My So-called Life: How my sanity went up in smoke

Excuse me if I rambles all over the place this week and don't make a lot of the sense but I have given up the smoking and my brain is all a muddle and I can not do the thing called sleep except when I do but then I dreams that I am lighting up in the bed and then I thinks I have set the duvet alight so then I shout "fire, fire!" while hopping round the room like a loony and then my partner do say: "Oh, go have a bloody fag and do us all a favour. Yous driving me mental."

Excuse me if I rambles all over the place this week and don't make a lot of the sense but I have given up the smoking and my brain is all a muddle and I can not do the thing called sleep except when I do but then I dreams that I am lighting up in the bed and then I thinks I have set the duvet alight so then I shout "fire, fire!" while hopping round the room like a loony and then my partner do say: "Oh, go have a bloody fag and do us all a favour. Yous driving me mental."

I do not find this supportive and kind of hope that one night there is a real fire and that will show him and that is not a nice hope to have but when you gives up the smoking the first thing you notice is that the NicoTeen is what has kept you nice all these years and without it you turns into a nasty, nasty person and there is nothings you can do about this.

The bad temper thing is very, very bad and means you shouts at everybody and everything and also revs your engine at peoples on zebra crossings just to gives them a fright and you finds yourself thinking while it would be very bad indeed to run thems over you could just give them a clip. And this is what the not smoking does to you.

I am giving up the smoking because I do not want to be like the lung cancer people on the telly who when they do the breathing go "ehhhhhhhhhh-haaaaaaaaaa-ehhhhhhhhhh-haaaaaaa" and have that oxygen tank in the hall although why the oxygen tank is in the hall while they are going 'ehhhhhhh-haaaaaaaaaa-ehhhhhhh-haaaaaaaa" on the sofa in the livings room is anyone's guess.

And I want to give up the smoking because the childrens hates it and in particular my little nieces who stays with me a lot hate it and hold their noses whens they see me coming and say the things like "you smell" and "why are your teeth so yellow?" and all the other things small children say because they have not yet learned how to do the artifice and that is fair enough but they will have to learn it 'ventually and the sooner the better in my opinion and have I read the book of the Allen Carr man?

That is whats everyone says when you say you are giving ups the smoking. Have you read the book of the Allen Carr mans? So I tries to read the book of the Allen Carr mans but it makes the bad temper even worser 'cos he keeps saying everything again IN CAPITAL LETTERS like you are a proper thicko and he also keeps saying that the relief you gets from a cigarette is like the relief you get from taking off shoes that are too tight, so why wear the shoes, WHY WEAR THE SHOES?

And I can see that he has a point but all the time I am thinking why not just get bigger shoes, WHY NOT GET BIGGER SHOES?, and I am guessing this is why he is a multi-millionaire gives-up-smoking person while I am not and would murder for a fag.

I hopes I do not get fat and do not think I will so long as I can stops eating peanut butter straight from the jar with my fist and drinkings the double cream straight from the carton. Pre-prepared celery and carrot sticks are said to be the answer but they do not seem likes a very good answer to me and they are just another thing to push outs the way when you goes into the fridge for the peanut butter and the doubles cream and maybe a bite of butter straight from the butter dish.

It is very trying, giving up the smoking. I has been smoking since I was 12 and nows I am 42 and smoking is whose I am. If you do the smoking all your life and remembers the No.10 and No.6 then not smoking is scary and is like looking down and findings your legs or some other part of you has gone all missing. And you gets all agitated because the smoking is like a kind of punctuation, your full stops and commas and colons, and without it everything goes all jumbled up and mad and the anxiety is nearly as bads as the temper.

I think it will help if I keeps really, really busy so afters washing our windows (inside and out) and rearranging everything in the larder in descending order of size I offers to take the nieces to Carter's Royal Berkshire Steam Fair which do be visiting the local park and the nieces come over and are pleased to finds that I have stopped the smelly smoking thing but do wonder why I have brown sticky fingers and a big white moustache but I tells them to stop being so nosy because I do not want to say anythings about the peanut butter and the doubles cream but while I'm about it, would anyone else like a big bite of butter?

And so we goes to the fair which turns out to be yesterday's rides at tomorrow's prices and 'cos it is quiet the rides last four times as long as usual and I find I do not like that. I do not know about you but when I takes kids to fun fairs I does not want value for money. I wants to be ripped off as quick as possible so we can all gets home and, no, you can not hook another duck for £1.50, YOU CAN NOT HOOK ANOTHER DUCK FOR £1.50, and that makes my nieces cry so all in all it is a bad outing and I has to say sorry to them and explain how hard it is to give up the smoking and the NicoTeen and I'm sorry, too, that I still have the horrible teeth but I is working on it and soon I will also go to the gym and drink two litres of Evian a day and become the sort of person I am not but think I could be if only I works hard enough at it.

And this is the story of my giving up smoking so far and now, if yous don't mind, I'm going to sit on the bottom stair for a good long cry before I goes to bed and dreams I am on fire. This is what it's like to gives up the smoking and it's the truth.

d.ross@independent.co.uk

- but do not try to contact me as I will be rude to you and then try to run you over and if that doesn't get rid of you I will give you my biggest smile which almost certainly will