I wouldn’t mind if the purpose of waking before birds’ chirping time was to get stuff done or go to work. It isn’t; the buzzer goes off, there’s shuffling and mumbling before the object moves downstairs to watch recorded programmes about back gardens. I’m not being euphemistic.

Fighting pillows becomes a losing battle and, in the end, I reach out to stick on the radio and tug on some GVC. I used to hate Grants. That was before I grew to like it…which came shortly before I made the decision that if the opportunity presented itself I’d skip the atty and simply mainline the stuff. I’m not addicted to vaping; I could (as Zammo might have said in Grange Hill) give it up anytime. But not Grants Vanilla Custard. I have a nasty feeling that if I ran low I might indulge in robbery to sustain my fix. Or prostitution. I’m prepared to keep my options open.

But downstairs there’s something important happening in a front garden. Or maybe there’s a new type of accident that no one in Casualty has ever seen before, certainly not at half five in the morning. I’m expecting today, the vendor’s website says so on the tablet. It’s time to wave a white flag and get up, coffee beckons.

Stairs are a wonderful invention. Stairs allow you to go up, and then you can use them to go down.  You can even use them as a makeshift storage unit for all of the things you can be bothered to put in your room because your life as a child is simply too damn busy. At this point stairs help you go down far faster than you could have previously envisaged going at 5:45am.

Nursing a throbbing toe, a coffee and an intense hatred of Alan Titchmarsh – I sulk. I sulk because more bad things have happened in the space of sixty minutes than I’d have hoped would enter the entire day sprawling in front of me. Mainly, I sulk because 6am has only recently featured in my sphere of reference and Alan bloody Titchmarsh is talking about something I couldn’t develop an interest in if my kids’ lives depended on it. But their lives don’t depend on it; they depend on whether or not they leave something on the stairs again.

I draw deep on the GVC-fuelled Squape. I draw deep and blot out humanity through the medium of more coffee until almost 7am. It’s at this point in the morning that two little people, who aren’t so little anymore, join us. Two not-so-little people moaning, two dogs barking and a partner panicking they’re now late because time has been frittered.

Satre said: “Hell is other people.” What he didn’t know is that they live in my house while Breakfast TV drones. Dante needs to add my pre-7:45am lounge to one of his levels, somewhere between fornicators and liars.

And then the door clicks and it’s done and it’s over. Heaven. Just me and you, Squapey. Me, you and a bottle of GVC to us through the next threeish hours until Posty rings twice. And Posty is going to ring because the vendor’s website said so on my tablet. Posty will ring and I’ll answer like it’s my birthday because he’ll be carrying a parcel containing a new atomiser. You take your pleasures in life where you can find them and we know the unbridled excitement of receiving an expected envelope with kit in it. Boy do we know that joy.

Time ebbs then Dog#2 barks. Dog#2 barks at everything that might be coming near the house but the thing he loves most is Posty. Loves as in ‘hates with a passion based on no logical motive whatsoever.’ The fury in his woof is my cue: it’s the signal to ride the flotsam and jetsam on the stairs as I try to break land speed records covering the distance to the front door.

And there it is.

No ring, no knock, no vapemail – just a letter. A miserable letter. A miserable excuse for a letter wrapped in the brown paper of doom. I draw deep on the GVC-fuelled Squape. I draw deep and resist the urge to kick Dog#2.

Kipling once wrote: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster – and treat those two impostors just the same…” Kipling was probably proud of that. He was probably as proud of it as the self-congratulatory business managers who quote it during training seminars. I’m going to hazard a guess that Kipling never waited for vapemail.

This post is aimed squarely at those out there with an appendage: the vapers who grip their little Red Rods, the 18350 owners amongst us, the folks who resolutely claim that they are happy clutching their small mods. Why? Because vaping advocates are really missing out on dictating an important message to every representative of Homo erectus walking on the face of the planet, every single member.

From one-eyed cave dwellers and butchers slapping their salami on counters to allotment owners pulling their rhubarb – Time Magazine carried a throbbing story, unearthing a rich vein of information. It’s a hammered home by The Guardian and Men’s Health too:

Male vapers have bigger, harder penises than smokers.

