Holy smoke! It will now cost €20 for a pack of cigarettes? |
It’s hard to convey to anyone aged under 30 today how much cigarette smoke used to play a part in everyday life.
Getting the bus into work? Smoke wafting over you from the fella sparking up in the seat behind.
In the office? By noon, a pall of smoke often hung in mid-air, like dawn the day after the Battle of the Somme.
Fancy a pint after work? The haze in the bar would be so bad that you would occasionally choke and your eyes would water.
Everybody smoked then, including the non-smokers, in a sense, who would inhale the stuff passively and retch at the smell of it on their clothes, which they only noticed when they got home after a night out. The smokers probably never noticed at all.
This was an era, late in the last century, when the idea of a set place just for smokers seemed nonsensical. The airlines did eventually shove all the smokers to the rear seats of plane cabins, while the hostesses went about the business of flogging boxes of 200 duty free cigarettes to passengers (even the non-smokers would buy them, as invariably a smoking friend would call in a favour).
Of course, this all sounds disgusting in these enlightened times, even to those who used to be nicotine addicts back then. A cohort that includes me.
I was what used to be laughably called a social smoker, meaning I only sparked up a fag when I could breathe it into other people’s faces at close proximity.
I started the habit at about 12 because, you know, cool,........