Fag free

For fourteen days now.

I can't decide whether to be chuffed or insulted at how amazed my family and friends are that I have managed this. But I have, and hope to keep it up forever.

I think I've put a few pounds on, but that is probably more to do with the vast amounts of wine I have been drinking in the garden than the lack of nicotine in my blood.

Although there are two things that I am absolutely convinced are side-effects of my stopping smoking.

1) I am waking up ridiculously early (for me). I have never been an early bird, always the night owl, and now I'm wide awake anywhere between 6.30-7.30 without the alarm going off or anything. Really weird.

2) My nails are all breaking. I'm not particularly vain about my nails, but they tend to be pretty tough and grow quite quickly so they are usually long, and natural, which pisses off quite a few of my female friends. Now they are all breaking. Appearance-wise it doesn't really bother me but as I have lost length from my fingers that has been there for years and years I am struggling to do some fiddly things like buttons, and it's quite uncomfortable.

Something that I think has absolutely no bearing on my stopping smoking is another pet has died. Melanie the goldfish. This is the very expensive goldfish that cost my daughter pounds and pounds to win at the fair, that took me weeks of extra special care nursing back to health cos of its fin rot. It curled up like a question mark and died. And what is it with fish these days. When I was a kid and my pet fish died they floated, ours sink like stones. But then my mother was never a pet fan so maybe it was something she was doing..........

Blubber off in 3 days.