One other tedious aspect of smoking outdoors: the number of people who will try to cadge a cigarette from you. Of either sex, & although most are young or youngish, the men in particular can be any age. Most look as if they would not dream of approaching a complete stranger to ask for 25p, so I suppose they rely on what they fondly suppose is fellow-feeling
Occasionally one may ask if they can buy a cigarette from you. These are to be particularly wary of – they will probably discover they have no change on them once they have your cigarette in their hand
My response to all this used to be to put on my fiercest grumpy old woman face & growl No! & risk the occasional abuse
Then I picked up a very useful trick from a young woman – obviously an office worker taking a break – sitting nearby in a park
My version is now to tell anybody who asks: I‘m sorry, I’ve only got my ration
Works a treat. Poor old thing!
And says something interesting about social relations. Though search me what it is
