Warm welcome for smokers
Friday, January 25, 2008 Talking of smokers welcome (HERE), I spent Wednesday evening at Boisdale, spiritual home of The Free Society. It's a curious thing, but despite the ban there are moments when you feel like an outsider if you DON'T smoke at Boisdale.
I was having dinner in the Macdonald Bar (above) with a group of 10 people. At the end of each course, the smokers would get up and climb the stairs to Boisdale's £40k roof terrace (or "cigar terrace" as it's officially known). After a few minutes the non-smokers would look around, note the empty seats and the sudden hiatus, and join them.
On Wednesday - my fifth or sixth visit since the terrace opened in November - it was colder and a little windier than I had previously experienced, but wrapped up in tartan blankets (so thoughtfully supplied) and allowed to simmer gently under the excellent patio heaters, the terrace was still the place to be.
As a non-smoker, however, I did feel a bit of an interloper, as if I was gatecrashing someone else's party. To enjoy the full experience, and the unspoken sense of camararderie, I really must take up smoking properly - if only at Boisdale.
Reader Comments (12)
I have only been there once, at the recent booksigning event, but I was more than pleased with it.
In fact, I tried to book it for this Saturday, for my wife's birthday, and unfortunately it was fully booked, and that was on Monday when I tried.
So I do urge anyone who wants to try it, to book early, terrific place.
I think i'm going to join. Too tempting to miss.
Sounds like the venue to finish my UK tour!
Shameless brown nosing, went down their city venue in Bishopsgate, excellent oysters, and salmon and a civilised smoking area too.
I have a dear friend who was diagnosed with vascular dementia. We have known each other since I was 17. She was a smoker until about 10 years ago. She is now 73. When she was 50 she became very forgetful and vague and all her friends and relations were puzzled. She had various scans. Having smoked since she was 18 the medical consultants said that the greatest contributory factor to her condition had been because she smoked. I visit her in a home and she is brain-dead. It is very sad for me to see such a dear friend in this state.
I have never smoked. I wonder how many of those in your roof-top smoking area will end up like my friend? Smoking is a killer in one way or another.
The anne amos post it is not only the troll post but as well it “the Voodoo Hex” against the smoker.
A few decades already, the smokers are victim of the Voodoo Hex practitioners.
The fanatical and brain washed sectarian use the voodoo hex technique to fight peoples ability to think clearly.
You're probably right Luke, but I think it's worth mentioning that a good friend of mine has worked in six residential homes for the elderly and has noticed that every case of dementia he's encountered has occurred in lifelong NON-smokers.
Anne, if you are genuine, I am very sorry for the loss of the friend you once knew, but to take that experience and apply it to all smokers is an emotional response that won't really help you or your friend, and can fuel tremendous resentment and hate (such emotional responses are, I believe, at the root of the anti-smoking movement). The equivalent would be for me, a person who still suffers physically from being hit by a car 30 years ago, to join car enthusiast forums and say hurtful thing to drivers, or to start campaigning to put an end to cars and driving on the assumption that every driver will injure someone in the way that I was injured.
Do you think that would be reasonable of me? Do you think it would fix the damage that was done to me? I don't - in fact, the thought to respond in such a way never occurred to me for a moment.
It is a sad fact of life that the longer we live, the more likely we are to lose people and to experience other forms of suffering. The point is, this is unavoidable. We all 'end' one way or another (at least in the form that we currently exist). The only thing to do is to develop a philosophy of life that helps us to cope with that fact. The blame game doesn't help anyone. As we can see, the blame game leads to the state we are in today, with governments telling us how to live, what to eat and drink, etc. A no-risk life is no life at all.
Your friend made her own choices in a free society. For that, I would be grateful.
On reflection - that wouldn't be the precise equivalent, since there is no doubt that a car did the damage to me, whereas the illnesses attributed to smoking occur in non-smokers too, making the associations asserted somewhat less reliable.
Anne
I fell to the floor laughing hysterically – when reading your post.
What kind of medical consultants were they, can’t you be more precise, i.e. were they neurologists. What scan has ever revealed brain damage by smoking…hang on I’m falling over again…ha, ha, ha…oh my aching sides!
You can always give us the name of the hospital and consultants who made this diagnosis, and we can ask them why they’re the only doctors in history to make such a discovery.
You then visit this friend and she’s brain dead…well in that case she must be dead…so why not just chuck her out with the rubbish? Be sure though to iron her nighty first, come to think of it – I’d better iron mine!
Anyway – how about this. Build yourself a wine vat…fill it with decent plonk, and soak your head in it for a few days – works wonders for me!
Now then.
Here’s my true sad tale. My paternal gran and grandad came over from Poland to stay with us when I was a boy growing up in the fifties. My grandad used to smoke a pipe…perhaps that’s where my love of pipe smoking comes from.
Well, things were fine at first…until one day we noticed this grossly embarrassing habit he had cultivated back in Poland. Without warning he’d suddenly drop his trousers and undies (no they weren’t M&S, so stop it!), and then bend over exposing his anus…after taking a big manly breath he’d squeeze his buttocks and start blowing a series of beautifully concentric rings – as many as ten or twelve, sometimes on a warm day, as many as twenty – yes twenty!
This always made me giggle…but my mum, dad and gran went crimson with embarrassment…you can’t blame them can you? Action had to be taken so our family doctor sent him to our local hospital for a brain scan…where the doctors revealed this.
Smoking had rewired his brain. Whenever he smoked his pipe his brain wouldn’t allow him to blow smoke out of his mouth in the usual way…instead it diverted the smoke out through his bottom. How cruel is that? However he enjoyed the experience so much, that he began entertaining crowds all over Poland for many years.
Sadly though, his passion for blowing smoke rings through his ring-piece had a price. He didn’t realize that his lovely smoke rings were passive, and so went on to kill many thousands of his admirers. Anti-smoking lobby groups had him arrested, then had his anus sealed for life. Rotten swines – he died shortly after of a broken heart.
Smoking – who would ever want to take it up– eh?
Really good piece Chris, but to be perfectly honest, I don't know why you bothered to even answer this woman, who is quite obviously a part of those silly Ash people.
They are so dumb, that they post stupid remarks like that on a thread about a restaurant??????
Moving on - does anyone want to join me in congratulating pub landlord, Nick Hogan, on continuing to take stand for freedom of choice to the extent of being fined £10,000 for not stopping smoking in his pub?
I do, Jane. I don't, as a rule, advocate law breaking but make an exception for the publians who are doing so in protest at a law that is based on a lie. I'm not a scientist so, when even I can understand the grounds on which people dispute the science, then it must be really dodgy. Take away the sience and the only problem left is one of irritation. Many moons ago, before I started to smoke, I hated cigarette smoke so I have a lot of sympathy for those who do mind a smoky atmosphere and who would like their preference to be accommodated. The issue of irritation is easily resolved with no losers. Instead, smokers lives are being made a misery and publicans like Nick are forced to act as HMG's unpaid policemen knowing that their businesses are going down the pan. When HMG won't listen and your trade representatives won't support you there's not a lot left but to break the law.