Smoked a cigarette in a pub somewhere near the Guardian offices on Wednesday, accidentally; the thing just sort of leaped up out of the packet and was nearly finished before I realised that this was not merely breaking the law but also a grave political transgression. Half expected the Guardian editorial board to descend, led by the terrifying Toynbee and with all those angry Fenians and feminists in tow, bearing fire extinguishers and social exclusion orders. It had been a genuine accident, though; the mind loosened through a couple of glasses of wine and convivial company, reaching for a cigarette felt the most natural thing in the world. For a few moments I had forgotten this vindictive ban; it had slipped my mind. A blissful state, like when you’re miles away on holiday and by day eleven you’re so relaxed you’ve forgotten about the existence of speed bumps, I’m a Celebrity get Me Out Of Here and David Miliband.

So, anyway, I went down to the bogs for another one, straight after.

Back in safer South London, the bar and restaurant in which I usually read the paper of a lunchtime – Franklins - had placed a couple of chairs and tables outside, under an awning. I sat myself down in a force 9 gale reading dyspeptic drivel in one of the tabloids and smoking like a wizard. It really is one of the few things I do very well indeed, smoking; I needed just one attempt to get the thing lit. The Southwark enforcement monkeys had been round on Monday morning putting up their fatuous smoke free notices - just to rub it in, I suppose. I had a quick chat with the bloke from the little fabric shop up the road who was confused about whether he was also required to put one up in his window. “But who would come in my shop to smoke?” he asked, plaintively and with bewilderment.

A friend bunged me one of those new smoke-free smoking devices, called the “Nico pipe”, a slender, tapered, black metal thing into which you insert a nicotine cartridge purchased from “pharmacies or your doctor”. I don’t think it’s for me. I’m not walking the streets sucking on what appears to be a weasel’s dildo, nor queuing up in the surgery for six hours to get a prescription. Also it seems like a particularly cowardly form of capitulation and collaboration with the enemy.

In any case, it’s still possible to smoke plenty of cigarettes if you choose your venue carefully (Forest’s website lists the pubs and restaurants which are smoke-friendly, so check it out quick before some spiteful little harridan from Ash gets on the case and closes it down). And a driver from my local cab firm turned up, his Skoda plastered with no smoking signs, the man himself chugging away as ever on a Marlboro Light, his first act being to offer me a light.

On a train back from Wiltshire at the weekend I sat in a carriage which told me not to smoke, nor to use my mobile phone, not to listen to music on headphones, don’t try to open the door or the window you oaf, just shut the f*** up sit down and mind your ps and qs. We have become terribly intolerant of other people and the stuff they do, haven’t we? More insular and, as a society, atomised. It’s a symptom maybe of living in an increasingly crowded country – but also of a deeper malaise, a sort of borderline psychosis. We don’t like each other very much, any more, I think.

Oh – and a quick clarification: last week I mentioned that doctors kill more people every year than die through smoking related illnesses. I meant accidentally, through their incompetence, not deliberately as a result of homicidal tendencies. I thought I’d better mention this in the wake of those car bombs in London and Glasgow, all twelve perpetrators apparently being NHS employees, including a brain surgeon. We have to keep a sense of perspective: it would be wrong to conclude that doctors are actually trying to kill us all – only a sizeable minority of them wish to do that.

Smoking Thought for the Day

Contributed by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek

“Let's take the campaign against smoking in the U.S. I think this is a much more suspicious phenomenon than it appears to be. First, deeply inscribed into it is an idea of absolute narcissism, that whenever you are in contact with another person, somehow he or she can infect you. Second, there is an envy of the intense enjoyment of smoking. There is a certain vision of subjectivity, a certain falseness in liberalism, that comes down to "I want to be left alone by others; I don't want to get too close to the others." Also, in this fight against the tobacco companies, you have a certain kind of politically correct yuppie who is doing very well financially, but who wants to retain a certain anti-capitalist aura. What better way to focus on the obvious bad guy, Big Tobacco? It functions as an ersatz enemy. You can still claim your stock market gains, but you can say, "I'm against tobacco companies." Now I should make it clear that I don't smoke. And I don't like tobacco companies. But this obsession with the danger of smoking isn't as simple as it might appear.”