Cats and dogs: A tongue-in-poo look at the habits of our pets

I love cats more than any other animal. They are to me the most mysterious, fascinating and wonderful creatures on earth. And not only can they read your mind, they can also manipulate it to  their own advantage.

That's the voice of 40 years of cat ownership speaking. Oh, and I didn't own any of my moggies - they owned me.

From Fluffy to Thatcher (Moggy Thatcher, that is), from Geoffrey to Henry and from Lucky to Princess, I was THEIR pet, not the reverse. If it didn't suit them to live in my home, they'd have been off like a flash to appoint some other purr soul as honorary daily food-and-milk supplier.

Some of us are cat people, some dog people and some, like me,  care for both. Only we usually have a preference and in my household cats have always held the edge.

To start with, they allow their owner more independence. If you're not around for a few days, it doesn't really matter as long as someone is there to feed them. Leave a dog on  its own for two days and you're not only in serious trouble with the animal authorities, the poor mutt will also have moped itself into a candidate for the canine nuthouse.

My tabby Geoffrey - or Geoffrey Boycat to give him his full name

Then there is the cleanliness issue. Dogs love to pepper their noses with  the ghastliest of savouries left for them by their fellow barkers. The browner and smellier the better for Fido and his pals, and the worse for those of us whose shoes squelch the stink into our  rugs and carpets when we get home.

From my experience, there's nothing more frustrating  than trying to house-train a  puppy. It will pee and poo to order providing you let it out a minimum of 250 times a day. But pop out yourself for five minutes and you open the door on your return to a mound of doggy dung and a floor awash with a ship-load of urine.

The yelps when Little Poo  is left momentarily on its own are bad enough. But they are nothing to the yelps of human anger that boom into the stratosphere when Mr and Mrs Owner discover what poochie was up to while they were out of the room.

Yet to a dog lover, those Close Encounters of the T*rd Kind are all acceptable in exchange for the pure, uncomplicated love you are guaranteed in return for just being there. Who cares that Fido spends all day rolling in mud, urine, vomit and the faeces of every animal on earth? It only takes a couple of hours to clean him up - and then those luscious licks and doggy hugs make it all worthwhile.

Unless, like me, you're already so browned off by those pooper bloopers that you've vowed never to have a dog again.

Cats are a complete contrast. House-trained before they've ever seen a house, all a kitten needs is a litter tray and it will wee and poo  into it ad infinitum. Mind you, removing the hail of stones that hurtle around the house in mini-puss's attempts to  bury the residue with its lethal back feet can take twice as long as clearing up after any untrained puppy.

Moggies also need no  teaching when it comes to cleaning themselves. And thereby hangs another tale - plus body, head and legs.  Before you  know it, puss has licked herself  bald and is coughing up a two-ton hair ball. You rush her to the vet thinking she's on her last legs but fear not...they all do it.

Unless, like my Molly, the furry one suffers from feline asthma and vomits up nothing but wheeze.

If your cat is a Tom, then you have another problem or three. First and worst is his territory spraying, and the pungent, difficult-to-remove smell it creates. Then there's his sexual appetite, which he'll inevitably impose on all the local moggettes - accompanied by a cat's chorus loud enough to drown out a 30-piece orchestra.

The solution to that one is simple. Have Tiger Tom snipped in the bud when he's a few months old and the spraying and s****ing will be a thing of the past.

If you have a dog, you will of course need to take it for walks. Unless you are a lazy bitch like one or two of my friends - and end up with a mutt that's even fatter than its owner. In such instances, at least fatso and her pet won't need a pooper scooper to clean up the dog mess, though not that many people seem to bother if the pavements in my locality at El Raso are anything to go by.

People not clearing up the mess left by their dogs in public places is a big problem everywhere. But here's a question for you: If you saw a threatening-looking yob's pit-bull pooing outside your home and he didn't clean up the mess (the yob, not the pitbull), what would you do?

If your answer is 'nothing', score a brownie point for honesty.

