Kids doing crackers and eating meatballs

If you look close you can see smoke coming out of the cracker. I think.

7:45am

Exeter Station

7:30am

Cow Lane

7:30am

I walked to Jane's the pretty way to collect my car.

Whole new idea - a photo from the day and then the time I started smoking

7:30 am

27th December

7:30 am

Boxing Day

7:30am

Here's what I do...

..and I do it all the time. I work and I work and I work. While smoking, naturellement.

This will surprise those of you that knew me as an idler. What happened was I started my own business and its getting bigger. I've still got the kids and I still meet them from school and make them teas that include a vegetable. I've got noone to help me or fund me and I'm goddam making a goddam living. The JOY of that! The fecking JOY.

Its cool to have a bloke saying you're fantastic but does he really mean it? When your customers and the bank say you're fantastic you know its for real because they wrote you a cheque to prove it.

On that cynical note.. I'm off out for the first time in months. Fingers crossed that the kids don't fight.

And for devoted attention to your IT Worries - visit itsgonefunny.com

Hmm

Well, that didn't last long. I'll try again soon!

And So Once More into the Fray

Here we go!

16 minutes and 56 seconds. 0 cigarettes not smoked, saving £0.09. Life saved: 0 minutes.

I'm Still Here

Well, yes, Delightful Dolores, I'm still here. And I'm so glad you've found someone who willingly performs acts that I'm normally electronically ordered to do.

As to smelling fresh - not so much, I'm afraid. The intention is to refresh myself soon. But the anxiety attacks alluded to in a previous post didn't go away. So I thought I'd start smoking, as I was too anxious to go to the docs and get an SSRI to make me unanxious enough to get to the docs to get an SSRI in the first place. I am, frankly a mess. Still, nothing new there, eh. Mostly, I need never to hear again people burbling at me about HEA and IP addresses and network links and.... And it would be lovely never again to have to stand in front of somebody and spout a long string of acronyms which make sense to everybody in the room but when I leave after my contract ends will be no good to man nor beast. (Okay, HEA and IP will continue to have a currency, but I can assure you that there are many acronyms circling my head that will be of no use to anybody.)

Unfortunately, the thing I do is the thing I've done for the last 25 years, and I'm good at it, and can't really think what I'd do if I weren't doing it. That's not true - I can think of many things I'd like to do, such as writing, photography and music, but they won't earn me money in the short term, and I'm not rich. Still, only another 15 years and I can retire on my paltry pension.

So, the upshot is - I'm f*cked. Still, one lesson is that the smoking doesn't really help with the anxiety, so I might as well give it up again. So I will. Not quite today, as I like dates and milestones, but give it up I will.

Hence, the hiatus in the blog. Because anything I wrote would seem like one long whinge. Just like this, in fact, is. And although the "reasons why I resumed smoking" would have been a good topic for a blog post, such are the complexities of my life, they seemed to have little relevance to other quitters. So if anybody is still reading this but me, Dolores, and The Poet (and, of course, Tiger) my travails would have offered little insight.

So all I can say is: "Just say no".

Hey

So long since I been here that I forgot what my name was and had to go and check. Yup its me, Dolores.

I've been all over since I last wrote and every step taken with a fag in my hand. So I shouldn't really be here but I'm squatting since Mystery Dude has scarpered and I can't bear to see the crumbling majesty of an unused blog. Where are you MD and are you still sickeningly fresh?

I've been out with my new boyfriend who's 30! Yes 30! How cool am I? I'm one of those new-fangled cougars. He has many other fine attributes but I won't list them here since Tiger has two traits seldom found in my boyfriends: he reads and he's interested in me. So if I start going on about how great he is he'll start checking the blog obsessively instead of doing his proper jobs: doing my laces up, telling me I'm gorgeous, making me dinner and being offended.

Like I said, I've been loads of places: to hospital to have my healthy appendix out, on two holidays with the kids, one long, gruelling and expensive and one short, austere and expensive, to the solicitors to have my money removed, to see loads and loads of customers, some of whom I have pissed off, to tiny Tescos to buy fags again and again.

So lots to tell you about. Soon.

xx

Still Here...

It's just that things in Quitland aren't particularly thrilling. Unless you count the fact that I've started having panic attacks, which does kind of indicate that I smoked for self-medication (many people do), and now I've stopped I have to learn to breathe again.

Smoking lesson number 1. Smokers breathe in a particular way when they are dragging -- usually a long slow in-breath, hold, long slow out-breath, relax. Repeat. In fact, it is just like the kind of breathing "they" teach you if you're prone to anxiety and panic attacks.

So, 20 or 30 times a day, you perform perfect yogic breathing -- well, if you ignore the toxins (my body is a refuse dump) -- for somewhere between 3 and 6 minutes. It's great. But then you stop smoking, and, if you are prone to anxiety (waves hands) then suddenly you have to learn to do stuff. Except you forget to learn that stuff because you're busy fighting with all the other new stuff you have to remember to do. Like, not smoke. Ever. Even though you want to. So, somewhere in that struggle you have to remember to breathe. And also remember that if something a little anxiety-inducing happens, you can't smoke and thus indulge in some yoga breathing -- you have to learn to do it yourself.

Quitting sucks.

Nonetheless:

Three months, 16 hours, 6 minutes and 57 seconds. 2780 cigarettes not smoked, saving £764.53. Life saved: 1 week, 2 days, 15 hours, 40 minutes.

Where Do the Cravings Come From

Where you're alone in your bed? Tell me the thoughts that surround me. I want to look inside my head.

Oh, it's just the nicotine receptors kicking up a fuss, I know. Even watching Stevie doesn't help. Let's try Arcade Fire instead. Reminds me of when I used to be in a band (did I ever tell you, etc). I've probably pointed you to it before, but hey! Let's go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJRSG95-WEU

Play it loud, play it big. Well filmed, I think, to capture the "being there". The wu, or something.

The desire for a fag is quite strong at the moment, so I might be forced to watch Christina Aguilera or something (don't worry, not rude, just a non-sequiter). Perhaps a meter flash would do it:

Two months, two weeks, 19 hours, 38 minutes and 52 seconds. 2274 cigarettes not smoked, saving £625.50. Life saved: 1 week, 21 hours, 30 minutes.

Oho, that is a lot of money. Must almost be time to buy something again. Spending. Perhaps that's what I need. Perhaps I need to take Christina to lunch and be serenaded by Arcade Fire. That would take my mind off things. Especially if Meg and Sandra came along to provide a little adult conversation. Then Christina could sing loud. Then we could all do karaoke, during which I'd do my Christina impression. No, really, it's good.

At least, that's what Kate said when she popped around for a cuppa the other day.

A good screaming sing-along is what I need:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnwfAABH

Well Well Well

The disaster I prophesied weeks ago never really came to pass. I'm not in the horrible bit of a quit at all. I'm having horrible moments, of course - that goes with the territory - but not the really scary stuff I was expecting that has happened in other quits. Oh well. Every quit is different. I should be grateful.

Perhaps it's because I'm eating like a pig. I've put on 6lbs since I quit.

I still think about smoking all the time, and I still think of excuses to smoke. If I can lose a stone by Xmas, I can smoke! If I go to the dentist and get my teeth sorted, I can smoke! If I live through 'til Xmas, I can smoke! If this mouth ulcer doesn't go away I can smoke!

I shall soon have saved 600 quid. I'm at 591 at the moment. I would spend it on something big, but I continually trickle it out (finally got around to ordering the Bat for Lashes and the two Arcade Fire albums, and also ordered The Flipside Of Dominick Hide/Another Flip For Dominick double DVD), so I've probably spent a couple of hundred of that 600 quid since I quit. Even with the book/DVD/CD outgoings, though, there is still enough of the "savings" left over for an Epiphone SG copy. Or a Pentax K100D. Hmmm.

