So, we have been on the hunt for eliquid market niches where the Stealthvape brand could stand proud and strong. Befitting our tradition for breaking new ground and pushing the vape envelope, we believe we struck gold – and that you will be incredibly excited by the results too.

We’ve all listened to the nonsense about juice being targeted at children. Baseless allegations each and every one but, hang on we thought, it would make a great range. Welcome then: Stealthvape’s Junior Juice! The family that vapes together does something else together. We haven’t thought through that tagline properly as we were too busy inventing all of the flavour profiles.

The Junior Juice range shares a base centred on a popular rusk. Suitable for ages 3 months+, your tiny toker can pick his or her favourite from Calpol Cooler, Mummy’s Mammary or (our personal ADV) Smelly Bear Blanket. Colour-coded bottles ensure that your cute cloudmaker gets all the stereotypical imprinting they need while also benefitting from specially designed teats, ideal for dripping.

“Hang on a minute, Stealthvape,” we hear you cry. “It’s all fine and dandy sorting the kids but we want in on this too!” Fear not. We are working on rapidly expanding the brand mix to target other (guaranteed not to offend) niches. We are just waiting for the final bottle designs to be returned from the drunk in the park we outsourced the work to.

Close to completion: The Stealthvape Speaklouder range. Old people don’t like tobacco or fruit – we all appreciate this – we plan on delivering exactly what pensioners do desire: Sparkling Sanatogen, Lovely Cod Liver Oil With Cloves and Brilliant Boiled Cabbbage set on top of a luscious base that hints of socks.

Women will be ecstatic to find out we are planning unique range just for them too. Everything comes with a taste of glitter and you get to pick from Daring Duckface, Lucious Lillettes or Tremendous Twerk.

Finally, and we hope to roll this out by Father’s Day at the latest, the Manly Man range for Men containing three more liquid options. All set against the cliff face of the great flavour of Brut you will be able to opt for the amazingly good Taste of Grit, Scent of Sport – or maybe you will settle for Traditional Fight…it’s like a town centre on late Friday night in your mouth.

So, we need to say ‘thank you’ to the Youtubers who provided the inspiration and motivation to bring this to fruition. Excited? We bet you are.

 

 

Sales

Some people labour under the misapprehension that selling is easy. All you need to do is claim you aren’t a one-trick pony (and that you have a whole field of ponies) because we’ve all seen The Apprentice. But it’s not simply a question of advertising something and then asking people if they’d like to buy it – no, that is ridiculously simplistic.

Go stand in a fast-food establishment. Go in, stand in the queue and wait until you only have one person to go before you get served. Think about how wonderful that burger or slab of deep-fried fish is going to taste. Imagine yourself slurping down the ice-cold fizzy drink loaded with more sugar than a Disney kids musical. Hmm, pretty fine living.

No. Because in front of you is that person who wandered in by mistake and struggles to remember their own name let alone what they wanted to order off the menu. One-minute life was all the ‘That’s How You Know‘ song and dance scene from Enchanted, now it’s the ‘waiting room‘ in Beetlejuice.

Because people invariably do not know what they want, we have employed Russell Grant and Mystic Meg to run the sales operations. Going forward, you won’t even need to visit the website. Russell and Meg will use all manner of scientifically proven divination techniques to work out what you probably don’t know you need and complete your order for you. All we need you to do is complete a direct debit mandate and we’ll simply take money from your account when we send you crates of things your life has been empty without.

Customer Service

Sometimes things go wrong. Not here, we never make mistakes, but maybe a football player is drunk on his riches and ploughs his Ferrari into the post van just because he can and laughs while he does it. So there’s your order languishing in a ditch and now covered in flammable liquids and steam – what to do?

The remedy is to contact our new Customer Service team with a long-standing record in delivering fast and efficient solutions from the hip. It is important that customers phoning up with gripes are treated in a polite, professional and courteous manner and that is why we felt Katie Hopkins and Deadpool were born to the role. Friendly, empathetic and welcoming – you can be assured that they will meet every circumstance with bonhomie and leave you with a smile.

Marketing

A great company needs great coverage in the media and a strong public likeability factor. We are that great company, so we have employed two people who know how to impress others and generated deep feelings of warmth and fondness. It was a tough ask to get both Kanye West and Bill Cosby onside but here they are ready to bring us all closer together. Welcome Kanye, welcome Bill.

