11 February 2026

Finally, a vape that doesn’t make me cough my lungs up

But I’ve already lost it somewhere in my bed

Photo by Matt Mawson/Millennium Images

Another week, and I feel as though nothing has changed. Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful (Waiting for Godot). The weather is frozen and so am I. Time is frozen too. It’s like that episode of Star Trek where they all find themselves stuck in a time loop and keep reliving the same day again and again and they have no idea how long it’s been going on. The only way I can tell time has passed is the slow growth of hair and nails, and the latest outrages on the news. However, hearing about Peter Mandelson getting into hot water again also makes me think that I am living in a time loop. He does have a knack, doesn’t he? Anyway, I’ll leave discussion of his fate and his misdeeds to the grown-ups in the front of the magazine. (LOCK HIM UP.)

Actually, I did do something last week, and something almost momentous happened. It was that mention of nails that reminded me. I cut them because they were getting a bit grubby and I was going to meet my friend K— for a drink. She is a lady, and as beautiful as a summer’s day, and you don’t want anyone like that to see your mucky fingernails.

We talked about this and that and at one point she mentioned that she hadn’t fancied a man for years now. “Compliment received at this end,” I said, and she chided me and said, “Don’t be silly, you’re a friend.” And my heart was not broken because although looks-wise, she is out of my league, she has freely admitted to hating the Beatles and this evening was wearing a jacket which said “Moonchild” on the front (confusingly, under a stylised drawing of the sun). Still, I enjoy her company.

Shortly afterwards, she asked me if I still smoked (it’s been months since we last met). I said yes, but that I had forgotten my tobacco. This happens a lot: during the day, I quite simply forget that I smoke. I can go days – well, a day or two – without smoking, and without even trying not to smoke. Of course, going to the pub without smokes is, as George Santayana said of a life without happiness, a mad and lamentable experiment, so K— nipped out to the shop next door to buy a vape. And when she came back, I found that she had bought one for me too.

Now I have always been wary of vapes. I was once commissioned to write about them for the Times, and they sent a man round with a black suitcase within which, nestled in velvet like Sherlock Holmes’s syringe, or an assassin’s gun, lay a formidably complex-looking machine for inhaling nicotine. I coughed my lungs out; and so strong was the nicotine hit that I developed the shakes, and actually had to have a real cigarette to calm down. I wrote this all up and the Times said, “Um, this is an advertorial so we have cut your piece by about 80 per cent,” at which point I told them to remove my name from the piece and – this I can barely believe – stick their fee where the sun doesn’t shine. Every Christmas when I see my children I get tiddly, try one of their vapes, cough my lungs up, and that’s it for another year.

Vapes have come a long way. This one was in clear plastic with a USB-C port at one end; when you inhale, it glows blue. I could tell you the make but I won’t, for reasons we’ll get to in a minute. I puffed cautiously at it, and for once I did not cough my lungs up. The evening degenerated most delightfully; we were in the Prince Albert, a pub in which it is hard not to make friends after a certain time in the evening. This is down to the the layout of the tables in the main bar – where there is also a proper fireplace – which compels people to share. Brightonians are a garrulous and friendly bunch, and so I ended up being festooned in a feather boa and a pair of silver mittens. That’s another story for another day.

Back in the Hove-l, I wondered if I was allowed to smoke it indoors. The terms of the lease are very unambiguous about smoking indoors, and while I might present myself as a wild, devil-may-care scamp who snaps his fingers at the law, I am actually a complete wimp when it comes to things like this. Now you can see why I forget I smoke: doing so involves a lot of palaver, and exposure to the outside elements, which, with the weather we’ve been having lately, hasn’t been that much fun at all.

But vaping seems different. For a start, K— had had the good sense to buy me a neutral-flavoured gizmo, so I wasn’t going to make the place smell of jam or something. And so one night, retiring to my boudoir with my bedtime cocoa, I decided to do the most decadent thing I have done in decades: I had a little smoke in bed. I had another cough, but only a little one, and tried to think of the last time I had smoked in bed. I think we have to go back to the dying days of Margaret Thatcher’s third administration – the late 1980s.

It was a glorious feeling. I thought: this has changed my life. And the reason I can’t tell you the make: because I lost it. It’s in my bed somewhere and I just can’t be bothered to look for it. If you saw my bed, you’d understand.

[Further reading: How “Wuthering Heights” seduced its readers]