For the thousandth time, Norm reached for an imaginary pipe between his teeth. Like the phantom limb of an amputee, he longed to suck on it for a moment, to realize it was out, tap it on his heel, peer inside the bowl, pull out a penknife, scrape the bowl and tap it again before filling it with fresh tobacco and lighting it with the flame-thrower of a lighter he used to use.

But he had given up smoking.

After so many years of pleasure, of smoking to his heart's discontent, he had given it up at the tender age of seventy-one. The physical craving had been easy to deal with, and he could even cope with the pitfall of many a would-be ex-smoker – the beer with friends, the hard decision or moment of high stress. But what still got to him were the habits of the pipe. He missed all the little rituals, the minutiae of a smoker's life. Toughest of all, he couldn't even tell the old joke after a gurgling, death-rattle cough: “I've been smoking for fifty-five years and there's nothing wrong with my lungs.”

He did, he had to admit, feel far better for not smoking. A little extra weight, the colour back in his face instead of the tell-tale grey pallor, a lungful of clean air.