Logistics

We know that football players and fast cars exist posing a clear and present danger to deliveries. Moving things from A to B isn’t as simple as asking one of your children to fetch a beer from the kitchen – it’s more like asking them to build a brewery and gift you a lifetime supply of pints of happiness.

Our fame preceded us so it was no problem getting the experts to come on board and join us on our journey into the future. Nobody knows more about logistics than Scotty from Star Trek and Thomas the Tank Engine. And we even persuaded John Candy’s family to allow us to exhume him and prop him in the corner of the office – strictly in his Planes Trains & Automobiles role. Rest assured, if there’s any hint of Uncle Buck we will be interring him again.

2016 – the year Stealthvape delivered you the same brilliance but now with added fantastic. No need to say ‘thank you’, it’s what we do.

 

 

Anyway, the first question on your lips is likely to be, “Why?” It’s very simple: before this morning, when we were slumped over a coffee and nursing the mother of all hangovers, nothing called The National Union of Apathetic Vapers existed. That ought to be a damn fine reason to set it up, we reasoned. Are you excited yet? In all probability, no. But don’t let that put you off; you haven’t heard all of the great things we can offer in return for a very affordable monthly direct debit yet.

For a starter, there are all of the wonders you will receive as a new member. Each new application will be treated as fast as we can be bothered to get around to. Normally we’d say within a couple of days or something – but it really depends if there’s a decent new series worth watching on Netflix. At some point you’ll get a pack containing a hand drawn membership card bearing an artist’s impression of what she thinks you might look like. Keep this safe; you may need it to vote at the annual general meeting. That’s if we get around to organising one, there’s literally tons of stuff to do to arrange them. Of course, as an apathetic vaper you’ll be fully conversant with all the things that you can’t be bothered to do either and empathise with us. If we come across some other stuff we’re not using from the vape kit we might thrown those in your membership pack too.

So, what other benefits does being a NUAV member confer? Not much to be honest. You’ll be able to join our Facebook group (because they’re dead simple to set up). From there you’ll be able to download our amazing range of jpegs we copy-pasted from the Internet and maybe ones we made ourselves (that resemble the work of a toddler suffering from St. Vitus Dance).

Policies and campaign issues are an important aspect to The National Union of Apathetic Vapers. As in, we realise that apathetic vapers don’t want any policies or campaign issues. Joining us guarantees you that we will never ask you to stand outside a building in the cold to show people you vape. Not just that, we also pledge we will never ask you to sign a single petition or watch a video about the issues impacting on vaping.

In fact, the default option on the enrolment form is for you never to be contacted in any form whatsoever. No emails, no personal messages and no status updates clogging up you life – isn’t this what the two million, five hundred and ninety-five thousand of you have been calling out for? Damn straight. The National Union of Apathetic Vapers is just the organisation you’ve been waiting for so just look at our website for more details…when we’ve done one.

Thanks,

The National Union of Apathetic Vapers committee

 

 

Then the spirit of progress arrived in the form of bulldozers, diggers and men. But then progress is awesome when you’re 8 years-old and allowed to do anything during the summer. We gave little thought to the grass being churned or them razing the beautiful dovecot to the ground because for kids scaffolding is like cake to members of the Women’s Institute. Not just any scaffolding, this was 1970’s scaffolding. This was the kind that didn’t have an impenetrable fence surround or daft signs telling you to go away. Daft signs compelling you to go vandalise a bus shelter instead – and this would have been really stupid as we’d already done that.

A new road and identikit houses rose from the rubble and mud. The stream steadily filled with old cement bags and then the village shop shut down. Something was going wrong with the world. It was becoming a greyer place. Adulthood beckoned with a life devoid of milk floats, rural bus services and frequent power cuts. I didn’t have a concept that this would become a preamble for a tale on the UK’s leading vaping spares company’s website at the time. When it took place I didn’t care about the future.

So there it is, an event from my life that I’ve now despatched to the Internet like Peter Kay tale of yore, but lacking in humour and no mention of lamb bhuna. That’s because we didn’t have them; if we wanted to go all fancy food then it was lasagne or a Sodastream. Damn, now I’m just a couple of references to Juliet Bravo and Crackerjack away from a full-on Kay routine.

Sharing. It’s nice to share, it has to be true because that’s what children are told. We don’t lie to kids. Imagine the misery that would exist in a small person if they had to eat an entire packet of Haribos all by themself. No, little ones prefer to feel a warm glow of contentment as a parent removes a fistful. Sharing stories or sharing sweets, it matters not – the world adores being involved in our lives.

