A smoke without fire

SO THERE we were, 31,000 feet above central Europe in the belly of the great silver bird with its beak pointing at Sofia, when an odd thing happened: the woman beside me lit up a cigarette.

Odder still, nobody complained, least of all the cabin crew from whom, after all, she had just bought her supply and who now looked on approvingly as she took her first satisfying puff. And, unless I lost something in translation, my understanding, after a brief, bemused conversation about this strange event, was that the captain was also merrily puffing away up in the cockpit.

Before the nannies all start agitating to have Bulgarian Air shot of the sky, I should perhaps explain that my fellow traveller was breaking no law on our strictly no-smoking flight, because what she was happily sucking on was something called an “electronic cigarette.”