I'm sure I will buy more "cultural" stuff. But I really must stop buying books. I've got over 300 of the damned things to read as it is. But, unfortunately, there is always Postscript books and their abominable bargain books!

Temptation Hill

I suppose I'd better start by saying:

Two months, one week, 7 hours, 5 minutes and 28 seconds. 2048 cigarettes not smoked, saving £563.43. Life saved: 1 week, 2 hours, 40 minutes.

and see what nonsense we can pull from those statistics.

Well, I have been too busy to look at my statistics recently, so am first struck that I passed 2000 ciggies not smoked at some point on Saturday night. And I can imagine what that stack of empty packets looks like. Easily as tall as my desk, much taller in fact.

I see I've also recently saved over a week of my life. A bit of an unbelievable statistic, but fun nonetheless. And the money saved continues to climb.

In the end, I bought neither a double-neck Epiphone nor a Gibson SG with the money saved (although just saying the names of those objects makes me want to buy them), as I decided I'm not that rich. I did treat myself to a polarising filter and a remote control for my camera however.



I recently visited our local UFO-spotting hill in the company of other ancient skywatchers as a nostalgic treat. It was a lovely night, and was 1976 all over again. Nobody saw any UFOs, but I think people enjoyed being there again. However, the number of skywatchers who smoke is surprising. I was sorely tempted. Still, I did get to stand next to a load of smokers and smell their lovely, lovely smoke.

I was thinking, while breathing in their lovely smoke, that if I were to fail in my quit, I'd have to "teach" myself to smoke again. I wouldn't have been able to just bum a fag from a ufologist and smoke it there and then. That would be far too nauseating. No, I would have to allow my body to acclimatise to the toxins. I would have to have a drag and then put the ciggie out. Then after twenty minutes, have perhaps two drags. And so on until I'd had a complete fag. But even then, I would feel faintly nauseous, and so I wouldn't have another for an hour or so. But I would have it. After the second or third cigarette, I would just feel generally ill -- slightly nauseous, and probably developing a headache.

But I wouldn't let that put me off. I'd still smoke another one, and another. Then I'd go to bed, and have colourful dreams.

But the next morning I'd be an adapted smoker. And the cigarette I'd have when I woke up would be the only cigarette I'd consciously enjoy, ever.

I wonder where Dolores is?

Two Months Done

So, I've just crawled over the line of two months done:

Two months, 13 hours, 47 minutes and 5 seconds. 1847 cigarettes not smoked, saving £507.99. Life saved: 6 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes.

And also recently passed the "saved 500 quid" mark.

Time is really dragging though. So for all you people who think time passes too quickly as you get older, my advice would be to smoke for twenty years, and then give up. Suddenly time will seem to move like black treacle though warm butter floating in cool honey whipped with mayonnaise and olive oil.

Hey ho. What can I say? Quitting doesn't get any easier yet. I mean, I knew that anyway. My body rebels though. Smoke now, it says. Accelerate time! Stop the body weirdnesses! You're just going to die anyway! Nothing has changed, your eye still hurts, you're still too fat, you're short of breath, and your teeth are rotting anyway. Just give up giving up and get back to smokey land where at least you don't eat like a pig and drink tea like a fish that likes tea.

What can I spend five hundred quid on?

John would suggest this:

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/74297

and it is 50 quid less than my savings so far... But...

Time Really Does Slow Down

It's true. And of course, that means that everything else seems to speed up. I mean, look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8X5-H6LRc&mode=related&search=

Got any Speed?

Lordy, I'm tired.

Looks like we've lost Dolores and Modern Monkey, so I guess you'll have to rely on me for entertainment. Yet, to read for entertainment about somebody who is giving up smoking is madness.

Nonetheless. Here we are:

One month, two weeks, five days, 17 hours, 13 minutes and 17 seconds. 1491 cigarettes not smoked, saving £410.17. Life saved: 5 days, 4 hours, 15 minutes.

Approaching 1500 fags not smoked. What's that... 75 packets of twenty? Wonder how high that would stretch? I'm feeling very tired. Some quit smoking groups aver that the tiredness many a quitter feels is because our bodies are healing. They could be right. All I know is - I'm knackered, pretty much constantly. I suppose I might always have been tired, but hadn't realised as I boosted my metabolism with nicotine.

I'll tell you what though - I could do with a fag.

I realised something today though. Spending 20 quid a month on the Lottery is stupid when I could save those 20s for 6 months and spend 120 quid on Premium bonds. At least with the Premium bonds there still a bit of a gambling element going on, but I can get my stake back. And the odds are better. Not that the 20 quid a month on the lottery has ever been a regular thing.

I don't gamble (much), I don't drink, I don't chase women (might flirt a bit), I don't eat fine food nor go on exotic holidays. The only thing I ever did that was crazy and enjoyable was smoke.

And yet - nearly seven weeks have gone by without a migraine...

Now the Cravings Really Begin

Have been quiet lately as I had a major car-related problem -- it stopped working, and I had to get a new one, and all the travails associated with that. But now I have a new old one, and note this morning that it has a puncture, and I can't be bothered to jack it up at the moment.

Because I've given up smoking a few times, I'm always amazed by the blithe insistence of some quit sites - especially those biased towards the "cognitive quitting" - that the cravings soon pass, that they are no worse than the cravings you get when you want a cigarette while smoking, that the cravings diminish with time, and if you just never put that cigarette in your mouth, everything will be fine and dandy.

Now, while the last statement is true -- and, so far, I have resisted the one, just one -- I'm here to tell you that, for this quitter, months two, three and four are the hardest. The cravings I get from here on for the next couple of months aren't some little tug at the edges of my consciousness, like the desire for another cigarette when I was smoking, but in another league altogether. This desire is difficult to describe. But it is a real desire, made worse because it is thwarted, and not by improbability, like say, my desire for a million quid. It is a desire that could quite easily and simply be sated, but which I have to resist.

These cravings are not something that pass within two or three minutes, as many cognitive quitters insist, but something that can haunt me for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, and sometimes longer, much, much longer.

The craving feels very physical. Located somewhere around the chest, but also spreading into my whole body and making me feel tired. A feeling of aching emptiness.

So wish me luck as I voyage into the next three months where it gets really, really, difficult.

One month, two weeks, 8 hours, 22 minutes and 21 seconds. 1330 cigarettes not smoked, saving £365.88. Life saved: 4 days, 14 hours, 50 minutes.

Bad Day, Really

My belly hurts. Oh, alright, it doesn't really hurt. But it is acidically disturbed. And my legs are aching a bit. And I'm a bit sweaty. And I really, really want a ciggy. I feel that, if I had one, although I would feel nauseous for a while, my legs would stop aching, I'd stop feeling a little bit sweaty, and my belly would return to normal functioning.

Oh, quitting is always fun. No wonder I always struggle to start, knowing that for the first few months, I'll have days of feeling like this, and no wonder I struggle to maintain a quit, when I have days feeling like this.

Yet, one thing I have to remember - for one month, four days, 17 hours, 27 minutes and 1 second, I haven't had a migraine. I've had mild twinges, as if I might be about to get one, but not a full on, chronic, head thumper. I might yet get one. I inevitably will at some point. Stopping smoking is not a panacea for my migraines. But it does the reduce their number and intensity. So what's a little indigestion and achy legs in comparison? Well - I'd rather have no symptoms at all, but as it goes, I think I'd rather forgo the headaches.

