Smoking ban shennanigans

I was chatting to a colleague yesterday about my trip to Madrid and explaining how everyone still smokes willy nilly in restaurants, cafes and bars. It felt really odd, not to mention smelt rather pongy! We're good little Brits really aren't we. Braving the cold and rain outside of Starbucks and bars in order to light up and have a puff. Shunning hail, snow or force 10 gales in return for a quick fix. It really hit home how quickly we've become accustomed to the smoking ban over here. I think many of us expected rampant uprisings and people exhaling at you furiously, on the back of a Bill Hicks anti-anti-smoking tirade. But no, we've taken to it like good little chickens and personally, as an anti smoker, I'm grateful to the people around Brighton and Hove who sit dutifully outside when they light up. I don't want to stink of fags when I pop to the pub or end up on the edge of the smoking bit of a restaurant. Call me a smoking fascist but I don't! Sorry Bill Hicks, but I do cough if someone exhales smoke at me - didn't do you much good did it!

I was a little worried though by a colleague who seems like she might have the murmerings of an uprising in her. A respectable woman of long term management she took great glee in telling me that whilst waiting for her luggage in a Spanish airport, she timed how long it took 2 policia espagnol to make their way around the airport and return to the area where everyone was illegally lighting up. As they approached they would waggle their pistols and shout 'no, no, no' (but in a Spanish accent). She mistimed one of their revolutions around the terminal and had to do a quick half revolution herself in a Benny Hill stylee to get away from them half way through a fag. Why do Brits get so mischievous abroad and not at home I wonder? Perhaps it was the pistols? I'm not sure....

Sarah
VisitBrighton