Middle seat

Middle seat at the barber's today and I noticed that it had an ashtray in the arm-rest. Nick flies this seat and we got chatting about when everyone smoked in there. He said that when he started as an apprentice one of his jobs was emptying the ashtrays; there were four of those posh ones on stands on which pressing the top down spun a mechanism that dropped the butts into the bowl below. He also remembered smoking while cutting hair. I remember Saturday mornings when it was hard to see the mirror in front of the chair for the smoke.

Of course nobody smokes in there any more and all three of the barbers stopped smoking years ago - a subject that occasionally features in the daily round of chat.