The new pariah
There is here, we have discovered, a new pariah. The non-smoker, those exiled to the outside of restaurants and bars, left to huddle under canvas awnings, extracting whatever warmth they can from gas-fired heaters while smokers enjoy the warmth and comfort inside. To drink or eat inside is unquestionably on their terms. The bars stink, the oxygen-less air brown and putrid, extractors apparently not yet invented in this part of the word.
While we have become reconciled with this in the city, we went last Friday evening to a suburban pub for the weekly after-work drinks with the teachers from Fleur’s school. Most lit up and within minutes we were engulfed in a pall of smoke. The teachers who don’t like it simply don’t come.
And it is not just the pub. In Kortrijk, in the south of Belgium, we went to the cafeteria at the local train station, into what we imagined as the sanctuary of the non-smoking area. This is sectioned off by a waist-high partition on the other side of which everyone, but everyone, contributes to the creation of a cloud of hanging smoke, a cloud oblivious to the non-smoking barrier. For babies and young children, the inhalation of second-hand smoke apparently all part of the rich experience of growing up.
It is the opposite of home and I blame Helen Clark, for we are the new pariahs.
There is here, we have discovered, a new pariah. The non-smoker, those exiled to the outside of restaurants and bars, left to huddle under canvas awnings, extracting whatever warmth they can from gas-fired heaters while smokers enjoy the warmth and comfort inside. To drink or eat inside is unquestionably on their terms. The bars stink, the oxygen-less air brown and putrid, extractors apparently not yet invented in this part of the word.
While we have become reconciled with this in the city, we went last Friday evening to a suburban pub for the weekly after-work drinks with the teachers from Fleur’s school. Most lit up and within minutes we were engulfed in a pall of smoke. The teachers who don’t like it simply don’t come.
And it is not just the pub. In Kortrijk, in the south of Belgium, we went to the cafeteria at the local train station, into what we imagined as the sanctuary of the non-smoking area. This is sectioned off by a waist-high partition on the other side of which everyone, but everyone, contributes to the creation of a cloud of hanging smoke, a cloud oblivious to the non-smoking barrier. For babies and young children, the inhalation of second-hand smoke apparently all part of the rich experience of growing up.
It is the opposite of home and I blame Helen Clark, for we are the new pariahs.
2 comments:
Doesn't sound like you have done much to lead a charge for change!!!!!
Perhaps you could recommend Helen Clarke for a role with ASH on Germany!!!
At least you will find it the other way around in the UK - though this does mean:
1. you have to fight your way through all the smokers outside the entrance to any pub or restaurant
2. in the summer all the nice outside tables of any establishment are filled with smokers so the non-smokers have to crowd inside
3. smells of stale beer, bad aftershave, BO etc are no longer "covered up" by the smell of cigarette smoke
Post a Comment