Just Keep Walking!

The ‘No Smoking’ sign has been stolen from my local florist’s shop window.

‘They cost £11,’ she moans.

She points to the adhesive still left on the window, grubby sticky marks on a crystal clean pane of glass.

I hadn’t realised that all businesses had had to display such a sign, even small one room businesses like hers, which consists of just one small room crowded with buckets holding flowers.
Someone has made a killing selling all those signs, and now thieves are busily at work stealing them. Somewhere, in one of the darker corners of England, shady characters are probably hiding their illicit hoard of stolen signs and grubby notes are exchanging hands as they are surreptitiously sold on.

These signs are everywhere; and as a non-smoker I’m grateful for the clean air they allow me to breathe inside buildings. The smoking problem has been moved from the inside of buildings to the streets. No sooner do you step outside a railway station for example then you are forced to walk the gauntlet of smokers who are just starting to light up. It is even worse in capital cities such as Dublin and London. Outside every tourist attraction people are desperately lighting up and puffing away. The Tower of London visit for us was marred by having to walk past so many smokers. Their smoke goes in our lungs, in our hair and weaves around our clothes making us feel grubby. I wish smokers would walk a long way away from others before they light up. In fact I wish they would just keep walking!

Then people like my local florist would not have to fork out another £11 for a sign.

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