CD or not CD?

I’ve just bought a new CD player. I’m not sure why because I rarely play CDs these days.

Like most things, I was a little late to compact discs. It was the late Eighties when I replaced my Sony music centre (tuner, amplifier, single cassette deck, turntable) with a Technics (Panasonic) hifi system (tuner, amplifier, twin cassette deck, turntable, CD player).

The Sony, which sat in a cabinet behind a glass door that occasionally fell off, predated the first CDs in 1983 which is why it didn’t have a CD player.

Although it had a turntable (my first) I continued to buy cassettes (having got my first cassette player in 1972, when I was 13) until I was almost 30, when I replaced the Sony with the Technics and started to purchase CDs.

Unloved today, CDs were a huge improvement on cassette tapes that were forever getting mangled in the tape machine.

Audiophiles disagree but I considered them better than vinyl too - no more scratches or hissing, although in time I realised you could scratch a CD too, making it jump or malfunction, if you didn’t look after it and return it to its plastic tray.

However, every car I had in the Nineties and into the new millennium still had a cassette player so it wasn’t until 2004, when I upgraded to an Audi, that I finally had an in-car CD player.

Twenty years later in-car CD players have been replaced by Bluetooth so if I want to listen to music while driving I have to download music to my iPhone.

But in all honesty I don’t play a lot of music, either at home or in the car.

My music collection, such as it is, is currently scattered around the house and garage in several formats - physical CDs, cassettes, and a few vinyl records; plus MP3 files on my iMac and iPhone, mostly ripped (is that the word?) from my CDs, with a handful of tracks purchased from iTunes.

I can’t play the cassettes or vinyl records because I no longer have a cassette deck or turntable. (My daughter has the Technics and it still works.) And until today I didn’t have a dedicated CD player either, but that’s not the reason I don’t listen to a lot of music.

The main reason is … I’m bored listening to the same stuff over and over again.

Like a lot of people, my taste in music was established when I was a young child in the Sixties, then a teenager in the Seventies, and it hasn’t really moved beyond the early Eighties.

Today, when I listen to music, it’s usually new stuff by artists I liked when I was young, or remixed/remasters of old albums (by the same artists) that I already have in my collection.

I convince myself they will sound better than the original recordings but I suspect a non-audiophile like me, listening to MP3 files on middling speakers, won’t hear much difference.

So why have I bought a new CD player, especially when I’ve read that you get better sound quality via streaming, and if I subscribe to a streaming service (Spotify or Apple Music, for example) I can listen to all the music I want to at a fraction of the cost of buying CDs?

First and foremost, I like physical things - CDs, cassettes, vinyl. Streaming seems a bit soulless to me, and I also like the idea of owning something - it’s the difference between buying a book or borrowing it from a library.

But there’s something else. There’s too much choice! Seriously. Choice is great, until there’s too much of it.

It’s like going to a restaurant and being given a menu with a vast selection of dishes. Rarely a good sign. A Michelin restaurant would never do that.

But there’s another reason for buying a CD player and it’s this.

Quite a few CDs I own are not available on any streaming service so the only way I can listen to them is by downloading the tracks on to my computer via an Apple disk drive and playing them through external desktop speakers that, as I’ve said, are OK but not great.

In addition, therefore, I have also bought a Sonos Era 300 speaker that will connect directly to the new CD player. The former has been well reviewed and the latter won the 2023 What HiFi? award for ‘Best Affordable CD Player’, so fingers crossed!

(Connecting the CD player to the speaker via cable is better, apparently, than using Bluetooth which is an option but is said to reduce the sound quality a fraction. Again, I suspect that only audiophiles can tell the difference but we’ll see.)

However, what really inspired me to buy a new CD player and speaker is that, for the first time in years, I am genuinely enthused by a new band, albeit one whose influences seem to hark back to the Seventies.

Again, I’m a bit late to the party - The Last Dinner Party - who I stumbled upon last year on YouTube before the release of their debut album, Prelude To Ecstasy, earlier this year.

I bought the CD a few weeks ago and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in a long, long time, but I felt my ‘system’ (music downloaded to my computer and played via desktop speakers) didn’t do it justice.

Hence the new CD player and speaker, making Prelude To Ecstasy the most expensive album I have ever bought!

I am still tempted though to subscribe to Apple Music - currently available for three months free, then £10 a month after that - if only to explore a world of music I’m largely ignorant of.

If only there was a music sommelier who could guide me to the best and most interesting stuff.

Then again, I do prefer a quiet life …

PS. CDs I shall be playing this weekend:

Prelude to Ecstasy (The Last Dinner Party)
What A Racket! (Joe Jackson)
Powertron (Bill Nelson)
Greatest Living Englishman (Martin Newell)
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Paul McCartney)

Operation benign fatty lump!

