Fine mess

Freedom of the press and all that - a great subject, and all the traffic coming this way in recent days implies that others think the same. One to return to, but perhaps it's time to move on.

Salut! goes Munch
thanks Gigi

Heavy, dark skies greeted me as I flew into Stansted the other afternoon. It felt three or four hours later than it was, and you got very wet walking from aircraft to terminal building.

If the south of France needed something to make it seem more attractive, that Essex welcome would have done the trick.

The welcome was to become bleaker. Awaiting me in London - one of my daughters had collected a stack of mail sent to our old home since the Post Office redirection time limit expired - were three letters from bailiffs.

A parking fine I never knew a thing about had naturally gone unpaid. The bailiffs were making bailiff-like threatening noises about what was likely to happen as a consequence.

You sense it means trouble
Picture: Alex Segre

Worse, these letters began in August, 2006 and ended in October. In that time, a parking fine that may have been - and this is a guess - £30 or £40 had turned itself into a debt of £235.

And the figure was still growing. When I was finally able to speak to the bailiffs next morning, I was informed that the sum outstanding now stood at just under £320.

What happens next is unclear. I have lodged an appeal on the grounds that no ticket was left on my car windscreen on the day back in February last year when, in a grim part of Birmingham, I had parked while attending Birmingham City vs Sunderland. I also had no idea I was illegally parked, but that is another issue.

A good case could be made out for penalising someone daft enough to spend good money travelling from France to spend an afternoon in the West Midlands, endure the worst food he can remember eating in a decade and then watch his hopeless, relegation-bound team produce a typically inept performance.

But I still reckon the cost of that day out, now racing past £500 (taking the cost of match tickets and travel into account) unless the appeal melts hearts, was steep.

And the burden is unlikely to be offset by the revenue Salut! enjoys from the Google click-and-earn ads (I think the income currently averages 11 US cents a day). Thanks for the bright ideas on how to illustrate this post - and to Alex Segre, a professional photographer, for allowing me to use his work.

No outdoor smoke without ire

Stand by for a news flash from Paris's Had to Happen department.

Someone may be watching you
Picture: Meteorry.

Few can have failed to notice that smokers, faced with fines if they light up at work, are forming sad little huddles at the entrances to workplaces.

It is not completely new, of course - the same sight, involving smaller numbers, could be encountered even before the recent law took effect
as more and more offices imposed their own bans.

What is fresh, however, is the stern warning from the Mairie de Paris that anyone stubbing out a cigarette on the pavement faces a whacking 183 euro fine.

That is rather steeper than the penalty for defying the smoking ban and the same price you'd pay if caught allowing your dog to do its business on le trottoir.

Was there ever a better reason for the street, in the noble traditions of France, to make itself heard?

French workers hooked on the weed must instantly mobilise to fight for outdoor ashtrays.

The fag end of France's smoking culture

Does the big stick work when trying to stamp out smoking?

Picture:_Pyro_.

Well, it didn't at school, where being caught guaranteed a caning. And I am not sure £48 fines will be any more effective in France now that the ban on smoking in many public places has taken effect.

The French are notoriously unruly in their approach to rules, regulations and conventions of which they do not approve.

The health minister may sound confident that the new law will be largely observed, but with legions of young people among 10 million or more French smokers, the early days and weeks may be a severe test.

If I am right to think of the French as almost professionally rebellious - they do love to claim to have been there at the birth of revolution - there will be lots of instances of defiance of the law.

Smoking is still seen as sexy and cool by lots of the French, and especially young people. And as any ex-smokers out there will readily agree, giving up once the habit has taken hold is genuinely hard.

Boys' choir practice at St John's Church in Shildon, Co Durham. That's where I first took up the weed.

I have guilty memories of covering my father's packet of Players untipped with a newspaper or comic, and easing a cigarette out without him seeing.

Threats of dire punishment at school did nothing to deter. Later, when I was smoking far, far too many cigarettes a day for my meagre pay to support, early morning coughing fits also failed to put me off.

By the time I eventually stopped, I was was nearly 30 and smoking at least one cigarette a day for each year of my life. I'd go to Belfast to cover the Troubles, rising early and staying up late in bars where lighting up seemed almost obligatory, and consumption would rocket.

After a fortnight of that, I'd return to England run down, and perhaps suffering from a chest infection that would make smoking positively unpleasant and painful. Still I would persevere.

It was on such a return that I finally found the will to stop smoking.

I was so poorly that I really could not smoke at all without severe discomfort. Within 10 days, I had recovered but knew I would never have a better chance to give up.

Once I felt really better, I rewarded myself with a packet of 10 - but I sensibly threw them away almost immediately and haven't smoked since.

Everyone who stops finds it gets easier as times goes by. The first weeks are obviously the worst but if you smoke heavily now and then succeed in giving up, you will probably - like me - always think of yourself as a smoker who doesn't smoke rather than a non-smoker.

In a recurring dream, I have taken it up again, reached 20 or so a day in no time and refuse to call a halt because I have persuaded myself I can stop any time I want.

If any smokers find that discouraging, they shouldn't. In real life, I am never tempted. But how to stop and stay stopped is not where I began these reflections on the French ban.

And when I think back, there is a ray of light for those wondering how on earth than can ever comply with the new restrictions.

Even at the height of my smoking career, I was able mentally to switch off as a user if I found myself in a court or some other environment where it was simply banned - however quickly I'd reach for the fags on getting outside again.

Smoking areas - upstairs on a bus, for example, or one carriage on the Tube - were usually so vile that they offered no proper relief and I routinely avoided them.

In time, I suspect, and perhaps before the ban extends next year to bars and restaurants, French smokers who cannot overcome the addiction may acquire another habit: knowing when and where it is just not allowed.