I should have died long ago from
some pulmonary condition
because I have always lived with
an open coal (now closed wood) fire
and spent most of my adolescent winters in a room
heated by an Aladdin paraffin stove
(of the old wick-burning type)
I could cook on. Now I have the more advanced
(equally-smelly) injection
kind for winter mornings. (Needs electricity.)
For twenty-five years I smoked a pipe.
Since 1970 I have cooked with gas,
and only during Covid and in a crowd
put on a mask - insofar as spectacles
and hearing-aids and claustrophobia allowed.
But I have hardly ever had a chest-cold,
let alone asthma, emphysema or bronchitis.
Most old people die of pneumonia.
I'll probably die of pudibonditis
turning me into unpleasant
human detritus.
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