There was one near the entrance of a weird old back alley "Working men's club" on my route to school. But the entrance was a corridor with no line of sight to the bar unless the guy was right at the very edge.

So, of course, we local kids used to take our chances all the time (when we had the money) - usually successfully. Sometimes someone would get caught and have to abandon the money already inserted, if any.

A successful run meant great profit as you could then sell the individual fags one or two per customer to a greater number of customers at a heinous black market markup. A ten-pack of fags would pay for itself plus a good haul of snacks easily - and even if you didn't sell them all you could just sell enough to pay for the next pack and smoke the rest yourself for free.

School was great for this sort of thing. Contraband and smuggling - felt a bit like prison (which is where a lot of the dickheads from my school did indeed end up).

There was also just the right amount of walking time from there to the main road (where you ran the risk of the wrong people spotting you) to finish a crafty one on the way to school at a leisurely pace as though it was perfectly legit for 11-year-olds to be savouring the old coffin nails in public.

Kinda helped you feel a bit warmer in the rain, as well. Thankfully never really got into it as an adult, except that everyone enjoyed a couple when out drinking (until the ban in pubs). Was only mildly keen as a kid, it was much more the illicit nature of the thing that I enjoyed, and I rarely had spare cash anyway.