My concentration is still lacking, even after nearly five weeks. My brain remains a tad fogged. I tend to start one thing, then get restless and start another. Or I start something, get distracted, and forget entirely what I was doing.

Hey ho, and away we go. I've got another novel to write!

One month, four days, 17 hours, 32 minutes and 24 seconds. 1041 cigarettes not smoked, saving £286.53. Life saved: 3 days, 14 hours, 45 minutes.

Hullabaloo!

One month, three days, 10 hours, 36 minutes and 22 seconds. 1003 cigarettes not smoked, saving £275.89. Life saved: 3 days, 11 hours, 35 minutes.

Shame I didn't catch it just at the thousand mark, but hey! That's fifty packs not smoked.

Time Flies By When I'm the Driver of a Train

At least, it does if we imagine that the "train" to which I refer is actually smoking.

I was just contemplating various time-related stuff - things that had to be done by, or had to or will happen by a certain date - and realised that I am - as is the rest of the Western world, for that matter - still only in July. And only just the last week of July.

It is a bonus that time seems to have slowed now that I have quit smoking; time does, after all, fly away faster as I get older. At the same time, however, I wish time was going just a little bit faster. Not by much, perhaps just a few ticks every hour.

It is also a bonus that today, I have no wish to murder anybody, and smokers in the street shall remain unmugged. Nonetheless, the absence of the cigarette - from my hand, from my life - nags. Not smoking is a vacuum into which something wants to rush - and that something is, of course, nicotine. It wants to rush back in, a nicotine rush, to all those nicotine receptors I spent 20 years developing (it should be nearly thirty, really, but I've had a lot of quits)...

It does get easier, as they say, and as I anyway know. I also know I'm one fag away from a pack of day, and I don't want just one, I want them all. Yet sometimes, the idea of again having them all seems so sweet that I don't care about my heart and lungs, I don't care that, when I am smoking, I spend a great deal of the time worrying that I'm about to suffer a coronary or develop a cancer.

All I want is blue smoke trailing from my mouth and the junkie pleasure of having fulfilled my need.

However, at this moment:

One month, two days, 16 hours, 0 minutes and 22 seconds. 980 cigarettes not smoked, saving £269.50. Life saved: 3 days, 9 hours, 40 minutes.

Ooh, look! Some time tomorrow, I'll have not smoked a thousand. Now there's a milestone about which to hullabaloo!

FMD

So, the first month has passed on by. It hasn't been easy, and still isn't, and will remain in that mode for some time. Nothing would make me happier than having a smoke (okay, sex and winning a million might make me temporarily happier).

Still:

One month, 9 hours, 34 minutes and 10 seconds. 911 cigarettes not smoked, saving £250.79. Life saved: 3 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes.

Displacement Activities 5

Wanting a cigarette quite badly at the moment, so back to YouTube, and, hurrah! Now, I'm feeling all jingly-jangly, so:

The Cocteau Twins: Live "Pearly Dewdrop's Drops", and Vid for "Carolyn's Fingers"

The Sundays: Vid for "Goodbye", and Vid for "Here's Where the Story Ends"

I'm also feeling a little bit heavy, so:

A Perfect Circle: Vid for "Judith". The video is so lo-fi you can watch it full screen! BTW, at about 1:50 is one of the coolest moments in rock!

Mudvayne: Vid for "Dig" One of my favourite riffs. Bombs away!

Oh well... suppose I'd better find something sensible to do with the rest of the evening...

Dolores is MIA!

I hope that doesn't mean she's relaxing in her summer garden with a ciggie in hand, but that she's in lurve or something...

Imagining Myself in a Car

Even since I drove into work this morning, I have this repeated image of myself in a car, driving to Devon. In this vision, I have a cigarette in my hand.

This began because I noticed that the gaiter on my gear lever no longer has a light covering of ash. And weirdly, I missed it. And suddenly, there was an image of the cigarette in my left hand that rested atop the gear lever as I sailed down the miles of the A303 towards Devon. Radio 4 on the radio. Interestingly, in this image, I don't appear to smoke the cigarette. It is just there, my driving companion.

I think this is an example of romancing the cigarette, making it an important and essential part of some day to day activity, seeing it as intrinsic and vital to the performance of an activity.

It would be possible, you might suppose, to ignore such images, to put them to one side and concentrate on the important things of the day. But no... the image leaks back in, just quick flashes.

Me, in a car. With a fag in my hand.

Something to Do With Your Fingers (1)

When quitting smoking, there's always the consideration of what you are going to do with your hands - and the terminal digits of said appendages - when you no longer have a cigarette to play with. If you are in the unfortunate position of having nothing to play with in a cigarette's stead, yet have an interest in things scientific, I advise wandering over to Galaxy Zoo.

You can help classify galaxies into left- and right-handed spirals, ellipticals and mergers. It's fun, and you get to see photos of galaxies that possibly nobody has ever seen before (why that should be is explained at the web site).

Two Hundred Quid Not Reduced to Ash

Here's a milestone that must have happened during the night. Two hundred pounds saved, already. Lookie here:

Three weeks, three days, 14 hours, 57 minutes and 55 seconds. 738 cigarettes not smoked, saving £203.14.

That's a nice milestone and gives me an idea of what I'll save over the year (about £2500, whoo!), and why I won't need to feel bad if I decide to buy even more books, CDs or DVDs in any given month. Although in the first few months of quitting I do tend to spend a lot of what I save just to make myself feel better (I've easily spent somewhere around 80 quid on the aforementioned items this month).

I had two hours of wading through sludge on the phone last night as I tried to make sense of somebody else's ill-starred world. This would normally have been the cue to smoke a handful of cigarettes. If I hadn't been so tired, and also not wanted to visit the nearest 24 hour garage just as the clubs were kicking out, I might have gone and bought myself ten sweet Silkies. But I didn't. And today, I've been burning the demon out with lots of joss sticks and ylang ylang.

One good thing about my odd life is that despite its oddness, I always find myself having a lot to do, so boredom is never an excuse to start smoking. Except for the special boredom I have to be wary of - becoming bored with fighting the cravings. Quits have collapsed over that. So, I carry on carrying on, remembering:

I don't want one, I want them all.

Three Weeks Done

Well, it's been three weeks. There are those who aver that it will get easier from here on in, but I've slipped enough times to know that isn't true. In fact, it will never be true. As they say, I'm just one fag away from one pack a day. Another favourite motto along the same lines - "I don't want one, I want them all."

Anyway, one day at a time. And on this day, three weeks has been and gone:

Three weeks, 19 hours, 29 minutes and 55 seconds. 654 cigarettes not smoked, saving £179.95. Life saved: 2 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes.

Julia Roberts and the Fag in Her Gob

So, I'm watching My Best Friend's Wedding tonight (I'm a sucker for romantic movies - so shoot me...)

Julia Roberts is, at certain times, quite beautiful. I can smell the Marlboro on her. You know, the Marlboro she shakes out of a packet at certain times of stress as if the rest of the time she can just ignore it.

When she smokes a cigarette, however, as if by some olfactory magic my living room fills with sweet cigarette smoke. Her body becomes wreathed in it. The smoke is sweet, and my desire to smoke strong. When Dermot Mulroney takes her in his arms, just after she has been sitting outside his bedroom door, smoking, I imagine for a moment how she would smell, at that moment, and for that moment I imagine the smoke now gone that lingers about her, how her long, red, curly hair, would smell of cigarette smoke.

And some people think this addiction is easy to beat.

Two weeks, five days, 19 hours, 37 minutes and 49 seconds. 594 cigarettes not smoked, saving £163.49. Life saved: 2 days, 1 hour, 30 minutes.

