I don't want to see your butt

Smokers, I've nothing against you. Feel free to light up. After all, you volunteer to pay an enormous tax which more that adequately covers the hospital bed you will need later, look on it as a deposit. And you do look very sophisticated when you smoke, very Marlon Brando or Marlene Dietrich, you make me want to hang out with you, you cool dudes. With the added bonus that you will have significantly shortened your life so you won't need that hospital bed for long, and there will be one for me when it is my turn to shuffle off this mortal coil. Shame you won't be around, but then again you might end up at a tea dance paid for by the Making the Difference fund somewhere where the curtains are never opened, oh lord, the thought almost makes me feel like reaching for a Regal myself.

But, or should I say BUTT,

you have one filthy habit which I have to take issue with and one that is making Mrs Litter very irritated indeed.

Take a stroll down Green Lanes on a Saturday afternoon, linger a little at the open MetroBet door, so tempting, an 'each way' with the child benefit and we'll be drinking champagne on the Riviera this time next week, and then look down. Everywhere you look you see little orange bits of paper, everywhere. Stroll on and before long you realise that the entrance outside the bookies was much cleaner than the one outside the cafe, the hardware shop, the grocers. And then you see it, three or four people, gossiping, enjoying the afternoon sun, having a joke, smoking a fag and each and every one of them throws the butt on the ground before going inside. Not the pub, oh no, the Old Ale is a model of cigarette etiquette with butt bins and ashtrays on the tables filled with sand and a landlord that cares about the space in front of his establishment. Back into the cafe, the bakery, the shop. One has made a half hearted attempt to throw it towards the bin which is 2 steps from him but misses, oh well, it's not going to make much of a difference, it is such a small thing.

Look, I know you feel you are the new social pariahs, that you are making a stand for freedom against the nanny state. You are a rebel, I can't take my eyes off, you gorgeous thing you, which is a shame as my newly walking toddler is just picking up that orange paper and testing it, with his tongue. Aaaargh!

You know, we could do something about this. Maybe people could use the bins, we could ask traders to put up one of those wall ashtrays outside their shops and ensure their employees and customers use them, ask employees to take an ashtray with them, get cafes to sweep up round their tables.
It's not so hard, you'll still be the the cool rebel you always were, the ashtray won't change that.

Photos by permission of Alex Segre