Having spent the weekend on my own, only going out once to Sainsbury’s for urgent supplies, something strange happened last night. I decided to start smoking again. I last smoked on 31st December 1993 and my brand of choice was Peter Stuyvesant, known as “the international passport to smoking pleasure”, or cancer as we call it these days. I don’t know exactly how this happened, but weirdly I was engaged in a stressful journey to buy some fags in a place I didn’t recognise.
It turned out that at some point in the past, I had actually started smoking again but I wasn’t smoking very much because the pack I carried round with me seemed to last ages. I must have been running low so off I went, visiting countless shops, trying to get my Stuyvesants.
There were lots of shops selling fags but none appeared to have my particular brand. I had a memory of picking some up before but had no idea where. And just any old brand wouldn’t do. It was Stuyvesants or nothing.
After a while, the constant dashing from place to place became extremely stressful, not least when I realised that shops were closing and I still didn’t have my fags. Then, just as I was about to give up, I woke up. It was 4.00am and I had not actually moved from my bed.
Unlike in my dreamlike state, I didn’t want to smoke again, finding as I do these days the stench of nicotine utterly repulsive, as I do those wretched vaping things which, no doubt, one day we will find make you die in a similar way to cigarettes.
In the cold dark before dawn, I remembered that this was not the first near panic dream I have had about resuming smoking. More than that, last night’s dream was basically a repeat of previous dreams.
My only fear is that one day I will find myself sleepwalking to the fags counter at Sainsburys and emerge with a pack of Stuyvesants and really start smoking again.
