The Smoking Ban

We've had a smoking ban in all working environments and enclosed spaces in England now for almost 2 weeks, and I'm actully more pleased about it than I thought. Friends' smoking has never bothered me when we go out, (although I do get a bit maternal about a couple of my friends who are 'social smokers' and tell them off with glares...) but now the pubs are so much better without the clouds of smoke. You walk in and can see peoples faces clearly and your clothes stay smelling nice. The characteristic hazey pub atmosphere has been lost but the overall experience of going out is much more pleasant.

However, the way I see it, there is also a sense of ridicule hanging over the act of smoking now, which I find amusing probably because I'm a non-smoker. Workplaces now provide 'designated smoking areas', and at my workplace they look like childrens play pens, make-shift cubicles made out of concrete pots full of sand, and garden trellis! Proper smoking shelters are planned, but that just brings an image to mind of 13 year-old kids loitering in bus shelters, only they are academics and administrative staff.

I have lived right next to York Hospital for the past year and have to walk past every day if I want to go anywhere. When I leave for work at about 8:40am there are now whole line-ups of people leaning along the front wall of the hospital grounds having their cigarette break. For example, this morning the line-up included a three caretakers, a man and a woman in suits who I assume are consultants of some description, a man in motorbike leathers and a lady in a bright pink dressing gown who is obviously a patient.

Clearly, there is an irony about this situation, being a Hospital and all. I've seen people outside on the benches in pyjamas and dressing gowns who clearly should have quit smoking 30 years ago, with skin like old brown paper bags... STILL SMOKING... It's all topsy turvy and I find myself laughing at the weirdness of it all.

The world is full of bizarre truths and there is nothing more ironic than human nature. An Alice's quote for the day. Profound.

More anon