Cat-walking is strictly for models, of course. But at the end of the day, you'll shack up with the pet that suits YOU, whether it be a dog, cat, rabbit, kangaroo or a 15-foot crocodile. My 11-year-old grandson would happily have the lot - particularly if the croc came with a guarantee to eat his sister.

As for me, I'll stick with my two moggies back home in in Guardamar. Even if I am at my wits end hoping they are OK while I spend Christmas and the New Year here with my family in Manchester. Don't worry, while I am away some good friends are feeding them both - along with three or four strays who have adopted me (and particularly my daily food offerings) over recent months.

They all used to be straggly. Now they are verging on obese. But I'd happily take them all with me everywhere I go if only they could speak English.

PS. Question: What do you call a brown Spanish cat? Answer - a chocolate gato.

Corrupt or not, Blatter and his FIFA bunglers have lost the plot

During last summer’s World Cup, I wrote a magazine  article in which I described Sepp Blatter, the most powerful administrator in world football, as ''an ageing plonker''. I now accept that at the FIFA chairman is not ageing. He’s decrepit.

Indeed, he is so far past his sell-by date that I suggest his native Switzerland considers putting him out of his misery. Euthanasia is perfectly legal there, after all.

Now I love football but, like just about every fan in the world, I think its administrators are in another world when it comes to moving into the 21st century.

Soccer is the world’s most popular game with billions of fans and ludicrous amounts of money passing through its coffers. Yet while other major sports like tennis, rugby, American Football and cricket have long since been using modern technology to adjudicate controversial moments, the Methuselahs who orchestrate the game’s structure continue to insist that decisions must be left entirely to the human eye.

Even if those decisions are patently wrong and unfair, as they often are.

Take England’s disallowed goal against Germany in the World Cup, for instance. Frank Lampard’s rocket shot bounced down off the crossbar at least a yard over the line and then came out of the goal – and the referee and linesman were seemingly the only two people in the stadium who failed to spot it.

The German goalkeeper knew it was a goal, of course. But since honesty is the last thing one expects from professional footballers (we won’t mention being faithful to their wives), there was no way he was going to tell the referee. Let’s face it, England would have done exactly the same had it been the Germans who scored, so dishonours even there.

However, had the referee merely been allowed to consult a video replay, as are officials in other major sports, justice would have prevailed. As it was, nobody knows what might have happened had England been level at 2-2 at halftime rather than 2-1 behind. Why, they might even have won. (well, in my dreams).

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a player or manager speak AGAINST the use of video playbacks to confirm or over-rule controversial refereeing decisions. And the argument that the delay would detract from the game has long since been shot down by the evidence of other sports. In rugby and cricket, for example, the anxious wait for decisions like ‘not out’ or ‘no try’ to appear on the screen invariably ADD to the excitement rather than detracts from it.

Yet Blatter and his fellow FIFA duffers have consistently resisted calls for any sort of technology. And that has inevitably led to people like myself asking ‘Why?’

And in the absence of a logical reason, I can’t help pondering the recent corruption allegations over FIFA’s decision to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia.

Now I am well aware of the laws of libel, so I am not saying someone is bribing Sepp and his sidekicks NOT to say yes to the technology companies. But it makes you wonder, particularly as Blatter’s election in 1998 was later sullied by allegations that an African federation official had been offered a 100,000 dollar bribe to vote for him.

Certainly, Blatter’s logic seems to be at variance with the entire population of the world. Apart, perhaps, from his cronies in Geneva, all of whom are presumably blokes. And that brings me to another negative aspect of the man’s background.

Seedy Sepp does not seem to hold women very high in his esteem. Indeed, he seems to see us merely as sex objects. According to Wikipedia, in the early 1970s he was elected president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders, an organisation which tried to stop women wearing tights instead of stockings and suspender belts.

Then, in 2004, he angered female footballers when he suggested that women should "wear tighter shorts and low cut shirts... to create a more female aesthetic" and attract more male fans.

I’ve got news for Mr Blatter. If he spent more time sorting out football’s injustices and less on ogling the girls, then it might start living up to its billing as ‘the beautiful game’.

