kool_kats_rule

After going down to the bar here in the student village today to watch the England v Wales rugby match, I came home, as usual, smelling of cigarette smoke. Not as badly as some occasions, I admit, but I was only down there for a couple of hours, but still enough to ensure that my clothes had to go straight to the laundry, and my hair needed washing.

Imagine my delight when I realised that, as smoking is to be banned here in Wales on April the 2nd, by the time I returned after the easter hols, it would be banned, effectively meaning only a week left, barring whatever I get up to in the hols (a damn sight less than here, for sure).

After this, I started reflecting not on the smoking ban, nor on the practice of smoking itself, but on those friends of mine who smoke. But a year ago, I had no friends who smoked. Sure, I knew people who smoked, even hung around with them while they smoked (outside and in the cold I seem to recall), but none of my close friends smoked, or seemed ever likely to. Now, one of my housemates is a smoker (roll-ups), several of my friends are smokers (ranging from gave up a couple of months ago, to has more or less given up (largely due to lack of money), to somebody who never buys their own, but will take one if offered. There are other people too, those who have given up for lent, and doing quite well at it too, and those who smoke like chimneystacks (and always seem to be in front of/behind me at shows and events).

Why did all these people take up smoking? The health effects are widely known, and have been for some time, indeed, they were drummed into us yearly at school for countless years. The cost is equally an incentive for a person on a student budget not to as well, in fact I have always wondered by people pay so royally for the privilege to kill themselves (and others). The other two aspects of smoking are of course the "coolness" and sociability. The former is these days largely gone, at least by the time you are legally old enough to smoke, as all students are. The last, however, is the final hurdle for those who wish to eradicate the habit.

Smoking is seen as being "sociable". From the shared satisfaction of bunking off school/work for an illicit fag, to the comraderie  of a smoke huddled against the elements, to the willingness to help and to ask for help from fellow man shown by people wandering around bars asking for a light, smoking carries a veritable mountain of subtle and not-so-subtle associations with the grander parts of the human character. And these will not be overcome so lightly.

So expect, come next month, hordes crowded round the doorways, and flocking to those places where they will yet be able to, for these will doubtless exist.