When I took up smoking again after Dad’s stroke and death (I was 45) I continued to smoke for another 7 years. I had a wonderful bloke. He was the sort of person who didn’t try to change me so he said nothing about me smoking. I knew he hated it though.
He died of a sudden heart attack aged 52 and I was heartbroken. There was nothing I could do for him now that he was dead, but I could give up smoking in some sort of post-mortem deference to him.
And I listened to my recording, and it worked again. Phew!
Now I am 82 and not once since then have I been tempted, interested or anything except sickened by a cigarette and its smell, particularly those butts jammed in ashtrays. So I am still a thorn in the side of any smoker who comes across my path.
I recently visited the Maldives. It was truly Paradise. BUT the little house was right on the beach with our beach chairs on the sand outside and the sea 20 feet away. Between our deckchairs and the beach there were many smokers on the rows of chairs between us and the beach. I couldn’t lie on our deckchairs because the smoke drifted from the smokers to be trapped in with us. I couldn’t cough, glare or ask them to stop because there were too many of them and they had a perfect right to be smoking. I was stymied.
I either stayed in the house with the doors firmly shut or swam in the sea, no idyllic lying under a beach umbrella and reading. Such is life!
But it shows that Australia is not in sync with much of the rest of the world in recognising the dangers of cigarette smoking. Many of the others either know or don’t, and if they know they don’t care.
In China, for example, it seems to me nearly everyone chain-smokes!