“Sooner or later, everyone stops smoking”

Seeing as change is the new black (or is black the new change?) I've decided to make a few changes myself. Well actually only one but a momentous one all the same. As of Tuesday I am going off the smokes. Can I? Yes I can! There, I've said it out loud so there's no going back. I've tried before but that was always to appease other people so it was always doomed to fail. Doomed I tells ye, doomed. My heart wasn't in it to quit in the past. But my heart is now the main reason why I want to quit. Oh yes it supports me fully this time, bless it's little blackened arteries.

sniff sniff
gonna miss you
don't watch me cry.....

just close the door after you

I always loved smoking. Christ it was great, I mean really really great. From the first one in the morning to the last one at night and every one in between, I loved them all. I particularly loved the first one after breakfast oh and the first one after dinner and then again the first one during work. Ah fuck it, I loved them all. But loving smoking is like loving Courtney Love, that is to say volatile, abusive and likely to leave you dead on the floor. And whilst it's true that a 100% of all non-smokers die there really is no long term future in continuing this relationship.

So I'm quitting, on Tuesday, probably. No I definitely am. I have even booked an appointment with the expert nurse at my local quit smoking clinic. Wow I bet she has nothing good to say. I hope it's not going to be one of those sit round in a circle type things with a lot of wheezing people with yellowy fingers talking about how much they want to quit. That would be too depressing but pure blog gold all the same. Probably more yellow than gold.

I was about 13 maybe 14 when I first sucked at the smokey teat of a cigarette. An older boy had them, isn't it always an older boy? But he was my cousin from England and ergo I considered him glamorous and wanted to impress him. He offered it, a Silk Cut the lamest of all the cigarettes available, and in a moment of pure hedonism I took it. I was a nervous child and not known for making such rash and impetuous decisions. But it didn't end well as I found myself in the middle of a country road coughing and spluttering and assuming I was about to die. I didn't take another draw of a smoke again for about six or seven years. I also didn't make another rash or impetuous again, until I got engaged that is. Funnily enough that also had me coughing and spluttering and thinking I was gonna die too. Well not straight away.

Now, by this point I was a waiter and living the life of a waiter with no responsibilities and too much spare cash. Spare cash? All my cash was spare. I drank and I dabbled in many nefarious things but smoking hadn't been one of them. But one Friday night after a long double shift at the Hut of Pizzaness I tried again. I was in a superb mood having made great money. All my chums were in the bar, Lavery's, and the atmosphere was great. Being as flush as a turkey farmer at Christmas I splashed my hard earned loot on all and sundry. I was buying drinks and hot nuts the way rich Arabs but football teams and Rolls Royces.

One of my chums, a lady who I had more than a special interest in, offered me one of her Marlboros. Ooooh Marlboro reds were cool looking, everybody under 25 smoked them apart from hippies who smoked roll ups. Damn hippies. So for very sad and indeed pathetic reasons I took one and then another and then another. In the end she got cheesed off at my poaching her smokes so I bought a packet. And that, as they say, was that. I eventually tried them all, from Marlboro Reds to Marlboro Lights to Silk Cuts to Benson & Hedges to the ever popular Twenty Majors. There was even a spell on Berkley Superkings, the baseball sized smokes allowed for a longer smoke break. Ironically I settled on roll ups and I'm not even a hippy! Who'd a thought it!?

But I'm done with them now. It's not just the wheezing and coughing and inability to take a flight of stairs without needing a break half way through, although these are good enough reasons to stop nor is it the fear that comes from any slight twinge of my left arm it's something much less tangible than that. I hate the way the smokes own me. And they truly do fucking own me. I am smokings bitch, I'm it's gimp. It wakes me up and demands it's attention. It shouts at me when I get off the bus and after I eat. I love smoking but smoking doesn't love me. The smelly bastard.

There is nothing that makes you feel more of an addict more of a low life than ripping your house apart at three in the morning looking for a lost packet of smokes. And if you smoke you've done it. You go mental looking for them, down the couch, into every trouser and coat pocket, twice, under the bed, in the bed, into your vast collection of man bags, eventually ending up rooting through the ashtray for half smoked cigarettes that can be reignited for that one more hit of nicotine. It's so very ugly, so very tragic. I'm done with only going to coffee shops and bars and restaurants with good outdoor smoking areas. I want to go where I want to go to not where the smokes want me to go to.

But mainly I'd like to make it past sixty and for the men in my family that is now a bit of a trick. Some make it and some sadly haven't. I've got shit I need to be doing and smoking ain't gonna get me there. Still we had some good times together, I would be lying if I said otherwise. [Cut to a dream sequence of me and a giant smoke laughing and drinking together whilst watching football and at many gigs and down the pub with the chaps and crying together when times were hard].

Oh yes I loved smoking and I'm gonna miss it. But it's become a one sided relationship and it's taking advantage of my happy go lucky and easily lead nature.

So the next few weeks will be fun. I predict swearing, mood swings, tantrums and comfort eating. So no real change there then. Stay with me folks we could be in for a bumpy ride and all help will be appreciated. And if anybody wants to make me an offer for about 30 lighters and a few ashtrays let me know.

I'm back to work today so I will post some actual waiter related goodies tomorrow....