I shouldn’t really get started on this one as it leads to a slippery slope of why our liberties are being curtailed in all kinds of areas but I will try and stick to the point.

I am a smoker. To be more precise, I am a smoker who is currently not smoking. I learned this valuable theory from a friend who convinced me that once you start smoking you are, at heart, a smoker for life. You are either a smoker who is, or is not, currently practising. Those who tell you they have ‘given up’ are simply in denial. They could start again at any time regardless of what they tell you.

But I enjoy smoking. It gives me enormous pleasure and I have been a smoker, on and off but mainly on, since I was about 18. I don’t really want to stop but I am suffering from the pressure being exerted by people who seem to want to control what I do with my life and my health on my own time.

At the end of this month I am going to the USA for two or three weeks. The moment I arrive at Heathrow (with the exception of one hideously filthy and smelly room with no air change) I have to forsake the fags. No smoking in the airport. No smoking on the plane and, without any doubt, no smoking at Nashville where I land. There will be no smoking in my friends car who will collect us – or in her house; and to both of these I am in agreement. But there will be no smoking in the stadium when I go to see the Titans get thrashed by the Colts nor in the shopping mall when I go to do some shopping. There will be no smoking in the hire car I am due to drive from Nashville to Delaware. I can not even smoke in the garden or grounds of the hotel in Delaware. But I can smoke in the bar of the hotel in Washington where I end my stay. But I don’t really drink much. And then it’s back to the airport.

I approve of ‘no smoking’ in most public areas and the last thing I want to be is a nuisance to others. But my freedom to choose to smoke is being seriously curtailed by those who feel they have some moral justification for imposing their views over mine. Their aim is to stop me smoking everywhere, even in my own garden or garage or my own car. This is an insidious facet of today’s political climate but is a broader subject than the one I am covering here.

Anyway – in preparation for my three smoking-free weeks in the land of the free, I decided to stop a few weeks before I leave to minimise the shock! So I expect my posts to get more and more grumpy for a short while.