a pub conversation

Twitching with self-employed boredom, I decided to go to the pub last night in the vague hope that there was 'something' going on - which there wasn't!

There was, however, karaoke - which was being enthusiastically performed, alternately, by a Japanese chap (no surprises there) and 2 girls who, amazingly, were equally out of tune with the music - but perfectly in tune with each other (luckily the 'actual' music was turned down so low we could not even hear the proper song and only their inane screeching)...

As it turned out, in hindsight, the highlight of the night was a conversation with a smoker regarding the imminent smoking ban in the UK (Mar 26 I think). He, admittedly, was quite pissed but his point was essentially this:

Smoking is doing us all a favour because it hides the smell in a pub. And, in case you're wondering, that offensive smell is predominantly caused by blokes farting (& their breath, I think was the other contributor). At one point he declared to me "you don't know how much blokes fart" which, even at the time, struck me as odd - since I am a bloke and reckon I've got a rough idea!

So, while it was an interesting take on the smoking ban, he seemed to have overlooked a couple of salient points:
- the smell of smoke is pretty horrific to non-smokers anyway (especially in ill-ventilated and cramped pubs, as often found in the UK)
- he would not be much of an expert on the smell since his olfactory senses would be pretty fucked up thanks to his own smoking habit and I, for one, will risk the smell of farts anyway.

There would be more points I'm sure with greater thought, but these were the 2 that came to me at the time. I did begin to voice these thoughts but, as mentioned, he was pissed and like a lot of these types of conversations, it wasn't really going anywhere (or going to achieve anything). So, I nodded, smiled and murmured a non-committal "mmmm..."