Across the pond

The telephone was ringing as I came downstairs this morning . I could scarcely speak for coughing. It is now so bad  just after I wake up that I am exhausted before I have had breakfast. I realised that I have to stop. My lungs have no room for any more smoke. Since I started smoking aged 17 I have inhaled 420,000 cigarettes.  That’s 7,000 a  year which has cost me £126,000 at today’s prices. If I go on the coughing will kill me.

So that’s settled then. And in 2010 I can give myself a real treat with that two grand which will not go up in smoke.

Except for one small problem. I came to the same conclusion a few weeks ago. I began to gradually reduce my consumption. Successfully for a time. But by the time I was writing the blog on the new film Bright Star about Keats and Fanny Brawne I was compensating by smoking more than usual. The weed helped to dull the pain of re-reading about his doomed love affair and painful death at 25.

I have not smoked today and when I looked at my watch just now I was astonished. It is now 1 PM. I stop after every couple of sentences, to reach for a cigarette, although just three hours ago I made the decision to stop smoking immediately. Not smoking slows me down, leaves me with a permanent sense that something is wrong.

This time my intention is to stop for one week and then review the situation. If the cough has abated somewhat I shall then experiment with another week of not smoking.

But, – and here’s a tip for the government – having an extra two grand to spend is no incentive. Right from when I started as a student I was spending more on cigarettes than I could afford. Putting the tax up does not change the behaviour of those who are addicted to smoking. For the poor – and a greater percentage of the surviving smokers are poor – that my mean cutting down on food, drink and shelter. Because for the true addict promises more pleasure than indulging the addiction.

These days nearly all smokers are addicts, who smoke despite the ‘smoking kills’ message on the box. The ‘social smokers’ no longer exist, because it is no longer socially acceptable to smoke.

(The picture is tthere to relieve the tedium of the smoking story. I took it on Wendnesday night experimenting with night photography in Lyme Regis. But the red telephone kxosk is also one of the icons of the age when nearly everybody smoked. Nobody uses it any more. But it is cheering street architecture. It should be preserved.)