the adlards

like upwind smokers. It was beautiful and sunny today with a bit of a breeze to take the edge off the heat. We went to drop Heather off and had coffee at a very pleasant outdoor place. The space was arranged with a long rectangle of tables and the breeze was blowing down its length. There were individuals quietly reading in the sunshine, couples chatting, and of course the three of us with two tiny kiddies. In the whole group there were only two smokers, both of whom settled themselves strategically at the upwind end of the space, the better (perhaps) to avoid tasting each other’s brand, but in the process ensuring that all the rest of us had to breathe all of their second-hand smoke. I can’t easily express how much that winds me up … . Perhaps they sat there because most of the rest of us had our backs to the breeze, so they felt inconspicuous.

This is by no means an isolated incident or a chance outburst. I enjoy my walk to the station in the morning; the air is crisp and in summer I can look at things and my mind goes out for a wander. In winter it’s dark and I can’t look at things and my mind tends to stay inside. Regardless, I’m usually quite relaxed by the time I hit the platform. My familiar patch of platform is most often smoke-free as the prevailing wind here blows across the platform. Smoking’s also definitely becoming less popular among the commuter group – there are only a handful of public-platform-smokers among a couple of hundred people stood waiting for a train. Nonetheless, almost without fail, if there’s a Southerly breeze there’ll be some City trader with tar for brains and a whacking great City-trader-personality-filter standing at the South end of the platform satisfying his paranoid need to be first into the front-most door of the train while at the same time trying to control his stress with nicotine. Why, when he’s gone to all the trouble that very morning of hacking and choking and gasping his respiratory system into action for the day, doesn’t he think before he poisons mine too?

Before you send that hate mail: I DON’T hate all smokers. My in-laws were smokers until a few years back and now I love them dearly … and there are certainly some on the platform each morning who carefully lurk downwind and are probably really quite thoughtful people. They’d probably desperately like to give up.

• Drinking: Water

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 10:01 pm by james and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.