The art of buying cigarette cases. I bought a friend a cigarette case the other day, and he lost it a few hours later together with his bag in the back of a cab. (Taxi driver wisdom: "If someone steals your cab, it is not meant to be your cab.") So I bought him a different case to cheer him up. This time round, he held it up to scrutinise and I asked why. He said he wondered if it's air-tight. If not, the cigarettes will go stale. And that struck me as amusing, cos since I'm not a smoker, I didn't know enough to factor that in when selecting a cigarette case. I simply went with the one that looked best.

Perhaps a non air-tight cigarette case will be a better smoking deterent than nicotine patches?