I had second and even third thoughts about writing this.

By most standards, the surgery I had this morning was a bit of a breeze, even though it was done under general anaesthetic and I was told there was a small (three per cent) risk of having a stroke or heart attack during the operation.

There was also a slight risk of infection, possibly leading to sepsis although the surgeon preferred not to talk about that during the pre-op consultation. Instead he alluded to something “worse” and I assume that’s what he meant.

I’ll get to the reason for the operation in a minute. But first, I want to explain why I almost didn’t publish this post.

As I say, it wasn’t a major issue and by writing about it I don’t want to equate it with far more serious operations and treatments that some of my peers, including friends and acquaintances, have undergone over the past year.

I think it’s an age thing. We’re all getting older and our bodies are wearing out, or mutating, in strange and unforeseen ways.

At Christmas, for example, a friend from university announced he was having open heart surgery. (Something to do with his aorta.)

A few weeks ago an old school friend - far fitter than me - had triple heart bypass surgery.

Then, last week, a friendly acquaintance had his gall bladder removed.

On top of that, several other people I know have undergone treatment for cancer.

But the most extraordinary case is that of Grandad, aka Richard O’Connor, who writes the Head Rambles blog.

I wouldn’t mention his name if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s been writing about it himself so almost every gory detail is in the public domain.

What he’s gone through is off the scale and I admire him not only for his stoicism but for maintaining his sense of humour. (It helps, I think, that he sees the absurdity of life.)

I admire them all however because I haven’t read or heard a single word of complaint, or self pity, from any one of them.

In comparison to theirs my experience has been a walk in the park, but this blog is a diary of sorts and it would be incomplete if I didn’t mention it.

Also, let my story be a warning to readers, but I’ll leave that to the end.

Anyway, the reason I was in hospital today is because a large lump had developed at the top of my back.

I first noticed it a decade ago when it was very small. Within three years it had grown to three centimetres in diameter.

That’s when mentioned it to my GP who said it was almost certainly a lipoma (a ‘benign tumour made of fat tissue’), but because it wasn’t painful, and was out of sight, I did nothing about it.

Gradually however it grew and grew to the point where my GP eventually said that, if was him, he would have it removed.

Earlier this year he measured it again and it was now eleven (!) centimetres in diameter, large enough to qualify for the Guinness Book of Records and, if I left it much longer, I’d soon be auditioning for the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

An MRI scan confirmed my GP’s diagnosis that it was a benign not cancerous tumour, but that created a different problem.

If it wasn’t a risk to my immediate health it would be considered a cosmetic procedure and the NHS doesn’t do ‘cosmetic’ so I would have to go private.

As it happens, when I booked an appointment at a local private hospital, the surgeon told me he thought I could get the operation through the NHS because the lipoma was now so large it probably met the threshold of risk because the larger the lipoma the greater the risk of it becoming cancerous, although he also reckoned the risk was very small.

He therefore suggested I speak to my GP again, but when I did it became clear I would have to jump through a lot of hoops, and even if the NHS agreed to operate there would be a significant wait.

Sod it, I thought, let’s get it done privately, and quickly. Hence today’s operation, although when my wife saw the price her immediate response was, “That’s the cost of a holiday!”.

Anyway, I’m home now. I’ll be convalescing for a few days but, fingers crossed, there shouldn’t be any complications.

That said, I now have an eleven centimetre scar at the top of my back so I won’t be winning any Mr Universe competitions in the near future.

Finally, what have I learned from the experience?

One, private hospitals are great! Over the last few months I’ve had a number of consultations and pre-op appointments, in person and on the phone, and I’ve been seen on schedule every time, so no hanging around in waiting rooms or corridors for hours on end.

Sometimes it felt more like checking into a hotel than a hospital. I exaggerate, but before and after today’s operation I had my own en suite room, and the post op food (which I could choose from a menu) was more than acceptable.

If I had my time again, and could afford it, I would take out private health insurance in a heartbeat, although I’m told that premiums go up significantly the older you get.

I’m also led to believe that private healthcare won’t cover more serious long-term illnesses - cancer, for example - but I don’t know enough about it so don’t take my word for it.

Two, and this is far more important. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, get it checked out as soon as possible. I know this is a bit of a cliche, but don’t postpone the day of reckoning because, if you do, the ‘problem’ (if it exists) will probably get worse.

The issue I had was relatively insignificant, but had I got it treated several years ago it would have been a ‘procedure’ under local anaesthetic rather than an operation under general anaesthetic and it would have cost a fraction of the price!

I should add that this was only the second time I’ve had a general anaesthetic in hospital.

