time, the dreams stopped, psyche stopped breathing.
I write between the solstices and it's always tough with the run-up to Christmas plunging you into a completely unnecessary busy-ness. This year it was tougher than usual but at least the coughing - which was viral - began to abate around mid-December. Richard Surface put me on to a book, one of those magical, self-motivational, life-changing books we all need now and again. This one is called 'The War of Art' by Stephen Pressfield. It begins by describing the enemy, which at first he calls 'Resistance' and, later, 'Ego'. The book goes on to describe the role of the Muses. It is an exceptional book which I wholeheartedly recommend. I began reading it on Christmas Eve and the results were immediate: at 11.15pm, I got off the sofa and went to Midnight Mass for the first time in eight years. Three days later, I quit smoking, but by then something else had begun to happen and it had become impossible to smoke anyway, but this particular quitting was easy. I had Resistance in my sites and knew when to take a pot shot.
Somewhere in the book Pressfield says that the Pro always turns up for work, even when he has 'flu. Well, that must be man 'flu; by the day after Boxing Day, I had woman 'flu. By the end of that week, that precious week of the year which is more or less All Mine, I had just enough breath in me to call the doctor.
'Blow in this,' he said, handing me a tube, and I couldn't. 'Asthma,' he said, 'triggered by a chest infection.' So then it was a ten-day course of antibiotics, a five-day course of steroids, and introduction to life with a puffer. The steroids were interesting: I started to dream again and feel creative. For five days, writing flowed. Before and since it has been like making a cake without ever adding liquid, just forever rubbing in more and more dry ingredients. Yes, I'm a pro and I've turned up every day, but for many days I was back in bed within the hour without the energy even to read. But the steroids helped.
Saw the doc again two days ago when the antibiotics finished and he's put me on a 'preventer', which is a brown inhaler. I had a couple of puffs before going to bed last night - and then I began to dream. I began to dream about my book and its characters, listened to them saying crazy, anachronistic things and even in my sleep exulted. I woke up several times to check the clock to see if I could get up yet and, at 6am, allowed it. I haven't coughed yet and here I am, writing a blog for the first time in months.
My next read is going to be a book I saw reviewed in Resurgence about story-telling as a healing art, how stories relate to different organs in the body. I'll give details when I've read it, but for now I'm intrigued, for this much I know: the airways and perhaps the lungs relate to psyche, pneuma and spiritus. It is not accidental - how could it be - that the Greek and Latin words for soul, spirit and Holy Ghost relate to breathing words. For the last few weeks I've not only not been a writer, I've barely been human: Muse-less, dreamless, God-less. It was one of the unhappiest times I've suffered and, if it's all over, then I am mightily relieved and grateful. Thank you God and Science for the brown puffer.
Just a little postscript. The reason I quit smoking very suddenly and without preamble was a) because I couldn't breathe properly and b) because I knew the full implications of that. Whether or not smoking was killing this body, it was definitely choking the Muse - and that was enough to stop.
One of my students last term sat in my study coughing and spluttering. I suppose in retrospect I should applaud his strength of will in getting to his tutorial at all. At the time I thought, Oh no. . . and, sure enough, I was coughing a couple of days later. That was November. Here, in mid-January, I am still coughing. In that time, the dreams stopped, psyche stopped breathing.
I write between the solstices and it's always tough with the run-up to Christmas plunging you into a completely unnecessary busy-ness. This year it was tougher than usual but at least the coughing - which was viral - began to abate around mid-December. Richard Surface put me on to a book, one of those magical, self-motivational, life-changing books we all need now and again. This one is called 'The War of Art' by Stephen Pressfield. It begins by describing the enemy, which at first he calls 'Resistance' and, later, 'Ego'. The book goes on to describe the role of the Muses. It is an exceptional book which I wholeheartedly recommend. I began reading it on Christmas Eve and the results were immediate: at 11.15pm, I got off the sofa and went to Midnight Mass for the first time in eight years. Three days later, I quit smoking, but by then something else had begun to happen and it had become impossible to smoke anyway, but this particular quitting was easy. I had Resistance in my sites and knew when to take a pot shot.
Somewhere in the book Pressfield says that the Pro always turns up for work, even when he has 'flu. Well, that must be man 'flu; by the day after Boxing Day, I had woman 'flu. By the end of that week, that precious week of the year which is more or less All Mine, I had just enough breath in me to call the doctor.
'Blow in this,' he said, handing me a tube, and I couldn't. 'Asthma,' he said, 'triggered by a chest infection.' So then it was a ten-day course of antibiotics, a five-day course of steroids, and introduction to life with a puffer. The steroids were interesting: I started to dream again and feel creative. For five days, writing flowed. Before and since it has been like making a cake without ever adding liquid, just forever rubbing in more and more dry ingredients. Yes, I'm a pro and I've turned up every day, but for many days I was back in bed within the hour without the energy even to read. But the steroids helped.
Saw the doc again two days ago when the antibiotics finished and he's put me on a 'preventer', which is a brown inhaler. I had a couple of puffs before going to bed last night - and then I began to dream. I began to dream about my book and its characters, listened to them saying crazy, anachronistic things and even in my sleep exulted. I woke up several times to check the clock to see if I could get up yet and, at 6am, allowed it. I haven't coughed yet and here I am, writing a blog for the first time in months.
My next read is going to be a book I saw reviewed in Resurgence about story-telling as a healing art, how stories relate to different organs in the body. I'll give details when I've read it, but for now I'm intrigued, for this much I know: the airways and perhaps the lungs relate to psyche, pneuma and spiritus. It is not accidental - how could it be - that the Greek and Latin words for soul, spirit and Holy Ghost relate to breathing words. For the last few weeks I've not only not been a writer, I've barely been human: Muse-less, dreamless, God-less. It was one of the unhappiest times I've suffered and, if it's all over, then I am mightily relieved and grateful. Thank you God and Science for the brown puffer.
Just a little postscript. The reason I quit smoking very suddenly and without preamble was a) because I couldn't breathe properly and b) because I knew the full implications of that. Whether or not smoking was killing this body, it was definitely choking the Muse - and that was enough to stop.
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