Youngsters brought up with a healthy disregard — I choose these words carefully — for other people’s right to smoke would find it almost unbelievable were they to time-travel back to the years of my childhood.

A journey by double-decker bus would prove a particular eye-opener for them — not to say an eye-waterer.

In those days, smoking was allowed, in the quaint language of public transport, “in upper saloon only”. Conditions there were, frankly, quite disgusting, with ‘stubbers’ on seat backs for the extinguishing of cigarettes and a litter of the resulting dog-ends around one’s feet.

You can’t picture it? Really? For an adequate simulacrum, try a busy bus stop of today, as I have increasingly been doing in the months in which I have been able happily to flourish an old person’s bus pass.

Our tolerance towards smoking just because it is taking place out of doors is something quite remarkable. Think of pub gardens, once smoke-free when nicotine addicts were all within. Think of the horrid fog through which you must pass walking from the entrance of Paddington Station into Praed Street.

It is not the same everywhere. In the Czech Republic, for instance, smoking outside stations and at bus stops was banned in 2006, with the law rigidly enforced at them.

Police chief Ludvik Klema said: “In the first month we had about 1,400 cases — 70 per cent of those caught in the act were given warnings or low fines. The rest received higher fines: either as repeat offenders or as smokers lighting up in front of children.”

Why can’t we have a bit of this here?