The first time was at Dundee Royal Infirmary when I was 12. I was rushed in with acute appendicitis and my appendix was whipped out within hours of my arrival.

I remember it well because I ‘woke up’ while they were still stitching me up. I couldn’t speak or move but I could definitely feel the needle and stitches being inserted. It was quite disconcerting, although at that age I didn’t know any better.

Anyway, I mentioned this in a pre-op questionnaire and I repeated the story when asked about it by today’s anaesthetist.

Thankfully there was no repeat. Instead, after he injected something into my arm, I drifted off and woke up an hour and a half later feeling as if I’d had the most lovely sleep.

I’m told I may experience some pain over the next few days - they sent me home with three different painkillers and instructions to use them three or four times a day if necessary - but so far so good.

I know, though, that others have experienced far more challenging operations and treatments, so hats off to everyone mentioned or alluded to above.

Update: I posted the photo above on Facebook with a short note and people have been replying with comments such as ‘Get well soon’ and ‘Hope you have a speedy recovery’.

It’s very nice of them but, 24 hours after the event, I feel absolutely fine and a bit of a fraud!

Culture war

The IEA’s Reem Ibrahim has issued a plea to ‘Save our shisha bars’.

Writing for the online magazine Spiked, Reem notes that if Keir Starmer’s proposed outdoor smoking ban is enacted, shisha lounges and cafes could face complete extinction.

I feel I’ve been here before. Back in 2007, a few days before the indoor smoking ban was enforced, I wrote:

An article in today's Times highlights the impact the smoking ban will have on the shisha community. ‘On Sunday,’ the paper reports, ‘the last charcoal will be lit, the last shisha will be brought to the table and a culture that stretches from Morocco all the way back to ancient Persia will be snuffed out.’

Britain’s shisha bars were indeed hit hard by the indoor smoking ban but, as Reem acknowledges, ‘many venues adapted to the new rules as best they could’.

For those that survived it meant taking the practise outside, on to licensed pavement areas and other outdoor spaces, although I once enjoyed an evening in a shisha cafe that still allowed it in what I remember being a rather dark back room!

Anyway, I am reminded of something else I wrote back then. It followed Forest’s Revolt In Style dinner at The Savoy hotel in London where 400 guests were invited to ‘eat, drink and smoke’ in an indoor public place for one last time:

A special guest at The Savoy on Monday was Ibrahim El-Noor of the Edgware Road Association who has been fighting - albeit belatedly - the smoking ban which owners fear will result in the closure of many of Britain's 600 shisha bars.

I first met Ibrahim 15 months ago when he took me to a local hookah bar and showed me how to smoke shisha. There is very little tobacco involved - it's mostly fruit peel filtered through water. Shisha smoking, he told me, is a social activity enjoyed by different age groups and different sections of the community.

According to Ibrahim, "For many young people, who do not drink or go to pubs and bars, the main leisure and social activity is to visit a shisha café. Here, they can socialise, debate and discuss their affairs without being intoxicated, introduced to drugs, or subjected to violence and anti-social behaviour."

The smoking ban, he says, will destroy this culture and a centuries old tradition. He is holding on to the hope that legal action could lead to shisha bars being excluded from the ban (as they are in New York). Short of funding a potentially expensive - and therefore crippling - legal battle, we have offered to help in other ways.

On Monday, for example, we gave him a platform to publicise his campaign and he responded with a short, moving speech that will have registered, I'm sure, with many of the MPs and peers present. If he can persuade just one of them to introduce a private members' bill on the subject, they may - just may - stay in business.

A few months earlier I had been invited to a press conference organised by the Edgware Road Association and hosted by Ibrahim. His impassioned plea included the points that:

"Shisha smoking is a social activity enjoyed by different age groups in a happy environment. It is an alternative culture that reflects the diversity of British society today. Its popularity is reflected in the prevalence of shisha cafes in many major cities and towns in England, Wales and Scotland.

“For many young people, from all walks of life, who do not drink or frequent bars and pubs, the main leisure and social activity is to visit a shisha cafe. Here, they can socialise, debate and discuss their affairs without being intoxicated, introduced to drugs or subjected to violence and anti-social behaviour."

Commenting on this, I wrote:

This late attempt to secure an exemption for what are essentially smokers' clubs will almost certainly fall on deaf ears because the anti-smoking agenda is now so extreme that 'tolerance', 'compromise', even 'culture', are dirty words. Nothing can be allowed to dilute the impact of the ban which is designed not just to 'protect' barworkers but force people to give up a legal consumer product.

