I had it in mind to write two posts today, but when I looked for my camera to download the photos, I found I’d left it at work yesterday. Not that it matters, they aren’t topical posts and they can wait.
Apart from that I’ve frittered my day away.
A goatlet, or whatever they call them. Never could stand the things, always escaping and looking at you with peculiar eyes…
I have submitted some work today, but apart from that haven’t made much progress in my plans to be one of the towering literary figures of the 21st century. This is a shame, as I woke up with such ambitious plans. I ended up washing dishes. cooking and watching quizzes. I think I may start telling myself that quizzes are coded messages from the devil. That way I might be able to stop watching them. On the other hand, you may read a post in a month’s time about how I made a pentagram in salt and sat in the middle of it to watch Pointless. In that case you will know that my addiction to quiz shows is becoming serious…
It’s strange. When I gave up smoking I had one packet of cigarettes in use and one unopened. I threw the partly used pack away and put the unopened pack by the front door. It was there for five or six years. It meant that I could have one if I wanted, and that seemed to make giving up a lot easier. I haven’t really given up smoking, even now, and still feel like a cigarette as I write this paragraph. People who give up smoking and bang on about their willpower and stuff, are really boring, and I don’t want to be one of them. I merely decided one day that I was going to delay my next cigarette. That was twenty years ago. I might have one tomorrow, but I might not.
If only I could do that with food and quiz shows. Unfortunately I can rarely pass a fridge or a TV set without checking what is in there.
Soda bread
Shots from the archives – March 2016.
Richard told me he would give up smoking before we got married. He kept putting it off until just a few days before the wedding. He stopped smoking because he didn’t want me to think he couldn’t keep his word. He became so foul I wondered what it was I had found so attractive about him. The evening before the wedding he visited me and – wonder of wonders! – he was charming and had reverted to the Richard I knew. He confessed he had started smoking again. I was so relieved. He eventually gave up the following spring and used nicotine patches to help him. He kept a packet of cigarettes and his lighter in a drawer in the shed for nearly ten years and only threw them out when we moved house. He hasn’t smoked in twenty-six years. If someone could invent food patches that gave us the sensation of eating our favourite foods and made us believe we weren’t really hungry they would make a fortune.
I’m glad it’s not just me that gets grumpy when deprived of nicotine.. Does he dream about smoking? I do. I used to wake up in a panic that I’d really started again. Now I’m more laid back about it.
As for food patches – brilliant – if you invent doughnut flavoured patches put me down for a large box of them! 🙂
Richard doesn’t dream of smoking and seems to have lost all desire to smoke. His dreams are mainly the getting lost type of dream; losing his travelling companions, forgetting to bring important documents to meetings etc.
Mmmm…doughnuts! 😀
My worst dream is the one where I am still in the job I left 25 years ago. I hated the admin and in the dream I am being pursued for 25 year’s arrears of paperwork. I sometimes actually wake up in a panic. 🙂
😮
I hate quizzes – you either know the answers or you don’t – and I’m not quick enough – but I do know that you were kidding us to pretend you didn’t know what a goatlet was
And again, another punishing point from the master cruciverbalist
Yes, good for you for giving up smoking. One of the best presents you ever gave yourself. As for food…I had a cousin, a seeker, who was into all things mystical. Once he even tried to subsist on air. He didn’t succeed and returned to eating food.
Icould do with a few weeks of air…
Quizzes are coded messages from the devil….I may use that
Do it on your podcast, it will make more sense than most of the current media outlets here and in the USA. :_)
But can you play a podcast backwards?
After his heart attack, my father gave up smoking after the doctor asked him if he was going to continue smoking. He asked why did the doctor want to know. The doctor told him if he was going to continue smoking, not to come back, as he didn’t have time for fools. Dad quit smoking.
Fair point, I once visited a friend of mine in the heart ward and he pointed several of his fellow patients out – the one who kept sneaking out for a cigar and the one whose family kept sneaking pork pies in for him.
Giving smoking in the end was no problem after not giving up smoking several times. I just stopped when the doctor told me to and that was it. Giving up food is much more tricky, I agree.
During one of my several attempts, JUlia went out, came back and slapped a pack of cigarettes on the table with the words. “You’ll have to start smoking again, I can’t stand any more of this.”
Lack of nicotine can, it seems, make you irritable.
I find that hard to believe. More or less everything makes me irritable.
Yes, I find that about me too. Waking up seems to make me irritable, and if I have trouble with my trousers my blood pressure can be detected at the British Geological Survey, which is a good ten miles away.
We have a seismological station up the valley, there to detect nuclear testing. It is extremely sensitive and probably registers your trouser problems.
🙂 It is nice to think that my dometic problems would register on the world stage, though calming down may be a good thing…
Possibly…. but dull.
🙂
First off – congratulations on quitting smoking! Bravo you. Think if you had been smoking for those last 20 years. That would not have been good.
Second, just google “cute goats” on You Tube – and you will change your tune on that account. Goats are the bomb.
Hmm…