Wandering the streets of Sydney, particularly the CBD precincts in Sydney and Parramatta, one is struck by the numbers of smokers loitering on street corners, on pavements or in dark bin-filled alleys. The impression one gets is of outcasts, people thrust from their workplace, rain or shine. I understand very well that secondary smoking can be very harmful, but the wowserism that is stalking the land bothers me.

In Japan, hermetically-separate smoking rooms are set up in many shopping centres and doubtless many business premises to accommodate these poor addicts. I remember walking into smoke-filled staff rooms when I first started teaching and how my eyes began to water within minutes. Freshly laundered clothes soon took on the odour of stale tobacco.

Still, there must be a better way to go about this. Today as I walked by the river in Parramatta, then up through the business district, these lonely souls has an especially avian presence.


strange birds
perched darkly in wintry lanes
furtively ashing