Does it work (1) : Chewing Gum

I just mean plain old gum here, not Nicotine gum which for some reason I am afraid of.

Old people: remember when gum came in green, white or yellow and that was it? (Spearmint & Juicy Fruit but what the hell was the other one?)

Well I've got news for you. The gum market has exploded. There's maybe a square meter of it in any corner shop. They still tend to the green/blue end of the spectrum, but there's pink, red, black, yellow, orange. You can get mad flavours like cinnamon or cherry menthol, They are beautiful, shiny and neat as a packet of fags and a whole lot cheaper per hit. Some of the gums even have Benefits: they clear your airways, whiten your teeth, freshen your breath.

For a really extreme gum experience there is Trident Splash: crunchy pillows of gum with a runny bit in the middle, in combos like Strawberry and Lime.

So for an orally fixated quitter like me, gum seems to have a lot going for it.

And it has helped. But there are problems.

First thing: proper smokers tend to have an addictive style personality, I would say. So at first you can just pop in a single gumlet and chew idly for 15 minutes, dispose of it thoughtfully, wait an hour and repeat.

But soon that's not enough, you've ramped it up to 2 gumlets at once. Soon as the flavour starts to leave, need to shove another one in there. Before you know it you are chawing on an entire packet at once. And that's a lot of artificial sweetener and flavours for the system to take.

I woke up this morning with a gum hangover, a sort of nauseous memory of too much sweetness. (Not unlike the sensation of having just thrown up after a bottle of Southern Comfort, come to think of it).

The thought of even looking at my remaining gum stores makes me shudder. No gum for me this morning.

Which is a relief when we stop to review the other problem with hard-core gum-chewing. Look away, sensitive types. Whisper it: constant gum-chewing makes you fart. Not great big satisfying farts either, mean little farts.

All in all, though, I give gum-chewing 7/10.

Now what?

What's the best approach for when you've fallen off the wagon? I think I shoould have figured that out before I bought the Silk Cut.

The most tempting thing is to shout "Hooray, this quit has failed!" and just throw yourself back into lovely lovely smoking with a vengeance. Cos what's the alternative? Reset your meter back to 0, hate yourself, despair and face the grim first days of quitting all over again. That's not going to fly.

I'm sitting here and a Brilliant Idea is forming. (Groans heard from those of you that know me and my Brilliant Ideas)

No, hang on, its two Brilliant Ideas. Its twins showing on the scan.

First Brilliant Idea. For every fag, I have to first sincerely repent. Think about the consequences of that, Young Lady. Perhaps I should repent right here in the blog. That will make riveting reading (Wild laughter) Then I have to commit an act of self-love so that I can know that I have proper forgiven myself. No I don't mean a w*nk. Necessarily. Could be anything nice. Could make myself a card. Or buy a song off itunes. Or force someone to say I'm great.

Second Brilliant Idea.
Since I was 19 every little thing I've done, I've done with a fag in my hand. Except for teaching or sleeping. I was going to say and having sex, but ummm come to think of it. So how about the worlds largest tick chart containing every conceivable situation, mood, scenario and location? When I get through that thing without a ciggie I get a tick. Then when I get, say, 100 ticks, you guys (the readers) can take it in turns to treat me to something nice. Possible flaw with this plan! Nobody will want to treat me to something nice! Prove me wrong and mail me your offers.

As to the meter: well its my servant not my master. I'm just going to expunge the last couple of days from the record and say:
Six days, 21 hours, 50 minutes and 56 seconds. 276 cigarettes not smoked, saving £62.88. Life saved: 23 hours, 0 minutes.

Unlike me

Two weeks, three days, 21 hours, 56 minutes and 32 seconds. 537 cigarettes not smoked, saving £147.79. Life saved: 1 day, 20 hours, 45 minutes.

He Never Said Sorry But ..

What happened to me on Tuesday do you think? Do you think a man drove a long way and bought me dinner and got me drunk and took advantage? Jeez you're psychic.

There's a lot more to this story than I can be bothered to explain. Read my email and figure it out Identity of less-than-ideal lover removed because Mystery Dude says to.

Dear Mr B*****

I hope the use of your surname does not seem too familiar.

I just wanted to write and thank you for drawing my attention to an interesting social phenomenon. I had thought the The Aging Lothario was, like polio, a thing of the past. I was fascinated to find that in fact he lives on in B*********, Herefordshire, unchanged since the early seventies.

I am annoyed with myself for not spotting the signs, though in retrospect there were many. All I can say in my own defence is that I did not think to look for the signs, just as we would be slow to notice the symptoms of polio in this day and age.

I did really enjoy the sex we had together, though I misunderstood what it represented. I (stupidly) thought it was an expression of our friendship and attraction, whereas for you it was the finale of a calculating and exploitative multimedia seduction campaign. I am so glad I found out what kind of man you are.

I assume you have cancelled your bank cards, amazed that you would rather do this than run the risk of contacting one of your conquests again. You may wonder how they came into my possession - I found them the next morning on the kitchen floor, where they must have fallen while I was sucking your dick.

You obviously have no respect for a woman who is willing to have sex with you, perhaps that is why so few of us are. I expect it is too late for you to change, but just feel I should repeat: people no longer think that way.

Of course I intend to publish what I have found out. If you would prefer me to omit the details of your name and location, you'd better ask me, real nicely.

Yours sincerely,

Just by the way

Oh and by the way I bought 10 silk cut.

And now I've started to smoke them

Aha, now I can

The most crazy beautiful thing happened to me yesterday morning. I went to see this customer who had somehow invited a whole lot of spyware on to his computer. So I temporarily disabled restore, booted into safe mode and started to run some scans. I saw that it was going to take ages and its kind of boring watching a progress bar so I asked him to please entertain me or I would have to go out and get some fags.

"Do you play chess?" he asked
"Kinda" I replied.

So he got out his chess set, but it was a very expensive chess set in which all the bits were very fancy models. Like there was an armadillo thing and that was a pawn. There was a dragon thing and that was one of the knights. The queen resembled Barbara Streisand. It was very hard to tell which piece belonged to which side.

So we played a game of chess. It was hard though because he's had a stroke and can't remember what anything is called. And neither of us could reliably say what anything was. So it was like
"Can you do that? Isn't that a bishop"
(Pause while I put on glasses so I can read underside of chess piece. Leg missing from specs so specs fall off)
I think its a bishop
(Pause while Kev attempts to remember the word for thing that goes diagonally)
Its a... its a ...
Bishop?
Yeah

It was brilliant, especially since I won. I only won because he accidentally sacrificed his queen early on, believing it to be a pawn. I could see that with a proper set and without the stroke he's have whopped my arse.

It was brilliant because it made his day and you know what, it made mine too

sdfgsfdgsfgsfgsfdgsdfgsdfgsdfgsfg

It won't let me type in the the title place/ And I have so much to say.. but can't do it without a title

But a Milestone!

Having had a moan in the previous entry, I will note:

Two weeks, two days, 19 hours, 41 minutes and 2 seconds. 504 cigarettes not smoked, saving £138.77. Life saved: 1 day, 18 hours, 0 minutes.

Over 500 fags not smoked. That's 25 empty packets not in the bin. Nearly 140 quid still in my bank account. So that's something.

I'm not even that keen on chocolate, either.

Give Me a Fag, or I'll Kill You

So, this evening I'm having quite a hard time. Endlessly replaying Stevie Nicks in that moment of naturalness I discovered on YouTube - which is nice. I still want a fag, and I'm aware that she was probably on 30 Cools a day then, or something. But she looks happy, and I join her for a moment in her happiness and for that moment a twitching strung out moment goes by in peace. But it comes back.

