Sunday 19th August
Wapping, Summer 2007
Saturday 18th August
I watched the movement towards the criminalisation of smoking advance across the legislative plains with an impotent sense of dread, powerless as get-out clause after get-out clause fell by the wayside.
Why don't we we just give pubs and workplaces the power to ban smoking on their premises? Nope. How about we just ban it during certain hours? Nope. Perhaps we could allow private clubs to make their own rules? Nope.
Friends increasingly peered into the smoke surrounding me to ask "What will you do when they ban smoking?" And out of the misty gloom... answers came there none.
The obvious answer, to give up smoking, is simply not an option for me: I thought then, and still mostly think now, that if and when it proved impossible to smoke and drink at the same time, I'd be most likely to give up drinking rather than smoking. (I've already pretty much given up travelling for much the same reasons.)
I took some comfort in the concept of designated outdoor smoking areas, grasping at the straw that any place where outlaws are forced to foregather can't be all bad. The prospect of standing smoking in the thick of a British winter, I forebore to contemplate ("They'll have to install space heaters. Surely?")
But in terms of actually preparing myself for the ban, effective July 1st, there seemed little I could do, beyond investing in a few timid experiments in nicotine gum.
It turned out to be a far deeper challenge than I could possibly have imagined....
Friday 17th August
Given that the ban became effective on a Sunday, the first venue where I faced up to the potential difficulties of not being able to smoke and drink at the same time was Horse Meat Disco.
Entering the smoke-free bar for the first time was, in itself, a revelation. For one thing, the change in the quality of the air was immediately apparent: the atmosphere was much, much...clearer.
Anti-smokers would want me to use the word 'cleaner', but bugger that; for one thing, the smell of drains was immediately much more apparent. And the lighting at South Central, which I've always applauded, lost a lot of its appeal without the usual clouds of smoke to shroud its harsher edges.
South Central (Dukes, as was) has a particularly commodious courtyard but I gamely forebore from heading out there straight away, standing chatting with a pint in one hand and...nothing..in the other.
I think I lasted all of half a pint before heading outside.
I don't know the statistics, but first-hand observation suggests gay men smoke much more heavily than the population at large; the bar had seemed a little quiet, and now I realised why: the courtyard was rammed with chatty smokers.
I already knew that there is some arcane nonsense in the legislation that complicates smoking en plein air, such that it's not just as simple as allowing smoking anywhere outside (something to do with definitions of 'enclosed spaces', I think) and South Central had obviously done their best to work within these regulations, erecting an awning that covered approximately half the courtyard, with notices attempting to shepherd smokers into their covered ghetto - notices which, to my delight, were roundly ignored (much to the ire of at least one anti-smoker, with whom I later had a blazing drunken mini-row).
Chatting in the courtyard with one's friends (and flirting with one's friends' friends) is the single greatest attraction of Horse Meat Disco for me, so this first non-smoking night proved relatively easy to handle - though popping inside to visit the dance-floor proved a bit more difficult to manage.
All in all, not a bad night (though God knows how they're going to heat that open-sided awning once winter arives...)
Thursday 16th August
A few days into the smoking ban, I took myself off to my regular haunt, The White Swan - and it was here that the true misery set in.
The clearer air was even more apparent here than at South Central (where they'd eventually resorted to a smoke machine to funk things up indoors a little). And, trust me, there's a lot to be said for not being able to see clear across the room at The White Swan, most nights of the year.
During the week, The Swan confines its customers to one end of its cavernous premises; their beer-garden (if 'garden' is quite the word I'm looking for) is right at the other end of the building.
So, during the infamous Amateur Strip Night, the smallish crowd was constantly fragmented into at least three mini-crowds: one watching the show, one out smoking and another teetering backwards and forwards trying to work out just where the guy they had their eye on had decided to settle.
To make matters worse, the lighting in the white-washed courtyard had blown a fuse, and the emergency spotlight was all that was working - making the entire space resemble nothing so much as a prison exercise yard, complete with isolated huddles of smoke-wreathed recidivists.
