RIP Smoking: What Happens If The Cig Break Goes Up In Smoke?
It’s official. The fag break is over. Keir Starmer is coming for our cigs.
It makes sense. No sensible person can defend smoking, at this point. But as a lifelong social smoker, I couldn’t help but feel a little ripple of grief for the future of my social life.
As an emotionally constipated nation, we’ve always needed permission to relax and unload. For any trussed-up British person, a cigarette break is a gift: the promise of a conversation with a reassuringly limited timeframe.
My own smoking career began aged sixteen bunking off school with packets of ciggies nicked from someone’s Mum’s glovebox. Stationed inside the cafe on the high street, we'd slurp drinks made of caramel whipped cream and teenage girl tears. We’d gossip about boys and blow plumes of smoke into the faces of nearby children. We’d giggle at the scary pictures on the packet while plotting careers that we were very confident would involve lots of cutting things out of magazines.
Our habit followed us out of school gates on a grand tour puffing around the pubs, clubs and gardens of the UK. The essence of sophistication, smoking made us bold and giddy and quite sick and dizzy. It taught us valuable skills, such as the art of striking up a conversation with a crush, which we even took global one summer (vous avez du feu?) to limited degrees of success.
The first ban of 2007 was the highlight of my smoking career. It was the excuse for a natter on a night out that I’d been waiting for. As a mini Mark Corrigan, I’ve never been as into the music, or as carefree as everyone else. I’ve always struggled with where to hold my arms convincingly in a way that would qualify as ‘cool dancing.’ They do not belong over my head. My arms are, however, very comfortable holding a cigarette.
Little did I know that waiting for me in the beat-free bliss of the smoking area were my people. In this weird ashy human soup, I met other poorly coordinated misanthropes who live to chat. We formed alliances and plotted our escape. We made up our own dance routines. Strangers became friends, and some of those friends eventually became lovers.
We rarely went inside. But why would you? The smoking area is roaringly alive. It's a marketplace, a trading hub where deals are struck for Rizlas and filters. An atmosphere infused with the quiet industry of smoking-related tasks like a makeshift roach, or a patient rolling lesson for a tipsy stranger.
There is no more exhilarating feeling than being dragged from the dancefloor by the cuff and surging outside into the chaotic, toxic cloud of urgent compliments. The smoking area is a place where you can stand with your brand-new toilet cubicle friend, lighting one cigarette with the previous one, and gabbling away as the chemicals hit your brains at exactly the same time. Then, once you’ve both run out, you cement their place in your life forever by parading up to the group and demanding your old friends give your new one more ciggies.
As smoking became less socially acceptable, pub and club smoking areas got grimier. Until they were mostly bleak prison exercise yards with all the astroturf glamour of an indoor dog toilet. The taxes got higher and so did the social stakes. This gave way to a new kind of theatre. A desperation that had you tottering along a velvet rope waving a pound coin as you busked for a straight.
The smoking area has never been for sissies. In the darkest of winters, we’ve huddled buttcheek to buttcheek, hands stamped, nipples and knees frozen in the holding pen of a nightclub. This is where some of our species’ most complex mating rituals have taken place. Non-smoking friends would shuffle from foot to foot while their bestie scored a fag from someone they’d been too scared to dance up to. You could catch the crackle of chemistry in the smile between them as he reluctantly hands over his second to last one. A gesture that would later develop into a romantic trip to the corner shop and the three-night stand that began their whole beautiful story. There were the less lucky ones, of course. The guys with their full tank of Zippo gas and fresh brick off the ferry went home alone. There were no laws that governed the smoking area - and there were certainly no guarantees.
The smoking area was never just a social space. It was a refuge, a meditation centre. The serendipity of finding out you are at exactly the same level of social anxiety as someone else taking five from the party. These could be gentle moments of communion or just trauma dumps with total strangers. The long pauses between drags are when you find out what’s really going on with people.
In my smoking career, I’ve rescued a rolly from the limp hands of a freshly single woman crying into a pouch of Golden Virginia. I’ve held a cigarette to the lips of a new Mum peering around the edge of a pub door frame to beg me for a couple of drags of something her baby couldn’t have. She said it technically wasn’t smoking if she didn’t hold it. I agreed.
We've laughed, cried and conspired in the smoking area. Huddling in the rain, chuffing in the sun. I won’t miss the overflowing pub ashtrays and the fag smell in my hair. Oh and the very high risk of lung cancer. But I will forever miss the solid gold excuse for a five-minute turbo-gossip with my favourite person in the world.
For now, until Keir taps us on the shoulder, we’re still huddling. The group is smaller now anyway. More of us are peering around the doorframe of the smoking area than standing in it. We’re a guilty ragtag assortment of blueberry blast and juicy peach. Some of us hold bubbling contraptions more like camera equipment than cigarettes. Nobody has a job cutting things out from magazines, weirdly.
We’re still the same naughty teenagers but with a more tangible sense of the stuff our parents warned us about. Deep down it feels less and less plausible that the picture on the packet with the mangled black mouth and the tracheotomy could never be us.
Smoking has had its fun with us. In the interests of not dying a slow and painful death, we’re all happy to have the matter taken out of our nicotine-stained hands.
The real question is, where the hell does that leave our precious British social lives? Perhaps we’ll actually have to tell the people we love we want to go outside and stare into the abyss. Perhaps we’ll have to learn to stipulate that we want a chat that will only last 4-5 minutes. We might have to one day tell someone we fancy them or practise starting a conversation for absolutely no reason. God forbid, I just might have to learn how to dance.
ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
You Might Also Like