He could start by introducing a law that works wonderfully well in rugby and ensures that cheats who illegally prevent a certain score don’t prosper. In such circumstances, referees can award a ‘‘penalty try’’ – yet in football, the worst a team can suffer is a red card for the offender and a penalty kick for the cheated side.

When a Uruguay player prevented Ghana winning their World Cup tie by deliberately stopping a goalbound shot with his hand, the correct decision should have been ‘goal’ – even though the ball did not cross the goal line. The incident happened at the very end of extra time, so the red card did not help Ghana in any way.

And when they missed the resultant penalty kick, any advantage was completely wiped out.

Uruguay celebrated their reprieve by winning the penalty shootout that followed and Africa’s last representatives in the tournament were on their way home when in the eyes of every fair-minded person they were really the victors. But the concept of introducing a ‘penalty goal’ award to foil the cheats has probably never crossed Mr Blatter’s mind.

Ghana did not get justice, they were robbed because the laws are an ass. It’s the sort of thing that makes football appear even more stupid than the heads-in-the-sand brigade who run (or should that be ruin?) the game.

So how is football ever going to be dragged into the 21st century? Maybe we should offer sleazy   Sepp an inducement to hand the whole caboodle over to us girls. Then we could sort it all out in no time and let him concentrate on whatever else he does for kicks...

Runway heating could pay for itself in two years - so let's get a flying start!

I am not privy to airport costings but the seemingly needless grounding of British-based planes during the ongoing cold spell is a soar point with me (pun intended).

Because it could all have been avoided if Heathrow, Gatwick and other UK airports had  heating under their runways.

But that would not be ec0nomically viable,  did I hear someone say? The cost would be astronomical and would have to be passed on to those who utilise the airports.

Presumably that means  the thousands of us who stand around interminally analysing the ‘Cancelled’ and ‘Delayed’ messages on flight departure boards.

Presumably, then, the £12 car-park fee my daughter paid to pick me up at Manchester Airport last week is NOT astronomical. And  it’s reasonable to charge nearly a fiver for a sandwich?

Captive audiences will always be ripped off. The only way the public can counter the profiteers is not to buy extortionately priced goods. But when you are starving and stranded miles from nowhere, what alternative is there?

When you think about it, it is actually in the interest of the  airports to ground passengers because they have to eat. And that means buying those gold-plated sarnies and £4 bottles of water.

It might be a good idea to start charging for using the airport loos as well, as mooted by Ryanair’s penny-pinching boss. That’s gotta be worth a bog-standard million quid a week, surely.

I’m not surprised there’s no rush to invest in underground heating – and the predicted vast expense provides a good excuse. Of cours, Britain’s increasingly deluded bureaucrats also assure us  we don’t have enough sub-zero weather to justify runway heating. Which is nonsense if the past couple of climate-changing years are anything to go by.

So how expensive would it be to heat the runways? Well, an executive study at  St Cloud State University in Minnesota concluded that using geothermal heat can prevent the build-up of ice and snow ”and once installed, such a system could pay for it self in as little as 2-5 years.”

The report also slammed current methods of trying to keeping runways open, maintaining: ”Both chemicals and snow-ploughing vehicles have adverse effects on the environment as they contribute to pollution.”

I am no engineering expert, so have no idea whether such a system is feasible for UK airports. But something MUST be done about the seemingly endless delays passengers are suffering these days.

Keeping airports open at all times has to be a priority. BAA, who own Heathrow and Stansted among others, are predicting a 15 per cent rise in income next year to £1.12 BILLION. So they are not exactly skint.
But do they really care that it’s becoming a bonus for passengers to get to their destination on the scheduled day, let alone on time?

The heat is on – or rather off if you’re in the UK. Whether those who make the decisions have the hot-water bottle to do anything about it is another matter.

Snowed-in Brits left on ice as forward thinking French stir the grit

Regular readers of my rants will know exactly how I feel about the pathetic British mentality that anything thought up by foreigners can't be any good.

