July 1st, 2007, a date that will live in infamy, the day when that coalition of puritans and pursed-lipped killjoys, of do-gooders, nannies and busybodies, control freaks, know-alls, health fascists and interfuckingfering bastards finally got their wish and banned smoking in ‘enclosed public places’. In other words my pub.
Who are these people, who talk of saving lives, but don’t know the first thing about living the short life we have? They’re not saving lives. At best they’re prolonging its misery until something other than cancer else gets us or rots our brains into not caring who or where we are.
Who are they? They’re teetotallers, vegetarians, feminists, calorie-counters, joggers, bureaucrats, censors. Eunuchs. How dare they tell me what to do, how to live? The same people who would have cockerels banned from the countryside and then pollute it with their four-by-fours; who fret about battery chickens and the fate of foxes, but are happy to pay for their daughter’s abortion; preen themselves over their catalytic converter and wonder why the police have nothing better to do than stop them speeding.
Listen to them with their hypocritical cant. How their heart bleeds for me and my health. How they lie awake at night crying over the poor barmaids breathing in all that smoke. Well, don’t weep for me, I do enough of that for myself; and if the barmaids don’t like it, let them work somewhere else. If other customers don’t like it, let them go and clutter up another bar with their requests for café latté and drinking chocolate.
Have we lost faith in the market? What’s wrong with a little smoking apartheid? Even God is supposed to have allowed us freedom of choice.
These people don’t like smokers because smokers don’t labour under the illusion that life is serious. Smokers are atheistic, amoral, adulterous, alcoholic, anarchistic – and, OK, on occasion absolute arseholes.
But they’re also gregarious, friendly, talkative, laid back and plain interesting. Non-smokers are attracted to them because they’re sick of the other nicotinophobes with their suburban gardens and their car-washing Sundays and their 2.4 children - who may be spoiled, fat and stupid, but at least they’re ‘not exposed to smoking’ – and their little wives with their little jobs and their sensible hairstyles and comfy flip-flops and their holiday videos and their sanctimonious pension schemes.
I know them. I’ve met hundreds of them. Frightened little people, envious pigmy-souled, joyless-hearted Lilliputians, striving to pin down free-spirited giants with a thousand restrictive threads.
Bitter? You bet I’m bitter. This is war, you petty-minded tyrants. And I’m going to enjoy it.
Now, where did I put my fags?
Who are these people, who talk of saving lives, but don’t know the first thing about living the short life we have? They’re not saving lives. At best they’re prolonging its misery until something other than cancer else gets us or rots our brains into not caring who or where we are.
Who are they? They’re teetotallers, vegetarians, feminists, calorie-counters, joggers, bureaucrats, censors. Eunuchs. How dare they tell me what to do, how to live? The same people who would have cockerels banned from the countryside and then pollute it with their four-by-fours; who fret about battery chickens and the fate of foxes, but are happy to pay for their daughter’s abortion; preen themselves over their catalytic converter and wonder why the police have nothing better to do than stop them speeding.
Listen to them with their hypocritical cant. How their heart bleeds for me and my health. How they lie awake at night crying over the poor barmaids breathing in all that smoke. Well, don’t weep for me, I do enough of that for myself; and if the barmaids don’t like it, let them work somewhere else. If other customers don’t like it, let them go and clutter up another bar with their requests for café latté and drinking chocolate.
Have we lost faith in the market? What’s wrong with a little smoking apartheid? Even God is supposed to have allowed us freedom of choice.
These people don’t like smokers because smokers don’t labour under the illusion that life is serious. Smokers are atheistic, amoral, adulterous, alcoholic, anarchistic – and, OK, on occasion absolute arseholes.
But they’re also gregarious, friendly, talkative, laid back and plain interesting. Non-smokers are attracted to them because they’re sick of the other nicotinophobes with their suburban gardens and their car-washing Sundays and their 2.4 children - who may be spoiled, fat and stupid, but at least they’re ‘not exposed to smoking’ – and their little wives with their little jobs and their sensible hairstyles and comfy flip-flops and their holiday videos and their sanctimonious pension schemes.
I know them. I’ve met hundreds of them. Frightened little people, envious pigmy-souled, joyless-hearted Lilliputians, striving to pin down free-spirited giants with a thousand restrictive threads.
Bitter? You bet I’m bitter. This is war, you petty-minded tyrants. And I’m going to enjoy it.
Now, where did I put my fags?
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