Smokers

To begin with I’ll say that I used to smoke; I stated when I went away to college at eighteen… most of my contemporaries,and the lecturers who taught us smoked. I was never an addictive smoker, it was just something I enjoyed from time to time. When I got married and my husband and I decided we wanted children I gave up, and have never smoked since, nearly twenty-five years.There was plenty of publicity about then, plenty of campaigns explaining the dangers and health risks.

These days everyone, just everyone knows exactly what tobacco does to you and to those around you; there is so much evidence, so many campaigns and now, thank goodness there are so many restrictions. You no longer walk into a pub and walk into a grey haze – you walk out of the pub and into a wall of smoke where all the smokers have nipped out for a ciggie! When you go to the cinema there isn’t a pall of smoke hanging like a dirty curtain between you and the screen.

No-one these days can claim they don’t know what vile things cigarettes are.There are so many different ways people can help themselves stop smoking – my husband who did smoke a lot gave up just by will power. In our village, down a narrow residential road there are two gates opposite each other; one leads into a school, the other leads into a hospice where people, adults and children are being cared for as they end their days. A little further on is the turning into our road and the garden of the house on the corner, has a low curving wall with a tall fence behind it. Round the corner, away from the main road, sit the smokers; even though they work in a hospice and in a school, they still have to smoke.