Wednesday 15th August
On my second post-ban visit to The Swan - I think it was a Saturday - it was raining. And here's where I got to test the idea that misery likes company.
Saturdays are always the busiest night of the week at The Swan, even when it's raining, so there was a considerable crowd of damp smokers gathered in the courtyard, crammed together under the huge garden umbrellas they've erected.
And it was quite collegiate, in a Ship of Fools kind of way, especially since their garden umbrellas hang from central supports, such that any untoward movement sends streams of rain down unsuspecting necks.
And I got to chat to a boy I've always fancied, so it wasn't a total wash-out - though I couldn't help noticing that virtually the sole topic of conversation in the yard was the iniquity of the smoking ban. (I wouldn't suggest the government goes canvassing votes there any time soon.)
But, although I usually bump into at least one person I know at The Swan, one of the attractions of the place for me is that I've been there so often I'm quite happy to stand or sit in a corner, watching the world go by in a 'don't-mind-the-old-person' kinda way.
And it was inside, as I yet again tried to acclimatise myself to the feel of a pint in one hand and nothing in the other, that I suddenly came up against the realisation that smoking is a major leisure activity for me.
This, I think, is something that a non-smoker will never entirely comprehend.
Whenever and wherever I'm in a bar, there's an enormous amount of unconscious physical theatre involved. I'm always looking, and I'm being - to some small extent - being looked at.Sometimes it's an idle bored glance, sometimes it's a cruisy stare of steely intensity, more often than not it's a look that says 'I can't help but admire the crazed persistence that led you to believe that your leaving home might somehow make the world a better place'.
But there is always performance involved.
And when you forbid us our basic props - no getting out your fag packet, no patting your pockets for a lighter, no asking a cute stranger for a match, no sudden flame-light, no Bette-Davis exhalations, no hands swimming to and from the mouth, no final crushing of a butt beneath an imperious heel - you are robbing us of an essential existential role.
When I used to smoke in a bar, huddled partially concealed behind a pall of smoke, it was only ever partially about satisfying a stupid addiction; it was always, also, however unconsciously, something of a dramatic performance, a small mini-epic in which I was able to cloak my ongoing observations behind a literal smoke-screen of physical activity.
And that has gone for ever.
I can't exaggerate the sense of loss I feel about this: it really is a little like losing a limb...
Maybe I should take to carrying a Rubik's cube?
Tuesday 14th August
I have studied with interest how various locations are adopting to the smoking ban.
And, it has to be said, there's a distinct whiff of Nazism in the air.
A friend of mine relates the story of how a friend of his popped out of the theatre where he works for a quick fag by the stage door. And who should come along but an Environmental Health Officer (the only one I've actually heard of - so far.)
And, of course, this Little Hitler struts up to the smoker and tells him he's not allowed to smoke within the doorway of the theatre, despite the fact that it's about as open-air as you can get.
So, of course, the smoker steps forward one pace onto the pavement - only to be told that he can't stand there either. The smoker asks where can he smoke - and is told that he's within the law as long as he's moving: pedestrians can smoke, bystanders cannot.
And so, of course, the smoker (obstreporous as smokers tend to be) asks for a definition of walking...and on it goes.
Victoria Station, I notice, has large signs on its station forecourt advising smokers that they cannot smoke anywhere beneath the station canopy - so if it it's raining and you want a cigarette before boarding your train, you're forced to run the risk of being mown down by double-decker buses as you try to cross the road to the other side of the bus-station.
Comptons (which, unsurprisingly for a West End bar, has nothing remotely related to a beer-garden) encourages its smokers to line up outside, where they are zealously wardened onto the thin strip of pavement; more than a few of their customers have taken to removing themselves and their pints across the road entirely, idly obscuring the windows of Clone Zone. On the several occasions I've been there the outside smokers outnumbered the inside drinkers by a considerable margin.
The Yard, where I haven't yet been, apparently belies the promise of its name by denying its handsome courtyard to smokers and insisting they stay within a mere half of its small upstairs balcony.
