Today is the seventh anniversary of the smoking ban in Ireland.
Older readers should look away now because I've told this story before (many times, in fact) but it was an occasion that for personal reasons I shall never forget.
The ban was introduced, if I remember, in the early hours of Saturday morning. I was intending to be there anyway but I was invited to Dublin as a guest of the Richard Littlejohn Show on Sky News. The producers had decided to do a live broadcast from the Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen's Green on Friday night and the fact that England were playing Ireland in the Six Nations that weekend was, I guess, a coincidence and an added bonus for production staff.
Anyway the programme was broadcast from the main bar of the hotel from 7.00-8.00pm. Guests sat at small tables drinking and, in some cases, smoking, and Littlejohn moved from one table to another asking pre-arranged questions about the ban.
On my table was the former footballer (now an outspoken pundit and TV presenter) Eamonn Dunphy, who some might call a professional curmudgeon. I couldn't possibly comment. Thankfully he was on my side of the argument because I didn't fancy picking a fight with him.
Actually it was a miracle I was there at all. I had flown to Dublin the previous day and stayed overnight with friends in Delgany, Co Wicklow, which is south of the city. Around midday they dropped me at the station in Greystones, a mile up the road, so I could catch the train to Dublin, check into the Shelbourne (where Sky had booked me a room) and enjoy a quiet, relaxing afternoon.
It takes 50 minutes to get from Greystones to the city centre but it took me six hours. The trouble began when I boarded the wrong train, which was heading south instead of north. I didn't think this was possible because Greystones is the last stop on the DART (Dublin Area Regional Transport) network but in hindsight I had obviously caught a different service entirely.
Even then I didn't twig until, 15 minutes down the line, an inspector looked at my ticket and announced that I was travelling in the wrong direction.
He was very good about it, though. At the first available halt he instructed the driver to stop the train, helped me off, and pointed in the general direction of a few houses several hundred yards away and said, "See those houses? Keep walking. You'll come to a main road and a bus will take you back to Greystones."
Perhaps I should explain that a halt is nothing like a station. No platform, no taxis, no-one. It's the rail equivalent of a request stop for buses. As far as I could tell I had been dropped in the middle of a field miles from anywhere with a heavy bag and few directions other than the promise that I would eventually find the main road if I kept on walking.
To cut a long story short, I did find the main road. It was in a village called Kilcoole but to all intents and purposes Kilcoole was shut that afternoon. There weren't many cars on the road either and no sign of a bus.
I think I waited two hours but a bus did eventually appear and slowly (very slowly) took me back to Greystones where I finally caught the DART to Dublin. It was past six o'clock when I arrived in the city centre and I had to run (sweating) to the hotel where I checked-in, showered, before taking my seat in the well-lit bar where the Richard Littlejohn Show was about to start. I made it with 15 minutes to spare.
What really struck me that weekend was the response of the Irish media. There was a sense of pride that Ireland was "leading the world". The issue was tobacco control but it could have been anything. (The French, I'm sure, felt the same pride when they were the first to send fighter planes to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya. "Leading the world", see.)
What mattered was the fact that, for one weekend at least, Ireland – and Dublin in particular - was the centre of world attention.
PS. ASH Ireland ("working towards a tobacco free society") are using the anniversary to urge the Irish Health Minister to introduce further measures to tackle smoking. It has produced a "10-point plan" which I am looking forward to reading ... (not).
See also: Amend smoking ban "to help save Irish pub", says Forest Eireann.