To be clear, I did not want to go to the Katy Perry concert in the first place because, in my entirely personal opinion, she is an increasingly cringe pop star who should perhaps have packed away the cupcake bras while still somewhere near the top of her game (circa 2010).

Last year’s absurd jaunt into space with her billionaire pals did her no favours, and her two-hour performance at Malahide Castle merely confirmed my suspicion that her Firework has indeed gone out.

However, I have tween daughters, so I made the three hour gridlock journey to endure the newer songs (which my 11-year-old succinctly described as ‘crap’), as well as narrowly avoiding fisticuffs with a fully grown adult who was extraordinarily curt to my small daughter when she tried to squeeze beside her to get a better view.

Yet all of this was not what caused the red mist to descend on a balmy evening.

It was the vaping.

Everywhere I turned, adults  - and yes, teenagers - were sucking furiously on brightly coloured plastic tubes and blowing forth their exhalations.

There is something about warm weather that seems to intensify the nuances of ethyl maltol, overheated fruit flavouring and whatever substance is required to make an inhalable product smell like a Frankenfood.

Now vaping has been irritating me for years, largely because its devotees behave as though they are entitled to puff putrid plumes all over the place, simply because they’ve been deemed to be less offensive than cigarettes.

People think nothing of producing a vape between courses at dinner parties and filling the room with something called Strawberry Ice, usually without asking whether the rest of us want our pavlova to taste faintly of cheap and nasty air freshener.

There’s no escape from the vapers – they lurk in houses, in queues, under restaurant awnings and in other people’s cars – and because there is no ash, naked flame or visible tar, apparently normal rules of social etiquette no longer apply.

Their quasi-acceptability has even infiltrated dating. On dating apps, people generally disclose that they smoke, yet vaping is never mentioned.

I recently went on a date with a man who, while we were out walking, suddenly produced a plastic vape and began puffing away. Needless to say, there was no kiss at the end, because nothing extinguishes romance quite like watching a grown man inhale Tropical Blast from an object shaped like a highlighter pen.

For years, I’ve tried to be sympathetic, because yes, yes,vapers done good, sure didn’t they quit that dirty nasty smoking business? But now, I think they’ve just swapped one heinous habit for another.

Cigarettes, for all their foulness, are at least honest. They smell disgusting, stain your fingers and arrive covered in photographs of diseased organs. Vapes are smoking’s disingenuous people-pleasing cousin, dressed in neon packaging, pretending that they are going to help wean you off your nicotine addiction when in reality they do the opposite – and perpetuate bad health.

Vaping and e-cigarettes, with their thousands of chemicals, are linked to all sorts of horrors such as bronchiolitis obliterans (terrifying nicknamed ‘popcorn lung’), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), nicotine dependence, potentially worsening asthma symptoms, exposure to myriad toxins – and that’s just what we know so far.

A major review published this year concluded that nicotine e-cigarettes are likely to cause lung and oral cancers, and when we see how catastrophic smoking turned out to be after decades of research – this is just the tip of the plastic vape container.

Speaking of which, I’m sick of seeing the fluorescent remains of this supposedly cleaner habit littering the country, not to mention the impact this has on the environment (the recent ban on single-use vapes couldn’t have come quick enough).

With about 11% of under-25s and nearly one in four young adults aged 18 to 34 vaping regularly, Ireland has a problem.

So I was delighted to hear that Spain’s government has approved draft legislation that would ban both smoking and vaping across outdoor public spaces.

Health minister Mónica García said the objective was to make clean air normal in shared spaces and allow people to enjoy outdoor hospitality without being exposed to other people’s smoke.

For those you who argue that there are designated smoking areas – they don’t solve the problem, not on a beach or park, or when you have to wade through a tunnel of tobacco smoke and watermelon vapour before opening the door of a premises. Nor does an outdoor table magically protect us when smoke and aerosol drift freely among diners.

We were once brave enough to lead the way on smoke-free workplaces, so there’s form there. An outright ban in public places would acknowledge that fresh air for all is not an unreasonable luxury. God knows, we shouldn’t be forced to inhale somebody else’s nicotine aerosol that smells like a unicorn’s packed lunch.