Happy New Year to everyone!
My new year's was relatively calm. Everything worked out in the end, so the H and I were able to have our apartment to ourselves and we just hung out at home and drank champagne. Except at around 9 pm, we realized we had already finished one bottle of champagne and wanted to save the second (and last) one for midnight. So we dressed up all snazzy and stuff and went downstairs to the bar on the corner and had a couple of drinks.
I am not one to make New Year's resolutions, but here in France, starting yesterday, the new no-smoking law went into effect.
This is fine for those people (ahem, usually Americans) who dislike cigarette smoking with a passion, but I happen to be one of those nasty smokers, so I am quite disappointed about the whole thing. I also sympathize with the French smokers, as I lived through the no-smoking ban in NYC.
Cigarette smoking happens to be my only vice, aside from the occasional drink from time to time (though I don't really consider it a vice, seeing as the last time I actually threw up from drinking too much was back in 1999 and I have never let myself get that drunk since). I really, really do like to smoke. It makes me relaxed and it eases any crazy upset stomach pains I might have from being glutened (for real - tobacco is actually good for digestion). I mean, I would like to eventually quit smoking, but I've recently found out that I am also intolerant to dairy products. So now, in addition to pretty much every delicious gluten filled food out there (i.e. croissants, pizza, bread, sauces, etc) I now have to cut out all milk, cheese, butter, and so on. My diet from now on will pretty much just consist of meat, fish, and veggies. It's very healthy, and it makes me feel better, but it is very upsetting nevertheless. And so I need the tobacco, nicotine, and all those other additives that go into my Marlboro Lights more than ever.
Oddly enough, H and his entire family are all non-smokers (except for BIL and occasionally FSIL), but H thinks the no-smoking ban is going a little far, in that maybe they shouldn't ban smoking from bars and nightclubs. H mentioned that every time he comes to NY with me and we go to a bar, he thinks the atmosphere is weird and tense because there's no cigarette smoke. We both agree that no smoking in restaurants is okay, but it's just plain weird in bars and nightclubs. Though I admit, one of the reasons I really liked living in Paris was the fact that I could totally smoke it up in the restaurants, and I could totally just sit at a café with a cup of coffee and light up. Or that I could go anywhere and order a glass of wine and have a cigarette.
Oh, French smokers. I feel your pain. Don't worry, though, we'll get through it somehow.
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4 comments:
Yes, I know what you mean about the atmosphere of no-smoking joints. Even when I totally and completely quit smoking for 3 years, the ambiance didn't seem the same in smoke-free cocktail bars, for example. And I love a cocktail. And the 1930s, and the curl of a stream of cigarette smoke. And jazz and swing dancing (it all goes together for me), but that's peripheral. ;)
Since being here I've enjoyed smoking. I'm only a couple-a-day smoker now, and since we live in the South the ban won't affect us much (almost all restaurants are terraced and we sit outside 9 months out of the year).
I was in Paris for New Year and I didn't see anyone stubbing out their cigarettes at midnight! But I have to admit, I'm rarely in a smoky club with so little ventillation. I wasn't bothered at all by the smoke, but the next day my wool coat smelled HORRIFIC. I can sympathize with people who hate the smell, but as I'm not usually in little smoky bars it doesn't bother me.
I wonder if this law is really going to be respected. What do you think?
Yeah, I was watching the news on the 31st and they said the no-smoking ban would go into effect on Jan 1st and I said to the H, "Surely they won't enforce the ban at midnight? That's just plain mean!" I figured it would most likely go into effect in the afternoon of the 1st, or possibly the 2nd. I haven't actually been to a bar since midnight of the 1st, so I can't say if the ban is working or not.
I think the ban here is going to be just like the way it was in NYC - a lot of people purposely didn't go out the first few months of the ban, then when people couldn't take it anymore and started going out, there was a whole lot of grumbling, even by bar owners and workers. In the first year, there were several bars that would let people smoke despite the ban, but we had to put a couple of dollars in a jar in case the police came in and the bar got fined. One of my favorite bars would let people smoke after 3 am; saying they would be closing in an hour, so it wasn't a big deal if the police suddenly came in. That said, I don't ever remember anyone actually coming into a bar in NY and enforcing the ban.
Anyway, it's been a few years with the no-smoking ban in effect in NY and people are more or less used to it now - even in the dead of winter, there are quite a few people gathered outside smoking...
I'm guessing it will end up being the same here, but then again, I feel like the French are not as adamantly anti-cigarettes as Americans are.
To each country its own vices, I guess.
Now seriously, I mean this half tongue in cheek, but Americans are so much more serious about being anti-cigarette than anti-fatass, and I believe it's our big fatassness that's killing Americans in greater numbers even than France's cigarettes are killing them. Non? Whew, what a long, run-on sentence.
Of course, there's no second-hand fat. Unless you count the inconvenience of being packed into an airline seat next to someone who ought to have bought 2 seats.
I can also sympathize with your other dependence on cigarettes.... I am such a chronic non-pooper that sometimes I think coffee and cigarettes are the only things moving my digestive system along. TMI, sorry, for those who don't speak of these things. ;)
Haha, JoySuzanne, you are too funny!
Also funny you should mention the fatness. Last week in NY I was talking to my best friend and I was saying that I get the impression in France that people are much more obsessed with being thin than in the US - i.e. I was watching the French Top Model and they kept telling the wannabe models stuff like "You are fat", "Your ass is too big", or "Oh my god, you gained 1,5 kilos!!!!!" Whereas in the American Top Model, Tyra puts in a token plus-size girl all the time and also there's been the celeb backlash against being skinny - so I think Americans tend to have more of an attitude like "Well, we can't ALL be skinny" but in France, I get the impression that people think Scarlett Johanssen and Beyoncé are really fat (case in point: whenever the H sees a full length pic of Scarlett, he always says, "Oh my god, she is SOOOO fat!")
Then again, seeing as how cigarette smoking curbs your appetite (which means more thinness) maybe this is why the French are cool about the smoking. Though on the other hand, we Americans eat really huge portions of food - the first time H went with me to a restaurant in NY he was like, "Oh my god, everything is SO ENORMOUS!"
Re: the dependence on cigarettes - I don't think they move my digestive system along so much as alleviate the pain when I get glutened. It's not very well known, and I'll have to google the links again, but there have been studies done that show that tobacco is really good for digestion - apparently it lessens the symptoms of Celiac Disease, prevents some sort of kidney disease, and is actually recommended for people who suffer from Crohn's Disease. But the findings have never been widely released because of the whole anti-cigarette thing the world's got going on now. (And also because it's really the tobacco that does it, not all those zillions of extra stuff they put into cigarettes).
Just goes to show that every negative thing/trait/aspect in the world or in people is always balanced out with something positive.
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