I was full of great plans for the weekend. When I found out I was going to be in Edinburgh for the last night of legal smoking, I vowed to go out and smoke until the last possible moment, in solidarity with Scotland's oppressed minority. I don't smoke, and I don't like smoke, but when there's a principle at stake, sacrifices must be made.
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First problem - I can't actually pull it off in practice. That's why I recently declared myself a 'political smoker' along the lines of a woman I was at college with who announced solemnly that she was now a 'political lesbian'. We were too embarrassed to ask how her boyfriend had taken the news, but she explained that she wasn't going to actually sleep with women - just put them first politically. We were also too embarrassed to say we thought that didn't count; it was the height of political correctness, and as Film and Drama students we stood proudly at its peak.
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A dry run on Friday night proved that even a rollie reduces me to pathetic coughing in seconds, so actual smoking was out. Like my right-on friend I'd have to express solidarity without doing anything with my mouth that my body didn't go for. So, plan B - stay out till the stroke of midnight and join the rioting or sullenly acquiescent hordes as the heavies of the health police attempt to enforce a mass stubbing-out.
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Second problem - being Scottish, when they say '24-hour drinking' they mean it. Not like London, where every pub I know still kicks out before midnight, or even like Great Western Trains, where a smug steward displays beer behind glass on a parched Friday night while refusing to sell it (not that I'm bitter…). No, Scotland's smokers would be extending the night before until the sun came up at 6am. Since I had to be hard at work by 8am, there was no way I was going to see it through to the bitter end. Not any more. All-night drinking, sadly, is another thing I can support only in principle.
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But I did squeeze in a quick drink in the Grassmarket's Last Drop pub, tears pricking my eyes as the selfish part of me looked forward to being able to sit in a smoke-free bar next time I come. Because I'm not against smokeless socialising, or waking up without your clothes smelling like you work in a kipper factory. I'd be the first to put in huge air-conditioning units and allocate no-smoking sections, especially around food.
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I consulted the chalkboard in the Last Drop's ladies' toilets. 'Hail the Ban! - coming from a smoker' wrote one altruistic soul, or somebody who wants to be forced to do what's good for her. 'Hangover will be better - no fag taste' added another sensible voice. And it's not as if nobody knows the health risks these days. Who'd start a campaign for more smoking? Except somebody who sells cigarettes, of course.
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 | | Hardly anybody I spoke to was prepared to say the ban was a bad thing |
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'My social life is over!' one poor smoker bewailed. Or was it a smoker? In fact I'm not looking forward to the ban's impact on my social life either. A short tour around Ireland, where every romantic drink in a bar was interrupted by having to go outside for a fag, showed me how disruptive it's going to be. Faced with the choice between freezing outside for absolutely no reason, or sitting alone like a lemon while my fella shared a light with the good-looking barmaid, I got rapidly nostalgic for the fug of a pub where he could indulge his vice without breaking up the party. And as another chalker noted, now in Ireland 'all we smell is loo'.
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The first contributor, possibly the most sober, managed a longer opinion. 'Give in to this and there will be more to follow - what's happening to our country?' I'll tell you what's happening: every aspect of our private lives is being watched and discussed, and apparently it's all for our own good.
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Hardly anybody I spoke to was prepared to say the ban was a bad thing. Sunday morning revealed no signs of smokers having made a final stand, though I did hear about 'last suppers' at which chefs had served tobacco-based dishes in every course. The Last Drop will gradually lose its old-ashtray ambience and smokers will start affairs with each other on the pavements outside while their non-smoking partners do the same indoors in the warm.
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I'm not sorry that fewer people are smoking. I won't be sorry when it's looked on the way we now regard Laudanum. But I am sorry that, in the name of health, we can be dictated to with scarcely a whisper of protest. Or in my case, a cough.
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Timandra Harkness is a writer and broadcaster. Visit her website here.
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