Cigarettes and Alcohol
I used to smoke you will be appalled to hear.
Officially I ended it the second I decided to try and procreate about twelve years ago. Unofficially I ended it the time I decided to procreate a second time. All in all, I have not touched a cigarette for seven years.*
In between the birth of the first and second born of the Flying Martini children I lapsed slightly from time to time. But the cigarettes I smoked didn’t count, because I was in a foreign country when I smoked them.
As soon as we hit foreign soil Meeester and I would seek our favoured brand of local cigarettes, dependent on the country we were visiting, and arm ourselves up with a bunch of reasons why smoking on holiday was acceptable and permissable:
“It’s immersing yourself in the local culture!”
“They are so cheap, it’s like saving money!”
“This is the kind of country that if you don’t smoke they think you are being rude. When in Rome…!”
I discovered that others have such smoking exemption excuses. For me, it was only “Smoking doesn’t count if you’re on holiday” but recently I have heard a few other choice ones from correspondents and friends of The Misssives.
Situations or places where smoking doesn’t count are:
- If you’re in the car
- If you’re trying to bond with new workmates in the smoking corner of the car park
- At parties
- If you’ve just had bad news
- At New Year (that’s almost like a reverse New Year’s resolution that one)
- If you’re with the band (my husband’s excuse)
- If you’re having a really shit day
You don’t have to be a faux smoker to join in. There are other things that are slightly bad for you can turn you into a self-delusional nutcase. Such as alcohol.
Booze: It doesn’t count if:
If you are in a church. (Passing by one doesn’t count)
The drink concerned has fruit other than lemon in it. Pimms is great for this. Why with a good helping of strawberries, cucumber and mint, that’s your Five a Day right there! It’s practically a health-drink, and should be available on the NHS. If you’re drinking it at Wimbeldon you’re doubly exempt as it is expected of you. If you are seen without a glass of it in your hand, officials may think you a foreign national and try to have you deported.
If the drink is Guinness or any other stout. They may have been having a laugh with the “Guinness is Good for You” advertising nonsense, but show me a woman whose mother hasn’t told them to get some stout down them if they are “run down” and I’ll show you a motherless child.
If you are a woman and you are menstruating or pre-menstrual. It doesn’t say so on the instruction leaflet inside the Feminax packet (but only because it wouldn’t probably be legal) but every girl knows they are only to be taken three times a day with a glass of white wine. Or else they don’t work. FACT. They teach that in sex ed when they divide the class up and take the girls into another room. That’s what they’re telling them in there, lads, nothing else.
At funerals. You are not allowed by law to refuse a drink at a funeral. It’s disrespectful to the deceased. In Catholic countries a drink refusal could get you stoned or run out of town.
If you’re outside in the sunshine. This goes back to the “on holiday” rule that I applied to smoking. The same applies to drinking. If you are on holiday you can have booze at any time of the day with impunity. Chances are that it’ll have fruit in it anyway, so you’re doubly exempt.
More excuses please in the comments box, please.
* My dad, who is a regular reader of the Misssives, will right now be shaking his head in a disgusted fashion..
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The other day was the first anniversary of the Sco…
The other day was the first anniversary of the Scottish Smoking Ban in Public places (26 March). It’s been great, hasn’t it?
Let’s look at why it’s been the best idea Scotland has had since Mr Fleming found some mould in a coffee cup that he’d left under his bed, that he had an idea might fight infection. (We’ve invented all the best stuff by the way, it’s easy to think that just because we’re crap at football, we must be crap at everything else. As I write we’re 1-0 down to Italy…)
So why is the smoking ban a top idea:
Heaps of people have given up the fags. Could we reach a stage in the future where smoking looks a bit eccentric like taking snuff, driving a Sinclair C5 or having a mullet?
- You don’t stink like Deirdre Barlow’s thermal vest everytime you wake up from a night out.
- You don’t have to deny yourself an outfit cos it’s dry clean only and will cost you £7.50 in dry cleaning everytime you so much as look at a pub or club.
- Friendships have been made as smokers stand together in the cold outside pubs…aw bless…I like to see the stats on how many weddings have taken place from people who met in the smoking area outside a pub. Just think they can go halfers on an iron lung…So beautiful.
- The pubs haven’t gone out of business. People still want to go out with their mates. They are not individually sat at home on their own with 50 Malboro and a carry out.
- Young people are less likely to have a cigarette whilst pissed in a pub- cos they can’t! (That’s how I started- gave up in 1997) Again great to see stats on how many people’s first fag was one that they lit the wrong end of, or set their hair on fire because they were hammered. The figures will be high.
- Dying of lung cancer isn’t an occupational hazard if you want to work in the hospitality industry anymore.
- You never ever have to eat a meal in restaurant and nearly have a stroke getting upset about the git in the table next to you who lights up just as your meal arrives and blows smoke over your toddler sitting in the high chair directly in the blue smoke stratos.
- Public places are cleaner generally. White walls ARE white, not “nicotine sunset”. And the seats in pubs are not like a pair hookers tights; grubby and full of holes.
- (Hooker’s tights….my metaphors are so poetic, kind of Shakesperian, I think…”Shall I compare thee to a Hooker’s tights, thou art so stained and full of bombers….”)
- This is a corker. It’s just not like Scotland to be a forerunner in the health stakes. We stink at everything else and are a nation of pie eating, binge-drinking liabilities, but we are a nation ahead of our time on this one. England still can’t get this law passed. What’s wrong with you people, if the fag addicted Scots and Irish can do it so can you! Now all we have to do to further improve our health is put a ban on the production of Lorne Sausage.
- You can now take your kids for a pub lunch. I would never have done that before. I once took baby Louis briefly into Ma Camerons as the staff had a present for him when he was born (John and I were regulars before our social life was severely curtailed.) Anyway after a fifteen minute visit where he was handed round the bar by cooing ladies, I took the boy home and his previously divinely smelling baby hair smelled of smoke. I was horrified.
- Can I just point out that I did not visit the bar at 11.30pm on a Friday night with the bairn…just in case any of you are thinking of phoning the “social”.
- It’s not cool to smoke anymore, it’s just bloody freezing to stand outside with your legs turning corn-beef in your mini skirt and wedges. Mmmm attractive, girls!
- And what a hassle- nipping out every five minutes for a smoke- you’ll lose your seat when you go out, and miss half of what’s going on in the bar, and it being Scotland, you’ll get your hair-do rained on or blown to hell and back. Not worth it.
- Are the tobacco manufacturers losing heaps of money? Let’s hope so. They’ve had it pretty good for too long. You lied to us, cigarettes didn’t make us sexy! They just gave us bad skin, brown teeth and buggered up our insides!
So long may the ban reign, and let’s hope that Wales find it as good as we have when their ban starts next month. England are due to start it soon but still can’t make up their minds about how far to go. Not the English as such, just the MPs. At the moment they’re arguing over whether it’s just for the unwashed or if the posh nobs in private gentlemen’s clubs have to pitch in too. They are actually discussing this. In a serious manner. Like it’s a reasonable argument. For real. No really. It’s true.
So, here’s Jerry’s Final Thought:
It might take a generation to really make a huge difference to the nation’s health but this is the best thing we’ve ever done up here. That and inventing the telly. (It’s amazing the stuff you get done when there’s no telly to distract you….)
Pinch of snuff, anyone?
