The Needle and the Damage Done

I’ve been trying to give up smoking recently. First I tried the cold turkey approach, but the mayonnaise was making me fat. Next my agent, Bernie Shimshelwitz, booked me a course of acupuncture at the ‘A Friend In Knead’ massage and beauty parlour. I’d been there before for a head massage (see here) so I wasn’t expecting much. Just as well cos when Mr Bleedin’ Miagi had finished with me I looked like that geezer from Hellraiser. He left a pin sticking out from behind my ear the idea being that, every time I fancied a smoke, I was to give it a tweak and the craving would be replaced by a feeling of calm and fulfilment. Not quite what I experienced when, on my moped on the way home from the first session, I sneezed into my crash helmet and stabbed myself in the jaw at the same time, which sent me skidding, knee-cap first, into a belisha beacon. Once I’d scraped my Honda C50 off the zebra crossing I hobbled straight into Fourbuoys for 10 Camel Lights.
Bernie’s next trick was to sneak up on me while I dozed in my hospital bed and cover me in those nicotine elastoplast things. He calls them my acupuncture repair kit. His heart’s in the right place I s’pose.