Giving up smoking

I gave up smoking cigarettes nearly 12 months ago.  Now I miss it.  I won't start smoking again, of course.  Why go through all that pain just to have to go through it again another day?  I am hoping that talking about what I am feeling makes it easier stay on the path of not smoking 


Though this last time I gave up smoking wasn't that painful at all.  There were four days of not feeling so lovely and being a little tense and then those feelings went away and I was left with a disappointed feeling that it, smoking, left me so easily this time.  


This is not a sign that I can resume smoking as it is so easy to give up!!  This says to me that it was time to let it go.  The previous times I gave up smoking were awful and seriously do not trust my luck that it would be easy again.


When visiting down south I felt like a pariah as a smoker.  Rightly so, it is smelly and dirty before we go onto any health issues.  Speaking of which, my daughter is studying medicine and the medical facts of why I shouldn't smoke weren't mentioned very often but.........

When did I start smoking cigarettes?  There was the time as a rebellious teenager that I smoked, menthols at that.  Peer group pressure - other girls were experimenting with smoking and so I joined in.  


There was something very risque about pooling our money and one of us going into the milkbar after school and buying a packet of cigarettes.  Sitting in the park smoking later I remember feeling very grown up.  We were not simply anonymous schoolgirls any more.   We were pushing the boundary of what we were allowed to do.  We were sophisticated women - or so we thought at the tender age of 15. 




That first time smoking did not last long.  I left school and it was no longer necessary to prove that I was not a schoolgirl any more.  I wasn't.  Anyway, life was far to busy and fun to spend time smoking.

A little later there was another experimental time.  It was the early 70's and the world was a beautiful place to be in.  We could do anything, anything at all.  There were few boundaries in our small world that we didn't push at in an attempt to batter them down.  


No, that is incorrect.  Really thinking back to that time, I did not realise that there were barriers there.  That didn't come until several years later.  At that moment there was just a hell of a lot of things to do in life, places to go to, people to meet.  And experimenting with substances was one of the things that was there to try.  We did and came through it and out the other side relatively unscathed.



The next flirtation with smoking was living in Germany in late 1976 as a young wife and mother.  For an Australian woman on her first trip overseas, at that time I did not have the life experience to communicate my feelings of being boxed in and expected to act in a certain way.  So I smoked hand-rolled Cuban cigarillos and they were fun.   As I stopped smoking as soon as we returned to Australia six months later, smoking these cigarillos was purely a release for me from the stifling lifestyle that was Germany at the moment in time.


The next step on my smoking career, if I can call it that, wasn't until I arrived in Darwin in 1993.  Again I was being rebellious, doing the things that I had not been doing in the previous 18 years because of the lifestyle that I had chosen.  It was again a time to experiment, to find out who I was and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.  


Now, 17 years after arriving in Darwin I am smoke free for nearly the last one and hopefully will not smoke again.  But I miss smoking.  I miss rolling a cigarette.  I miss the time out it gave me when I went outside to have a smoke. 


Okay, I don't miss emptying dirty ashtrays.  I don't miss the mess in my handbag with bits of tobacco and filters rolling around the bottom no matter how careful I was.  There are more books on my shelves which I have treated myself with from the money not gone up in smoke.  I notice the smell of cigarettes when I walk out of a building and say thank you that smokers have been moved from straight outside the doors to way down the street.  It is an awful smell to come across, it really does assault my nostrils.


Maybe this is just another of those moments when I realise that I might be growing up.  I have chosen to take something out of my life which wasn't a positive influence.  Now, to do that with other areas.......


(With apologies to the ducks for taking over their spot for a moment.  Though smoked duck is very, very good)

Ducks in Champagne 2008

After Paris, my son had arranged for us to travel to Reims where there was the guided tour through Veuve Clicquot building and cellars, lunch at the Manoir in the hills and then back to Reims for a visit to Krug cellars and dinner at a local brassiere with our local hosts.  Wow, what a day.  And that is the meaning of the heading - no, we did NOT eat ducks cooked in Champagne.  Though the thought...................

The ducks were allowed to come out of my handbag very quickly when we were in the private tasting room at Veuve Clicquot while we were left alone for a moment between our tour and the guided tasting of the wines that make the famous champagne.  The ducks looked very happy being surrounded by all that glamour and yellow diffused light. Definitely suited them.




That was the end of their frivolity for the day.  They were not allowed out in public again for the time we were in Reims.
Lunch at the Veuve Clicquot Manoir in Verzy, maybe this picture explains why the ducks were not allowed to come out.

Between the Krug tasting (which I left early, there really is only so much champagne a girl can take in) and dinner, I retired to the hotel for a much needed relax and soak in the bath. 

As the ducks had been cooped up in my handbag for so long they enjoyed a wallow as well.  

The next morning we packed the car, no mean feat with the four of us travelling, had a wander around Reims and the beautiful cathedral and then continued on our travels to Belgium.

Decorative duck at Hotel des Templars, Reims.  Okay, couldn't resist taking the photo.

Ducks in Paris 2008

First stop for myself and the ducks was Paris.  Our first trip there and I was very excited to be staying in an apartment in the most beautiful city in the world.  Paris really is as beautiful as is stated and the food!!!! Wonderful.

Little pastries from the boulangerie/patissiere just around the corner from our apartment on the first morning in Paris.  I loved being able to go to the boulangerie/patissiere every morning and choose a selection of little pastries to start the day.

And as we were in Paris, viola, photo op at the Eiffel Tower.  My son managed to pull himself out from under his embarrassment, after saying 'You're not!!!' and played along with me to take these photos. 

Five glorious days in Paris staying in the 7th Arrondissement, buying food in the local shopping street every afternoon - visiting the greengrocer, cheese shop, delicatessen, wine shop.  Mmmmmmm.  Fresh bread on the way home from our favourite boulangerie.  Any left over baguette was then my petit breakfast the next morning with leftover tomatoes, greens or cheese.  This was with my first coffee before I went to the patissiere for the real or second breakfast.  How do the Parisian women stay so slim?  

Travelling Ducks 2008

It is about time that I put up the photos of the ducks travelling with me in Europe as it was in July 2008 - 18 months ago!!!  Lil Duck and Blue Duck travelled with me when I met the kids in Europe.  They both had passports which I had put together for them - how could anyone travel without a passport?  Unfortunately, since 9/11, passport control people seem to have lost their sense of humour and my attempts to have the ducks' passports stamped were met with disapproval - to the point that I felt that if I had pressed any further with my request that I may have been taken away to be questioned as to my motives.

Anyway, both the ducks seemed happy in the bottom of my handbag even if they were not travellers with stamps in their passports.  In the end they are ducks and rubber at that!