forest fires and traffic jams

Typical! The smoking ban comes in at the weekend and then all I can see for the next couple of days is smoke.

First of all – hours after the ban came in - I was driving home from Ballymena when I heard a siren. I pulled in as two fire engines roared by. A few miles down the road I had to do it again for another two fire engines. When I looked to the west I was able to see what all the fuss was about – plumes of smoke from what seemed like large area of bog land. Here in Northern Ireland we don’t do forest fires – we do whin fires. In the recent dry weather they have become an increasingly common occurrence. Some wee skitter generally starts them maliciously for kicks – they then rage out of control for a while killing wildlife as they go. I’m seriously concerned that someday someone will get caught in one of these while out for a walk in the bog. That would have to be a horrible way to die. Why that thought doesn’t go through the heads of the wee hoods who start the things is beyond me. What some people do to entertain themselves in a ceasefire…

The next day I was driving home from work when I saw an odd shaped cloud in the sky above Coleraine. A grey vertical column reaching from ground level to high in the sky. It looked a lot like smoke – it was of course smoke, but I’m not the sharpest tool in the box and it took being overtaken by three fire engines and an ambulance for me to realise that a factory in the Wattstown industrial estate was in the p rocess of returning itself to the ground. While sitting in the queue of traffic going past Armstrong Medical I cursed the part of human nature that makes people slow down and stare at accidents, creating massive tailbacks and making it more difficult for emergency services to get to the scene – before rolling down my window, slowing down and gawping. I may be aware of the human flaw – it doesn’t mean I don’t suffer from it. I regretted rolling my window down later when I listened to radio and heard warnings to move inside your houses and close all windows in case the fumes were toxic – but maybe not as much as the crowd of people who stood outside watching the fire for several hours.

On both these occasions I had the same urge to buy a pack of 20 Marlboro that I get every time I see smoke. I quit smoking almost fifteen months ago and still I get the urge to light up every time I see someone smoking, or someone who looks like they are smoking, or indeed someone who looks like they once smoked… I get the urge to smoke when I see the colour grey. Ironically I get the strongest urge to smoke when watching the anti smoking adverts. They can be cutting open a diseased lung and all I’m thinking is “They showed that person smoking. Smoking’s good. I think I should smoke.” I watch the other teachers smoking at breaktime and I miss it – I miss it terribly. The wind will momentarily shift and I will catch a whiff of the smoke and it will smell so good – and I wonder why I ever quit in the first place. Then I’ll wake up the next day and not spend twenty minutes coughing and wheezing, and then I’ll walk up the stairs to my classroom and not take a moment by my door to catch my breath, and then I’ll look in my wallet and see that extra fiver – and I’ll remember why I quit.

With the smoking ban in place I thought it would be easier for me but in truth it has made it more difficult. Now I see people smoking outside every bar, every office, every restaurant. I see them everywhere. I really do have mixed feelings about the ban. Of course it’s good that people no longer have to breathe other people’s smoke, and it’s good that it is making so many people consider kicking the habit – but – well, I (say it quietly) actually quite liked the smell of smoke when I went out. It meant that I could enjoy the smoke without actually lighting up myself. Also, and this is really going to show how shallow I am, I liked the fact that I quit while so many of my friends and colleagues kept smoking – I was different. When we’re outside chatting I was the one not smoking – I liked that. Now they’re talking about how they have to quit and it’s all become so passé. How to be different again? hmm. Could I cadge a fag off someone?