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Confessions of a Middle Aged English Hashish Eater
The Word on the Streets
Don't Smoke
Atheist Prayer
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Who Cares What Jesus Would Do?
Theocracy? No Thanks
Atheism and Marriage
Religious indoctrination is child abuse
First Against The Wall When the Revolution Comes
Smoking has been banned in all publicly accessible buildings in England now for several months. Is it a year yet? I’m not sure, it isn’t that much of an issue for me.
I have never been one to go to pubs very often so I was not expecting my habits to change dramatically after the ban but in these past few months on the occasions I have been to pubs I have noticed a huge change. I have been able to sit and enjoy a meal in a pub and be comfortable at all times. It has been remarkable, a massive improvement in the quality of the undertaking. The entire experience is better because I am not put in a filthy mood by contending with foul air and the inevitable looking around to see the smug self-satisfied culprits.
For decade smokers have been imposing themselves on their friends and the people who want their business. There was the arrogant assumption that of course you wouldn’t mind them smoking, why would you? Only nutters hate smoke, Hitler hated smoke, you remind me of him. If you want their business you have to put up with their smoking and claim not to be bothered by it or else they would go elsewhere. Pubs and restaurants have had to redecorate on a cycle two or three times more regularly than shops, offices and the homes of non-smokers and still they have had to smile as they polished the ashtrays. No of course we don’t mind if you smoke, we’re just happy to have you here at all sir, and my tongue’s just a-slatherin’ to lick the ash off your boots sir.
It is wrong for non-smokers to have to positively assert their rights not to be polluted by smoke. It is wrong for smokers to believe that they have the right by default to smoke anywhere they want to. Smoking is not an issue of personal rights for the smoker, there is a right to be able to breathe without being assaulted by powerful fumes. The effort to show that second hand smoke is damaging to the health is a red herring, that has never been an issue for me, the point is that smoke-filled air is unpleasant to be in and the annoyance factor is multiplied many times over by the thought that the nuisance is being inflicted by rude people. The supreme arrogance that really makes me boil over is the thought that the smokers don’t care that they are annoying me and would smirk as they told me so.
When I was young I used to watch Doctor Who. There was a particular series that really scared me. There were spiders on it. The spiders were huge and they jumped onto your back and then turned invisible and infiltrated your thoughts. It was a terrifying idea that anybody you come across could be controlled by an alien invisible force violating their thought processes and taking over their entire personality. Smokers, that’s you. The addiction to smoking changes people and not for the better. It controls them. It tells them when to stop work and who their friends are.
Not every restriction on the freedom of action of an individual is significant. We are constantly kept in line by restrictions, the vast majority of which don’t cause us any distress at all and we hardly notice. People can still smoke, people can still go and spend times with their friends and smoke. People can still go and spend time with friends and drink and smoke. The freedom smokers have lost is the freedom to fill up rooms in publicly accessible buildings with smoke because that is a freedom which people should not have.
You haven’t been able to smoke in cinemas for years, not because it was illegal but because there was nothing in it for the cinemas. Cleaning up after smokers and replacing seats and carpets used to cost a fortune and there was no way they could have recouped this cost by selling over-priced cigarettes. When almost everybody smoked cinemas allowed it and did their best to recover some of the costs by selling cigarettes right there in the aisles, but they could not get away with the premiums cinemas like to charge for drinks and popcorn. When people began to give up smoking in large numbers the number of customers who bought cigarettes went down and the number of people who felt uncomfortable around smoke went up. I can’t remember ever being in a cinema that allowed smoking, although I do remember banging my knees against ashtrays.
I remember a few months ago, just before the smoking ban, being in the big cinema complex in East Didsbury. Of course all the cinemas in the multiplex were non-smoking as were the main foyers where you queued up and the areas near the shops. But there was one small part of the vast atrium where smoking was allowed, and there was one man there with a pipe. I don’t know how many thousands of cubic metres of air there was in that place but he was doing his best to pollute them all, and I could smell him from over sixty metres away and I gave him one of my Paddington hard stares.
The big problem now with smokers is the smokers gauntlet in front of every pub door. Why do pubs put up with it? Their least attractive customers, the ones they would least like to be associated with, the old and haggard, careworn, prematurely aged and disproportionately lower class crowd are all gathered around the front door forming an unwelcoming committee. Five full sets of teeth among the nine of them, four if you don’t count dentures. If the pub was to do a promotional photo-shoot these are the people the photographer would do his best to put at the back or accidentally crop off the edges. They are not only making themselves visible they are barricading the entrance. To get into the pub you would have to walk sideways between two smokers, one in front, one behind. The one you face smiles nervously and smoke spills out of his mouth from a range too close to focus your eyes as he makes an inane pleasantry, his mate behind you (whose only common interest is a shared addiction) laughs at the non-joke and sends smoke fumes through your hair and down your collar. What’s the point of having a smoke-free pub if there a barricade of smokers in front of the place? You don’t need a black belt in feng shui to know that if you’re going to have smokers huddled around a door it should ideally be a spare door, one that leads to a space that only smokers would ever want to use, a small corner of addiction and misery not visible from the entrance.
A related doorway issue is bikes. Last night I went past a shop with three abandoned bikes lying flat in a semicircle around the front door. Could there be anything more likely to make people want to go away than a huge sign that says in this shop is a minimum of three inconsiderate young men who think they're too hard to get their bikes nicked, you might run into them as you walk in, if you were mad enough not to walk past. If you wanted to design a trap to trip up infirm and partially sighted pedestrians a bicycle balanced on its pedals sprawled across a doorway with one wheel still spinning would be an excellent prototype. The solution to this issue is a large notice on the shop doorway saying “Second Hand Cycles for Africa: Donation Point. Thank you for your generous gifts.”
Shopkeepers, especially newsagents really need to understand that standing in the doorway at the front door of the shop is not doing them any favours and if they are smoking the negative effect is a hundred times worse. Stand clear of the doors and let the public come in. Keep the doorways wide and free of any restrictions. The only reason to have people stood by a door is to charge admission or to deter trouble makers.
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