24/01/2008 Sometimes you have to bite your tongue. Not physically, but mentally. It’s far less bloody and gory, and nobody bites their tongue physically unless they’re really hungry and shoving food down their gullet like their life depends on it. I’ve bitten my tongue both mentally and physically and when I did it physically it hurt like hell. I couldn’t eat any more steak after that, even though it was a real nice bit of sirloin. I reckon smoking should never have been banned though, and I’m not going to bite my tongue on that one.
People disagree, and fair enough, but that’s why smokers often complain now in pubs, because they have to go outside. Years of tradition down the drain. Smokers cast outside like social lepers. It isn’t really on. Our grandparents could smoke in pubs; theirs before them, and so on through to the middle ages. Maybe longer. Second hand smoke? A ridiculous theory. Those people survived wars. The smokers really vent their spleen about having to go outside, and even though talking, or ‘Smalking’ as it has been labelled, can be really positive, negative Smalking is becoming far more regular.
It’s down to being in the cold weather or in the pouring rain. Smokers don’t want that. That’s one of the biggest subject matters of outside smokers: “why should we have to smoke out here?” That and football. Some people reckon that in the summer, when everyone’s outside including the non-smokers, the non-smokers will want the smokers inside. Opposite to how it is in the winter! I was never that good at science, achieving very bad grades, but I know that smoke just floats away outside so why should it matter?
I was smoking outside and one guy told me that he really liked these two guys when he could smoke in the pub. Now he  realises that one has real bad body odour and the other one has dog breath. The smoke used to cloud that. It’s true really, because the pub has an air freshener that constantly has to be used, whereas before it didn’t. If someone farts you can really smell-it. The other day one regular was literally heaving, and he’d only had a pint. It was because someone had let one go. Somerfield Dave was gagging as well, even though everyone pointed the finger at him. He was keeled over and everything. I reckon non-smokers will cave-in and want the ban lifted if people carry-on like that. Just you wait and see.
More and more regularly Smalking appears to target the weak. We’ll be having conversations in a big smoking group, complaining about this that and the other, and then someone will say something and everyone will laugh hysterically at them. Not with them, at them! It’s a macho-type phenomena, I guess. A load of guys in a group being laddish and that kind of thing; the hunter and the hunted. A pack of wolves baying for blood.
One guy, Dougie, was telling us how his jacket got caught on a bin, one of those ones covered in wire mesh. He was walking along, brushed against the bin, and his jacket got caught; just like that! Poor Dougie dragged the bin a few feet without realising his jacket was caught, and kids were pointing at him and laughing. I think he said they were teenagers, but they could have been kids. When Dougie was reciting this tale, he wasn’t too impressed, he said he loved the jacket and was going to get it fixed in a shop. Dougie is quite well-spoken and quite small; has a way with words. He described his jacket predicament as “bloody awful.” Everyone laughed at Dougie, and started saying things such as: “I burnt my toast this morning, it was bloody awful.” One guy said that the kids were probably pointing at the bin and wondering how it was moving on its own, because they couldn’t see Dougie… because he’s so small!
 See what I mean? Smalking targets the weak. Other Smalking subjects include women. When women are present they often get uptight about guys talking derogatory about other women, but this is all part of Smalking. One guy regularly goes to Thailand, and he said (fag in hand) that the women out there behave like women should do, because they don’t complain. All the women down the pub went mental, it was sort of vicious and they really laid into him. I guess he was entitled to his opinion, and they were entitled to their opinion. Anyway, sometimes women Smalk about men in the same way. I’ve heard them.
I reckon they should reinvent the Jeremy Kyle Show into a Smalk show instead of a talk show. In the Jeremy Kyle Show, someone will say something, and then another person will have their say. That’s how it is outside the pubs, and often it’s far more interesting. They could call it something like: It’s Good to Smalk, with your host the walking Smalking Dot Cotton, or walking Smalking Pat Butcher. It could be an Eastenders spin-off. I reckon it could be a goldmine. Knowledge shared is knowledge gained. |
