How was Hogmanay? Me too. Very quiet.
And the Beeb still hasn’t listened to my pleas to put on repeats of Rikki Fulton’s the Reverend IM Jolly, still the funniest festive telly in my lifetime.
My New Year stovies and oatcakes went doon a treat, especially with my wee grandson, who declared: “You’re a great cook, Nana.” Ken is, I suspect that’s the nicest thing anyone will say to me throughout the year, even though his dad reckons he’s a sook. Too cruel.
He went on beat me at that hilarious but infernally difficult building blocks game, Jenga. Trounced by a seven-year-old.
We thought smoking was oh so sexy
Setting up my new calendar, something of a bombshell struck. In May, it will be two years since I stopped what I’d been doing since I was a feel-gype 14 – smoking.
The shock is that I hadn’t realised it was so long because I’ve barely missed my once-beloved faggies for a second. Fa’d hiv thocht it? Deffo nae family and friends. Some of them still think I slink off for a sly puff every now and then, so addicted was I to the wicked weed.
Last night, watching the Beatles documentary Get Back, I realised how, way back then, smokers barely had the nicotine stick oot their moos. The boys puffed as they played; John even had his plunked between his guitar strings.
Me and my late pal, Jenny, would buy five Cadets on the way to school and share them during the day. At the Beach or Palace dances, as we bopped roon oor handbags on the fleer – hoping to catch the eye of a likely loon – we’d also sook awa’ on the fags, thinkin’ that made us look oh, so sexy. Bampots. Come to think of it, we must have had the loons heavin’ with the guff o’ tobacco.
Beginning of 2020, when I started getting breathless and home-diagnosed emphysema, fear kicked in
I even ended up marrying a passionate anti-smoker, to whom I promised I’d stop when we married. But there was I, all in white, in the lavvies at The Amatola, demolishin’ a cigarette from a packet I’d primed a good mate to smuggle in for me.
Stopping was easy – thanks to pure terror
Pregnancy stopped me, naturally, when I cowked at nicotine, but – eejit that I am – started again aboot a fortnight after the twins were ootski. Hypnosis and acupuncture were unmitigated disasters.
Absorbed at my typewriter at work, I’d often have two lit fags in the overflowing ashtray. As al’ age approached, I was the only wrinklie hingin’ aboot ootside restaurants and bars with a crowd of rowdy youngsters. Beginning of 2020, when I started getting breathless and home-diagnosed emphysema, fear kicked in.
Literally seeing each as a nail in my coffin, I went down to just a pucklie a day. Then I couldna even thole one.
After an X-ray, the doc reckoned my problem was, quite simply, being fat. Lost a stone, then put it back on again.
So, stopping smoking was easy-peasy, thanks to pure terror. Now, how do I give up crisps, tatties, fish suppers, cheese, After Eights – and a’thing to which I’m now a hopeless addict?