Stevie also strongly reminds me of somebody who I wish I could contact - just to find out how she's getting on, you know? - but for various reasons, can't.

I've got the tight chest thing again too, the feeling that I'm just about to stop breathing, the feeling I only get when I stop and not when I am smoking, which is weird.

Hang on, I'm going to light a couple of joss sticks.

And slap some ylang ylang and patcholi on my wrist... and sniff. Ahhhhh. Lovely.

I am such a hippie.

Perhaps the tightness in my chest is just stress. I don't get stressed much. Perhaps smoking masked it.

It's so difficult to describe.

It's like a tightness

Perhaps it's just depression? There is a theory that people who find giving up smoking hard (people like me, who have given up dozens of times, and sometimes for years before backsliding) actually use smoking to mask symptoms of depression.

It doesn't seem to happen when I smoke, so it must have something to do with not smoking. So, of course, part of me thinks, yeh, go on, have a fag, feel better. But then if I am masking stress or depression, better to let it out and live with it than keep hiding it?

But then, perhaps, it's just some psychosomatic shit that's trying to make me smoke. Because it does make me want to smoke, so in that sense, it's quite successful. I will continue to fight it though.

Shame I don't drink, really.

French Films

Oh Lord.

French films of the early eighties are high-class smoking p*rn. I just watched Diva, and of course the really cool guy successfully builds an enormous jigsaw that consists mainly of different shades of blue while smoking many Gauloises.

Blue smoke wreathes around the apartment that only contains a bath, a jigsaw, a phone and a kitchen. A girl roller-skates around it. Cool bloke sits on the floor smoking a Gauloise. In this bubble of film-time, you know that smoking isn't going to cause any harm, no cancer, no heart attacks, no diseases. Just a bloke and his fags, a girl on rollerskates, an enormous jigsaw.

It was so cool, that, of course, I wanted a fag for most of the film. Luckily, the subtitles kept deflecting the worst of craves. But they were there, in the background. The craves, not the subtitles.

Still, I keep on keeping on.

Two weeks, one day, 21 hours, 4 minutes and 16 seconds. 476 cigarettes not smoked, saving £130.99. Life saved: 1 day, 15 hours, 40 minutes.

Displacement Activities 4

Arggh! What a discovery! Haven't seen this for about 25 years! (And for those of you who thought we were precious for composing sonnets!)

Unfortunately only the last 8 minutes, but hey:

Le Sacre Du Printemps by Pina Bausch Wuppertal Dance Theater

There is a Dance of the Young Girls from Le Sacre by a different choreographer here.

And something slightly more Dudish, but still perhaps surprising - I've been trying to find a complete one of these all night!

Question Time

Tonight, in the dog-end of day 5, we will be exploring the question: why am I such an utter twat?

Here I am, 44 long full years behind me, I've sat through the same damn lesson time and time again. I've taken notes and nodded sagely and put my hand up and answered the questions and told the lesson to other people and I still don't really learn it.

The lesson I can't learn is this: there IS a future and unless I take steps, I won't be in it.

I don't like the future and I never have. There are people that love me, I am lucky and I do include you Nix and Monkey and Jane and kids and Dude. There are things that are beautiful in my life and I will risk them all for a momentary thrill. My self-control is crap. I'm like a little kid or a border collie, see something distracting and I run across the road without looking, car crash, dead.

So how can a person of this type possibly quit smoking? How?

My best friend can tell me something important about where I'm going wrong and I just go "lah-lah-lah-yeah whatever". A complete stranger can dare me to drink a bottle of vodka and do a pole dance in the Griffin and I'm right there. I'm a twat and I get it all wrong.

This probably doesn't make any sense but what do you expect after
Four days, 22 hours, 52 minutes and 58 seconds. 198 cigarettes not smoked, saving £45.07. Life saved: 16 hours, 30 minutes.

Modern Monkey

Where are you chicko? I want you right here, right now, in the blog xx

Reacquainting Myself With Brenda

I've stood on Brenda and walked 50 paces three times today without significant effect - like fear of having a heart attack - so that's good.

I'm trying to replace the smoking addiction with an "I'm going to have a six-pack and lose a stone by Christmas" obsession. I know that, if I smoke, I won't manage either of those things, because when I smoke I'm too scared to exercise in case I die. So the only chance of any change in this fat nearly-fifty year old is if I stay off the weed. If I return to smoking then I am accepting that I want to be a fat, unfit, fifty-year old who smokes.

In fact, it's almost worth giving me the reward of smoking for Christmas if I can get a six pack and lose a stone by then. But that would be madness of course.

So fit and fit by Christmas. Can the Dude do it?

Two Weeks Done!

It's one of the milestones!

Two weeks, 8 hours, 0 minutes and 56 seconds. 430 cigarettes not smoked, saving £118.25. 0 Shags. Life saved: 1 day, 11 hours, 50 minutes.

Let's see if you're paying attention...

Four days, 11 hours, 22 minutes and 49 seconds. 178 cigarettes not smoked, saving £40.71. Life saved: 14 hours, 50 minutes. Shags enjoyed: 1.5

Displacement Activities 3

YouTube seems to be a fruitful way of keeping my mind off the ... the... you know...

So go look at my favourite mashup

or:

A lovely clean 1970s vid of Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks!) doing Rhiannon

Oh, and look at this very lovely thing, Stevie Nicks just singing with a backing singer and a backing track while being made up backstage and looking relaxed. It's so sweet, so of the moment, and what a voice...

And ever since the 70s I've wondered what the improbable combination of Elkie Brooks and Robert Palmer sounded like, but I was too scared back then. I'm made of sterner stuff now, and this actually rocks, man.

Blegh!

Can't say I've stopped feeling blegh. But that might be something to do with the number of plain chocolate biscuits I've consumed since this morning's Ugh! post.

Plain chocolate biscuits are lovely in and of themselves, but are a poor substitute for a Silk Cut. But as I can't have a Silkie, guess the choccie bix will have to suffice.

Of course, I could eat plain chocolate biscuits even when I smoked. So what is the point of the biscuits? What need is satisfied by the biscuits? What need am I satisfying by eating biscuits?

Am I satisfying any need beyond the basic need to enjoy something sweet and fatty? Wouldn't I enjoy a plain chocolate biscuit anyway? So am I, in fact, rambling for nothing? To no point? Making a mountain out of a molehill? What does it mean? Anything? Nothing? In what way is the biscuit meaningful? Wouldn't I have eaten one anyway? Even when I was smoking, if I had a packet of biscuits, didn't I eat too many? So is the problem allowing myself to buy the biscuits? Because if I didn't buy them I wouldn't eat them?

How many questions can I ask myself in one blog entry? Can I ask any more? In what sense do I expect an answer? What would an answer consist of? Would I know if I had an answer? Is the chocolate biscuit an answer? Is blegh a word? Is blegh a biscuit? How many shortcake can a man wolf down? How short can a cake be? How short would a cake have to be before it became useless? Would that depend on how many short cakes there were?

Blegh?

I want a fag

Tired of this quitting now. You're just high-fiving yourself for getting over a crave when another one comes along. That's just going to happen over and over and over every day for ever.

I split up this fella who I reckoned was the love of my life a few months ago and I missed him a lot at first. But the thought of never seeing him again didn't make me cry like the thought of never having another fag does.

That's proper addiction isn't it?

(sarcastically)
Three days, 11 hours, 25 minutes and 5 seconds. 139 cigarettes not smoked, saving £31.63. Life saved: 11 hours, 35 minutes.

