Blow it out of your a**

If one had to ask me, for whatever reason, what smells I associate with Cape Town and Johannesburg, a brief moment of pondering would lead to the conclusion: cigarette smoke!
Walking down the Mother city’s streets has become a hazy gauntlet of noxious cigarette smog. This coupled with the cacophonous hacking coughs of these chronic indulgers of cancer gathered outside buildings makes a simple stroll a hazard of sorts. Sure, those of the non-smoking persuasion, such as me, have the shopping malls, hospitals, aeroplanes, morgues, our ‘antiseptic’ fortresses away from the eye-stinging ciggie smoke. Why then do smokers have the environment, the rest of the world to indulge their habits? You’ll note, I didn’t mention restaurants among these newly created ‘Smoke-free zones’ Hahahahahaha, what a joke? Too often a dinner out will be interrupted by that all too ubiquitous smell. And setting up so-called ‘Smoking Areas’, does that really help? Does smoke not know how to creep and contort its way through any crack so it can hone in on your eyes and nostrils and clothes? I often stare at these ‘cages’ they euphemistically label ‘smoking sections’ (more like wannabe cancer wards) and wonder just how pleasant can it be sitting amid an atmosphere of smoke, sipping wine, having a meal? I suppose seasoned smokers are accustomed to it, but surely the penny (or cigarette butt) has to drop at some time, where they realise ‘Yuck, I smell offensive. My teeth are yellow, my fingers pong. Heck, even my underwear stinks (of smoke that is)’. But personal hygiene aside, for me, it’s more the virtually omnipotent intrusiveness of the smell and the arrogance of most smokers. Sitting in my car the other day at a red traffic light a man in a Mercedes behind me, lazily smoked his cigarette. Like a heat seeking missile, the smoke sought me out in my car as if it could detect I was one of those – an anti-smoker. Before I knew it, Mercedes man was inadvertently sharing his habit with me. He’d smoked just half of it before flicking it onto the road (at more than R20 a box, I would have thought he’d at least smoke it to the end. It’s like burning cash). Don’t Mercedes vehicles come equipped with ashtrays? Why couldn’t this guy just stub it out into the apposite instrument – the ASHTRAY? Stompies are now a regular sight on beaches across the country. Like little landmines, they surround you. They’re by no means dangerous, but most certainly offensive. Yet another billboard advertising the arrogance of nicotine lovers. All too often I find I have to negotiate a wall of smoke while walking, smoke which comes from another person’s possibly disease-infested mouth. How would they like stopped, turned my head to them and coughed furiously over them? If they were normal functioning humans they’d scowl and curse, much like what I do when they exhale their fumes and promptly flick their butt wherever they want to.