First thing to go....

I smoked my last cigarette ever last night!
The consultant last Friday said it had to go and reading up on renal cancer it is a serious contributory factor and if I have to live with just one kidney in future it would be more than stupid to add to the risk of that one having problems.

I'm sure it will feel very odd not to have them in my life as I started while still as primary school....what a horrid thing to admit to eh? I was 9. We could buy 3d (that's 3 pennies old money) singles from the corner shop and would share just the one between about four of us only maybe once or twice a week, so no big addiction as money was tight.

I can remember when we used to smoke in the cinema and melting a plastic false nail from flicking in the dark, smell of burning plastic is not a good way to impress a first date. My first office job at 16 had the rule of no smoking before 4pm because of all the very valuable documents on desks, it became the thickest fog at one minute past four! I felt very grown up and sophisticated when I smoked the French Gauloises. And felt quite sick when all we could get hold of in Israel was the local brand Knesset which was no doubt made of cow dung yuk. There was the youth club play where I was the aristocratic devil and puffed my way through an enormous Churchill cigar on stage. It was just part of our world.

I've given up on and off over the years and probably got through a packet a day at some points too. Hubby was a smoker when we met and our supplies were often shared with his dad who called himself a "social" smoker because he never bought any just smoked other people's hahaha. Hubby gave up after a rough two weeks of flu some time before we had the children I think. The main conscious decision to stop was when the children were old enough to start school and we were definitely tight on funds so it was get a part time job or save money in other ways...not buying cigarettes meant I didn't have to work for another two years.

Over the last 20 years I've smoked again but never in front of Hubby or any children or most of my family and rarely got through more than a packet a week. Hubby hated it so much that I never lit up when I was with him so mostly none at all during the day since I retired and I never even had them in my bag on our holidays.

So no big deal to give them up eh? Although I really did enjoy the ones I had they have to remain as part of my history now. Last Friday when I decided, there were 8 left in the packet (I'm too tight to throw them away lol) and last night was the last one!
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