Ugh!

That's one of my symptoms of quitting today. I feel very tired, a little bit yuk, some parts of me feel a bit ugghhh, and there are other parts of me feeling urk. This is all rolled up into a general feeling of blegh. If I was smoking I wouldn't feel blegh. I can balance this in the great scales, however, by remembering that if I was still smoking, I might have a migraine (haven't had one since I stopped, not even a hint of one). So, in general, I'll take the blegh, even if the feeling of torpor and lassitude associated with it is a bit disheartening.

So I'll post the meter, even though it's now getting to the stage where not much appears to change between flashes.

One week, six days, 7 hours, 43 minutes and 27 seconds. 399 cigarettes not smoked, saving £109.90. Life saved: 1 day, 9 hours, 15 minutes.

Although it will flip to 400 not smoked soon, but I don't know when. 20 packets not smoked. I can just imagine a tower of 20 Silk Cut packets. It's nice to know I've not smoked them.

Be nice to not feel blegh as well, though.

Leading (a sonnet)

Leading

Whenever I went shopping, when told the total
For my groceries, I would have to add
"And twenty Silk Cut please." Is that purple?
They'd ask, and I'd say yes, and then feel bad
When I added, "Make that thirty, instead",
Knowing that I'd never make it through the day
And would otherwise, before the day was dead,
Have to climb into my car, make my way
To a twenty-four hour service station.
I thus ensured I had enough shit-sticks
To enable narcotic satisfaction
To the point of feeling just slightly sick.

It is madness, is it not, to be led
So by a drug, and not by heart and head?

Love Sonnet

Love Sonnet

Mayfair Smooth!, your shining pack
Held the scaffold of my day
Five for paying myself back
For the things I had that went away.
Ten to keep me bland and sweet
Tie up the bitch-cow out of sight
Five more so I don't need to eat
Ten more to help me drink all night.
I don't know where the others went.
They turned to brown stuff in my lungs.
I do like men. But best prevent
Myself from kissing them with tongues.

But you stole from me, you crappy lover
My money and youth. Fuck off. Its over.

Amazingly Difficult Creative Challenge!

Mystery Dude will be like hmmm yeah I'll have a go. Normal people will be like get over yourselves you pretentious ponces. But we're the quitters and, remember, we must be indulged! So get out your quills and have a go.

The challenge is this: compose a Shakesperean sonnet on the topic of Smoking.

Just in case the rhyme scheme for that has slipped your mind, it is
abab cdcd efef gg

And I think each line has to go to this rhythm (but not sure let's be liberal about that)

When I have dreams that I may cease to be

like der-DUH-der-DUH-der-DUH-der-DUH-der-DUH

Dude says: Yeh, that's like iambic pentameter darling

Foxed by New Toothbrush

It must quite common for recent quitters to develop a toothbrush fetish, since all those chirpy guides to quitting suggest you brush your teeth whenever you want a cigarette. Better not clean them forty times a day though, they'll end up as nubs!

I treated myself to a state-of-the-art toothbrush this morning. Its an Oral-B Pulsar, you seen one? Man, they are advanced. Distributed throughout the normal bristles are these little yellow rubber bits, they strongly resemble bees' legs. That's not all, you press a button on the handle and the bees' legs start to vibrate. Actually they kind of flap feebly, as though your bee is drowning in a jar of jammy water.

So far so good, but it is not clear how to apply the buzzing brush to your teeth. Do you just hold it against your teeth and pulse the detritus off? Or are you supposed to scrub in the traditional way with the pulsing as an additional boosting mechanism?

I got through the clean using an ad-libbed combo of the two methods. It probably explains it all on the packet but I can't read that tiny writing, not with my middle-aged smoker's eyes. If anyone has experience in modern tooth-brushing techniques I'd be grateful for any insights.

Cheers

Recommending Things

Hey, I'm on a blog! I can recommend things! And I'm quitting smoking, so recommending things is a useful thing to do in that it keeps my fingers occupied on this keyboard rather than doing things they didn't oughter.

Hang on while I do the patchouli thing. Ahhhhhhh

So I'd like to recommend the album Dynamo Mercurial by The Somatics. 21st Century art-prog-rock with a whiff of early Floyd, they have a fantastic ear for a tune. One of the highlights of the album is the four-part track The Lost Weekend. In fact, I'm going to listen to it now.

The band had problems getting a distribution deal and are selling the album through CDBaby. Click here to hear and buy.

And when I was watching the Glastonbury multiscreens on BBC interactive (ah, the wonders of digital television) I was arrested for forty minutes or so by the intriguing Bat for Lashes. I've yet to buy an album - but that is simply because I'm pauvre, otherwise I would. You can see them doing their thing on the BBC website.

Saved a Ton

Apart from 3DD (three days done) and FWD (first week down), saving my first hundred quid is one of my favourite quit milestones. I wanted to be awake to see the meter tick over, but I had the opposite problem to the always-lovely Dolores, in that I felt really tired last night and fell asleep so early I was actually awake by nine thirty this morning. So the meter doesn't look quite as dramatic as it could. Nonetheless, here it is:

One week, five days, 6 hours, 50 minutes and 19 seconds. 368 cigarettes not smoked, saving £101.35. Life saved: 1 day, 6 hours, 40 minutes.

Insomnia

Who forgot to tell me about the insomnia? Look at the time, look at the freaking time.

I stupidly forgot to get blind drunk before I went to bed where I'm been since before 11 and not a wink. Not a wink! Instead I've been tormented by fruity thoughts about people I would not generally touch with a bargepole. With a throat that feels like I have smoked 70 lovely ciggies.

How is this fair? How is this right? In a hour or so, Quit Day No. 3 ("Psycho Day") will be dawning and I have to get up at 7 and do a load of things. I can't just miss out a night's sleep, not at my age.

And oh yeah, Two days, 4 hours, 32 minutes and 45 seconds. 87 cigarettes not smoked, saving £19.92. Life saved: 7 hours, 15 minutes.

I want that 7 hours, 15 minutes I've allegedly saved, I want it right now! I can add it to the remaining 2.5 hours of this night and cobble together a decent night's sleep.

Oh Lord I Can't Breathe

That's not true. That's not true at all. I am breathing as we speak.

I just feel like I can't breathe. Even that's not true. I know I'm breathing. So what is this feeling?

It's not unknown to me. I've broken quits over this feeling. How best to describe it? Like a tightness around the chest. It's annoying. Because I don't feel like this when I'm smoking, and one of the reasons for giving up is to feel better, so when I give up I don't expect to feel worse. I expect to feel good. But instead, I have a weird tightness around my chest that feels a bit like I can't breathe.

I'm not going to let it freak me out this time. It would be stupid, would it not, to start smoking over a feeling? A feeling that is related to quitting anyway, and is thus either my body adjusting to breathing oxygen, rather than CO and CO2, or is a psychosomatic attempt by me to make me smoke again.

Well, I'm not going to.

Oh no what did I do last night?

Let's start with things being all nicey-nicey and say:

One day, 18 hours, 50 minutes and 39 seconds. 71 cigarettes not smoked, saving £16.24. Life saved: 5 hours, 55 minutes.

I have to tell how I got through my first smoke-free night because its either funny or horrifying depending on your perspective.

First I drank the dregs of a bottle of wine, then chased that with another full bottle of wine. I was desperate for a fag by then so, with drunk logic, I went to The Forgotten Shelf and found two dusty magic bottles, one containing a peach schnapps type thing and another Islay whisky. Thrilled with my haul I went back to the basement to get into trouble with MSN.

