In November 2023, Olivia Pollock went on a night out that would go on to change her life.
She’d been to an art gallery with a friend in London, and after dinner, they realised that they weren’t ready to go home yet.
They decided to head over to Soho House on Greek Street, where she gathered the courage to strike up a conversation with a ‘tall, dark and handsome’ man – 34-year-old Jake Abdinoor – in the smoking area.
‘We were already a few glasses deep, and very single and so a certain “f*** it” mentality came into my head when I saw this gorgeous man leaning against a pole,’ 27-year-old Olivia, who lives in London, tells Metro.co.uk.
‘He was very clearly not a smoker but still I decided to go up to him and ask for a lighter. We ended up chatting all night.’
When the lights came on at the end of the evening, Olivia realised that, having accidentally left her bag open, she’d dropped all of the contents of it onto the floor – including her headphones.
Secretly distraught but trying to ‘act cool,’ Jake insisted on helping her find them, even getting on his hands and knees to search.
‘After a few false starts he managed to find BOTH Airpods,’ Olivia reflects.
‘Fair to say he was cemented in a semi-heroic status from then, and better yet, he actually called me back the next day to ask me on a date.’
The pair have been together ever since – and even recently moved in together.
‘When my lease at my previous house was up in April, he offered to put me up while I looked for my next flat,’ Olivia adds.
‘After one prospective flat fell through after another, he eventually suggested that we just find our own place. We found a perfect little garden flat and we’re unboxing all our stuff this week.’
Olivia also often feels ‘quite overwhelmed and overstimulated’ by loud spaces, so as a smoker, the smoking area, where her love story began, also serves as ‘a little refuge when the noise inside gets too much.’
‘It’s a great spot to meet people too and asking to borrow a lighter is a historically great way to get a conversation going with a stranger,’ she says.
But meet-cutes like this may soon become a thing of the past, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently confirmed that the government is considering tougher laws on outdoor smoking, telling the BBC: ‘We have got to take action’ to protect the NHS from preventable deaths from tobacco use.
Of course, he’s absolutely not wrong that smoking is bad for your health, and the less people who smoke, the better.
But an end to smoking outdoors will also end the need for a smoking area. That weird, hazy extension of a night club where you can strike up a conversation with a stranger, and manage to come up with a plan to right all the world’s wrongs.
(If only you could remember it the next morning.)
As Olivia notes, smoking areas have long been a space for people to connect with one another – whether that’s a drunken snog, or something more. And that even applies to non-smokers like her boyfriend, Jake.
‘It’s not always about the music and the dancing but meeting people,’ she says. ‘It’s also a happy refuge for to hang out and get some space,’ she concludes. ‘Pub and club culture wouldn’t be the same.’
Olivia isn’t the only one that’s had a life-altering experience in a smoking area. In 2013, 36-year-old Tom Bourlet quit his job and went travelling after connecting with some chatty strangers on a night out.
At the time, he was incredibly unhappy – 5am starts and 9pm finishes weren’t uncommon, and, as he tells Metro.co.uk, he ‘had only taken the job a short period of time before’ but ‘quickly realised’ he’d made a ‘massive mistake.’
‘After one particularly stressful Friday evening, I finished up about 10pm, having missed my friends who were in the pub down the road, so I joined them all near Pryzm for some pre-drinks and then we headed in,’ Tom, now living in Brighton and heading up the marketing team at Fizzbox, recalls.
‘I don’t smoke, but I liked going out for ‘fresh’ air and used to love making ‘temporary friends’ in the smoking area. Plus, I do get bored of club dancefloors and used to always prefer talking to people.’
That night, he started chatting with a random group, and the topic of travel came up. A few of the smokers he met mentioned that they’d just come back from Argentina, and they quickly bounced off one another.
‘I talked about missing being out seeing the world. Things quickly developed and I told them I hated my job and started instantly looking up flights,’ he adds.
That same evening, he booked one-way flights to Peru and handed in his notice the next day – much to the shock of his colleagues, who tried to convince him to stay.
Tom never looked back and ended up travelling for two months.
More than 10 years later, one memory outshines all the others: when he’d just finished biking down the ‘Death Road’ and, on the return journey, I Am The Highway by Audioslave came on the radio.
‘The lyrics really resonated with me and made me truly think about how I had made a massive decision that night to quit.
‘When I returned, I found a job not too much later. My travels certainly rinsed my bank account, but [it was] worth it for that adventure.’
For Olivia and Tom, the smoking area might’ve held the key to a life-altering moment – but for 25-year-old Milly Oaten, it’s also created hilarious memories on a smaller scale.
In 2023, she was on a night out in Clapham with three of her closest friends when she made what was arguably a monumental life realisation (albeit perhaps a less serious one): she’d been wearing the wrong bra size for years.
‘We’d been pre-drinking at my friend’s flat and we fancied a good night out somewhere local, as we usually do, just galivanting around London,’ Milly, who lives in South London, shares.
‘We went to the pub and at one point, myself and a friend got separated from the others and so we stumbled into the smoking area.’
As Milly’s friend went to light up a cigarette, a lady [who Milly places in her mid-thirties] came up to ask her if she could borrow her lighter.
They quickly started chatting about their careers, which is when it turned out that the lady worked for a lingerie company and was trained in specialist bra fittings.
As the night ran away with them, engrossed in conversation for what felt like hours (but was, as Milly notes, probably more like ’20 minutes’), she offered to give both of them a free measurement there and then.
‘We immediately said yes because bra fittings are hard to come by and it’s usually a bit awkward, so if you’ve had a drink then it’s just easier,’ she laughs.
‘She told me my bra size was incorrect, I’d been wearing a cup size too small, and I’ve been wearing a different bra size ever since.’
For Milly, who considers herself to be a social smoker, the smoking area is where ‘most of the fun’ happens on a night out.
‘You’re able to interact with people who you’ll then spot on the dancefloor later on and just instantly have a circle of friends,’ she concludes.
‘It brings a sense of community to whatever establishment you’re in that night. And if you want to have a chat away from all the intensity of the club environment, the smoking area is the perfect place to do that.
‘They’re the beating heart of a club, so if we do get rid of them, I hope a space like it can continue to exist.’
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