BEING RESOLUTE

No doubt some of you have made New Year resolutions.

I just have the one - not to make any. I just can't bear the sense of failure when - well when you fail.

If you must make one I hope it's to give up smoking. I'm one of those pious ex-smokers who now feel that it's an obnoxious habit but if you are addicted, I feel your pain.

Here are my tips for how to give it up. 

1. Plan ahead. In my case I allowed 14 years for this. I was a cigarette smoker and knew that one day I would want to give up. I also knew that I would find it impossible to do so given my absolute dependence on my fags.  Then I devised my cunning plan. It occurred to me that giving up a pipe should be easier because pipe-smokers are already used to going for a few hours without smoking. So I switched to a pipe. Then 14 years later I gave it up.

2. Give up pipe-smoking. This is explained here.

What's that you say? You're female and women don't smoke pipes? Think again.

A LOOK IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

This morning was chilly and frosty. As I approached my Mini Cooper S Diesel, I pressed the remote unlock on my key fob and then climbed in and switched on the heated seat control. I plugged in my USB memory stick, pressed the 'start' button and drove off to the sound of Adele singing 'Make you feel my love'.

Rewind to a similarly chilly and frosty morning thirty three years ago. I walk up to the door of my Fiat 128 saloon, put the key in the door and unlock it. It being chilly, I pull out the 'choke' button to make the fuel richer while the engine warms up. I must remember to push it in later to save petrol.

I put the key into the ignition and turn it. The engine starts. I root around in my cassette box and choose a tape by Blondie. I push it into the slot and rewind the tape to the beginning. Next I open the ash tray in readiness, pull out a cigarette, for I was a smoker back then, and use the lighter on the dashboard to light it.

I drive off to the sound of Blondie singing 'Heart of Glass' as the inside of the car slowly fills with cigarette smoke.

How times have changed.

ALL PUFFED OUT

The year was 1994. I was sitting in the doctor's surgery waiting for his verdict on my nagging cough. Having identified the cause as bronchitis he said he had something he could give me for it. He duly ripped a sheet off his prescription pad and passed it across the desk.

When I looked at the prescription, I realised why he had not written on it. It was pre-printed and said simply, 'Stop Smoking'. He added that my lungs were showing the first sign of damage but that if I gave up smoking they would be back to normal within ten years.

Smoking had been part of my life for some thirty four years, the first twenty smoking cigarettes and the last fourteen puffing a pipe. It was going to be hard to give up but necessary.

I began by phoning my wife and asking her to remove everything from the house which was pipe-smoking related before I got home. There followed a period of months which were occasionally excruciating as my body readjusted to normality but then I became a smug ex-smoker.

Tell me, when dining in a pleasant, cosy restaurant do you ever look out of the window at the small gaggle of smokers huddling together to shelter from the chill wind and rain and think 'I wish that was me?' I'm guessing not. If however, you would like to try the experience without risk, you can now purchase an 'e-cigarette' which looks like a cigarette, glows like a cigarette, gives off wisps of smoke like a cigarette but contains no tobacco.

Alternatively, you can 'light up' in the middle of the restaurant and annoy everyone totally legally since e-cigarettes are not subject to the smoking ban. What a jolly wheeze! I must check if they make an e-pipe version.