Following on from my post of a few days ago (Jennycliff – 31st March) here’s another space that, while not actually beyond the fence, is pretty close to it. If you’re a smoker, you’ll find yourself passing through a lot of these non-environments. Yet, despite the powers that be doing everything they can to show you how disgusting you are by hiding smoking areas in the ugliest and most difficult to get to of venues, these are the places that we have always been the most familiar with: in the bike sheds and behind the science huts at school, round the back of your mate’s dad’s car repair workshop, the garages at the end of the estate, among the bushes at the bottom of the sports field, these sites offer a welcoming escape from normality and the opportunity for chance meetings, not all of which will be nice, but then what is the world without risk?

On this occasion, at the smoking area at the end of this trav-o-lator™, among others I found: a brittle and angry airline worker sucking the life out of her dog ends as if, in draining them, it would also consume whoever had caused her upset; a young woman texting frantically between puffs, then waiting with equal fervour for a reply; a man holding his cigarette with studied nonchalance trying to look important; three more men joking in an unfamiliar language while waiting for their pick up… and here I felt at home.