When will we ever accept that theold Empire is dead and buried? And has been so for the last 50 years, even if the Beatles did rule the world for a while.

The reality of the 21st century  is that the entrepreneurial wheels have dropped off in the UK and that the Europeans have come up with a lot we can learn from. OK, they have no idea how to run their economies - but there again our lot are also a load of bankers.

I've written before about Spain's clever idea of filter lanes in the centre of main roads to allow traffic on side roads to ease onto main carriageways with the minimum of disruption.

Well, I've now discovered that the French (and I bet they are not the only ones) have mastered the art of clearing ALL roads of snow and ice in the current arctic conditions with no more grit than the poverty-screaming British have.

They simply grit the SIDE roads - and leave local residents' cars to drag it onto the main roads, where the flood of  heavy traffic melts away the residue.

I was told about the French idea last week by a Manchester taxi driver, whose wife is une femme francaise.
And he assured me: ''The idea works, believe me. I've been there and seen it.''

My local council in Bury, Lancashire took pride in announcing in their 'Our Voice' magazine that they had prepared for another bad winter by putting aside an extra 500 tonnes of salt plus 300 salt bins after being caught short by the bitter freeze-up 12 months ago.

But what did they do to make the borough's snowbound pavements usable by the elderly and handicapped - surely a far more important issue? The answer is absolutely zilch!

And spread any grit, salt or whatever on the side roads? Not likely. My street, a leafy cul-de-sac, is on a gradient that makes it impossible for those at the top to access their homes by car when we are snowed up - unless they have a four-wheel drive vehicle. And the chances of safely negotiating the two streets between us and the main road diminish in proportion to the depth of snow.

I'd never really thought about the French idea before but it would certainly be  a godsend in my locality (on my increasingly rarer visits to the UK, that is). The traffic is so heavy on the main A56  Manchester-Bury road that it would take an avalanche to cause any major problem, even without gritting.

And dithering dodderers like myself wouldn't have to spend days at home afraid to go out in case we fall over and break our necks.

Why Telefonica no longer have my number

SHODDY SERVICE MADE ME CALL TIME

ON SPAIN'S COMMUNICATIONS GIANTS

After waiting several years for Telefonica to venture into the comparatively new urbanisation in which I live, their eventual arrival was more than overdue.

Now I wish they’d never bothered because my subsequent dealings with the Spanish national telephone service developed into one long, frustrating nightmare. That’s why I got rid of them a few months ago – and reverted to My Bubble, a local provider here in the southern Costa Blanca.

As a result, I am at least 20 euros a month better off and can contact an English-speaking technician at their offices within seconds. On the downside, I can’t call the emergency services except from my UK-contract mobile – and have learnt to my cost that calling premium rate numbers in Britain is a ridiculously expensive Bubble burster.

From the start, Telefonica made me feel I wasn’t really wanted. I’m not talking about the engineer who installed my line and internet wirelesss equipment. He was remarkably quick and efficient…even if I did pay through the nose to be connected.

The problems seemed to mount when I called their English-language helpline number, 1004. My first problem was in obtaining a bill. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t mail me one, depending on whether I wanted it sending to my Spanish or UK address. The best they could offer was online billing. Only I simply could not get my user name or password to work, even when they gave me new ones.

Consequently, my only way of knowing how much I was being charged was to check my bank statement each month.

The 1004 people also insisted that I provided my NIE number as well as my name and phone number every time I called them. That’s equivalent to BT asking for my passport number. Surely the fact I was the subscriber calling from my own private number – which they could clearly see using their own office technology - should have sufficed.

In my eyes, they were just being plain bloody-minded.

Even more frustrating was that when I rang to request temporary suspension of my ADSL each time I went to England (which reduces internet charges by 75 per cent or more), the 1004 operator insisted this could only be done by their business department.

‘‘But this is not a business line, it’s a private house,’’ I repeatedly told them. ‘‘Well, we have it down as a business number,’’ they insisted. ‘’You’ll have to ask them if you want it changing to a private one.’’

The punchline is that the business department don’t (or more accurately won’t) speak English – and the English-speaking operators on 1004 won’t do the job on your behalf.