Shisha bars are unlikely survive the ban because, unlike a pub or restaurant, the principal activity is smoking a shisha pipe. In New York, shisha bars are exempt from the ban. Sadly, in Blair's Britain, few people seem to care that an entire culture is about to be destroyed.

In hindsight the threat may have been exaggerated because the culture, like shisha bars, still exists.

Nevertheless, an outdoor smoking ban really could be the final straw because it’s not like a cigarette - you can’t walk a few yards down the road with your hookah pipe in hand (at least, I don’t think you can!) and it ignores the fact that smoking a shisha pipe is, in the main, a communal activity.

In April 2021, with shisha bars still closed due to Covid, Ibrahim contacted me again:

As you know, shisha places are not just businesses, they are part of the community and provide a social platform for very large and diverse sections of society.

We spoke on the phone and had a long chat, but after that it all went quiet again. Perhaps I should give him a call …

PS. Shisha pipes were part of Forest’s fringe event at the 2006 Conservative Party conference when we invited Keri Remes of High-Life Hookahs to bring some of his products to the party.

And bring them he did.

Keri was one of many people trying to persuade the Labour government to exempt shisha cafes from the smoking ban and we thought this would a good way to highlight the issue.

Ultimately it made no difference but it was certainly a popular feature of the event.

Below: I did inhale, honest!

Keep it local

I’ve written a piece for Chamber UK about the Government’s plan for an outdoor smoking ban.

Run by former MP Ben Howlett, Chamber UK describes itself as a ‘broadcaster and publisher of politics from across the UK’:

We have a readership of 119,000 – with our audience primarily being MPs, council leaders, devolved parliamentarians, council chief executives, director level civil servants as well as subscribers.

I was asked for 600+ words so I contributed 1,000. They were very good about it, though, and published it in full.

I made several points but the one I thought would resonate most with their audience was an appeal to put local democracy ahead of a nationwide ban imposed by central government:

In 2020 an amendment to the Business and Planning Bill that would have banned smoking in the new outside pavement areas was withdrawn after the Conservative government rejected the idea that smoking should be prohibited in all outdoor seating areas that were licensed to serve food and drink.

According to a statement, ‘The government will not ban outdoor smoking. Since the existing [indoor] ban was introduced, businesses have invested heavily in their outdoor areas and banning outdoor smoking would lead to significant closures and job losses.’

That remains the position today and it seems to be working well because, although local authorities have the power to ban smoking in licensed pavement areas, only a handful have chosen to do so, which suggests there is very little demand to extend the indoor ban to outside areas when more liberal solutions, based on tolerance, common sense and pragmatism, already exist.

Despite this, the newly elected Labour government wants to by-pass local authorities and impose a nationwide ban on smoking outside pubs, bars and restaurants, taking what should be a local issue out of the hands of local people and local businesses.

At stake is the ability of cafes, pubs and bars to choose policies on smoking that work best for them and their customers without unnecessary and intrusive government intervention.

In a perfect world, of course, this would not be an issue for either central or local government.

Given a choice, however, I would prefer decisions that could seriously impact local businesses to be made by local authorities, not central government, even though some will inevitably be driven by the same anti-smoking ideology that has infected Whitehall.

Full article: Why Extending the Smoking Ban to Outdoor Areas is a Threat to Pubs, Clubs, and Local Democracy (Chamber UK)

ASH was also invited to contribute - see Creating a Smokefree Country: The New Government’s 2024 Reforms.

Fight the ban, fight for choice

The Government must have hoped that the anger and incredulity that greeted reported plans for an outdoor smoking ban would have fizzled out by now.

Instead, almost two weeks after The Sun published its exclusive story, based on leaked information, the issue continues to make headlines around the country, and not in a good way.

Yesterday, Observer columnist David Mitchell (yes, that David Mitchell) weighed in with his thoughts on the matter (The pub garden smoking ban is a drag on our freedoms).

After a bizarre swipe at Margaret Thatcher, he finally got to the point:

The indoor smoking ban was bad enough. I know it’s been successful at reducing smoking and, on balance, I wouldn’t go back on it now. Nevertheless it is my belief that that is not the sort of law governments should make. Smoking is a stupid thing to do but, in a free society, we should be allowed to do stupid things unless they impinge on the freedom of others. But the advocates of the ban tried to claim that it was not an assault on liberty, by citing the health impact of passive smoking.

Are they really going to make the same claim when it’s being done outdoors? That smoking in pub gardens significantly shortens the lives of significant numbers of non-smokers? More than driving non-electric vehicles or smelting steel or lighting bonfires on 5 November, activities the government is not proposing to ban?

Mitchell is (or was) a smoker, but I don’t remember him being an outspoken critic of other anti-smoking measures. Perhaps the threat of an outdoor smoking ban was the final straw.

