Day 3 at the Smoke Free Hospital

The grassed and wooded area at the front of the hospital has become my regular meeting place with my work colleagues. We do so as not to incur the wrath of we know not whom and out of fear of "disciplinary action". The car park attendants, my mate Lionel included, have been told they are the smoke police. I talk to everyone but one by one it seems I find out something new about these people. People I once talked to freely I now have an urge to assault and others I feel are allies. The segregation of my friends has commenced. I now have two types of friends, those who wander how I'm managing now they've closed the smoking room and those who are showing increasingly violent opinions and feelings towards the people who have done this to us. One colleague related how he had got so angry yesterday he had gone home at lunch time and phoned to tell his boss he wouldn't be coming back for the afternoon as he might hit someone.

Day 2 as a result of having to display my doctorial smoking habit in the light of day at the bus stop outside the hospital I met a strange lady. I was chatting to 4 other colleagues inhaling on similar white sticks and this extremely fat lady started talking to herself whilst looking at me. We are only 100yds away from the mental health services hospital and so it is not unusual to meet this behaviour and anyway health service staff themselves are in the habit as well. She seemed to be communicating her pleasure derived from the very thing that caused my unusual and defenceless placement and despite her rambling and disconnected style of oration I got the distinct impression she was trying to make me and my troup feel embarassment. "Excuse me but we're not actually interested" was my lame interjection which I later found out was rather approved of by my trench mates. It was at that moment that I remembered my last such exchange and simultaneously some form of personal abuse issued as if by reflex from the calorifically challenged marauder. Apparently I am smelly and undesirable. I could only think of an enormous black pot bubbling over next to a rather sleek cordless upright slimline kettle. Well forward into battle it is. Platoon! Attention!!