And that is why joy is unbridled when it comes to like and share competitions on Facebook. Not only do you get to see what competitions are running you can count how many of your friends have already entered by the email notifications of being tagged in them.

 

 

Death by Fire

Much has been made of li-ion batteries, which is a shame because they could be found in anything. It seems unfair that vaping has to share a danger with laptops, cellphones and torches. It might be better for current smokers to weigh up a more directly attributable issue.

So there you are happily making a new coil, gently threading in the wick and loading up with a juice that tastes so awesome it could have been made by angels. It’s something so enthralling that you utterly forget about the bread you placed into the toaster until the alarm shreds the focussed silence. Now you face one of two options: disable the fire alarm or ignore it, there are no alternatives. It doesn’t matter whether you opt for route one or two, either way it’s going to end up as an inferno and people being interviewed on television saying how you weren’t as bad as the others are making out.

Death by Ignorance

We all begin vaping without knowing everything, but then we get hooked into buying spares for our spares and within six months you need a shipping container for storage. Large collections mean a number of things: firstly, develop some good DIY skills. Shelves were made for books, picture frames and those things your sister-in-law gives you for Christmas.

A collapsing shelf is the least of the issues here. Collecting too many vape things leads to losing things. Not knowing where that reel of wire went leads to anger. Slipping on that reel (kindly placed on the stairs by a caring relative) results in a ten-foot slide, a trip to A&E and people being interviewed on television saying how you weren’t as bad as the others are making out.

Death by Groin

We were all smokers, the statistics say so. Those of us with decent hand-eye coordination also hold a driving licence. This means that a huge swathe of vapers have experienced the joy of a lit cigarette falling down between your legs while on the motorway. And it’s this experience, burned into the psyche and thighs everywhere, that stops us popping our mods between our legs when on the road.

And we can’t not vape as nothing says “I’m an awesome driver” more than someone peering through a windscreen surrounded by clouds. And because we don’t have anywhere decent to store a mod in the vehicle it teeters from where it was balanced, it shifts – it sends the drive-thru coffee groinwards. Against the backdrop of emergency lights, people are being interviewed on television saying how you were the kind of stupid that would Vote Trump.

Vaping isn’t safe, but then neither is living.

 

 

During 2015, he said, the NHS dealt with over 25,217 incidents directly related to the use of electronic cigarettes. The incidents included an unplanned pregnancy after a Miss Shona Tights confused her contraceptive pills with a starter kit, and a surprise sex change when Roberta Buttocks (formally known as Robert) mistakenly used a venting unregulated device.

Martin McPies, a leading British health campaigner, greeted news that the sale of all merchandise will be banned with delight. “It is overdue,” he said with a wide grin. “I have been demanding this kind of response ever since I heard of so-called ‘vaping’ last week.” McPies has dedicated his online life to outing the dangers faced by vapers. He spoke to us about the clear links between suppliers of eliquid and organised crime, that vaping has been proven to radicalise potential terrorists and that an ecig user said something nasty about him on Twitter.

We contacted the British Medical Council for their take on the subject. Professor Simon Cashback, qualified surgeon and part-time drag act, confirmed: “We’ve been researching the dangers of smoking for decades. Thanks to the billions of pounds we’ve received there is a clear understanding of how cigarettes ruin lives.” In a plea to ministers, he added: “We now need at least the same amount of money to spend on yachts and golf equipment so we can categorically link vaping to cigarettes.”

“For a start, they look the same,” Cashback stated. “They both look like strong, attractive penises – except this new type of death stick is made from metal. Other things made of metal include bombs, guns and Lemmy from Mötorhead. – and just look what happened to him! Plus, these e-cigarettes have metal bits on the top too, just imagine the carnage in maternity wards if women had metal nipples.” Powerful arguments with strong implications.

We put the points raised to Timothy Frothingatthemouth, freelance vaping advocate and full-time power-walking blogger. “It’s all about money,” explained Tim. “There are studies out there like the one showing a field of bunnies thrived when given access to mods and atomisers.” Although McPies for one questioned the methodology of the bunny research, Tim remains unfazed. “Not only did the buns demonstrate easier breathing while copulating, compared to when they used to smoke the fags researchers gave them, but they also improved their fine motor skills as a result of coil building.”