One of my fondest platonic loves (he's the Plato fan, not me) is this fella who talks to me regular on MSN, except when I am blocking him for some imagined slight. We both enjoy swearing, though in real life we are as posh as can be.
As in:
Me: You are such a w*nky c*nt-faced tit
Him: Well at least I'm not a c*nty tit-faced w*nker like you.

So in a drink-fuelled frenzy of creativity I suggest we put our swearing skills to the test and compose a poem with lots of swear words in it.

Which is how "Spunk Song" came about. Sadly the details are now lost to history, I just know that this collaborative work seemed to me possibly the finest poem ever written. Nothing would do but I published! I would be courageous and dare to push the boundaries of art! I would be the Tracy Emin of blogging!

So anyone stopping by the blog this morning would have been the only people to have read this seminal (groan) work.

Was driving to my friend's house about lunchtime, car full of kids, centre of Bracknell, when in a series of vivid flashbacks it came back to me what I had done. I nearly killed us all by attempting to bury my head in my hands while driving. I had to pull over and call Mystery Dude to please unpublish the obscene pome. Which he did, thanks mate. [It burned my eyes out in the process - Ed]

Incidentally this is only one in a series of ill-advised incidents from last night. Other travesties include inviting someone who is considering volunteering to be my boyfriend (I think) to come and sleep with me, also possibly asking my collaborator the same thing (not sure about that one, but probably did, usually do) before doing a really nasty character assassination on him for attempting to infringe my right to publish our dirty poems wheresoever I damned pleased.

Sorry to everyone involved in the fall-out from my Festival of Binge-Drinking. Please forgive me and imagine my funny face looking all contrite and ashamed.

And you know what? I did not have a single puff.

Obligatory Meter Flash 2

One week, four days, 8 hours, 48 minutes and 53 seconds. 341 cigarettes not smoked, saving £93.78. Life saved: 1 day, 4 hours, 25 minutes.

Stinking Like an Old Hippie

One tactic I'm using in this quit is the "Stink Like an Old Hippie" strategem.

I liberally apply patchouli or sandalwood to the pulse point on my wrists, and when I get the urge to smoke, I sniff a wrist and get instant summer of '76 flashbacks.

This helps because I didn't smoke in 1976, but I did wear patchouli. It's some kind of psychological thing.

Mind you, I love the smell of patchouli. I used to love it on the eighteen-year old girls I used to hang around with. (Of course, I would probably still love it on eighteen-year old girls. I mean, I might have given up smoking, but I haven't completely taken leave of my senses! But the only place I smell patchouli these days is on my own wrists. Which is a shame.)

I would love the sandalwood just as much, I'm sure, but in the bottle I have, it's so viscous it refuses to come out of the spout. Perhaps I should just take out the spout. We didn't need plastic spouts to control the flow of essential oils when I was a lad. If you got too much on you, well... nobody really noticed in the circles I moved in.

So. Joss-sticks. That's another thing. I've used up all the joss sticks I had. (By now you have this image, undoubtedly, of some guy with long, thinning grey hair, a white beard, a cheesecloth shirt and red loons, with cheap bangles on his wrist and a leather necklace with multi-coloured glass beads on it. If that's what you think, you would be very far from the mark, and you need to adjust your stereotypes accordingly.)

During the last week, when desperate (that is, all the time), I've burnt a joss stick and sucked in a good lungful of some exotic perfume. I can't tell you the flavour I'm afraid, as the joss sticks were given to me, sans packet, by a good friend. They were very nice. But as I say, they've all gone.

Now, where does one get joss sticks? When one is not in Totnes. I mean, if you're in Totnes, obtaining joss sticks is a cinch - and, most likely, de rigeur. I suppose I could drive over to Glastonbury, where there is bound (by civic edict, probably) to be a purveyor of joss sticks. Or Bath! I know precisely where to go to stock up on joss sticks there (unless that shop has closed - the one opposite Tumi, you know it?). But parking is an expensive nightmare just for the sake of a couple of quid's worth of stinky sticks.

I suppose one can resort to the wibblywobblyweb, but there is something... oh, I don't know, not quite right... about buying joss sticks from the web. They should be bought from a dark shop that also sells tie-dyed tee-shirts, indian shawls, books on Reiki, and, like, healing crystals, man.

Nonetheless, I have begun my exploration of net-based purveyors of exotic olfactory stimulants, and discovered that in my current state of quit jitters I probably need sandalwood (for uplifting and lightening my mood), lavender (for calming and stress relief), vanilla (for generally feeling good - and who wouldn't want to, hmm?) and Tibetan healing incense (for healing anxiety).

So perhaps Incense Man will yet get my custom. Because, let's face it, this AmbiPur Aromatic Wood candle just doesn't have the same punch as a good old sandalwood joss stick.

Dolores Has Quit!

I have ALWAYS found you completely adorable fantastic gorgeous smart and kind. I would personally take up smoking 100 a day if I thought it would make me more like you. I don't care whether you smoke or not. You are so cool it doesn't matter.

Nonetheless, it's also kind of cool you gave up.

Slightly Limp Hooray

I'm blind from crying again last night (no wonder I haven't got a boyfriend) but what's this then?

10 hours, 45 minutes and 38 seconds. 17 cigarettes not smoked, saving £4.08. Life saved: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

For 10 hours 30 mins of that I was asleep so that bit wasn't bad. The remaining 15 minutes I have spent coughing and wondering if my eyes will ever function properly again.

I don't feel liberated, euphoric, healthy or smug yet. Actually I'm just saying that to be cool, because I do feel sort of euphoric. I feel like doing one of those mad laughs that goes a bit too high-pitched and makes everyone uncomfortable.

Rule of the day: if Dolores wants it then she can have it. Wish me luck getting "the others" to agree to this.

Successfully Completed a Thing

Okay, if I was still smoking, which I'm not, the completion of an assignment for my Open University course would have been just another milestone in the... OU course. Instead, it's also a milestone in my quit, because although I have brain fog, and am suffering craves all the time, I did manage to successfully complete something without having to run out and buy a packet of fags just because it's very important that I do this thing, and this thing can't be done while I'm quitting, and really, this was a dumb time to quit, I should have waited until completion of the thing before quitting.

Well, I did a thing, and completed a thing, without succumbing to one of my junkie thinking excuses which was a good thing.

And the thing? Well, I think it was quite a good thing, unless brain fog has blinded me.

Displacement Activities 2

Well, this is more the kind of thing you'd expect from a Mystery Dude. Something far more art-rocky.

Yeessssssss - it's Frankie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JNOM7p0Bzw

I am reborn

Look!

I look so much better without a fag in my hand!

Now I look like all you chuffing poncey bastards that never smoked in the first place!

Hey let's do something really fun like.. errr ... errr

..but what can be more fun than taking on vile pollutants?

I gotta do it though cos now I've only gone and promised the kids.

Holy Cow I've only one hour left.

Map of Hell

Just a little reminder of where I am, with 8 hours and ...errr... 12 fags left on the clock.

This Post Isn't Light-Hearted

I've been wondering whether to post this, but I have to.

Spare a thought today for my darling friend and his family. He is in Guy's Hospital having a rib and a chunk of lung removed. He has lung cancer, though he gave up smoking a good few years ago. He is a lovely man and so crucial to his wife and daughters. I've seen them a few times in the last few weeks and watched him sinking into a morphine haze, the thing you don't think about with cancer till you see it close up, is that it hurts. A lot.

I know that any coping I have to do is nothing compared to their coping, but I don't think I've made a great fist of it. Mainly I have just twittered about trying to make him laugh, how crap of me when laughing hurts so much. I've also tried to find ways to help that haven't been covered by anyone else: I'll lend my ipod, I'll drive them to London, I'll give him a sitting-down job when he comes out of hospital.

