This morning I had to take my car across the city to Middlewood Road, Hillsborough. That's where the "Seat" dealer is located. And as Hector - my trusty steed will be at the garage most of the day, I had to make my way back to Pudding Towers by bus.
Riding back, I was struck by the number of people I saw standing around outside shops, businesses and office buildings. They were talking with colleagues in huddles or fiddling with their damnable mobile phones or simply in awkward poses watching the traffic go by. Oh,, and I forgot one other thing - these sad people were all smoking cigarettes!
Surprising as it might seem, the author of these words was himself once a smoker. "Benson and Hedges" in golden packets was my drug of choice though in America I smoked "True Blue", in Greece "Karelia" and in France - "Gitanes". I had a twenty a day habit - sometimes more. Pints of beer were accompanied by cigarettes in smoky pubs and the day couldn't start without my first fag (apologies to American visitors for using that last word!).
So I know all about the smoking habit. But thankfully I gave up forever in 1988 just before my beloved daughter was born and I haven't had a single cigarette since. And now for all smoking bloggers out there I would like to help you by presenting you with The Yorkshire Pudding Guide to Giving Up Smoking. It doesn't involve any nicotine patches or nicotine chewing gum. No hypnotherapy or self-help information packs, No counselling sessions and certainly none of those execrable "e-cigarettes" that are quite prevalent these days - promoted by unscrupulous entrepreneurs solely to make money.
Giving up smoking makes sense for lots of reasons:-
a) Smoking makes you stink like an ashtray - the stale odour is in your hair and on your clothes. It hangs about you like a fart that won't go away even though you can't smell it.
b) It can cause lung cancer and heart disease.
c) It costs a lot of money that could be spent on better things.
d) It makes you breathless so climbing up hills or staircases becomes a struggle.
e) It makes you step out of work places or social venues to smoke with the other addicts instead of getting on with work or the social event you have just left.
f) Smoking causes many house fires and road accidents.
g) So much money you spend on cigarettes goes to the government - like a voluntary extra tax. Why give them more of your hard-earned cash than you have to?
h) Much of the money you spend supports the greedy and very cunning tobacco industry.
i) Through the vast majority of human history people haven't smoked - it's a very modern habit.
So now to The Yorkshire Pudding Guide to Giving Up Smoking.
Are you stinky smokers ready for it? You will be surprised to discover that there are just two steps:-
1) Decide to give up smoking.
2) Give up smoking.
As those irritating meerkats might say - "Simples!" There are two important supplementary points to my master plan. Firstly - Do you really, really, really want to give up or are you kind of pretending you want to kick the habit? Secondly - giving up means just that - no "reward" cigarettes. Tell yourself - "I am now a non-smoker" and mean it! No vaporising e-cigarettes, no more links with the old habit - "I am a non-smoker". No turning back. If you do turn back and succumb to the dreaded weed once more then that is the proof that you were just pretending in the first place. But don't worry. Learn from your failure and after a couple of weeks try again but this time with 100% determination. Thousands and thousands of others have succeeded and you my friend can also do it!
Remember my plan. In the words of John Lennon - "It's easy if you try".
I'm with you YP. My John quit smoking in 1984 or 85 - said it was the hardest thing he ever did. But, you still have to be careful. He smoked for 30 years, has been quit for 30 years, has been disgustingly active and healthy since, and was diagnosed in February with lung cancer. The treatment has been rough on him, but he's almost finished with this session. We hope, of course, with subsequent testing, the beast will be in remission.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to you for quitting the nasty habit.
Best of luck to your husband. I hope he has great doctors like my husband had (see my comment below). I'll be thinking of you both.
DeleteThanks, Jennifer!
DeleteDear Mary - So sorry to hear that your husband has had to endure this serious smoking-realted condition and let's hope that the beast stays sleeping in its cave for many more years.
DeleteAfter about 45 years devoted to the disgusting activity, I quit overnight. My method? I didn't buy any more cigs..... easy.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Cro! Quitting after 45 years is an achievement to be proud of. Clearly you turned your back on the habit when you were mentally ready.
DeleteI have given up this morning. I have run out of tobacco and can't be bothered walking into town in the pouring rain.
ReplyDeletePS. Thanks for the reminder. I'll charge my E-Ciggy up and vaporise myself.
I guess I will never convince an old seadog. Were you the guy pictured on packs of Player's?
DeleteYP, I know it's bad and I feel like an old ashtray........I am wrinkly and my willy doesn't work. I will start again after I've been shopping in Aldi. I don't want to add sanctimony to all my other bad habits.
DeleteBreast cancer kills an awful lot of people but they don't tax tits by the gramme.They also scan them for nothing.
PS. Bloody Aldi don't do Maggi roast in the bags nor do they sell tobacco. Had to trudge all the way across the road to Morrisson's . Out of breath I was. I'll get one of those obesity scooters that move me by electric.
DeleteYeah, you's look cool in a mobility scooter Adrian! With "go faster" stripes down the side and Alf and Molly trotting along behind. A hearing trumpet would be a useful addition too.