His piece is one of many op eds on the subject, most of which have been critical of the plan.

The Spectator led the way with at least five articles online including Starmer may regret an outdoor smoking ban (Andrew Tettenborn) and The war on smokers has gone too far (Sam Leith).

The Telegraph has also published several op eds denouncing an outdoor ban including I’ll never go to the pub again if outdoor smoking is banned by a certain Nigel Farage (who else?!).

More surprising was a piece by Martha Gill in the Guardian: I love the nanny state, but let’s leave outdoor smokers to puff away in peace.

Other articles have included Defending an outdoor smoke (Charles Amos) and Crossing the public health Rubicon (Chris Snowdon), both of them on The Critic website.

Of greatest interest, perhaps, was a piece by Mary Glindon, Labour MP for Newcastle East and Wallsend. Writing for the Northumberland Gazette, she commented:

Have a thought for those who see smoking as a crutch in a difficult life. Remember older people, particularly single men, who nurse a pint and a tab outdoors and feel less isolated.

I’m sure she’s not the only Labour MP who is uncomfortable with the plan. How many, though, will stand up and make their views known, as Glindon has done?

Meanwhile, reports in the local press as recently as yesterday have included the following:

York hospitality bosses slam beer garden smoking ban plan (The Press)
Sparks fly over proposed pub garden smoking ban (Coventry Telegraph)
West Dorset residents on smoking ban plan in beer gardens (Bridport News)
'It's getting stupid!' Shropshire Star readers have their say on leaked smoking ban proposals (Shropshire Star)
Leicester divided over 'ridiculous' outdoor smoking ban plan as future of pubs is feared (Leicestershire Live)
Wyre Forest pub bosses slam outdoor smoking ban plans (Kidderminster Shuttle)

But what about public opinion generally? In a series of tweets, YouGov (ASH's favourite pollster) reported that:

• Nine in ten Britons (88%) support the existing indoor smoking ban, including 70% of smokers

• Britons tend to support banning smoking in public areas, but are most divided over banning it in pub gardens

• Support for the proposed outdoor smoking bans are not uniform, with smokers and Reform UK voters least likely to support them

But is that the full picture? For example, local newspapers have been busy polling their readers and the results I’ve seen are overwhelmingly against a ban.

Of course these are self-selecting polls whose results must be viewed in that light, but the results seem to be consistent and it indicates to me that there is no significant demand for an outdoor smoking ban because if there was far more people would be driven to vote in favour and that isn’t happening.

One issue I have with polls like YouGov's is this. It’s all very well polling a representative sample of the general public, but I’m guessing that many of them - almost certainly a significant majority - are not regular pub goers.

Surely the people that matter most in a discussion about smoking outside pubs are the people who frequent them at least once a week?

The opinions of those who never go to pubs are largely irrelevant. Likewise those who only visit pubs on a sunny day. The people that really matter in this debate are those that help keep pubs in business all year round.

Prior to the indoor smoking ban it was said that 47 per cent of regular pub goers were smokers. (This was at a time when the national smoking rate was around 22 per cent, if I remember.)

According to anti-smoking activists, however, the hospitality industry had nothing to fear from a smoking ban because smokers would adapt and go outside, while the ‘smoke free’ environment indoors would attract more non-smokers and everything would be hunky-dory.

It’s true that most smokers did adapt, some more quickly than others. Furthermore, we now have a generation of adults who have never known anything else so it's inevitable that calls to relax the current regulations have fallen with each passing year.

The suggestion, however, that the indoor ban encouraged thousands of people who had never previously been pub goers to start going to the pub is palpable nonsense.

A handful may have been encouraged to start taking their families for Sunday lunch at the new gastro pub down the road, but how many and how often?

The fact that thousands of pubs closed in the immediate aftermath of the ban tells a rather different story, and an outdoor smoking ban could have a similar impact, although there are at least 20 per cent fewer pubs than there were in 2006, the year before the smoking was introduced in England.

I repeat: who else, apart from smokers, uses the space outside pubs all year round?

At least, with the indoor smoking ban, they can take their drink outside and smoke in the beer garden or smoking area, if one exists. But if smoking is banned outside as well, why would they go at all?

And spare a thought for the businesses that have invested heavily in order to create comfortable outdoor smoking areas to accommodate customers who wish to smoke.

One of the great attractions of Boisdale - the bar restaurant with which Forest has had a close association for 20 years - is the smoking terrace.

Back in 2007 MD Ranald Macdonald spent £40,000 creating a dedicated smoking terrace above the restaurant in Belgravia. It was a risk but it paid off handsomely, and the smoking terrace at Boisdale of Canary Wharf (above) has been equally popular.