McPies replied to this point in an email: “Yes, but it then raises the question of what would happen if rabbits with keen hand-eye coordination were to find access to weapons of mass destruction. Can you tell me they wouldn’t kill everyone given the opportunity? That’s so-called vapers for you. That’s why the ban is justified.”

“Money and genitals. Genitals and money,” concluded Frothingatthemouth. “How can we ever move forward when politicians and public health experts are obsessed with money and genitals?”

 

 

With a deft sweep of his right hand he cleared space on the desk for his box of juices. Three drippers and a coil of wire failed to comply with the delicate operation and tumbled to the floor whereupon the coil of wire transformed itself into a piece of modern art. Jeremy hated art. Jeremy hated everything at the moment. He held a particular loathing for inanimate things that didn’t automatically guess where they should be and what they should be doing. He let out an exasperated sigh and growled as he bent down to collect the nest of metal.

“I mean, what the…” And silence punched him in the mouth. Like every other person who rightly believed that nothing in life was more important than vaping, Jeremy took great umbrage at the comment he’d just read on Twitter. He got annoyed when his old boss called his professionalism into question after he’d thrown a steak slice at a customer. For goodness sake, the customer deserved it seeing as they’d had the temerity to question its “Freshly Baked” status. He was incandescent when the traffic warden gave him a ticket. It’s not like the damn traffic was waiting for long and no one walks from the car park to the Post Office in the rain.

Life just didn’t run correctly for Jeremy. It was full of idiots but, worse, they were idiots who always thought the wrong things. Like his wife. Only yesterday they were travelling back up from Southampton and she took the M40 instead of continuing on the A34 to Northampton and joining the M1 there. He punched the dashboard and spat: “What’s the bloody point of building an excellent dual-carriageway if nobody is going to use it?” Northampton Roadchef does a good coffee too. Jeremy drank too much coffee.

Dripping some of Stealthvape’s new Ladybits eliquid onto the coil, his gaze returned to the monitor. Re-reading the thing that made him angry reminded him of how irate he was. It also caused him to forget to pay attention to the other thing he was in the process of doing – and juice flowed from the air holes. “Oh for the love of fu..!”

How the blinking flip could this person not be convinced by the efficacy of vaping? How could anybody not automatically discount anything negative published on the subject of electronic cigarettes? It was tantamount to The Internet calling him a moron. The last person to do that was the bloke in the petrol station to which Jeremy produced a gold-medal winning sulk.

The keyboard was attacked with fury. One hundred and forty characters of expletives questioned if the anonymous tweeter had an IQ over 75 and likened him or her to various parts of the human anatomy. Jeremy sat back. He felt as though the storm of emotions had passed. “Let that put you straight,” he spoke to no one. Jeremy knew that if this person had any kind of intelligence they’d take his abuse on board and question their entire position on the matter. He knew he’d just performed a great service to vapers everywhere. He mopped the side of the mod with some tissue and luxuriated in a deep inhale.

Then a notification message popped up.

 

Petition of the Year

Never before have so many been asked to sign so much so many times. The only petition we haven’t seen is a petition to stop petitions. Some of these have been very worthwhile – the Totally Wicked petition deserved all of our support to lend weight to their legal action. Likewise, Clive Bates’ petition attacking the TPD and the recent (and essential to sign it if you haven’t yet) 100K Campaign are highly commendable. But in a field of strong competition, we have to award the prize this year to the amazing Save Vaping petition – the only petition where you can invalidate your signature by obtaining a T-shirt saying you saved vaping. Here’s to Greenpeace giving away free petrol in cans labelled “I saved everyone from global warming”.

Shed of the Year

It’s very easy to be flippant about things but no one should underestimate the importance of a good backdrop for a YouTube video – it’s probably the most important thing in vaping. Some YouTubers think it is important to show you they live in a Comet showroom, others film their shows inside a cardboard box. Only one man has the perspicacity to use a shed. Sheds are part of the fibre of this country – if sheds aren’t celebrated then the terrorists win. Huzzah for Todd’s shed.

Idiot Move of the Year

It’s been a tight call in this category as so many have gone above and beyond in attempt to lift the title. Whether it has been politicians attempting to force through de facto bans or anti-ecig activists lying about research, we’ve been spoilt for options to exclaim “My word, what idiots!” As vaping has faced the strongest opposition around the world ever, some vape companies decided that they would attack…err…vapers and vape companies. For everyone who has sent out a Cease & Desist letter because they wanted to cover up the truth about their products – you are all joint winners.

