Wordsmith with Martin Smith

The truth be told, I was even looking forward to seeing some fights break out as people refused to put out a Lambert & Butler when asked to by bar staff.

How I longed to wake up on a Sunday morning no longer with lungs like coal sacks after a night at my favourite pub or club. It so happened that my favourite hang-outs were also possibly the most smoke-logged in the world, so the ciggy clampdown was going to have a genuine effect on my life.

What I failed to take into account was that some of my pals are smokers and were less than enthusiastic about the banishing of fags from their regular watering holes. I assumed they'd swiftly get over the challenge to their liberty and either go outside quietly or stub out all together when they realised smoking publicly now also potentially involved getting cold and soaked each time they sparked up.

The reality is, of course, they all still puff away like dockers. Defiantly so. And, more to the point, I get left on my tod several times a night like Billy No Mates in the middle of busy clubs or boozers.

Furthermore, I also keep finding myself in the firing line having to fend off other would-be sitters from planting their backside on the chairs vacated by said smokers. I either get tutted at or given a look that says: "Yeah, of course your mates are outside having a smoke. Bet you're really popular."

I now feel like a social pariah! I'm left there feeling awkward at best or made to feel like some loon who has imaginary chums. Or unsociable for not having in a habit many deemed anti-social enough to ban in the first place.

Maybe I'll just take it up.

Courtesy costs simply nothing

APOLOGIES if you are one of the polite ones.

An even fatter 'sorry' if you've been behind me when I've let the door close in your face.

But I've had it with holding them open for people now. There are just not enough 'thanks' going around for my liking.

Not least from women - surely the main reason we men, in particular, began holding doors open in the first place. I'm sorry - not least for me when anyone female I know clocks this column, but they really are the worst offenders.

It is as if they've come to expect this act of courtesy, that it is mandatory, so therefore no thanks is required.

Well, not from this side of the fire door ladies. And gents. From here on in I'm saving myself for one off acts of chivalry: the odd leather jacket laid down over a pothole or a kick up the backside for a troublesome terrier snapping at a feminine ankle.

And you can add to the above letting people out of junctions. Not least those folk who drive 4x4's the size of bungalows down the middle of the road on their way to pick up baking yeast from Waitrose.

Why these people, you ask. Not enough indicating, that's what - the bigger the motor, it seems, the less indication is required. Chapter six of the manual for one of these uber-wagons probably reads: “Don’t bother to indicate left or right when you can clearly see someone ahead of you waiting to cross the road or pull out of a junction.”

It’ll be alongside the bit about raising no more than a withering index finger to thank other drivers for letting them through a gap large enough for two normal sized vehicles.

There’s no arm in receiving a call

ANYONE else find those bluetooth ear piece things hilarious?

Once the domain of van drivers and NASA controllers you see them everywhere now.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone using a mobile while driving. And I too own a bluetooth earpiece. But can I bring myself to wear it? Nope. I would rather miss three hours of calls while I drive to London. Or lance my inbox while checking what that Roadchef is serving up.

What prompted this course of action, however, was not seeing other motorists with a flashing bit of chrome attached ludicrously to their lughole. It was the people who walk around the street with them on. And middle-aged men shuffling around B&Q, their cochlea primed in case they receive an emergency plea for a litre of PVA or some nails.

What is it that makes these poor chaps lose the use of their phone-holding arm the moment they leave the house.