Is it just me that still loves the smell and would have one in a moment if I had no willpower? I quit in 2005, but particularly outside pub gardens and the like, bus stops I still crave

I can’t say if it’s just you, but I had a moment when I tried one and felt sick like the day I first tried tobacco (an addiction you have to work at initially?) and feeling that sickness was the final step, I simply didn’t want them anymore.

When I smell old smoke on people I’m glad it’s not me any more. And pity the poor buggers outside in the rain grabbing a quick puff. Smoking ban made it so much easier.

Tbh the chatting / plotting outside the building was one of the best bits for me… But yeah, not stinking of fags is a bonus. Walking up mountains another (and my primary motivation for stopping)

When I first quit smoking, I used to occasionally go for "a stand" with some of the smokers at work because I missed the camaraderie and valued the break away from the screen.

Yup. Best scurrilous gossip you could get… plus as I say, plotting.

At Blitz Games we used to have an Angry Lunch Club, where we'd occasionally go for a proper sit down lunch somewhere and bitch about things that made us angry 😆

Most of the best work conversations at GW were done while having a smoke.

Old smoke makes me cringe, for definite. It's the fresh smoke outside that gets me. Don't miss the social pariah out in the rain or cold business at all. At work in the early 2000s we actually had a smoking room in our 7th floor office, sounds mad now.

So did we. It was a pit of utter awfulness.

I remember visiting one in town hall in Bradford… Awful. Would rather stand in sleet.

In Bradford sleet, too. Proper nesh sleet.

I feel that they nailed it in The IT Crowd, "I remember when smoking was fun. All the cool kids were doing it. Now every time I want a cigarette I have to go to Gorky Park" 🤣https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0QgBavxCjQ

Wonderful 😂

Absolute genius.

a proustian flash black to disney making positive stories about refugees from communist countries - remember one about an east german family who escaped via a home made hot air balloon …

Teddy Ruxpin? An Eastern European dissident? When are you running this game?

am i ? a blog post will come about games on my mind shortly

Yep, that was a massive deal at the time.

bsky.app/profile/dear...

Reminds me of the pariah corrals they used to have in airports. Best was an outside bar in Singapore, where I drank a Singapore Sling because...

The design studio in the 90s gad a tea room which also allowed smoking. It had one tiny extractor fan. I remember one day someone cosed the door (fire marshal visit) and the enclosed steam from the tea urn made the walls run yellow with accumulated tar and nicotine...

About 15 years for me. 🤝