Hundreds of other pubs and restaurants have gone to great expense to accommodate customers who smoke.

Some licensees have built sheltered smoking areas either to keep smokers away from non-smokers or to give smokers a comfortable place to light up, especially in the chillier winter months.

If the Government bans smoking outside pubs and restaurants will that investment now have to be written off?

I’m pleased to see that with one exception (Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin who seems to believe that an outdoor smoking ban will not affect his chain of pubs) the hospitality industry has been making its concerns known.

Last week the Morning Advertiser, the pub trade magazine, published an article (Over 8 in 10 operators against outdoor smoking ban) by Chris Jowsey, CEO of Admiral Taverns, who wrote:

I know I’m biased, but this policy is deeply flawed, will not deliver its intended benefits and will cause unnecessary social and economic harm.

Jowsey's article reflected similar comments by other hospitality spokesmen including Kate Nichols of UK Hospitality.

My only worry is, we’ve been here before. Prior to the indoor smoking ban the hospitality industry made similar noises, but in terms of actively fighting the ban they did very little.

Indeed, when it was suggested that local authorities might be given the power to ban smoking in pubs, clubs and restaurants, the pub chains made it known that they would prefer a nationwide ban because it would be easier to administer than a system in which local authorities imposed a range of different policies.

Worse, when there were suggestions that private members’ clubs (including working men’s clubs) might be exempted from the ban, the pub industry insisted that the ban embrace them too.

So, while I welcome their initial opposition to an outdoor ban, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the pub trade (by which I mean the representative bodies) were to soften their position, especially if they were able to persuade the government to cut beer duty as a quid pro quo for not opposing an outdoor smoking ban.

There are many similarities with the battle we had prior to the introduction of the smoking ban. The biggest difference is probably the argument about passive smoking because, as David Mitchell noted in the Observer, it's very hard to argue that smoking outside is a significant risk to anyone else’s health.

In 2004/5/6, even though the evidence of harm from exposure to secondhand smoke indoors was (and still is) almost impossible to prove, we lost that battle, and that was crucial.

It will be much harder for the government to claim that smoking outside is a threat to non-smokers which is why Keir Starmer and other ministers are now talking up the preventative aspect of the policy – in other words, the Government wants to ‘protect’ both the NHS and smokers themselves by ‘encouraging’ them to quit.

Except that banning smoking in outdoor public places isn’t ’encouraging’ them to quit. It’s coercion, pure and simple.

Anyway, our aim over the next few weeks is to build a loose coalition of groups and individuals opposed to outdoor smoking bans.

In the last week alone Forest has been contacted by a number of concerned parties including publicans and restaurateurs.

We‘ve even been contacted by some Labour Party members so if I can make one promise it's this. We're going to fight this all the way.

Watch this space.

Herbie Flowers RIP

Sorry to hear that legendary bassist Herbie Flowers has died, aged 86.

I ‘knew’ him in the sense that I knew he had been credited with the famous bass line on Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Side’.

That might not seem much but as someone who has every Lou Reed record in his collection the name Herbie Flowers actually meant something to me.

I also ‘knew’ him as someone who worked frequently with jazz pianist Mike Hatchard who I wrote about only a couple of weeks ago when I explained how we once collaborated on a variety show at the BBC Concert Hall, 30 years ago.

‘Mike,’ I wrote, ‘has worked with some wonderful singers and musicians, including the great Herbie Flowers who famously came up with the bass line for Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, for which he was allegedly paid £12 (and no royalties).’

What I didn’t mention is that, a few weeks before that, Mike had posted on Facebook a lovely piece about his old friend and collaborator.

I hope he doesn’t mind if I re-post it here but it’s a wonderful tribute that deserves a wider audience:

A few weeks ago I called in on my old mate Herbie Flowers in Ditchling. I got quite a shock. He told me was ill, and his appearance certainly suggested that, for once, he wasn’t exaggerating; so I’m not entirely surprised now to hear he is terminally ill.

I wouldn’t normally share this sort of thing on social media but I gather that whilst he doesn’t want pity he wants people to know; so I am.

I first met Herbie at a gig in the Charing Cross Road when we (briefly) shared the same management. His bass playing was seriously impressive but I think it was probably his smile that blew me away. I’d never met anybody quite so naturally charismatic and I’m not sure I have since either.

We got to chatting and a while later I offered him a gig, at Roald Dahl’s party. It was in a big marquee in the writer’s garden. When Herb arrived I explained that I and the guitarist (Mike Eaves) were going to go around the tables playing violin and guitar as a sort of warm up. I explained that I didn’t expect a musician of his reputation to do anything so cheesy, he was excused duty and could help himself to some of the abundant Pimm’s. Looking back, I think I was naive imagining Herb would accept such absenteeism graciously. He insisted he would join in, and so we approached the first table with Malcolm Mortimore resourcefully supporting his snare drum around his neck with his tie.