Quite often in the course of an evening I'll drink too much and sometimes when I do I'll break out into unexplained sobbing before going to bed. Last night I drank too much and did the sobbing but this time it wasn't unexplained.

I know some of you know him, so shall we resort to the superstitious nonsense that is the last resort of the atheist and just wish him well together? Even if you don't know him, you'd be better off if you did, so wish him well too.

Obligatory Meter Flash

It's first thing in the morning (for me), I've just woken up, and it's METER FLASH!

One week, two days, 7 hours, 37 minutes and 21 seconds. 279 cigarettes not smoked, saving £76.87. Life saved: 23 hours, 15 minutes.

Indulgence

MD has reminded me of something with his Torvill & Dean enthusiasm. This is one of the double-plus bonuses of a quit, that is, you must indulge yourself with any little thing that takes your fancy, and nobody is allowed to make fun of you.

So for example if I want to spend 3 hours doing puzzles of kittens on jigzone.com then that's fine. If anyone suggests I would be better doing my accounts I can look at them with big wounded eyes and simply state that I have just given up smoking. Ditto knitting socks, watching Shrek, sitting in sun-lounger eating olives, playing "Club Anthems: 94", buying little bottles of miracle unguents from Superdrug, flirting on MSN....

I am looking forward to this. Any more ideas of comforting brain-dead activities out there?

Only 13.5 smoky hours left.

Displacement Activities 1

So, you feel kind of ill, in a chronic, non-life-threatening, just irritating way. Just a bit shitty, you know? And you think lawdy, a cigarette would cure this. If I just had one of those stinky little shit-sticks between my pouty lips, I would be a GOD!

Still, instead you can go on YouTube and watch those whom the heavens have blessed.

Lord, it can't be!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOD3cm7NHE

Not those two giants of ice-dance?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_-Em9wLij4

It is! Torvill and Dean!

Foolproof Idea

Didn't want you to miss this brilliant idea left by an anonymous commenter way down the page:

"I have a flawless suggestion for quitting smoking. As of Sunday, just remain in public places 24/7. Even a bustop is included, just set up camp there and you are nicotine free. You could even make some friends in the process..."

Thanks nonny!

My Eyes Look Much Better

In a comment on one of Dolores's earlier posts, I averred that my eyes look much better since I gave up the weed. She, of course, wanted photographic proof of this.

And, of course, I have photographic proof of this. My renunciation of the weed has also improved my skin and, generally, taken years off me.

Before:

After:

It's even better than plastic surgery and botox!

Permitted Supportive Statements

While I yearn for your unconditional love and support, please be careful what you say.

There may possibly be remarks that I can stomach apart from this one I have developed, but don't try unless you are very sure.

[Standard Acceptable Supportive Remark] "I have ALWAYS found you completely adorable fantastic gorgeous smart and kind. I would personally take up smoking 100 a day if I thought it would make me more like you. I don't care whether you smoke or not. You are so cool it doesn't matter. [OPTIONAL] Please accept this large wad of money as proof of my love"

This rules out the following (just 10 examples from a database of 1000s):

1. You look so much better since you gave up smoking.
2. I don't know why but I never had the urge to smoke
3. I heard that stopping smoking can be quite hard.
4. Just don't smoke any more! Simple as that!
5. I gave up smoking in 1946 and never looked back
6. I bet you're pleased you gave up smoking
7. What's a few pounds compared to the health risks of smoking?
8. Have you tried hypnosis?
9. My dad smoked 10000 fags a day and lived till he was 120
10. I gave up smoking in 1946 and every day is still a struggle.

Ok. You have been warned.

The Bet

I gave up smoking, as I usually do, at my friend's house. None of his family smoke, so it's a smoke free house, and they would nag me if I failed to give up.

This time I thought I'd spice things up with a bet. So eventually, after negotations, it was decided I would bet my friend's delightful daughter. We shook hands and everything. I didn't even cross my fingers behind my back. We bet a pound to a hundred pounds that I won't smoke before Xmas. So if I win, I get a shiny coin, if I lose I hand over a ton.


There is one small problem with this bet however.


As you will note from my metero intacto (that I shall again display, in case you missed it: One week, one day, 10 hours, 7 minutes and 43 seconds. 252 cigarettes not smoked, saving £69.48. Life saved: 21 hours, 0 minutes) I have already, in one week and half a day, saved nearly 70 quid. Therefore, by my calculations - and yes, I am calculating this - I could afford to pay the bet with no loss to myself by about Friday.

In fact, as I sit here thinking about this now, I realise I could:

a) Smoke on Friday evening

b) Go to Devon on Saturday and pay up the lost bet

c) Give up again on Saturday night at my friend's house

d) Start the whole cycle again

Which would, in itself, be healthier than smoking every day.

It's the kind of scheme that makes perfect sense a week into a quit.

Now, I must away and buy biscuits, or cake, or something.

Heart attack

Unlike the delightful Dolores, I have already quit. Do you want to see my meter?

One week, one day, 9 hours, 33 minutes and 8 seconds. 251 cigarettes not smoked, saving £69.28. Life saved: 20 hours, 55 minutes.

The money is amazing. Nearly seventy quid. Not that this is an amazing revelation that will forever keep me away from the fags. The money is also nothing. Think how much I've spent on fags over the last 25 years, and the 70 quid I've already saved is a puddle of piss in a thunderstorm. Still, it is amazing in and of itself, and will enable me to feel okay about buying books and CDs and DVDs and stuff. Not that I ever felt bad about those things. All right, let's just face it - the money I'm saving is absolutely no incentive at all.

Yesterday, I got on Brenda. (Brenda is my unimaginative name for Brenda DyGraf's Lateral Thigh Trainer. Yes, yes I bought one. I used to fall asleep to Brenda's Infomercials, and eventually came to believe that, yes, there is something unique in its skating-like motion.) I did a hundred steps - a hundred at a time is a sensible strategy for somebody who smoked thirty a day and has done little exercise - and then sat down to continue what I was doing. But then, my arm hurt. Not a lot. Just a bit. Lord, I thought, here comes the heart attack. And then I did feel short of breath, and a bit dizzy. Forty minutes later, I was still having a heart attack. My chest even hurt a bit. An hour and a half later, I was still having a heart attack.

I had decided, somewhere around the thirty minute mark, that I wasn't actually having a heart attack, but a mild panic attack, and didn't phone for the paramedics. Even writing this appears to be causing a mild heart attack again. Well, typing is exhausting.

Anyway, here's the point. Somewhere during the internal dialogue over whether I was actually having a heart attack or just being as neurotic as I normally am I decided to open another line of enquiry that went along the lines of wouldn't I actually feel better about all this if I had a fag?

Good news. I didn't. Hence the metero intacto.

You need to look here.

Have loved this Truth in Advertising presentation from Chickenhead in many years of failed quits.

I'm posting the link now because once I give up the fags my IQ will fall to about 60 and I won't be able to find it.

Useless Quit Buddy

That's me. But I'm quitting again on Saturday.

But how will I look cool when I'm not covered in a layer of fag-ash?

Sex addiction? Nah, been there, done that, stained the t-shirt.

Alcoholism? Well I'm showing some talent in that direction, but how convincing is a drunk without nicotine stained fingers?

Fat bastard? That's probably going to happen anyway. Some may argue that fatness is not in itself cool. I think a snarling fatty could have a sort of retro charm in these poncey look after yourself 5-a-day days.

That's it then. I'm gonna get chubby and if anyone makes a comment I will kill them.