I haven't done you anything for a couple of days, because I went to see my dad in Sussex. As OptimisticCynic suggested, I did indeed go by car. It was my brother's car, though, and he was going anyway. I don't have a car myself, so I think I might be allowed a small, half-smothered Ha! of vindication.

We stopped off in the Sugar Loaf for a pint when we got back to Bristol, and that was when I had my Jon Ronson moment. You know, the moment when your own internal dialogue of insecurity leads you astray, and you find yourself unable to share it with the people around you, yet somehow pefectly comfortable telling the entire world a few days later.

It all seemed so suspiciously straightforward at first. We bought the beer, there were free tables, we sat down at one. Then it started. The smoking hokey cokey. They're in, they're out, and after a few pints you wouldn't put it past them to start shaking it all about.

For those of you who live in countries where smoking in public places is allowed, or else has always been banned, all such venues in Britain went smoke free in July. I don't smoke, so I'm better off in two important ways. Firstly, pubs have been transformed from grisly Hogarthian hellpits into light, airy places you might actually want to be in. Most of them used the end of smoke as an excuse to redecorate, so for the moment the nation drinks in stately rooms that would grace any Mongol pleasure dome. If you're stuck for a cafe in mid-afternoon, pubs now serve perfectly well as somewhere you can sip coffee and do the Sudoku. Excuse me, that's a perfectly good way to behave in a pleasure dome. Well maybe I'm not quite as frivolous as you.

The second advantage is that you can usually find somewhere to sit, because the smokers are all outside. And therein lies the rub. You may have sensed a rub coming.

Everyone was happy enough in July, but now the seasons are turning. Come January everyone will be forced to lump it indoors, but right now outdoors is cold but not that cold. This creates confusion in the smoker's mind, as the twin discomforts of cold and nicotine withdrawal are roughly equally balanced. As the brain cells they might use to make an informed choice are either dead or sedated, they oscillate between the two adverse stimuli like cows stuck between a dog and an electric fence. If like me you can only handle social situations in the first place by reducing them to a series of algorithms, this merely serves to introduce an extra, entirely unnecessary non-linear element to the behavioural calculus.

My evening went like this. Two of my brother's friends came and sat with us. I went out to make a phone call, and saw my good friends Phil and Jane sat at an outside table smoking. While I was talking with them, the other three came outside to smoke, thus abandoning our table. As I'm sure you will agree, what the situation really required was a seating co-ordinator, and fortunately there I was. I made all parties promise to come back in when they'd finished smoking, went back in and grabbed the second last table, and sat there on my own.

My brother headed off, as he was driving and couldn't drink, and his friends wandered off to sit with someone who wasn't carrying on like an usher at a Bourbon soiree. Some other friends came in, and sat at the last free table. I tried to persuade them to join me, but they declined to be organised, and half of them were off outside soon enough anyway. By that time we were so hemmed in by other people there was no room for anyone to squeeze in even if they'd wanted to. I briefly considered sorting the strangers by height, but decided against it. Phil and Jane came in, but soon disappeared off again, so I went and sat at the other table with the non-smokers from the other group and moaned about people going in and out all the time. Fortunately they all had forgiveness skills, which they deployed.

Phil and Jane came back in but now there was nowhere to sit, so they went back out again and stayed there. By this point I was beyond caring who sat where, as long as I had a chair at a table and someone was prepared to talk to me about something. Fortunately the group I was now with were interested in football, so we talked about that. I shared my joy about City's recent success with them, and they validated my joy with their warm regard, and suddenly I realised there was beer, and football talk, and a table and chairs, and all my anxiety was like a distant dream.

I'm still peeved though. Yes, I could edit my personality to make it more clubbable. Yes, I could try to be a bit more of a bon viveur, a bit less the eminence grise sat scowling in the corner and ordering you all about. Or, and this is my preferred option, you could all just fucking sit still. It's not like I'm asking you to sit up straight and face the front. Your posture and orientation are your own. Just stop running in and out every thirty seconds.

Not that I'm looking to rain on anybody's parade. I managed to rain on Zombizi's, after he went out and bought a new car with biofuel capacity, and came home all proud of himself to find my last post had popped up in his browser, announcing that biofuels weren't environmentally friendly at all. I'm painfully aware that if I carry on like this I can expect to be left off group emails announcing forthcoming parades.

No, smoke if you like, drive cars, live your lives. I drink Guinness and eat pork, so who am I to hold forth? Just don't - oscillate. Instead, sit by me and radiate, and I promise to be charm itself.