Cultured Views

As we are in the business of tourism and are acommodation owners we have complied with the new anti-smoking laws sweeping Europe and the United Kingdom. Well, sort of…when we bought this place there were no-smoking signs already in place in the public areas of our establishment so we left them as they were – and our guests have heeded them.

We do deviate though; if we have a couple who are the only guests currently in residence and wish to linger over their breakfast, or evening meal, with a cigarette then we allow them to do so. So long as there are no other objecting guests in their presence what does it matter? afterall – this is our establishment, our business – and if we see fit to allow our guests a post prandial cigarette where no-one else is around to be bothered then why not?

Having said that I have seen many businesses who are suffering from the introduction of these new laws and I have to say it is wrong; why should non-smokers laud it over everyone else?…and I am a non-smoker myself.

But to me there is another insidious lung-wrecking, chest-choking, throat-strangling evil which needs dire legislation world-wide…the excessive perfume/after-shave wearer !! and I really am quite serious about this.

I was born to, and raised by, two smokers. I have great lung capacity, never have a cold, and am healthy, happy and fit. So tant piss to those who gabble on about passive smoking reducing children to quivering, pallid and unintelligable wrecks. Cigarette smoke (okay, certain French fags excluded) does not really bother me, unless it is being blown directly into my face, but if there is one thing that causes my airways to cease up – if there is one thing that causes me to gasp for air and induce a marathon headache – then it is a woman swathed in perfume and/or a man smothered in aftershave cologne. Especially those cheap, musky perfumes sold on supermarket shelves.

I love to browse the cosmetic counters in the stores, but I just dread being ambushed by those women who stand armed to the teeth with bottles of perfume and little paper strips…“No I do not wished to be sprayed…bugger off!”

In my line of work I have to enter and inspect rooms vacated by guests, most often couples, that are so filled with thick clouds of perfume that I have to open doors and windows for 30 minutes before I can re-enter them; I have to greet these people on arrival, serve them meals and see them on their way when they leave. Very often I have to endure thick clouds of dense aromatic vapours exuding from him and her and often I am left a wheezing, coughing, eye-watering wreck for days afterwards.

Often I even have to air the dining-room and foyer afterwards just to rid the atmosphere of their heady vapours; and have also endured complaints from asthmatic guests arriving in their wake.

Why do people do this…why do people see fit to smother themselves from head to toe in perfumes and aftershaves…what are they trying to prove, and even more, what bodily sins are they trying to hide?…do these people forget that the rule with applying a fragrance of any kind is “a little goes a long way”.  Maybe it would teach them to know that ” too much goes further than it bloody well should!” 

I am almost tempted to put in place signs which totally ban the use of perfumes beyond one squirt (users of ‘Impulse’ take note), and guys, please leave the Brut, Old Spice, and especially Lynx at home!

Yes, by all means apply laws fairly to protect those people who are offended and affected by cigarette smoke; but please, can we do something about those people who create just as much a social and public health menace by wearing too much wheeze-producing perfumes?

Just as non-smokers do not wish to breath other’s cigarette smoke, nor should people like me be forced to inhale other people’s excessive layers of perfumes.

And, I have to admit, that the worst offenders here are the French…

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