The articles rely on information gained by a study carried out by VA Boston Healthcare System in 2011, where they found: “that men who successfully kicked cigarettes had thicker, more rigid erections and reached maximal arousal five times faster than smokers.”

According to the National Male Medical Clinics: “Cigarettes clog the heart’s arteries, including those that fill the penis with blood during erections. The toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke can damage blood vessels that may lead to erectile dysfunction.”

Doctor Lydia Bazzano, Tulane University Health Sciences Centre, is quoted as saying: “There is a fairly strong body of data that link smoking as a major risk factor for erectile dysfunction.” Recent research has demonstrated that the bulk of toxins present in cigarette smoke simply aren’t present in vapour.

Men’s Health reported that researchers at the University of Kentucky discovered: “that when asked to rate their sex lives on a scale of one to 10, men who smoked averaged about a five””a far cry from non-smokers, who rated theirs at nine.”

So, gentlemen, maybe the next time you’re sent out to vape in a smoking shelter you may wish to offer the others there a tug on your big, firm 26650 device.

As you might be aware, we purchased 30,000 metres of top grade Ti wire and the full three kilometres of it is still lurking underneath a pile of jumpers and spare Christmas wrapping paper. Despite providing a cleaner vape to Kanthal we felt it prudent not to sell it due to its combustibility on the mods available at the time.

With the number of temperature controlled devices now out in the marketplace we have seen that the proclivity for titanium to burst into flames has been greatly reduced. Despite this positive result we strongly caution against using titanium as a standard resistance wire – it is unsuitable for dry burning and poses a risk when over-heated.

It is springier to work with than tempered Ni200 but we are pleased to see that the development of temperature-controlled boards appears to have facilitated a way of using this wire in a safer manner. Also, annealed titanium has entered the market and appears to be much easier to work with. Titanium wire also appears to be less prone to oxidation than alternatives due to the low oxygen content of the metal, which may well prove to be a positive in the long run.

We should point out that we are not trying to instil a sense of fear; we see it as our duty as responsible vendors of vaping accessories to act responsibly and keep our customers informed. We welcome exciting advances in vaping technology and are proud to have been part of some of them.

Manufacturers of boards utilising titanium wire assure us that it is safe for use and we’re happy to trust them to bear the responsibility of that statement. Our concern remains that vapers should not be tempted to use titanium wire coils in mods not designed precisely for the purpose of using it.

Update 9 July 2015: Customer demand has been overwhelming for titanium wire to use with dedicated devices so we have sourced what we believe to be the best quality Ti on the market for this purpose. It will go on sale here when in stock.

While we can only speculate upon the motivations behind such an action, we promise that we will still strive to provide the best service and offer support through a number of online points of interaction.

Our physical address and contact number are listed on both the stealthvape.co.uk site and our new rebuildablesupplies.com online store. Our Facebook page (facebook.com/StealthvapeUK) is updated frequently and we guarantee to respond to personal messages. We are active on Planet of the Vapes too, our vendor section can be found here. If you wish to draw our attention to a question or problem please make sure you tag us by using writing @stealthvape in the post.

Within the next couple of weeks we aim to have a RebuildableSupplies.com Twitter account open (and hope that it remains so). We will be using it to advise users of that social networking service of offers and new products as well as any other site updates.

The owner (of what once used to be a thriving coffee shop, before they banned caffeine because it posed serious risks to public order) ushered Old Man Dorn through a cellar trap door. Gary flew into a chair and attempted to affect the pose of a man who enjoyed sitting in a dusty room sipping lukewarm, flavourless liquids.

The Vape Resistance never claimed to be one of the most interesting of underground resistance movements; The Petrolheads had sweet matching jackets, everybody connected to the Loud Sound Squad referred to each other as Lemmys and even The League of Potato Lovers had badges shaped like one of the old McDonalds fries. The VR had one seriously old Kraken clone atomiser that they had to share between all seventeen of them. Hiding out and sharing any scraps that could be pressed into service as a wick they would take turns inhaling vapour that made the old Crab Juice seem exotic.

Life had changed so much since the Cameron Act of 2016. Gone were the freedoms to congregate in groups of more than 2 and the ability to buy alcohol unless it was a £970 bottle of Krug champagne. In fact anything deemed posing a potential risk to the public good was now banned while the inventive and reluctant were forced to find ways to exercise free will under the radar.