During my 18 months as a Telefonica customer, I made several unsuccessful attempts to have the line switched to a private one, using my far-from-perfect Spanish – and when my umpteenth effort once again elicited the obligatory request for my NIE number, I snapped.

 I called 1004 and said I no longer wished to do business with them and would be instructing my bank to cancel my Direct Debit. The operator showed not the slightest inclination to persuade me to rethink. The clear message was, ‘‘If that’s what you want, please yourself. We don’t care.’’
  
So I wrote off the extra amount I had been charged for the suspended service Telefonica didn’t suspend and told my bank to refuse any future demands for money from them.

 I’m well rid, I thought – and for six months or more I heard nothing. Then, out of the blue, I received a demand from a collection agency recently saying I owed Telefonica 55 euros and that  if I didn’t pay, the amount would be increased and I would face legal action.

 I would not even have known about the demand had the Correos not finally started delivering mail, a luxury my locality has only been blessed with for the last few  months.

 I toyed with the idea of ignoring the demand because I knew that in reality I owed Telefonica nothing while they owed ME at least 100 euros. But I quickly realised I was fighting a war I couldn’t win…so I swallowed my anger and wrote off another 55 euros.

 Whether I have now seen the back of the company once and for all I don’t know. What I would say is that if YOU are planning to become a Telefonica subscriber, do so with caution. Better still, ask a few people who have done business with them how they got on.

 Most expats reckon life in Spain is generally much better than in the rapidly deteriorating UK, yet could you imagine British Telecom treating anyone with such an abysmal ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude?

 Still, at the end of the day, whether you get your telephone service from Telefonica is your call...

Spare the rod and spawn the yob - so let's bring back the cane

I know it’s not funny, but I couldn’t help laughing when Home Secretary Theresa May announced that slapping ASBOs on young British yobs doesn’t work.

There is only one way to deal people who have no respect for others and repeatedly flout accepted norms. And that is to take them off our streets and remove them as a threat to decent law-abiding citizens.

In other words, lock them up until they are prepared to behave properly. And if that means years rather than months, then so be it.

The politically correct brigade repeatedly tell us that we must try to re-educate the poor young souls whose sorties into crime, violence and vandalism are no fault of their own. It’s all caused, they insist, by the deprivation and broken homes they come from.

If that is so, then how come so many people from miserable backgrounds grow up to become decent law-abiding citizens without a blemish on their character?

I’ll accept that circumstances often play their part in juvenile delinquency. When one’s role models are jailbird fathers and drug-addict mothers, what hope does a child have?

They need pointing in the right direction – and with only negativity in their home life, unless they are taken into care, that positivity can only come from their school and its teachers.

But thanks to the do-gooders, the disciplinary guidance these battled-scarred kids so desperately need is banned from the outset. So how on earth is a wild child ever going to be tamed? It’s no wonder so many of them never learn to respect anyone – least of all the laws of decency.

Embryo thugs are left to openly attack any sort of authority without fear of a penalty. Drag them before the courts and namby-pamby lay magistrates tell them not to be naughty boys. Not once, but dozens of times before even minimal custodial terms are even considered.

These low lifes laugh in the faces of their schoolteachers and, knowing that no-one dare raise a hand against them, taunt officialdom relentlessly. It’s no wonder that decent teachers have been known to lose control and end up in court

In 21st century Britain, the punishment does not fit the crime – at any level. A young car thief runs over and kills a young mother with her own car and gets a paltry six years in jail for manslaughter. Ludicrous. In the absence of the death penalty, the correct sentence for should have been LIFE imprisonment . The murderer (and make no mistake, that is what he is) has no right to live in freedom. Ever.

As ever, the victim and her family must suffer for ever while the villain milks the state and the taxpayer – and emerges in a few short years probably to commit more crimes.

I know this is contentious, but many of us who remember the 50s and 60s would bring back corporal punishment in schools as a matter of urgency.

