I've been nicotine clean now for three months and three weeks exactly and the urge to have "just one" cigarette is now really pretty rare. But I must admit to having such an urge just now.
I do not feel the desire to smoke when drunk or when stressed. Indeed quite the opposite. Just now I have completed more than 90 minutes of hard manual labour, that is to say olive tree pruning on some of the rockier, wildlife friendly and TW unfriendly terrain at the Greek Hovel. Returning covered in sweat and with sun tan lotion dripping into my eyes I turned on the shower, that is to say hosepipe, and ...well... gosh it was brilliant.
The sea yesterday was an inviting and sparkling blue. I plunged in because I was very smelly not because it was enjoyable. It was cold. Not Whitby or Margate cold but too cold for my liking. My shower, on the other hand, has its water heated in the metal pipe that climbs the mountain, linking the Hovel to civilization. The shower was, as ever, better than sex - to quote my guest of two years ago. It was blissful.
And so I sit here after a hard afternoon's work and the best shower a man can ask for with most of my work done for the day and what could be better than to enjoy just one cigarette, sitting on the steps leading up to the snake veranda watching the world go by? Or, given where I am, watching it not go by.
The desire is passing already. There are no fags stashed at the hovel and Kambos with its 4.5 Euro packs of twenty is two miles away. I know that one fag will lead to two and to twenty and I really don't want that to happen. I may have put on the odd pound but as I labour in the fields I am conscious that I am fitter than I have been for ages. There's no going back.