Handbags of the Year

Handbags, as everyone knows, are even more important than sheds. Especially when the bag contains two bricks and a Cease & Desist letter. Following on from the last award: strange people run some companies. They seem to believe that the best way to win admirers and customers is to live their lives in Caps-loc. Five Pawns must get an honourable mention as runners-up for trying to obfuscate test results on their juice range – but it wasn’t good enough to win this year’s coveted prize. So step forward and collect you prize Fernando Solis of Hyon Mods. His spat that inspired two glorious videos from Vaping with Vic  made for great entertainment. Unfortunately, Mr Solis can’t be here with us tonight and so we would like to ask Vic to collect the jpg on his behalf.

Vapefest of the Year

It can be very difficult to out-do yourself when you have already attained a level of excellence. Like a man’s razor – surely they can’t manage to add one more blade and make it even better, and yet they do. Likewise, Vapefest continued to leap up to a whole new level this year. In fact, the only downside is the concern regarding if there can be one in 2016 given the latest pronouncements from the government. So, well done to Vapefest 2015, worthy winners and only candidates for the Vapefest award.

Forum Joke of the Year

The social media is a tricky place to navigate. The written word is cast adrift from the context given by visual cues and vocal inflection – what can appear like a light-hearted quip to the writer is suddenly interpreted as an insult on everything a reader holds dear. More words ensue; someone invokes Godwin’s Law and the sound of e-Tears fill the internetz. So, well done to everybody for posting a picture of Sting or Leslie Ash whenever the word Mod is used. We all appreciate you effort to be witty and you can feel proud of your contributions – but everyone who posted a picture of a tank can feel justly proud and have the use of the winners’ jpg for the whole of 2016.

Complaint of the Year

All vendors will have their own stories and we’ve heard many of them (we all talk to each other). Some customers have been concerned that their vendors haven’t anticipated the order and cycled it around to their house 15 minutes before the online transaction was made. Other customers have expressed disgust that vendors have the audacity to charge for postage. Our winner though goes to the Stealthvape customer who genuinely believed that we were profiteering to a disgusting level with our exclusive Oscillation Overthrusters.

For the record, we make a loss on every £125,000 sale.

Thing That We Can’t Talk About In Case It’s Used To Ban Vaping of the Year

Frequent mentions of XXXXXXXX or XXX XXXX XXXXXXXXXX are removed on social media so that some sections of forums end up resembling a redacted chemical weapons report. XXXXXXXX users must be wondering if the same response would happen if vape devices could be used for vaping XXXXXXX or enhancing a XXXXX. Aha, it seems like these are automatically censored too. 2015’s winner then is XXXXXXXXX.

Not-Vapefest of the Year

There is only one Vapefest but life is not like the Highlander film, there can be more than one. This year there were three more than one in the UK. That’s four, there were four vape events this year. In trying to work out which one would win this hotly contested category we had to appraise a number of qualities, like: Did they serve beer? Did the beer run out? And, how many bags of Freeshit™ was it possible to go home with? The process was more intensive than a school Ofsted inspection but ultimately hinged on one vital thing – did we manage to visit it? As such the Vape Expo UK beat off the other challengers to lift the top prize. Well done Vape Expo UK for being something we attended. Given our love of staying in bed all weekend this was no mean feat.

Forum of the Year

Some might think that a field of one is not expansive and barely reflects the excellent options out there. Some might think that but we encountered huge problems trying it another way. One minute we were debating “Best Forum”, the next we had spent seventeen hours locked inside Mumsnet. Fortunately the shopping needed doing and the break snapped us back to our senses. To time to watch Ash vs. The Evil Dead we renamed it the Forum (that we advertise on) of the Year award. Congratulations go to Planet Of The Vapes, we love advertising with you and really appreciate the Vendor of the Month award we won.

Ostrich of the Year

It takes skill and practice to make it appear as though you are listening to someone and yet at the same time imagining bunnies frolicking in meadows. Oh sure, most married couples do it to a semi-professional standard but it takes a politician’s effort to elevate it to full pro status. Lame Duck Drakeford sat through hours of submissions by experts telling him vaping is good, got the results of a Welsh government funded survey demonstrating that there’s no gateway effect – and yet still believes that a threat he can’t prove exists needs banning in case it appears in the future like the Rapture or a New Kids On The Block comeback tour. Feel free to use the jpg all year on your website, Mark, you earned it.

Stupid of the Year

This year there has been: Too. Much. Stupid.