The thud of boot meeting door fused with the crash of door hitting wall. The blackened PH paras clutched departmental clipboards in a menacing fashion as they flooded the space. One, the fat one at the back with McKee embroidered on his full left breast, produced the only noticeable sound as he repeatedly clicked his biro.

“What was I thinking?” contemplated Gary as a bead rolled down the arch of his nose. “All those times, all those warnings.” His mind swam with visions of ranting men and angry women chastising him on YouTube for his lack of gumption to protest back in the day. The first time he knew something serious was taking place was after the ECITA and Nicotine Alliance offices had been raided and all the gobby vapers had been placed into internment camps for re-education. “Why didn’t we all stand together?”

For sure, he’d found most of them tediously annoying, but he always reckoned he’d be OK. “They can’t stop me from using my own kit,” he smugly exclaimed at the fresh fish counter in Asda before exhaling a plume the size of Kent. Gary was in denial about many things; he didn’t believe in global warming, held no store in the fears spread by the media and never used the indicators in his long-gone car. He didn’t feel so clever now.

Using the biro as an extension of his digit, McKee prodded the proprietor in the ribs. If a weasel could speak it would have found its soul mate in this man as he demanded to see certifications for the water quality being vended on site. In truth, Old Man Dorn couldn’t have sneezed at a worse time.

Just about managing to squeeze into the passenger seat of the electric riot van, McKee made the call. “I found them, Sir. I found them all – vaping is dead in this country.”

By ‘say‘ I mean ‘shout‘, Brian was given to expressing every thought through the medium of barely concealed hatred of the world. Grammar school boys had clearly not been kind to him through the years. When not spitting contempt for our collective sins he was tasked with our class-based religious education. Line by line we worked our way through the bible, across five years, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21. Well-meaning questions in the beginning became honed opportunities to raise a laugh and drive the Reverend into frenzy.

Brian didn’t teach; it was all or nothing proselytising. He expected his charges to be empty, willing and unquestioning vessels that he could pour instruction into. Failing that he expected them not to run or tell tales when he (frequently) beat and kicked anyone he felt was not taking the word of Brian seriously enough. Bruises would heal but the memories of the raucous laughter as he failed to understand irony live forever.

As vapers we are confronted by quandaries regarding proselytising on a number of fronts: whether or not to sing the praises of vaping to smokers, if we should advocate our position on sub-ohms & battery stuff and then there’s the whole political thing. If there’s one concept I took from the years of Brian’s bellows it’s that going head-on with a person about something invariably fails.

I’ve been struck by the number of disparaging comments about vapers I’ve seen or heard recently from smokers. A number of them don’t seem to like us. They don’t like us a lot. I always considered that I avoided all conversation on the topic of vaping unless it was bought up elsewhere. And then I caught myself offering a custard-loaded Squape to a smoker in a manner that shocked me. “Go on, vape it!” I extolled to the poor woman expectantly; withdrawing the gift the second the words dropped from my mouth and I realised the magnitude of arse that I was being. I lived to vape another day and no drinks were spilled but it has given me pause for thought.

Meanwhile, on a forum, the weekly debate over subohms has kicked off again and left me wondering why any of us care what others do? I’ve not once seen a person standing by the foot of a stage and hollering at Lemmy Kilmister, demanding Motörhead turn it down a bit. The volume they play at can damage hearing and might lead to stringent sound legislation thereby curtailing everyone’s fun…and yet no one seems to be bothered. But it seems to be impossible for some vapers to not lambast others because ‘it can reflect badly on all of us if something goes wrong’.

And then there are the campaigners; and a subset that holds fervour for their actions that borders on the fundamentalist. I’ve signed some petitions but nothing to the level to say I’m actively politicking, mainly because I have a fatalist view of what is occurring – but then this is my choice. What they, you and I all choose to do is just that, and isn’t the concept of ‘choice’ what harm reduction is all about?

I don’t fish or spend my time recreating meals from Come Dine With Me; I wonder if people who do those and other pastimes proselytise? “Go on, hold my rod! Try it! Go on, try it! Fishing is bloody brilliant!”