‘What can we play you?’ I asked cordially. ‘Some Beatles?’ came the reply.

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Any in particular?’

‘Sergeant Peppers?’

‘Sergeant Peppers is an album,’ I explained. ‘Any particular bit?’

‘All of it!’

In the same way that the suggestion of not going around the tables was to Herb, this was my red rag moment. I undertook to play the whole of the iconic album in about a minute and a half, complete with the crazy crescendos of ‘A Day in the Life’ and even a nod towards the interminable play off. The Reduced Shakespeare Company would have been proud. And that was the first time I ever played with Herb, and he seemed quite proud that he’d kept up (which he had, more or less).

A few days later he phoned and offered ME a gig. And from that point on we worked together many, many times.

I could write much, much more about about my unique pal and no doubt I will in time. In the meanwhile here’s one anecdote that always springs to mind. We were asked to appear (if that’s the right word on a radio show) on the Mark Lawson Radio Four Edinburgh Festival special and Herb was inevitably asked about Walk on the Wild Side.

He told a tale I had heard many times, Lou Reed asleep on the sofa, etc. etc; this story wasn’t always entirely consistent in content but I don’t doubt it’s true enough, always culminating in ‘I got twelve quid for that’ or, ‘I got nine quid for that.’

On this occasion, to demonstrate his contribution Herb played the famous riff to the rather earnest Radio 4 audience about seven or eight times, and they were, as ever, totally mesmerised. He then turned to them and said, ‘It’s bollocks, isn’t it?’

As I said, I could write so much more. I have no doubt many people will have lots of nice things to say about Herb when he’s passed; but so much better to write them now, I would have thought.

Thanks Herb, thanks for all the laughs, all the confusion and above all all the music. Bless you, matey. And remember, it’s all bollocks, really, innit.

How lovely is that?

Fun fact: Herbie Flowers was briefly a member of T Rex and played on the band’s last album, Dandy In The Underworld, which was released shortly before Marc Bolan’s death in 1977.

Recorded just as punk was taking off, the album was nevertheless well reviewed and the title track was a minor hit.

To promote the album, Bolan took the band on tour with The Damned as the support act, which was quite brave!

Today the idea of gentle Herbie Flowers playing on the same bill as Dave Vanian, Rat Scabies and Captain Sensible still makes me laugh!

RIP.

See also: Legendary 70s bassist Herbie Flowers dies aged 86 as tributes flood in (Metro) and What Bowie, McCartney and Lou Reed all owe to Herbie Flowers (Telegraph).

Below: Mike Hatchard and Herbie Flowers, ‘Watermelon Man’, from the album The Business (1998)

Sun, sea, and ships

We got back from holiday late on Monday but I’ve been so busy I’ve not had a chance to write about it, until now.

Regular readers however won’t be surprised to hear we went on a cruise.

I think we’ve exhausted most destinations from Southampton, a list that includes the Baltics, Iceland, Denmark, the Norwegian fjords and, to the south, Portugal, Spain, Gibraltar, the Mediterranean, and the Canary Islands.

Places we’ve visited, albeit very briefly (as is the way with cruises), include Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Tallinn, St Petersburg, Reykjavik, Cannes, Lisbon, Dubrovnik, Saranda (Albania), Heraklion (Crete), Santorini, Lisbon, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria.

There are several more but I’ve forgotten them because it’s a bit of a blur now.

Post Covid, when cruise ships were still not allowed to dock in many ports overseas, we also embarked on a no-stop ‘sun’ cruise from Southampton to the Bay of Biscay, and in 2017 we went full transatlantic to New York via Halifax in Nova Scotia.

The ‘no-stop’ cruise in 2021 was arguably the best of the lot for two reasons. One, it was fantastic to escape the country for the first time since Covid.

(The previous year, after the first lockdown, we were happy just to catch a ferry to Arran off the west coast of Scotland.)

Two, the concept of a ‘no-stop’ cruise appealed to me because all I really want to do on holiday is eat, drink, and read.

On two other occasions we had to fly to our embarkation points - Venice and Vancouver - but I prefer not to do that because it prolongs the travelling, and the general hassle.

Sometimes however it’s unavoidable and this time we flew to Trieste in north east Italy from where our ship took us to Zadar and Split (in Croatia), before sailing on to Malta, then Sorrento in Italy, before we disembarked in Civitavecchia, an hour’s drive from Rome where we caught our flight home.