The problem is that matters have been allowed to deteriorate to such a point that if teachers were allowed to deliver six of the best, every school would need to employ 100 policemen to ward off yob parents bent on attacking the staff.

Once upon a time, policemen were allowed to give cheeky kids a friendly clip around the earhole. Barbaric, I hear the 21st century do-gooders scream. If that’s so, then how come I’ve yet to meet anyone who was permanently damaged by being physically punished for misdeeds at school.

What did happen was that the sting of the cane or slipper taught naughty kids that defying authority could be a painful experience they would not want repeated.

Certainly there was much less delinquency in the UK in those days. And decent people could go out at night without fearing they’d be either mugged by drug addicts or molested by drunken louts.

And while '50s and '60s society did admittedly contain an undesirable element, they represented a tiny proportion of the population. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.

In contrast, the sub-culture Britain has spawned over the last 40 years seems to be growing by the day. It’s an element of society which milks society of every benefit possible, has no interest in working – and supplements its assets by stealing from others.

Its members have no respect for ANYTHING. And until the authorities start making the punishment fit the crime, things will just get worse.

Custodial sentences are becoming all too rare – and when the worst offenders ARE locked up, they live it up in comparative luxury with all mod cons. Why on earth don’t the warders take them out in chain gangs, American style, to clean up all the rubbish that litters Britain’s streets?

Is it barbaric to make criminals put something back into the society they have exploited?

OK, my argument is very simplistic and it’s certainly not a case of black and white. But how on earth does a schoolteacher inculcate respect into an insolent, defiant child with absolutely no moral standards?

There used to be saying that went, ‘‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’’ Sadly, that seems to have been replaced by a new adage, ‘Spare the rod and spawn the yob.’

One thing is all too obvious. The softly-softly approach is not working in the UK. So I’ll stay here in Spain, thank you very much – and feel a lot safer. 

January 2: A real ban at last - or just another smoke screen?

NO MORE EXCUSES - IT'S TIME

TO KICK SMOKERS IN THE BUTT

So smoking is finally going to be banned in Spanish bars and restaurants from January 2. Well, that’s what they say – but after threatening to see sense for years, I’m still not convinced the government won’t renage yet again on enforcing the new legislation.

The ban was supposed to come into force last January, then again in June. Now we are told it is really going to happen in a couple of weeks’ time. But don’t bet on it – and certainly don’t bank on the Spanish people observing it universally.

Spain’s smoking culture is so entrenched that I can see bar owners slipping the police a drink or two to turn a blind eye to the ciggy suckers. However, those expats who prefer to frequent British bars undoubtedly have clearer airwaves ahead – because most of us have wanted a ban for years.

My friends Jane and Graham Lilley spent last winter considering the likely effects if they were to ban smoking inside Ricardo’s, their bar/bistro at El Raso, near Guardamar. Like other bars in the area, they feared it would hit their business – and in the end decided to allow the air-polluters to have their way.

As a confirmed ashtray-basher, I believe a ban would have had the opposite effect, if not immediately then certainly once fervent non-smokers became aware that a fresh-air zone had finally surfaced in the local commercial centre.

Let’s face it, how many people – including cigarette addicts – actually ENJOY eating in a smoky environment?

OK, our Spanish amigos presumably do, but that’s because finding a Spaniard who doesn’t smoke is like finding an X-Factor judge who says something original.

According to the Office of National Statistics, the percentage of British adults who smoke dropped from 39% in 1980 to 21% in 2007, when the UK legislation against smoking in public places took effect.

I have always taken the never-ending stories of Spain’s sit-on-the-fence legislators enforcing a blanket smoking ban with a pinch of salt. The existing law is so woolly and ineffective that it might as well not be there – and I also find it difficult to believe that the tobacco-obsessed Spanish will actually observe the full ban. 

British fag addicts complain that UK anti-smoking laws are too stringent and I accept that they do have a case of sorts. My philosophy is that if consenting adults wish to impregnate each other’s lungs with a terminal disease in private, that’s their business. Just as long as the rest of us aren’t expected to participate in the suicide attacks on healthy living by inhaling the residue of their habit.