A by-product of the liberation of Afghanistan has been spiralling opiate use. From the 2009 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Drug Survey, the four-year period witnessed a rise of 53% in opium use and 140% in heroin. This isn’t an attempt to make a simplistic direct correlation linking freedom from decades of war to drug abuse; I include this simply as an example that by attempting to solve a problem another has grown in its place. Whether caused by or opening the opportunity for, Aristotle told us “horror vacui” – nature abhors a vacuum.

Every Christmas brings with it a renewed push to eradicate drink driving from the roads. Almost universally supported, but the act of being drunk and in charge of something has been an age-old problem. In 1872 you could be prosecuted for being drunk in charge of a horse-drawn carriage, cow or steam engine – and yet as recently as 2009 a man was prosecuted for riding a horse while intoxicated while another ran a red light, inebriated, riding a pony trap in 2014. Strict legislation neither prevents nor alters the behaviours; education and a sense of freedom to make choices does. Banning or taxing vaping will achieve nothing but resentment and non-compliance in the same way that a teacher punishing the whole class for the actions of one errant child does.

Under the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847 a person could be fined up to £1,000 for hanging out washing or even flying a kite in the street. Having rid society of such menaces it is now possible to wander any town or city centre on a Friday evening without being disrupted by anti-social behaviour. In the same way that preventing the public beating of carpets didn’t cause drunken yobs to fight a century and a half later, actions and behaviours were replaced for people in high office to continue being concerned about.

In Management Control Systems by Merchant & Van der Stede, in relation to employees, they write that it’s impossible for individuals to enjoy following a strict set of guidelines for a prolonged period of time…they rebel. Merchant and Stede caution that people will fake report figures, call in sick, slack off or demonstrate any number of undesirable behaviours. If employees see what they are being asked to do as out of their control, not meaningful to them or simply unfair they will subvert their outcome.

Their ‘employees’ are analogous for the general public. If public health officials and politicians place strict mandates on vaping then it will be met with large-scale non-compliance because it is devoid of logic, unjust and seeks to control our free will. Like sourcing Snus from Sweden, markets outside of the EU will flourish for mods and juice. Global eMarkets will fill the voids created by insensitive and ill-considered legislation.

There are few whose lives have not been touched by cancer and yet alcohol (which causes 1,008,850 hospital admissions and costs the NHS over £3.5billion a year) doesn’t face the same controls that are heading towards vaping. Imagine the outcry if we were to be told that beer was to be limited to 3.6% and only sold in 100ml child-proof/drip-free bottles.

And no one mentions dementia and Alzheimer’s, the biggest killer of women and fifth largest killer of men in England and Wales. There seems to be a huge disparity and unfairness in the attacking of vaping, targeted as a result of dogma and vested interests, wholly disproportionate to the threat it poses to the population.

I strongly suspect that even if electronic cigarettes are forced out of the national consciousness it won’t free up many hours for public health officials – they will seek out new monsters to battle. A new war to be fought will rise up in its place, probably of equal or less threat to the fabric of society as vaping is.

My postmodern nihilism leads me to pose a further question: to what extent does Karr’s maxim, from the satirical Les Guêpes, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” hold true for our use of nicotine? To paraphrase: the more legislators attempt to change things for us the more they will stay the same. Afghans will remain at risk, cows will still have the occasional drunk owner and people wishing to use nicotine will still find a way to do so.

I understand the reasoning to try to improve the public health but surely that should only be if those members of the public want it improved and their actions pose a clear danger to themselves or others? The data doesn’t support legislation or taxation and, until it does, the de facto position cannot be to assume threat.

All I do know for certain is this: If they remove my liquids from me I’ll be buying an awesome kite and heading for the M1, and to Hell with the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847.

The feeling of anticipation doesn’t lie in the train-spotter experience; it’s been a while since I’ve found looking at other people’s mods and attys remotely interesting. The joy of the Internet is not reserved to hunting out saucy pictures of cartoon ponies or shooting tanks – even if that is its main purpose – but online forums have an ability to suck likeminded folk together.

I’ve been fortunate to meet a collection of weird oddballs online that, if society had any sense, would be shunned by right-minded thinking folk. Weird oddballs who are right up my street and make me laugh – something BBC’s coma-inducing Miranda can only dream of. Of course, if you’ve been vaping for a while and using forums you’ll already know this: Vapers be like nice. In the main.