DeleteI smoked my last cigarette in 1967. I found it very easy but I won't bore you with the story (just yet). When I returned from a visit to someone who smoked several years ago after having travelled on two planes and various other conveyances I was met at the airport here by a very dear friend who exclaimed "You've been smoking!" I was mortified. Not by her exclamation - despite her horror at what she thought was her being rude - but by the fact that every person I'd sat next too must have thought the same. All my clothes were clean on that morning but the very fact of being in a room for breakfast in a smoking household had saturated my clothes.
ReplyDeleteWe've visited overnight with friends who were smokers. Immediately on arriving home, we put all clothes (from suitcases AND bodies) into the washing machine, and put the luggage outside to air. We never thought about that when we were smokers.
DeleteThankfully it is now against the law to smoke in British pubs so I can wear whatever clothes I want to and not risk smoke pollution or any unwanted passive smoking.
DeleteThe hard way to give up smoking: find out you have a giant tumor in one of your lungs and you will surely die if you don't.
ReplyDeleteThis happened to my husband three and a half years ago. He now only has one lung, but he is cancer free and has been given a second chance at life. Most lung cancer patients aren't so lucky.
I would beg anyone (especially if you have family and friends who love you) to give up cigarettes IMMEDIATELY. I promise you, they're just not worth it.
Your husband isn't a statistic Jennifer - he is a living and loved human being with a name and people should listen to you and learn from his terrifying experience - all linked to smoking.
DeleteFormer smokers like us know that smoking must stop. Here teachers were heavy smokers. we smoked in the school and in the classroom after the kids leat. Bad old days!
ReplyDeleteYes Red. I well remember school staff rooms filled with smoke and having a fag while I marked books at the end of the day. Thank heavens those days have gone.
DeleteYou forgot one reason closely related to a): Smokers not only stink like an ashtray, they taste like one, too. Attractive, sexy non-smokers like myself don't want to kiss stinky, ashtray-y smokers. They don't want to hug them. They don't even want to dance with them, even if it is "just dancing". And smoking simply is NOT sexy. Look at the wrinkles around the mouth of women my age who have been smoking for many years, and then try to find the wrinkles around my mouth.
ReplyDeleteSo, even if you really don't want to succumb to the dictatorship of "beauty and fashion", do it for yourself, women! And men!
(Steve smoked, I never did. I still loved him. You simply can't choose who you fall in love with, can you.)
I agree with you Miss A. I should have mentioned that point. No doubt Steve had to have regular showers to wash away the cigarette stinkiness before kissing his wife. Probably had a dozen showers a day. And in answer to your last question - no you can't.
DeleteI was a smoker for years...and I enjoyed it, most of the time...particularly when socializing over a few drinks; after a good meal, etc; all of it.
ReplyDeleteI gave up cigarettes a few years ago now; and I just gave up "cold turkey". I stopped buying them. That was the simplest way of doing it - for me, anyway. I decided not to fight my will power; not to read or listen to all the articles etc, telling me I should give them up....they were all just a reminder of what I was doing. So I blanked all of it from my mind; didn't dwell on cigarettes and smoking; and I've never smoked again since...nor will I again now or in the future.
Seeing people smoking these days is becoming more rare. I was watching a re-run of special chosen interviews from the Michael Parkinson Shows the other night and in one of the segments a guest was smoking...and it looked so strange - once upon a time we'd not have thought it so.
You are right Lee - there was a time when smoking almost seemed stylish - sophisticated. Even Audrey Hepburn puffed on a cigarette stuck into an elegant cigarette holder. I look back with disbelief.
DeleteComeonnow! You are kidding, right Mr. Pudding? This little girl was a B & H smoker from the age of 15 to the age of 33!! I loved Benson&Hedges! Quit about 8 times before it finally stuck! It was the smell of my clothes that I knew other people smelled even tho they did not say anything about it that finally did it. That and the ridiculous cost. It was not easy, and I still miss puffing with my morning coffee, but I can spend a lot more money on fabric now. hahaha
ReplyDeleteBack then when The Big Bear kissed you, it would have been like kissing an ashtray unless of course he himself was a also a smoker! I bet he was.
DeleteI stopped smoking 30 years ago and where the money I have saved has gone I have no idea. I agree with (e) it can only have been spent on better things...
ReplyDeleteMs soup
You have probably spent it all on soup Alphie! Maybe you need help to deal with your soup addiction. You could always try stew instead. Congratulations on being a non-smoker for thirty years!
DeleteThankfully it is not something I have ever done so I don't have the problem of trying to give it up but I do realise it is not an easy thing to do. Although there are still lots of smokers here in Oz we notice the huge numbers in Europe when we travel there. Thankfully they now restrict smoking in places where you eat, but we are forced to sit inside even when it would be very pleasant to sit outside because all the smokers are puffing away at the outside tables. Yuk!!
ReplyDeleteThis Stone Age diet, in short, consisted of mainly lean red meat and vegetables. In this type of diet animal meat is
ReplyDeleteAlpha ZXT consumed in large quantities and 45 to 65% of the energy needed by the body is derived from it. Over and over again, life expectancy studies related to diet, including by the World Health Organization (WHO), have concluded that Americans and Europeans would do better to eat more like third world peoples as the options provided by their additional wealth have most often lead to poor nutritional choices. http://www.healthsupreviews.com/is-alpha-zxt-scam-or-legit/
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