no laughing matter

I’ve no idea what this is when I first come across it - apart from yet more rubbish dumped outside the Train Shed.  

Dan - who’s staying with us until he returns to India - identifies these canisters as Nitrous Oxide, otherwise known as ‘hippy crack’.   Or laughing gas, to those of my age.

The term laughing gas, was coined by Sir Humphry Davy (he of the safety lamp) who noted the effect it had on people when inhaled.  He began inviting his friends round to sniff the gas from oiled silk bags and in doing so started a craze for ‘laughing gas parties’. 

"The nitrous oxyd [sic] was inhaled by a gentleman who after laughing sprung up in the air to the astonishing height of six feet from the ground," wrote a correspondent in the Times in 1819.

So nothing new then - apart from the mess.