Is it 'common' to smoke on your front step?

[LookAtTheFlowersKerry]

My mother has spotted my decorative boot ashtray out the front. She is HORRIFIED.

I smoke out the front if it's raining (there's a covered bit, porchy thing). Otherwise I smoke out the back.

My mother says it's terribly low class and my neighbours will all judge me. They normally just say hello tbh, and comment on the shitty weather.

Is she right though? Am I committing a terrible faux pas?

What's worse is that I'm often in my pjs and slippers...

Aibu?

She just drops the tab ends on the floor and they get blown into my garden.

Why did the autocorrect allow you to type "tab ends" but when I typed "tab ends" it changed it to "raw ends" the bastid .

This is soooooo unfair!

It's pretty hard to make smoking look classy

Unless you are Audrey Hepburn Arietty.

She could make stealing old shoes off a dead tramp in a skip look classy.

Hi Mumsnet, btw - sorry this is my debut post!

And it is a corker!

Welcome Hogs!

Thank you HappyFlappy! :)

She could make stealing old shoes off a dead tramp in a skip look classy.

brilliant and true!

We live in the US, I don't smoke cigarettes but I love cigars and sometimes I sit on the verandah by my front door smoking a cigar and cleaning my gun, very relaxing and has the added bonus that is annoys my sometimes pearl clutchy DH . Unfortunately I don't currently have a rocking chair or a banjo, I am considering both though.

I smoke in my car

Not sure if that makes me more or less council?

I used to sit on the doorstep but the kids would open the door and I'd go flying backwards

So now I sit in the car with the door open and scare the shit out of the postman when he walks past

Yep defo common but so what -
Better than smoking indoors

And whilst we're talking about council is going to knock out my favourite council anecdote.
DS plays football for the local "council estate" team. We were playing the local "middle class" team last year and kicking their arses.

One of the mums from their team comments a bit too loudly that "gosh aren't council eastate kids always so good at football"

How she managed to get off the pitch without being lamped I don't know.

sometimes I sit on the verandah by my front door smoking a cigar and cleaning my gun, very relaxing

Now THERE'S an image to conjure with Loup

I'd smoke in the car but have to run child to the bus in the mornings. My postman looks like Pat Mustard though, so surely needs a fright? (And we do have a village full of hairy babies (.

Why would the ketchup be on the window sill?
I smoke out the front of my house in my pjs but we don't have a step so I just pace up and down. And we're on a busy main road. I really don't care who sees me. I suspect they are all mainly just jealous of my very beautiful dressing gown anyway.

Ah hogs, you need to sit on the passenger side, door open, legs out of the car and blow the smoke away.

Happy it always makes DH start muttering about rednecks and the like, makes me chuckle and is payback for some of his benign but annoying habits . Its even better with a nice glass of brandy close to hand. Perhaps I should start swigging from the bottle, now there's an idea

Ah Littlelanecountrygirl (I hope I've got that right), maybe I'll try that. Or I could build a porch out of old cider boxes? Damp obviously because safety first and all that.

(Sorry I am being horribly flippant but I loathe the "council" stereotype. Fair boils my piss it does, so much so that bought me out of perpetual lurkdom)

Yes it's common as hell OP and you know it.

I live in a v posh area and take great enjoyment at the following:

1. Smoking in my front garden
2. Plastering my red Labour posters over my walls windows come every election - thus depriving the village of its sea of blue
3. Not washing my stupidly expensive car every Sunday
4. Not collecting my wheelie bin the same day it's been put out
5. Having a garden gnome to keep me company in my front garden whilst smoking - he holds my ashtray...

I might start wearing curlers - with my Hermes Scarfs on top - just to really fuck everyone off.

Oh - and welcome MN Hogs

Yy times a thousand EatsShitAndLeaves!!! We lived very briefly in the real life version Stepford in the deep south of the US - you would not believe the amount of fun there was to be had, it triggered my mile wide rebellious streak and made getting through what would have been a depressing few months quite hilarious

Cheers EatShitsAndLeaves (was that Lynn Truss? I forget). I too plaster Lab posters in my window.

Yes - it's a play on the truss book, in so far I love cooking and eating and enjoy eating out (on the rare times DH and I can get to do this wrt childcare!).

What I can't stand is paying for a shit meal at a posh restaurant that I could cooked better myself!

I don't actually leave, of course, but feel like doing so .

To be clear the grammar book by Lynne Truss is "Eats Shoots and Leaves (Eats, shoots and leaves)".

Having read Truss I should have at least got my Scarf or Scarves right

Yes, especially if you wear a dressing gown while doing it

Well I have not dared to go that far yet...

Being the village eccentric is one thing - but the village rebel is quite another.

I am skirting a fine line though...I walked down the drive to pick up the wheelie bin, not only a day late, but in my slippers

*Unless you are Audrey Hepburn Arietty.

She could make stealing old shoes off a dead tramp in a skip look classy.*

Bette Davis and Paul Henreid do a pretty good job in "Now, Voyager";

The Max Steiner music doesn't hurt, either.

Not common, whatever that means. It's your front step to do with what you please. Much better than smoking in the house.

I too smoke on my front step, as do my neighbours.