FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
April 2005. My wife and I are sipping Bellinis in Harry’s Bar in Venice (a favourite haunt of the writer Ernest Hemmingway). We are celebrating a birthday, a big, birthday. Down the bar an American couple are chatting loudly (as Americans do); the man lights up a cigarette and immediately the barman rushes down the bar towards him: “Non, non, signore, no smokink now in bars in Idalee. Grazie. Grazie.”
On his return I tell him that we’re Irish and that last year Ireland was the first country in the world to ban smoking in public places. Our Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, I inform him. brought in the ban. “I-ah kizz hizz azz’” the barman proclaims. And that was the one and only time I ever heard anyone offering to kiss a politician’s ass!
Indeed when Minister Martin first introduced the ban in March 2004, a lot of folks wanted to kick, not kiss, his ass. Including me. A smoker at the time I was none too happy having to step outside in the wind and rain for a smoke while inside my pint was going flat and the conversation was continuing without me.
And so I quit, easier I thought than huddling in doorways of pubs puffing furiously on a fag like the demented nicotine addict I was. Twenty years on I’m still off the fags and, though I wouldn’t go so far as to kiss Micheál Martin’s ass, I am, nevertheless, grateful to him for helping me kick my nicotine habit. As it happened I was in Cleere’s Bar on the March 28, 2004, the night before the Big Ban, enjoying a pint and my last legal, indoor smokes. As the 28th slipped into thes 29th I watched the ashtrays being piled high ready for the dump. (I even have had a smoke during the process, illegal of course, making it all the sweeter). As I left John Cleere’s Bar I brought with me the last ashtray on the table as a souvenir so to speak. I subsequently, out of sentiment and a modicum of sadness, wrote a poem about it. Here be that poem.
The Last Ashtray
Here’s to the Last Ashtray
The creature has had its day
Now in pubs, clubs, hotels
The death bell knells
For this harmless thing
Once full to the brim
With ashes and butts
Now there’s no “ifs or buts”
It’s finished, it’s done
Its glory-days gone
Banned to the bin
Without fanfare or din
Oh, does anyone care
Will none shed a tear
For this friend who stood by us
While drinking our beer
Who was part and parcel
Of every party and session
Will there be no reprieve
Will there be no concession?
Will we just turn our backs
Will we all walk away
And consign to the dump
The Last Ashtray?
Will we show no respect
Will we not have a wake
And bury it proper
Out of sympathy sake?
But where shall we bury
The Last Ashtray
Arrah damn it, we won’t
We’ll cremate it, okay?
We’ll step out on the street
(Just as we’re told)
Where we’ll have a quick smoke
In the rain and cold
Then we’ll set it alight
With our matches and lighters
And should anyone call
Our intrepid fire-fighters
We’ll simply explain
It’s a wake, it’s the end
That we’re laying to rest
A once very dear friend.
But where shall we sprinkle
The Last Ashtray’s remains
In litter-bins, lane-ways
In potholes, in drains?
Certainly not
But with dignity, pity
We’ll sprinkle a bit
In every pub in this city.
Just one thing remains:
Some brief epitaph
For the Last Ashtray
Now considered “riff-raff”
This to be etched
On every publican’s bar
Where all can see it
While having a jar
Here lie the remains
Of the Last Ashtray
Passive in life
Passively passed away.
