I’M all for people stopping smoking.

Without being too much of a killjoy, it’s an awful habit, especially when smoking does not just affect the smoker, but everyone else around them.

I’m all for it being banned in public places, so that we non-smokers no longer have to run the gauntlet while walking into a coffee shop or a pub.

So I should, naturally, be positive about the alternatives to smoking. The e-cigarette industry has certainly picked up. Where there were boarded up shops in town centres before, they have reopened as e-cigarette stores.

Which is funny, because their product is quite small and they don’t actually need to have such large premises in the first place. They tend to fill the stores out with a sofa, just in case you need to sit and contemplate which flavour of e-cigarette you wish to purchase.

Because smoking is banned in many places, e-cigarettes must not look like cigarettes. Instead, they seem to take on the appearance of sonic screwdrivers from Doctor Who.

And, they are yet to make it look cool. When I was a student I bought a pack of 20 Marlboro because they looked cool, and I wandered around the nightclub with an unlit cigarette in my mouth in a bid to look smouldering and moody. Instead, I looked like an idiot who had lost his lighter.

But you can’t look cool with an e-cigarette. And until they work that out, it’s doomed to failure.

A DAY OFF THAT NOT EVEN LUCOZADE COULD FIX

THERE was a heartwarming story in the paper this week about a teenager who has not missed a day of school in more than a decade.

Darlington’s Joanne English has not skipped a day of education from reception, right up to Year 11.

Fair play to her. As well as her willingness to learn, you have to pay tribute to her immune system.

More than a decade without a sick day is some achievement. It’s certainly better than I have ever managed.

I wasn’t particularly sickly as a child, but I had my fair share of bugs, every one of which was cured by, seemingly, a bottle of Lucozade. Temperature? Lucozade. Fever? Lucozade. Running nose and sore throat? Always, always Lucozade.

But, anyway, back to not missing school. It reminds me of the time one of my friends at school was recognised for not missing a day in all of the five years we were there.

The presentation took place on the final day of school – on his first, and last-ever day off sick.

That is a level of irony that not even Alanis Morissette could comprehend.

The Northern Echo: LANDMARK: Darlington’s Covered Market and Clock Tower, which have just celebrated their 150th anniversary

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS.... OR NOT

DARLINGTON Council has been forced to perform an embarrassing u-turn after they ditched a 150-year tradition by switching off their clock tower bells and replacing them with a £6,000 PA system.

The decision was made after guests in a nearby hotel were complaining that the once-hourly chimes were keeping them awake through the night, so the new system was brought in so that, between 11pm and 8am, they could be silenced.

I can completely understand where the guests are coming from with this. Working in Darlington, I hear the bells throughout the day and if they were to stop, it would be no real tragedy.

Tradition is tradition. But change is also good. And, in the last couple of hundred years, there have been massive advances in technology. So you don’t need to hear an audible alert every time an hour passes.

Just look at your watch.

MY WEEK IN A TWEET