The Californian Department for Public Health saying that there is such a thing as third-hand nicotine is still as duh as it was in January. Martin McKee (he really is a professor) telling folks that vaping can lead to cocaine addiction was a real head-stuck-in-railings moment. How about the ban on vaping in the great outdoors of North America? It probably renormalises Smoky the Bear or something. People continuing to use subohm tanks on hybrid mods or setting fire to their homes with dodgy chargers is now too commonplace to be even worth thinking about any longer. No, it has to be the UK government/Department of Health’s proposals for the implementation of the TPD. Any piece of regulation that stops vape companies advertising, that blocks forums and social media groups on Facebook and the like and restricts freedom of speech in public is abhorrently stupid – and that is why we encourage everybody to sign the 100K Campaign. The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP can collect his jpg when he promises to scrap the proposals.

Ban of the Year

Attempted bans don’t get a look in here – you tried, dear legislators, but you failed and fail to win the lovely jpg as a result. You failed in Wales and in California, leaving the award wide open to the authorities in New Jersey. The dullards who organised Vape Expo NJ thought the law wouldn’t apply to them – but it did. Vaping was banned…from a vape event. Will this happen in Britain next year? Promoters Andy Balogh and Don Miller will have to share the jpg with health Nazi Jay Elliot.

Vendor of the Year

It would be too easy to make Stealthvape the winner of this award. We were surprised exactly how easy – and awarded it to ourselves. There’s no rules prohibiting this kind of thing apparently, you’d have thought there would be a government department dedicated to the elimination of self-promotion…but then what would Peter Andre do with his days? Fear not, we created a 1^st equal winner. We could have come to our decision based on things such as type of products sold or customer service or any of a thousand other criteria. We didn’t. We chose Vape Geek because Nat is lovely and Rob has an awesome name. There should be more people called Rob. We could have called the award “Best Rob” but then there’d have been no 1^st equal.

Reviewer Who Looks Most Like A Puffin of the Year

We like puffins. Actually we love puffins and everything about them. We love their bills, their funny walks, the fact that that they are the only sea-based bird to run a publishing house and their name. Puffin. Use it instead of a swear word every time something goes wrong and you’ll have an instant smile back on your face. So when it was suggested that Damian Safer Vaper group Morter bore a passing resemblance to one we felt compelled to whip up a special award just for him.

Scopes of the Year

Keep your friends close, they say, and keep your enemies closer. It’s never made an awful lot of sense; personal space is essential. But then it’s important to keep your juice man exceptionally close – otherwise he’d never be able to fight his way through all the friends and enemies hanging around outside Stealthvape HQ. Scopes fits the bill. And for everyone who doesn’t live next-door to him, Scopes E-Liquid can also use the postal service to deliver fine juice.

Coolest Juice Maker of the Year

We don’t understand popular culture but think it’s important there are juice makers out there who are down with the kids. The hippest bloke in Vapeland knows what is happening from what is not happening – and all the cool people love techno goth, apparently. Many already appreciate that the translation of the Native American word Manabush into English is: “He who moves with dayglo dreads to a pumping beat”. No wonder then that Manabush receive as many letters asking for fashion tips as they do for juice orders.

Vape Accessory of the Year

Let’s be perfectly clear here, the beard is out. Last weekend, a man sat near us in a Nottingham pub. Many questions could have been posed but why anybody would intentionally make himself into a Gary Glitter tribute remains unexplained. As he tugged on his ecig you could imagine him humming one of his never-to-be-heard-again songs to himself. We don’t need that in vaping. The trouble with this award is that it’s related to fashion – and now I think about it there will always be a problem with whatever we award it to. It’s too late to scrub the thing now so let’s just say you can give it to whatever you think rocks. As long as it’s not a baseball cap. Donald Trump wears baseball caps. Please not a baseball cap.

Vaper of the Year

There can only be one winner here – you lot. It’s been a delight to supply you all with wicks, wires and rest all year, a delight and an honour. We’ve been blown away by the wonderful comments you’ve made to us and on the Internet. Whatever the future brings it has been a special year full of special people. You are special and we love you for it. The Stealthvape team want to wish you all a happy holiday and that 2016 brings you nothing but fantastic vapemail.

 

 

They said that about Nigel Pearson. He’s a bloke, for all but the three of you who know, who does stuff with football teams. What he does and who he did it for is irrelevant – but they said it when he was reappointed to a club he’d worked at before. It’ll all go wrong, they said. It’ll go wrong and we’ll all hate him and everything will be wrong with the world. Unfortunately they were wrong but they won’t remember that because they’ll only recall the times they were correct.

