Chris Saul's Blog

Thursday May 22, 2008

Wallowing in ash

My patience with the smokers around our pool is running out.

It's a lovely, community pool, surrounded by very nice greenery.

There are no-smoking signs all around it, but people still smoke. I'm not too bothered about the odd person smoking as they are outdoors after all, but things are starting to get ridiculous. The majority of smokers simply chuck their cigarette ends on the floor around them or stub them out in the earth around the plants on the pool edge. Two obese buffoons were even wallowing around in the middle of the pool the other day, grunting into their mobile phones and tipping their cigar ash into the pool itself.

These aren't 14 year old layabouts or a bunch of yobs stopping by on their way to the pub. They're professional, supposedly educated people. Why they want to sit in their own filth and think they can treat the pool like one extended ashtray is beyond me.

It's one of those typical 'community' situations. Since you can't trust people to be reasonable and courteous, the developer's simply going to have to come down like a tonne of bricks and strictly enforce the no-smoking policy. Instead of the odd resident enjoying a cigarette outside by the pool and courteously tidying up after them, the hordes of ash-wallowing halfwits will simply have smoking strictly banned. They have ruined it for themselves.