Which came first, the chicken or the fag?
I’ve never smoked. My Dad did, but gave up ciggies for pipe and cigars only by the time I was about ten, and then finally gave them up when he was in his late sixties.
I can remember the one and only time I was tempted, but decided in that moment I wasn’t going to and that was that.
I remember my Mum trying a fag when I was a kid, but she didn’t like it and never touched one again.
After going through our adoption process, we used to attend a support group for parents of adopted kids, and often had a guest speaker.
One of these was a Police Officer from the Drugs Unit in Bristol, and he came to explain the perils of drug use and signs to look out for in our kids.
He had samples of fake drugs to show us what they looked like, and the normal quantities of each one that were normally sold to users.
He also went through the addictive properties of each, telling us that nicotine was more addictive than heroine, and all it took was five cigarettes to become addicted.
He said, knowing what we know now, if tobacco came on the market today, it would be a prohibited substance.
I remember the ciggy adds when I was growing up. I never understood how something burning red hot could be referred to as, “Cool as a mountain stream.”
That’s the power of advertising for you.
When I first started work, smoking was allowed. Later, smoking indoors was banned, and eventually smoking anywhere on site was banned, although people still did it in secluded places. Well, the site was huge, perhaps fifty acres in total before bits got sold off.
Before it was banned I had a stand-up argument with one of the hourly-paid chaps, a really horrible bloke and a self confessed thief.
I was staff so I could request, but not order instruct, and I was twenty something, less than half his age.
I insisted that he must not smoke in the control room. He said it was allowed.
Well you see, I had done my homework and read the Offices, Shops, Factories, and Railway Premises Act current at the time, because there was a copy of the relevant part posted on the first landing of the building.
I quoted the relevant paragraphs that basically said, though shall not smoke or produce sparks or naked flames in the vicinity of (distances given) fuel storage (gas, flammable liquids, fuel oil, etcetera) or pipework, or buildings where said flammable stuff is used.
I then poined out that one of the control rooms was adjacent to a fuel farm, and both control rooms had kerosene fuel pipes of about 100mm bore running under and through them up to the point where they were connected to the engine under test.
One of the Inspectors, whom everyone liked and got on with went down to read the Act framed on the stairway wall.
When he came back he just said, “He’s right, and it’s a criminal offence if you do it.”
That was that. No more smoking in control rooms, at least not whilst I was there.
Many years later I was on another test bed with a similar layout when a fuel pipe broke resulting in a rather scary fire. We had to evacuate across a flat roof as the fire went under us, and then down a metal escape ladder bolted to the side of the building.
Oh how we laughed all the way to the launderette.