The problem at El Raso has been that the only way non-smokers could escape a coughing fit is to stay away from the bars. Until now, none of the dwindling number of hostelries on the urbanisation (I exclude exclusive restaurants like Stan and Ollies) has had a non-smoking area, even though they all serve food. This means that tobacco addicts have been free to blow their fumes into anyone and everyone’s dinner.

The government ban will make things a lot easier for people like Claire Tyson, who runs Rayz Bar at El Raso. She believes a voluntary no-smoking policy would have decimated her business – particularly in the off season.

‘‘The majority of my customers are smokers,’’ she says, ‘‘and they enjoyed the fact that they didn’t have to abide by the English laws where cigarettes are concerned.

‘‘If we’d banned smoking in the bar before now, they’d have had no problem going outside to smoke in the summer. But if they had to do it in the winter I think they would have just found somewhere else where smoking was allowed.’’

Only once has anyone ever asked me in a bar or restaurant if I had any objection to them smoking - and that was in England so long ago that I can’t even remember where it was. Anyway, I made it pretty clear I would throw my knife and fork out of the cot if the young lady concerned lit up, and immediately felt guilty because she had been courteous enough to ask.

It’s 30 years since I gave up my own 25-a-day habit after listening to an LP by a hypnotist which I took initially as a joke. Before turning in one night, I sat and listened to this guy’s soothing voice telling me to close my eyes and imagine I was sunbathing in an idyllic scenario on a tropical island beach. 

I was in paradise, he assured me, except for this ‘’horrible, stinking weed’’ in my hand.  ‘’Get it out of your life,’’ he ordered. ‘’Throw it as far as you can and tell yourself you’ll never touch it again as long as you live.’’

I went to bed laughing to myself, with no real intention of giving up. Yet when I got out of bed the next morning, I told myself, ‘‘I’m not going to smoke today’’. And from that moment, the thought of taking even a single drag on a ciggy has revolted me ever increasingly.

Even more bizarrely, a few weeks later my late mother-in-law, who had been a lifelong smoker, listened to the same LP one evening. She never smoked again until the day she died.

So where can we get hold of this record, I hear hordes of would-be ex-smokers asking. The answer is I don’t know. I always thought the hypnotist’s name was Edwin Starr, but since the only Edwin Starr on the internet appears to be the late soul singer, I guess that time has distorted my memory.

If anyone out there can enlighten me  on the hypnotist’s identity, and where they might still hear that LP, then please leave a comment. You could make an awful lot of would-be quitters very happy.

Anyway, back to El Raso where Jane and Graham’s decided against a voluntary ban – and subsequently lost me as a regular diner. I won’t eat in a room where people are smoking – or likely to light up. And fortunately there have always been plenty of options. 

John Latham and Ken Brewster, who run the classy, Hollywood-themed  Oscars café bar in Ciudad Quesada, certainly have no regrets after going smoke-free when they took over the old Casi Casi premises a couple of  years ago.

‘’We did lose a few people who used to come in just for a drink and a smoke,’’ they told me.

.

‘’But that has been more than balanced by a much cleaner atmosphere both for our diners and ourselves. We also have lots of people coming in now who would not have dreamt of eating here when smoking was allowed.’’

It’s easy to see why. With only 20 inside covers for diners, the addition of a row of beer-swilling smokers at the bar could only have a negative effect on the food side of the business.

The compulsory ban, if it does actually come in, will solve a Catch 22 situation. Until now, the choice that hostelry bosses had to make was: Allow smoking and ostracise your non-smoking diners – or ban it and risk losing your regular drinkers?

Hopefully, that decision has now been taken out of everyone’s hands. Along with the nicotine stains.

TOBACCO NOTE. Isn’t it remarkable that the people who smoke the most often seem to be those who look as if they can least afford it? But let’s not go there just now - I’ve kicked smokers in the butt enough for now.

THREE CHEERS FOR NO SMOKING: At Oscars with bosses John Latham (left) and Ken Brewster

Jane and Graham Lilley were torn over bringing in a smoking ban