I’ve got juices that didn’t shine for me bagged up to give away, there’s a box with bits I sold all ready to be handed over to the new owner and now the slog comes…

To begin with each meet up necessitated that I take along my entire vape kit. I’ve no idea why, but I’d take bags full of wick, wire, juice and kit as if I had to prove I could coil to exactly one ohm after seven pints. This is a mistake – do not do it. Ever.

Each and every meet after this would see people thrusting all manner of atomisers at me. This went on for so long at the last one I barely had time to drink and could totally remember my name at last orders. My tip to the noob is this: pretend you are absolutely abysmal at everything; imagine you are vaping’s equivalent of Nicholas Cage, keen to do everything but unable to do anything in a convincing fashion. The less people rely on you to fix a short means you have more time for your quest to attain alcohol poisoning and your pub grub won’t get cold.

So my problem is this: I’m not taking anything other than a few tanks and a couple of mods. I need to plan ahead of time in order to predict what flavours I’ll be vaping over the course of 48 hours away from home. I have no concept of what type of curry I’ll be eating on Friday night, the chance of me successfully predicting what my vape whim will be on Sunday morning is non-existent.

And then there’s the battery issue: How come I find it impossible to leave home without taking the contents of Torchy’s ebay store with me? This is going one way, an ITV sitcom way because despite previous mistakes I know I’m going to end up repeating them again. Oh sod it – the wire can go in too.

The vape bag is empty but in an hour or so it’ll be bulging again. And come Sunday morning my head will be foggier than the pub was. And I’ll want to do it all over again.

Go to a vape meet.

I’ve been riding motorbikes since I was legally able to. In many ways I feel the same way about bikes as I do vaping given the liberating experience they offer. Maybe liberating isn’t the best word? I ought to buy a load and post them to Tibet to see if it helps remove the Chinese. Defeated by your own atomisers, that would suck.

Perhaps that’s why the Subkangerlantis doesn’t come with instructions on how to use it safely? The Chinese know the sense of relaxation and joy that freedom from smoking offers, perhaps they understood the power of a sub ohm tank went far beyond the ability to chuck clouds in front of Wolf Hall to improve the viewing pleasure? Today your coils, tomorrow the world.

Bikes are ace. Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance missed the boat on metaphysics. Sure, some people love to get involved in the workings of the engine but it’s the focus on the road that empties the mind. It’s an emptiness that induces a tranquillity of being; smoothly flowing from corner to corner while the skin sense changing temperatures and the nose is flooded with smells.

I find a slow vape the same – none of the immediacy of sub ohm clouds flooding the room but a gradual cyclical vape sending spirals of vapour curling and dancing airborne. Focussing on breathing, the flavours and the heated fog on my tongue is beautifully cathartic.

It’s why I don’t understand race reps. I don’t get motorbikes covered in plastic replete with their dayglo power rangers. I don’t understand the need to turn the B6047 from a road to bliss into an extension of Donnington race circuit. The residents of Great Dalby don’t understand either. They don’t know why every sunny Sunday brings the sound of baffle-free exhaust pipes expressing the rage of an engine hitting the red line limiter.

The B6047, like a whole number of roads around the country, is now covered in road signs telling bikers how many other bikers have died on it this year. I’m sure someone somewhere thought this was a great plan to reduce road casualties – in the same way they invented Take Me Out to put folks off having sex with stupid people – but it hardly seems to be working.

I’m certain danger perception just doesn’t get communicated through a sign or someone moaning on about it. If it did smokers wouldn’t have bought Death cigarettes. I feel it comes from experience, that the closer you get to the limit the more you appreciate the stuff on the safer side. Not just that but the knowledge accrued from experience.

I can service an engine like I can build an atomiser head, the months spent pawing Evods into life and coaxing mesh wicks away from the bright side developed an appreciation for the beauty of it: Pirsig’s gestalt, the coexistence of rationality and being in the moment.

Now, with Direct Access, middle-aged men can leap straight onto a Honda Fireplace and go at twice the legal limit. China has given the world direct access vaping: within 2minutes of taking up ecigs people desire a 0.000001ohm coil and a cloud the size of Luxembourg.

I don’t understand it but can I decry it? Nope. I’m too busy constructing Zen & the Art of Mechanical Mods.