Citizen Chris: A year of misery

Jul 4 2008 By Citizen Chris

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear smoking ban, happy birthday to you!

Thanks for making my life a complete misery for the past 12 months.

Before you say it, I know I'm a couple of days late and no, I'm not just an angry, bitter smoker. I'm just annoyed at the loss of my culture.

It seems to have been generally accepted the ban was a good thing - with the exception of heavy smokers and pub landlords. Families and the anti-smoke brigade have certainly benefited from the cleaned-up pubs.

The problem is now you can't walk into a pub before eight without being confronted with babies screaming in prams, older kids running around and families having a 'pleasant meal'.

All over the country traditional boozers and pubs aimed at 20-somethings on a budget are closing in favour of horribly trendy wine bars or family-friendly gastro pubs. My local is now a Thai restaurant and charges s3.20 a pint.

If I wanted to be surrounded by kids I'd socialise in McDonald's on a Saturday afternoon or take up drinking in parks. Family-friendly pubs are great if you're a family, but I'm not. I want to have a drink with mates, be offensive, swear and generally be rowdy - if I can't do this in the pub then where can I? If you're caught swearing in front of a kid you get the dirtiest looks from their mum, but they shouldn't really be there in the first place.

Worse still, by the time you finally find a pub not populated by families, half of your mates go outside for a 'quick smoke' which then turns into a lengthy chain-smoking session leaving the rest of your friends inside.

With the ban also came 'smirting' an irritating little term for smoking and flirting outside of pubs/clubs/work/train stations. Smokers are creating a whole social world the likes of me are not invited to - it's just like at school with the cool kids smoking behind the bikesheds and everyone else out of the loop. I can honestly say smoking has never seemed so appealing.

Nightclubs have changed for the worse too, I've always frequented scummy, dirty indie-clubs where you can almost feel the sweat dripping of the ceiling. There, the smoke covered a multitude of evils, the smell of the toilets, sweaty dancers who chose to use a trendy body spray instead of a proper deodorant, people with too much perfume/aftershave on and, of course, the odour of vomit on revellers' breath who have already had seven to many. Now these smells are impossible to escape, unless you stand outside with the smokers!

I understand the health concerns, but who goes to pubs and clubs to be healthy? Join the cafe culture if thats what you want, the government should've let each drinking venue decide if they wanted the ban or not, then non-smokers in a smoking pub know the risks and families could have stayed out of my way.

No doubt the politicians responsible will be toasting the ban's success at its birthday do, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that they've actually spoilt many a party.