The Griffin, the new(ish) gay(ish) neighbourhood pub down Vauxhall way, have invested what looks like a quite considerable sum to graft on a whole new smoking-terrace, where I will be quite happy to spend a companionable hour or two as summer moves into autumn - and maybe beyond, by the look of their hefty heating installation.
Elsewhere in Vauxhall, BarCode, Area and The RVT have all laid out pleasant patios that seem positively continental at the moment; Crash, by way of contrast, has a hideous little cage outside the front door. How these will survive the advent of winter remains to be seen, but it doesn't look promising, given that in each of these venues you'll have wanted to check in your coat the moment you got through the door.
Fire (where I finally got to to see - and be distinctly under-whelmed by - the famous lights-room late one Friday) shepherds its smokers into a fenced-off enclosure quite some distance from the club's back-doors; I was distinctly narked, whilst lurking there, to hear a security guard telling people that must get back inside just as soon as they've finished their cigarettes.
On another night, a Thursday, with several club-nights sharing the space, I shouldered aside the fire-doors in search of the same enclosure, only to discover that each clublet now had its own, new, space.
Having seen no signage suggesting where I could smoke, I'd missed the official exit, and had no hand-stamp to prove I was an Actual Paying Customer - so I ended up stuck on the street with a bank of barrel-shouldered blank-faced security guys between me and my bag back in the cloakroom...
Nightmare. And all just because I wanted a cigarette.
Monday 13th August
Although I did very little to prepare myself for the advent of 'Smokefree England', I admit there were two potential areas of fallout that intrigued me.
The first was the question of how cabaret artists in general - and David Hoyle in particular - would handle not being allowed to smoke on stage.
To no-one's great surprise La Hoyle has carried on smoking regardless: no less than one would expect from a diva who has made a career out of spitting in the face of established convention.
A reputation which, in turn, paradoxically gives him (and The Royal Vauxhall Tavern) a get-out clause should he ever face prosecution: the law allows smoking on stage provided that it forms 'an integral part' of the performance.
(A get-out which, in turn, you might think, somewhat undermines his purportedly rebel stance. Which, in turn, makes his on-stage smoking less legal... and so it goes in the business we call show.)
My other pre-ban thought concerned saunas (or 'heath spas' as I once resolved to call them if I ever got trapped into discussing them in public).
Straight readers could be forgiven for not entirely appreciating the relative centrality of the sauna to metropolitan gay culture, but it takes only a moment to visualise the possibilities.
You turn up - probably quite late, possibly quite drunk - you hand over your money, you remove all your clothes and put them in a locker, and then you venture off - towel in hand if not actually round your waist - to see what the luxuriously-appointed darkness has to offer. (Who knows? You may even end up having a sauna.)
Several hours later (quite possibly around the time of the first tube), you put your clothes back on and stagger out into the dawn, cleaner - arguably - than when you entered.
Not an unattractive way to pass a few hours - especially for anybody who still hasn't got round to fixing their domestic hot-water situation.
Although most saunas, quite understandably, forbid smoking throughout the larger part of their facilities (and not even I want to find a cigarette butt floating in the jacuzzi), they will always provide a lounge area: couches, a large screen tv - and ashtrays. How would these survive the smoking ban?
For a brief, absurd, moment I allowed myself to contemplate the possibility that saunas and suchlike might be exempted from the smoking ban. The Limehouse branch of Chariots has an outdoor terrace, but everywhere else would have to send their smokers out into the street - an interesting thought given that the clientele are all, at the very least, semi-naked.
The logical deduction would be that sauna customers who want to smoke would have to return to their lockers, don at least one layer of clothing, nip outside for a chilly fag, and then return to start all over again.
Absurd, obviously - especially given the health ramifications of sending damp, warm people out into the grimy urban chill once every hour or so.
But you know what? I'm told that's exactly what happens. (You'll forgive me for not having taken the time to go find out for myself, but I have better ways to spend my time; thank god for the internet).
......previous week
