Smoking Out The Bugs

[Robusto]

OK. I've been full of cold for a fortnight plus now, and my special birthday cigar has been on hold for a week. I'm semi-depressed with the situation now. The festive season has been a bit ballsed up by this. All four of us here have bad colds.

I'm very tempted to smoke a small Punch to see if I can blast the bugs away - and to see if I can smell or taste anything at all.

I just wondered if anyone else would light up to attack a cold.

I have a death-rattle chest still, so it might be really silly.

Please advise, brothers. I need stogie-bro counselling!

[Drewmidorn]

I usually smoke through colds, but i think I'm kidding myself when I tell everyone its doing me good!

[Wildwood]

Personally, I'd wait Bryan...if it didn't go well, you'd just feel even worse about the situation. I just don't feel like smoking when I'm bunged up...so it may be easier for me to say this, than for you to do it...

[Deano]

Yeah leave it mate, the chest thing thats going round last for ages, I wouldn't make it any worse for yourself.

[linfield100]

I've had a bit of a cold for a week or two, every cigar I tried tasted awful or no taste at all.
Tried one this morning and hurray....The taste is coming back.

I'll try another one tonight.

[Robusto]

Well I haven't tried it... I'm still greasy with Vic's VapoRub on my chest and can barely smell it. Think it would be counter-productive.

An annoying situation.

[Robusto]

Right.

I have never sat at my laptop with a Havana in full flight and written a post. There is a first time for everything, however, and for me it's now.

I have fired up a Punch Petit Coronation - sent to me gratis by MonteAndy when I ordered a couple of boxes of cigars from him recently - as a smoke to hit the residual cold I'm buggered with.

I decided I wanted to smoke right now as it's been a long time coming due to the bugs. My wife has gone back to work in this phoney war pre New Year period. I have one son upstairs dead to the world. I have the downstairs as a Havana paradise all for me.

I'm back at work in a week and these indolent Havana house mornings won't be there when I'm back at the chalkface.

I've recounted and bored you with the fact that my 50th birthday passed by without a remote possibility for a smoke, and that Christmas came and went lost to coughs and sneezes. The season for liberal cigar celebrations is passing, and I was thoroughly brassed off.

I swear I am not addicted to cigars in that gasping way. I can cope when I can't indulge. I observed my parents go absolutely glass-smashingly insane when we lived in the wilds of Northunberland in an Army barracks and they ran out of cigarettes. They were well disturbed!

The cigar lust isn't the same as that. BUT it really IS a lust when you are looking forward to a powerful stogie to relax with for a couple of hours. Mates tell me that dope heightens their aural perception - but I find that happens to me over a good cigar. I am sure I get more depth out of, say, The Division Bell when I'm smoking a Partagas or a Cohiba than I do when listening to Pink Floyd when driving stogie-less in the car.

Well anyway I decided to have a cigar today - this morning - mucus or not.

I went to my humidor which is like a fat bird in a kingsize bed at the moment. Packed. Sprawling with stogies. Replete and incredibly satisying to look at and touch. Behold - I could sense essence of Havana rising from the Partagas and Punch sisters looking back at me. They were smiling at me and inviting me in. The thing is... This was/is the smell of Havanas at the end of a long corridor. I had to sniff deeply to draw the scent in. I worked at it. I was pleased that at least they were at the end of the corridor.

I left the fat bastards resting. I thought to myself that if this were to be a loathesome experiment, I did not want to crash land a bloody good and hefty cigar friend.

Instead I took Monte's Petit Coronation. I've been given a couple of other Punch Petit Coronations over Christmas by a good guitarist mate who has sussed the route to my heart.

I wanted to fire up Monte's. Even as a tubos, I knew this was coming from a thoroughbred cigar aficionado! I couldn't go wrong.

I torched the end, and I got nostril reaction that said, very clearly, I Am A Punch And You Adore Me.

I find that any Punch is a well-endowed hitter of an aroma. It makes me salivate at first sense of it... and it cut through my sinuses. I could smell its quality!

I was in smoking business again!

I put it to my mouth and took a couple of good mouthfuls. Alas, the taste did not match the smell and I appreciated nothing at all. An empty taste event. I thought this was how it was going to be throughout.

And yet... And yet...

I took my obligatory phone picture (Captain Misplaced Vanity) but looked like a middle aged English plump twat in paisley pyjamas (paging all perverts) so got rid of it straight away.

Maybe it would have stayed had I remembered the monocle.

I carried on smoking in measured puffs... and after about an inch of the cigar, I realised I was in the taste zone completely.

I'm now drawing on the richness of a Punch. I've had to re-light it about four times because I've been typing, but there's the distinctive deep-herbal taste, an almost licorice-y tone to it. A strength to the cigar that can really over-power... and I adore cigars that can taste TOO strong and make you gulp a bit.

The glory and kick of this cigar is getting through to me! It's knocking away the clinging buggery of my cold! I feel as if I exist again!

I feel comfortable and relaxed. I'm clearly coming out with some turgid bad poetic thoughts. I am intoxicated in a way which won't get me banged up on bad charges.

I'm just a happy bloke!

And that's why I'm into cigars. They lift me up. They make me sit still and take a long reflective pause. They take me away.

I'm going to cut this bullshit now, but I'm just thrilled that I haven't coughed, choked, spluttered or sneezed once.

Goodbye Vic's VapoRub!

I remember what you wrote earlier on this subject about smoking through colds, Drew, and I will maybe not wait as long as I have done this time to light up in future. In fact I may well keep going with a second Petit Coronation after this.

I am married to cigars until my time is up on this earth, I reckon. After my main squeeze (lol), my boys and my labrador, cigars are my next enduring love. Maybe with music sometimes as a special temptress...

What fabulous bed-mates! (Not the boys or the dog!).

[Robusto]

I'm moving straight on to a Punch Punch now.
Amen to that!

[Robusto]

In short, a return to heaven!

[rokkitsci]

In short, a return to heaven!

Must've taken years of practice to obtain that smoke effect! Outstanding picture!

[Robusto]

Oh! You want more?! I have many lol.
Hehehe...

I must report that my cold really was banished by a big Havana assault.
I'm pretty amazed!

[Drewmidorn]

You go to the gym and punish your body to make it better! Therefore you owe it to yourself to drink and smoke to build up your lungs/liver etc.

It's surely obvious to any fool.

[Robusto]

What is that "gym" thing, exactly?

I seem to recall seeing one when I was 14.

[Pantomimehorse]

My throat has been killing for the last week and Im really wanting a new years eve smoke, damn this cold.... on the bright side I have just made up my mind to plan a trip to Cuba! , only prob is convincing others its a good idea!

[Robusto]

Go for a Big Smoke tonight, Pant.
Clear your head out.

I'd love to go to Cuba, but it will probably be Butlins yet again lol.