This was our third cruise on Queen Victoria, and our sixth on a Cunard ship. We like them because, while they’re not exactly small (the number of passengers ranges from 2,000 to 3,000), they are smaller than many modern cruise ships.

The Icon of the Seas, for example, which is currently the largest cruise ship in the world, can accommodate 7,600 passengers with 2,350 crew across 20 decks.

Today some ships arguably look more like Las Vegas hotels, whereas Cunard ships are not just smaller but more elegant (in my opinion). Book the right cabin (or ‘stateroom’) mid ship and you don’t have to walk far to the nearest dining room, coffee lounge, or cocktail bar.

Nor will you be tripping over young children because there are fewer things for them to do with the result that there are relatively few on board. (Nothing against young children. I just don’t want to go on holiday with other people’s!)

Anyway, I’ve written at length about the pros and cons of cruising - usually in response to some derogatory comment - so I won’t bore you again because I know that people have fairly entrenched opinions on the subject and it’s not my job to persuade you either way.

As it happens, I’m far from an evangelist on the subject but I did enjoy our latest holiday, and it wasn’t just the weather, which was occasionally too hot!

Having been on Queen Victoria for two previous cruises we felt very much at home, and we limited our excursions to a few gentle walks (Split was a pleasant surprise) and a single coach trip to the ruins of Herculaneum, which are similar to nearby Pompeii.

Herculaneum sits directly beneath Mt Vesuvius which erupted with such force in 79AD that the ancient Roman town was buried under 20 feet of mud and ash and effectively ‘frozen’ in time before it was discovered in 1709.

Even today, only a quarter of the original Roman city has been unearthed, partly because of a lack of funds, but also because the modern Herculaneum (Ercolana in Italian) has been built above the remains and people would lose their homes if they continued excavating.

Nevertheless it’s an extraordinary sight (and site), albeit on a smaller scale than Pompeii which is one of the reasons we chose Herculaneum for our visit - fewer visitors!

News of the Government's plan to extend the public smoking ban to pub gardens and other outdoor areas was an unwelcome distraction, but that’s another story which I mentioned briefly here.

I’ll return to it shortly.

Live – online, on message!

It's taken a while, but the new Forest website is now live.

For reasons that are beyond my pay grade, the (outdated) software on which our previous website had been built was not going to be compatible for much longer with the new server to which it had been transferred.

The old server was being decommissioned, apparently, or whatever the technical term is. (It was explained to me but, frankly, most of it went over my head.)

We also had to find a new web designer because our previous one, with whom we had worked for 13 years, had decided to prioritise more lucrative corporate clients, which was understandable.

To cut a long story short, we found a new web designer whose brief was to keep the overall look and feel of the old site but modernise it and make it as simple as possible to navigate.

That, in turn, gave us the opportunity to update some of the copy and delete stuff that was wildly out-of-date.

It's a work in progress – we're still working on the Info Bank section, for example – hence this soft launch, but I'm happy with the way it's turned out.

To be honest, I wasn't sure how valuable it is for Forest to have a website when so many people now seem get their information from social media (a platform we've found difficult to exploit).

Don't get me wrong. I think it's vitally important to have an online presence because the internet is the first place most people go when they’ve read about you or are looking for a smokers’ rights group to contact.

Furthermore, a website says a lot about an organisation (or indeed an individual), but how many people visit sites like this on a regular basis?

It reminds me that in February 2008 I wrote:

January and August are usually the quietest months for websites, at least in terms of visitors. Nevertheless the Forest website still attracted 107,837 unique visitors in January (13.3 million hits). The largest number of visitors in a single day was 5,800 on Monday January 21.

The most popular download in January was Joe Jackson's The Smoking Issue. It was downloaded 2,632 times. We estimate that since it was first published in 2004 The Smoking Issue has been downloaded from the Forest site over 50,000 times.

We're not getting that level of traffic now. However, according to our new web designer, who has been monitoring the number of visitors, the website continued to attract a healthy number even when there was only a holding page while the new site was under construction.

Anyway, you can visit it now by clicking here or on the images above or below.

PS. The first Forest website I had an active hand in was launched in 2003 at a cost, if I remember, of £25,000.

Those were the days when design companies created their own proprietary software and, in addition to the all the design costs, we had to pay an expensive annual licence fee for the right to use their software.

Thankfully the initial cost was underwritten by a third party, but the annual licence fee, for which Forest was responsible, became a bit of a burden and we eventually bailed out of the arrangement.

Today the cost of designing and maintaining a website like ours is a fraction of that, otherwise we would struggle to afford it.

See also: Coming soon - new and revised websites (November 24, 2007), Welcome to our new website (May 20, 2008), and Live and kicking – the new Forest website (March 30, 2011)