Why I’m finally giving up smoking at 68
She puffed her way through breast cancer. Not even her dad’s lung cancer put her off. Now JENNI MURRAY reveals the surprising reason . . .
One day after my 68th birthday in early May, I made a momentous decision. After a lifetime of puffing away on an average of 20 a day, I would give up smoking.
My family is delighted and, frankly, astonished that I’ve lasted six weeks with no lapses and only the help of a vape and the occasional square of nicorette chewing gum. That’s at work because, for some reason, vaping is banned in indoor public spaces.
I think I’ve been a nicotine addict my whole life. One of my greatest pleasures as a small child was to sit between the knees of my father or grandfather, hold their hands and sniff their yellow, nicotine-stained fingers.
They were both addicted to untipped Park Drives, so the scent was powerful. I loved it. I associate it with comfort, security and love.
My mother and grandmother naturally disapproved, considering smoking an acceptable evil in a man, but a disgusting, inelegant habit in a woman.
It was in defiance of them that I stole my first cigarette from my Dad’s packet around my 16th birthday. It was revolting. I coughed. I choked. I felt dizzy. I was sick. It should have put me off. I was determined to persevere.
I don’t think any of us had the faintest idea of how dangerous to our health smoking would prove. It was everywhere. We would go to the bowling alley and pause for a fag between games. Behind the bike sheds at school, it was the cool kids who had a quick drag during break. At the cinema, we would sit in the back row and smoke throughout the movie. We would watch old films on TV and see famous and beautiful movie stars using cigarettes as a sophisticated form of communication.
My favourite was now, Voyager as Bette Davis and Paul Henreid say: ‘Shall we just have a cigarette on it?’ He lights two and hands one to her, then she utters the immortal, romantic line: ‘Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.’
Seduced by the sophistication of it all and with no restrictions on when and where we smoked, apart from home and school, we quickly became slaves to the evil weed, always longing for the next fix and sneaking off at every opportunity. It wasn’t even beyond our pocket money.
I don’t remember the exact price, but we found that if we packed in the habit of a bar of chocolate and a bag of sweets after school, we could easily afford a pack of ten — and the risk