The biggest problem with the “pills” that help you quit smoking? Craving. Oh my lord the craving is like nothing else. Seriously, if you stop smoking, after three days of the worst cravings you’ve ever had in your life they tend to go away. But with the pills? Oh no, the craving isn’t really bad, but it’s just nagging, consistent nagging, for days, and days, and days…… I Actually think it might be worse than going cold turkey.

Anyway cigarettes sorted, it’s time to sort the weight out now…

Ok so that aside, the success of CardiffTweetups.co.uk has been phenomenal, and it’s really tweaked my interest in photography. More and more pictures are getting added to flickr and to the portfolio, and today, I took delivery of a spectacularly good Manfrotto tripod and head.

My interests have been tweaked even more by people actually telling me about the things that go on around Cardiff so that I can go take pictures. Which leads me with an interesting decision.

The blog is taking a life of it’s own, and the photography has no longer become “a story of my progression and development”. In fact it’s starting to turn into something that needs it’s own photography site, a dedicated photography site.

I was already planning on mcrowlegroves.com for my professional career etc but at the looks of it….
mcrowlegroves.com – Professional Online CV
mcrowlegrovesphotography.com – Photography portfolio and really really small mini blog purely photography based
thelongmile.com – Perosnal Blog and Site

Hmmmmmmmm….

Don’t get me wrong, It’s my personal mission to get over the cigarettes once and for all, I’ve even quit quite a few times before, but found myself missing a smoke. By missing I don’t neccesarily mean craving either… Sometimes it really is nice to sit down and have a smoke. There’s something soothing about the sensation, but, frankly for the sake of my health, It needs to stop. But there will be times I will want one, which, as any smoker knows, if you buy a pack, you will smoke the whole pack, because it’s like a chocolate box.

Since the smoking ban in the UK, it’s become increasinly hard to smoke. Now that’s not a bad thing, but for those of us that do smoke and suffer withdrawal, you tend to get a little edgy if you havn’t had a smoke after a while, and that’s in a way, involuntary, especially after a few beers. So I decided to look at something else, which is relativley uncommon in the UK. Snuff.

Now, before we go any further, let’s just clear up that Nasal Snuff is infact 100% legal in the UK, the oral snuff such as Snus, is not. I am talking about Nasal snuff. Anyway, for me, this was relatively uncharted territory, how would it work in stopping me from smoking… or at least reducing the amount I smoked and helping me quit. There’s certainly enough information on the web to promote the health benefits, and it’s significantly cheaper to sniff snuf than it is to smoke a cigarette. So what’s the right balance? As any smoker knows, sometimes you really do just need a hit…. We’ll I’ve taken the plunge and ordered 15 quids worth of snuff, which should last me about 4 months apparently and they are all different variaties, so I think it will be interesting to see at least…

Now of course the other thing I wanted to talk about was coffee. I am a huge coffee drinker, and have been for a very long time. Though surprisingly, I didn’t like coffee that much when I was around 14. It took my father taking me to Le Mans and saying just how much coffee there would be, for me to start drinking it and, learning, to like it. Though I’m glad I did, I’ve learn to actually taste coffee, and in a way, have become a little bit of a coffee snob.

Now that’s no bad thing, as such, it means I appreciate more than just “A Cup Of Kenco”, it means I appriciate the citrusy flavours in something like Las Mercedes (cup of the year 2006) and knowing how to make a good espresso. It’s no secret that I love coffee. More so that coffee loves me, we agree with each other, I don’t get huge heart palpatations or need to fear that I will stay up all night because I’ve drunk too much coffee.

But lately, and don’t ask me why, but I’ve started to really like tea again. I loved tea before I loved coffee, but I think I like coffee more. So where has this come from? The odd cuppa’ or odd green tea, and now I’m starting to like it a lot more than I expected… good in some ways, but a shame, as tea dehydrates me worse than coffee does, at least in the way I react to it.

I don’t know. The simple things used to be simple didn’t they… all of a sudden my Coffee and Cigarette in the morning has become a Pinch of snuff and a mug of tea… Either I’m really getting that much older, or I’m going mad..