The cabbage-slop fag-ash odour replacement has made me angry. Photograph: Graham Turner
I wander through each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe ...
And the smell of cabbage.
I've just endured a smokeless evening in the Smoke and have to report that it was rather lacking in atmosphere - unless you count the newly pre-eminent fug of boiled potatoes, old cabbage, body odour and smugness that clung to the air as tenaciously as anything our dear departed nicotine could have wafted across. These are the default stenches that bided their time - waiting their turn to assault our olfactory senses, held at bay by the unifying blanket of curling, swirling tobacco smoke. Not that dissimilar to Iraq, perhaps? A bad situation held in check by a tyrant, swept away by outside forces in the belief that it would improve things ... An unforgivably trivializing metaphor, of course - I'm good at those - but, how is boozers smelling of cabbage, onions and Eternity by Calvin Klein a liberation? Didn't they send inspectors in to assess what pongs might rise up once the old guard was toppled?
Of course I see both sides of the argument. Public health, primary and secondary cancer of those undeserving (is anyone deserving?) people exposed to it in the workplace, and all manner of lung wheezing maladies, which could be avoidable with abstinence. By all means ban it in all enclosed public places - except pubs and clubs.
It feels very unnatural to walk past a pub - I could stop this sentence here - to see in through the windows a crystal clear, high-definition picture of germ-free adolescents quaffing sports lager by the teaspoon full, while outside, middle-aged roués and life's other charming detritus fight for pavement space with baby buggies, 94-geared mountain bikes and defecating dogs.
Mind you, the shiny happy people might eventually be bred out of existence due to losing the best chat-up line in existence. Never for them the flirtatious possibilities ignited by the sentence, "Excuse me, may I trouble you for a light my dear?" I suppose, if the spark of attraction is already there, then, "Doesn't the cabbage smell wonderful?" could conceivably work.
Anyway, I realise that I'm ranting now - I AM trying to stop smoking, but less enthusiastically than before July 1. I'd imagined the ban would make it easier, but it's had the opposite effect. The cabbage-slop fag-ash odour replacement has made me angry. Now I want to stand outside pubs, chain-smoking with the other poor souls, making rude faces at those inside, while leafing through undertakers' catalogues.
