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MAISONS-LAFFITTE - Le Cafe Cosy is typical of French bistros.
You push open a heavy front door and find yourself a few metres from the solid wooden bar and a busy waiter appears demanding to know if you want to eat or just have a drink.
At the
same moment, the fug generated by smokers perched around the bar hits your nostrils with the density and speed of a World War I gas attack.
If you are a non-smoker, you reassess your hunger level and wonder whether other nearby bistros will be different. Chances are: no.
During the winter months, there will be no terrace seating outside, so smokers and non-smokers alike are forced inside. If you want an omelette, a glass of Beaujolais and crusty baguette, you will also have to put up with a lungful of smoke from a neighbouring Gauloise or "une blonde", as a Virginia cigarette is called.
At the moment, the law requires strict segregation of smoking and non-smoking sections of restaurants. In practice, it means smokers occupy one part of the room - usually the largest bit with the best view - and non-smokers the other, and if you need a clue, look for a cluster of three tables located behind the coatstand and next to the toilet.
So ingrained is the tradition of puffing on a ciggie while sipping an espresso or a Ricard that just mentioning France's campaign to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and nightclubs brings a carefree snigger.
"We've got another year before we even need to think about that," laughed the bar manager at the Cafe Cosy, showing not even a flicker of concern.
Not yet, in any case. From tomorrow, a ban on smoking in public places comes into effect across France. Lighting up in the workplace, schools, hospitals, shops and sporting venues will be illegal, carrying a fine of €68 ($127).
Even "smokers corners" at train stations, schools and airports will become illegal.
The ban brings France into step with a growing number of other European countries. Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Belgium and Norway have already introduced tough anti-smoking rules in public places, while in England a ban on smoking in offices, pubs and restaurants comes into force on July 1.
"From February 1, no one should be forced to breathe other people's smoke," Health Minister Xavier Bertrand has declared.
One in three of the French population aged 15-75 is a smoker, while in the 18-25 age bracket the figure is one in two. The number of smoking-related deaths is around 66,000, while passive smoking claims around 6000 lives annually.
Beneath the bright declarations and the clear facts, though, anti-smoking resolve at the street level is about as hazy as the atmosphere around the bar in the Cafe Cosy. .
For one thing, France has taken the slow path to a complete ban. Cafes, bars and restaurants have been given until January next year to become smoke-free, after lobbying that they need more time for their smoking customers to adjust to the measures.
In Ireland and Scotland, many pubs are saying that takings have surged after the ban as families and non-smokers returned and many smokers themselves happily accepted the new restrictions. But in France, their cafe counterparts are worried, fearing that their baccy-loving "regulars" will flee.
Some gloomily predict this will speed the decline of an institution already threatened by shop-bought booze and horse-betting outside the licensed gambling outlet, the PMU, which is often the local cafe.
Desperate to somehow accommodate smokers and non-smokers, some cafes are following several businesses in contemplating installing hermetically sealed boxes - large glass cubicles with air filtration - where smokers can puff away without, supposedly, affecting non-smokers.
A Swedish company, Smoke Free Systems, is renting these shower-like boxes out for between €300 and €550 a month depending on size, and is casting around for French franchisees.
Other cunning plans are to use the same idea, but in reverse: to put the non-smokers in a smoke-free cubicle which for reasons of simplicity you might want to call "the outdoors."
The Cafe Paradise, a small bar in Paris' trendy Marais district, is already experimenting with this.
It has continued its terrace service all winter despite below-freezing temperatures.
Any customer wanting a coffee and croissant - and no smoke - can sit outside, and a waiter brings a blanket to drape over their shoulders to keep them warm.
If only life were always this simple.
THE END OF A SMOKING ERA
From this week, a legion of 175,000 "cigarette police" will patrol and sniff schools, factories, offices and other public spaces across France, checking for smokers.
Offenders face a fine of €68 ($127).
Until two decades ago, the French state, which held the monopoly for producing and importing tobacco, took a relatively relaxed view of smoking.
In recent years, tobacco taxes have gone up by 40 per cent, bringing a packet of 20 to around €4, one of the highest prices in Europe.
The power to enforce the law has been given to the police, gendarmerie transport police and inspectors.
They will have the power to issue "contravention" documents, like parking tickets, to offenders.
The Government hopes that the law will mostly be enforced by the moral pressure of non-smokers.
- additional reporting: INDEPENDENT