They said the girl who binned me on my 21^st birthday shouldn’t return to me. Now on this point I can fully understand the reasoning behind it seeing as I was an utter waste of space. But come back she did. Years of marriage and children later all of their objections to our partnership probably still hold true but it’s worked in a fashion.

But when it comes to vaping I hold no store in the adage. Revisiting past ways of vaping is brilliant for mixing up the experience. For sure there’s been the repetition of past failures but also the rediscovery of enjoyable ways to exhale vape.

There’s not an atomiser in the collection that doesn’t sport Kanthal again these days. Gone are the dalliances with temperature-controlled set-ups and the sojourn into stainless steel coils. As much as it was interesting to try out new ways of procuring a cloud I’ve returned to the ease of whipping up with wire that I can do blindfold. The thing is, for Kanthal, there was nothing wrong with it to begin with. After the initial learning process to eliminate hotspots or glowing legs it’s never missed a beat – and the vastly improved range of wire diameters makes it a doddle to wind for any desired outcome.

Maybe, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have bought another Maraxus. It seems so obvious now, but there was so much I didn’t like about using one it makes a nonsense of the decision to make a repeated purchase. Fortunately the same can’t be said for the Heron. Much loved by many, at one point in time two of them adorned mods on the shelf and were my daily tanks. I caught myself eyeing them again last week and was fortunate to get one on loan. It saved me the disappointment of trying to shift it on; it’s just too tight for me now.

Of course, that’s the benefit of going back to old kit – it reaffirms my belief that where I am with my current kit is exactly what I need. With the decline of the second-hand market purchases are fewer and the collection tends to remain shelf-bound rather than being moved on. It gives me pleasure to clean and use.

‘They’ might not like it, but I’m going to break out an 18350, coil to 1.2Ω and try out a 12mg tobacco-based liquid with a well-deserved Friday night beer tonight. It’s been a while.

 

 

Crouching on the rooftop, he reached inside his cape for the bottle in the utility belt. The contents were meticulously added to a wick while arching over the device to protect it from the torrential deluge. Everything held a reflective sheen, a steel aquatic shroud. The bottle returned to safe storage, he raised the copper tube to his mouth and inhaled.

The traffic rumble intertwined with the weather’s gentle white noise, the metropolitan soundscape offering a bleakness to compliment the view. A drab austerity that mirrored itself in Vapeman’s heart while clouds of peanut scented vegetable glycerin pearled out from the mouthpiece and upwards.

For what seemed like forever, Vapeman had fought for justice. He’d fought for values that he held as worthy: honesty, integrity and the need for a scientific peer-review process. When Carnage, Apocalypse and Venom had sent letters to the World Health Organisation or written articles for The Lancet, Vapeman took to Twitter with a righteous fury previously reserved only for people who jumped the lane-closing queues on motorways.

But what was it worth? What was the merit of the time spent in the secret hideout, the hours completing online petitions? There are no bad endings for superheroes. It’s a rule. Or something. No matter how bleak the outlook, there’s always “…and with one bound our hero was free”. Right? Vapeman knew his lore: no matter how one issue ends, no matter how the story arc is weaved, eventually right wins out. Right? Bad guys vanquished, friendships forged and order restored.

There’s that court case, the one people are clinging to. There’s that. Nothing else has worked so there has to be that. The clock has its hands at three minutes to midnight, Doomsday for juice. There has to be that. Another tug on the mouthpiece, another peel of vape curling and fighting with itself.

The wind picks up. It’s a bitter gust of pre-winter that carries the sheeting downpour off to an angle and sends pieces of loose paper on secret missions.

There’s something about despondency. That darkest of celluloid hours when the hero is on the verge of abdication and begins to embrace Paul Nystom’s malaise. The moment when it seems our protagonist will be subsumed by existential nihilism. It’s the cue for things to turn around. There’s that court case, the one people are clinging to? There’s that?

And it’s at this moment a sheet gets stuck to droplets on Vapeman’s boot. It’s the proposals for vape advertising in a post-TPD world. It’s not a good read – a bit like a column penned by Katie Hopkins, but serious. We don’t live in a world of heroes but like comic book characters, vaping could soon to be the stuff of myth and legend. It might be a decent time to have another chat with your local MP.